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PART II

CHAPTER I
Mine Enemy

So many steps the length of my cell – beginning with the heel planted against the wall under the high window, and finishing at the door; so many steps across – beginning with the heel planted against the wall opposite the bed, and finishing at night at the bed itself, or in the day, when the bed had been turned up against the wall, at the opposite wall. Beside the door the heavy sheet of ground glass that made another window, outside which a light burned at night for a certain time; before that ground glass a wooden slab, fixed firmly in the wall, for a table; a stool for seat. And on the table my Bible. And that was my home for twenty years!

At first, when I realized what it meant: that I was to live there for all my life – that ambition, hope, and all that made life worthy had been stripped away from me – I rebelled fiercely. If I had had any chance to kill myself I should have done it; because this was so different from anything I had planned. I saw the years stretching on before me – seemed to see the very stones of the place worn by my feet, and I growing old in captivity, with all the busy eager world going on outside. Men and women living and loving, and laughing and weeping; little children being born; the seasons renewing themselves; and I at coarse toil, counting the days, and wondering when they would cease for me.

And yet in time, mercifully enough, I did not count the days. I knew when Sunday came round, because there was a difference; one sat in the chapel attached to the prison, and heard a man speak, and the sound of singing and of an organ; one looked about on the faces of other men, prisoners like oneself, and wondered about them. The same faces were seen in the exercise yard and in the shops during the week; but Sunday was a day to be looked forward to, as a break in the dread monotony of the week. I only counted Sundays after a time.

After a time, too, the fierce rebellion passed; I was getting used to things. One gets used to anything, they say, in this world; one's edges become blunted. In the course of years mine were blunted so much that I forgot almost how old I was – ceased to care, in fact. And I remember once that when they shifted me from one cell to another I was resentful, and pleaded to be put back again; I knew the stones of the other, and had grown to like them; and this was new to me. It was like turning a man out of his home, and I was bitter about it.

My fear at first had been that I might lose what refinement I had; I strove passionately to remember what I had been – to be always something better than those with whom I was herded. I believe I was a model prisoner; I read all that I could from the prison library, and I wrote when they would let me. After a time I began to write of that first part of my life – the free part; I was afraid that in the dull course of the years I might forget. Although at first the remembrance of what I had been and what I had done were strongly with me, in time it all narrowed down to the figure of Barbara, and rested there; nor would my recollection turn to anything else. And during all those twenty years, wherein time did not stand still with me, she never changed; in my remembrance she was always the bright pretty girl of eighteen years of age whom I had loved so long before. It was as though she had died, and I had remembered what she was at the last. And it is safe to say that she was always with me.

Not that the wall of my prison ever went down, as it had done once when I lay condemned to death; that vision never came to me again. But in the night I dreamed of her – a mad impossible dream – that she waited somewhere near at hand – always young and beautiful, and always loving me – waited until such time as I should, by a miracle, get out into the world again. In the first years of my imprisonment I dreamed that, over and over again; but no other figure out of the past came to me – at least, not after my first remembrance of the world had worn off.

In time, as the years went on, it seemed as though, as I grew older, a sort of mental mist descended over all that life I had led before my trial – so that things were blurred, and I did not see them distinctly. Mercifully, too, I grew to take an interest in the work I did inside the prison walls; to be keen and anxious to do it well, and to do it better than my fellows. The prison life had worn and broken me, and I know that I was prematurely old, and a little feeble and fretful compared with what I should have been. And I was shocked one day when, in the tinsmith's shop, I got a brief vision of myself in a shining sheet of tin; I was old and haggard, and the little hair I had was quite grey. It frightened me; and I know that I lay awake that night, thinking bitterly of the years that had been stolen from me, and trying to remember how old I was.

Then the time came, quite unexpectedly, when I was set free. I cannot now write of that time, or think of it, without remembering how frightened I was, or how strange the sensation of freedom seemed to me. I had noticed that something was different – had feared that something was going to happen – because they had not cropped my hair for a little time, and would give me no explanation; and then at last one morning – one bitter winter morning, when I flogged myself with my arms to keep myself warm – I was sent for to the governor's room.

I had been there once or twice before, because the governor took an interest in me, and had tried to get me to talk. I would never do that, and I fear that he had thought that I was sullen or morose. He had asked me about my life before I had come to prison; had tried even to consult my wishes as to what work I should do; he had been uniformly kind and considerate. Now, as I went along to his room, I wondered petulantly what new thing this was that he wished to say to me. I did not like the room; it was a dreadful place to me, hung about with brightly polished steel chains and fetters, and with only a little table in the middle, at which he sat while any poor prisoner talked to him. I was left alone with him there, and he looked at me for a moment or two in silence. He had been a soldier, I think; he was a fine-looking old fellow, with a trim moustache and deep-set grey eyes.

"I have some news for you," he said in his abrupt fashion, "and I want you to prepare yourself for it. You are not strong, and I do not want to give you a shock of any sort."

I thanked him, and wondered dully what he meant.

"If you could have at the present moment anything for which you liked to ask, what would you choose?" he asked me.

I shook my head stupidly, and said that I did not know; corrected myself in a moment, and asked, wistfully enough and almost with tears in my eyes, that I might have the making of some particular sort of pan in the tinsmith's shop; I had fancied it greatly, but they had given it to another man. He seemed touched by that, and laughed and shook his head; I had never heard him laugh before.

"An order has come to me from the Home Office in regard to you," he said. "Can you guess what it is?" – I shook my head; I did not understand that anything could happen to me. – "An order for your release."

I did not understand, and I suppose I stood staring at him as stupidly as before. For I had been condemned for life; what could this mean now? More than that, I had become settled in the place, and the idea that I should never leave it had sunk gradually into my mind, and had nailed me, as it were, to that spot, so that it would be difficult to tear me from it. I murmured that I did not understand.

"I have sent reports concerning you again and again to the Home Office," went on the governor; "I have been able to point out that you have been an exemplary prisoner; I have urged that fact upon them again and again. Do you know, Avaline, how long you've been here?"

I shook my head; I think I sighed a little. "I think I've forgotten, sir," I said. "So many winters – so many times when the sun shone, and I knew the summer had come again – but I have lost count of the years."

"You were here before my time," he said; and then added in what seemed to be a hushed voice: "You have been here for twenty years."

I said again that I had not kept count; I think I added a little wearily that it did not matter. His kindly voice went on —

"You were a boy when you came – twenty years of age. You must be forty now – still a young man. You have many years before you – years of freedom, in which you may live a new life." He spoke kindly and encouragingly, but the glance he gave me showed me that he knew I was an old and broken man, despite my years.

"It is too late for me to begin anything, sir," I said. "What life I had lies back behind the twenty years; I cannot take up any broken threads of it now. I did not expect ever to have to take up any free life again." I was moving towards the door, beyond which the warder awaited me, when I came back to him, on a sudden impulse that I would plead with him. "If I might stay here – and go on with what work I have learnt to do – I should be happier," I said. "If I wish to stay, you will not turn me out? God help me – this is my home."

He got up hurriedly from the table, and turned away for a moment, and cleared his throat. "It doesn't rest with me," he said abruptly at last; "I, like you, can only obey orders. Clothes will be provided for you, and a sum of money given you which you have earned; also you will get an order on the railway company which will take you to London. And I hope you'll do well."

I went to the door, turning back for a moment to thank him for what he had done, and to assure him again, something to his bewilderment, that I would have been glad to stop. For I was afraid of the great world outside, and I was too old and broken to begin again. I remember that I thought, bitterly enough, as I had thought before, that it would have been so much better if they had killed me at the first.

It was a wintry morning when I stepped out through the great gates of the prison – a free man. They had all been very kind to me; most of the warders whom I knew well had shaken hands with me, and had given me little common keepsakes by which to remember them; I had been infinitely touched by the fact that one and all spoke to me as "Sir." I went with reluctant feet; strange as it may seem, I looked back more than once hungrily as I went out through the prison yard that I was to see no more, and through the great courtyard. A little wicket in the gate opened, and I shook hands with the man in charge there; and so left them all behind. Before me stretched a long road downwards towards a town in the far distance; I saw smoke rising lazily from its chimneys in the early morning air; all around me lay the great wastes of snow. And I alone, as it seemed, in the world – to begin again.

They had provided me with clothing that was new and rough, and awkward and ill-fitting; I felt like the naked impossible thing I was, that had been clothed and covered up in a hurry, so that men should not recognize me. I had a little money in my pockets, and a few odd things that had once belonged to me and had been carefully kept – things that had been mine twenty years before, and were mine again now.

I sat down on a heap of stones near the gates of the prison, with my mind full of the bitter injustice of the thing. If I had been in my cell now, I should have been eating my poor breakfast – comfortably! I should have known what the day held for me. And here I was – an outcast, and tired already before the day was begun.

The mere fact of wearing civilized clothing again, however coarse and common it might be, had brought back to my remembrance something of what I had been – some faint ghostly shadow of it. I found myself looking at my coarse hands, and at the broken stunted nails, and striving to remember what those hands had been like ever so many years ago when I was a boy. Then, as a shadow fell across me, I realized that I had been sitting musing for some time; and looked up from the hands, to see a man standing in front of me.

He was a tall man, very thin, and not at all well dressed. He had a long thin nose with wide nostrils, and a short beard that was black at the roots and grey elsewhere. He stood with his hands clasped before him, and with the cold white fingers turning incessantly over each other. I wondered in a dull fashion where he had come from; but as he did not greatly interest me, I went on again looking at my hands. Then he spoke my name.

"Charles Avaline," he said, in a curious jerky voice that was only raised a little above a whisper.

I looked up at him, as I might have looked up any time during those twenty years at a warder, and spoke my number. It had been the natural thing to do with every one. "No. 145," I said, in a dull voice.

The man laughed in a disagreeable fashion as I dropped my eyes again from his face. "Poor broken devil!" he muttered to himself, and then spoke my name again. "Avaline – Charles Avaline. I don't want your number."

"They never wanted my name in there," I said, jerking my head towards the great gates of the prison. "It was always 145. But I'm Charles Avaline," I added.

He dropped his hand on my shoulder, and shook me – pulled me to my feet, in fact. "What are you sitting here for?" he demanded. "Don't you know you're free? Aren't you glad to be free?"

"What's the use?" I asked, with a shake of the head. "Don't you know I'm dead – dead to everybody? I've been in there" – I nodded at the prison with a queer sort of pride at the thought – "I've been in there twenty years."

"And might have been there another twenty, or another forty, or more than that, if you'd lived so long," he retorted. "They seem to have driven the brains out of you – what few you ever had. Look at me; have you ever seen me before?"

He struck himself on the breast, and leaned forward to stare at me. I trembled a little before him, but contrived to shake my head. "I don't remember," I said. But I knew that some old memory was springing up in me; I knew that I had seen some such face as this, perhaps in a dream, a long, long while ago. Life and memory were stirring so slowly in me yet that I could remember nothing. I only knew that I existed, and that I stood trembling in the snow before this man, and that I was cold and dimly afraid. I knew no more than that.

"Well, I've waited outside your grave for you until you came to life again," he said, with another laugh. "I'm your friend, if you know what that means, and I want to help you. Take off your hat; I want to look at you."

That old habit of obedience was so strong in me still that I pulled off my hat, and stood there, grey-headed, before him in the winter sunlight. Whoever he was he seemed shocked for a moment beyond measure; fell back from me a pace or two with a dropping jaw.

"God!" he muttered; and then in an awe-struck voice I heard him say again: "Poor broken devil!"

I put on my hat again, and waited patiently to hear what more he would say; I felt instinctively that in all the great world in which I stood so forlorn and lonely this man might chance to be my friend. And I wanted friends then badly.

"What are you going to do, Avaline?" he asked.

I shook my head. "I don't know," I said, with a glance down the long road that sloped away to the distant town where the smoke was rising in the still morning air. "I'm afraid to think."

"Got any money?" he demanded; and I turned out my pockets, and counted into his hands all I had. I told him a little proudly that it was what I had earned behind the great gates that frowned upon us as we talked.

"All this in twenty years!" He laughed, and transferred the few coins of which I had been so proud to his own pocket. "I'm your friend, Avaline," he said. "Come with me, and I'll look after you."

I want you to understand, if you can, something of what my feelings were at that time. I had gone into that place fiercely rebelling against my fate; I had gone into it young, with the fierce hot blood of life beating in my veins. Twenty years of it had tamed me and broken me; it had been a gradual process, but a sure one nevertheless. Slowly the rot of the prison had eaten into my soul; slowly and surely I had sunk to be what I was – a thing obedient to orders, and expecting always to have life measured out in scanty regular doses for my daily consumption. Now, in a moment, I had been flung upon the world; small wonder that I turned in fear and trembling to the first creature that called me by name, and spoke a decent word to me that was not a command. I had been tossed out into the world after twenty years; I was fumbling feebly to find my place in it – and this man might be able to tell me. So I went with him down the long hill into the town; and I felt even then that I went with the trot that had been mine in the exercise yard of the prison.

We came down into the pleasant little place; there were buxom women standing at the doors of the little houses, and whistling boys in the streets, and children trooping along on their way to school. By that time I had hold of my companion's arm, the better to keep up with his easier stride; I turned with him willingly enough into a little inn in a side street of the town, where, in a quiet room where we were alone, he ordered breakfast. When the smoking food was put before me I laughed, and clapped my hands like a child. He did not eat much himself; but he seemed greatly amused and interested at seeing me eat, and seemed, too, to understand what I felt.

"That puts life into you, doesn't it?" he asked, peering at me across the table. "That makes you young again, and ready to face the world – eh?"

I nodded gratefully, although I knew that it was my money that had paid for the meal. When I had eaten all I could, he leaned across the table towards me, and looked at me closely. I smiled at him in a friendly way, because I felt that he had been good to me.

"Charles Avaline – how old are you?"

I thought for a moment, and remembered what the governor had said to me before I left the prison. "I was a mere boy of twenty when I went in there," I said, "and I have lived there for twenty years."

"A simple sum in arithmetic," said my companion, with a grim laugh. "There's a looking-glass over the fireplace," he added, pointing to it; "look at it, and see what has happened to you in twenty years, my man of forty!"

I laughed as though this were some great game he was playing; I got up and went to the looking-glass. Staring into it I saw a worn lined face, with the eyes of a tired old man set in it, and crowned with grey hair. I had not seen myself in a mirror for all those years; I looked into the startled old face of a man of sixty at least. Realizing for the first time a little who I was, and what I was – and understanding perhaps the tragedy of what I had been – I turned away, sick at heart and afraid, and looked at him. He was still seated there, with his elbows on the table, and with that grim smile hovering about his lips.

"You're an old, old man," he sneered, "of no use to any one in the world, and of no use to yourself. Your life is a thing of the past, and you can't begin again now. What are you going to do – how will you live?"

I told him that I did not know; he seemed so much stronger than I was, and so much more accustomed to the big world in which I was expected to move, that I begged him to help me if he would, and to show me what I should do. I was so much a child, after that long burial to which I had been subjected, that I could not think for myself; indeed it never occurred to me to ask how this man came to know my name, or why he had met me at the prison gates.

"I mean to look after you," he assured me. "You shall live again, Charles Avaline; you shall take up your life where you thought once you had laid it down. You have been snatched from death; you shall come out into the world with me again; you shall come into your kingdom!"

I went with him placidly enough when presently we left the inn, and set off through the town. If you wonder that I should have submitted myself so readily to him, I ask you to remember the life I had lived, and the fear in which I stood of this great world that was closing about me. I was to have the past brought back to me fully and strongly, but I did not know that then; I was to live again, in another way, the life I once had lived, and to understand it in a new fashion.

We came to a railway station, and my companion took a ticket for London; he seemed to understand that I had my pass from the prison – in fact, he asked me for it. The station master at the little place looked at me queerly, but I think he was used to poor prisoners who came to him with Government slips of paper to take them to various parts of the kingdom. He shut us into a third-class carriage alone together, and we started for London. And on the way, strangely enough, my companion raked over that long buried past of mine, and reminded me who I was, and what I was. I remember that I cowered before him, as I might have cowered before a judge who knew my record, and was passing sentence upon me.

"Charles Avaline, twenty years ago you killed a man," he began.

I nodded my head; I remembered that, at least. Had I not struck the man down many and many a time since, and seen him lying at my feet. But in the long dreary course of the years I had forgotten what it was for, or why it had been done; I only knew that he had deserved to die, and that I had done well to kill him.

"The gallows was built for you, Charles Avaline; the hangman stood ready for you; the grave yawned for you. But you were reserved for something else, Charlie; there was still some work for you to do in the world."

I leaned forward on my seat, and stared at him; for there was a dim feeling in my mind that I had met him somewhere, and that I knew him. The mention of my name in that form – "Charlie" – seemed to wake within me some old memory that had been dead. His knowledge of my crime, and of how I had gone down so near to death, set me wondering what manner of man this was that had seized me at the very prison gates, and now held me in his power by his knowledge of me.

"Who are you?" I demanded, staring at him fearfully. "What is your name?"

"You shall know soon enough," he replied, and relapsed into silence. I sat in a corner of the carriage, staring at him, and wondering about him; striving to fit him in with some dream I had had – a dream that had begun in some old time before the prison closed upon me. But the habit of thought had long been lost to me; my brain was a poor mechanical dull thing, long rusty for want of exercise. In fact, I do not think that I should have recognized him at all, if I had not noticed again that curious action of his thin white fingers, twining over each other restlessly. I had the courage to lean forward and pluck off his hat, and stare into his face. I think I must have shrieked out his name.

"Fanshawe! Jervis Fanshawe!"

"Yes, Jervis Fanshawe," he said. "Who else do you think would be likely to inquire about you, or to find out what day you were coming out? Who else do you think would watch and wait for twenty years to get hold of the man again who ought to have died twenty years ago. There's blood upon you, Charlie Avaline, and not all your years of servitude can wipe it away; but I think I'll stick to you." He folded his arms, and grinned and nodded at me, as though indeed he owned me body and soul.

And now the first frail door that held in check the floods of memory was down, and I began to read the past. Nothing was sure yet, nothing that I clearly understood; for at first, like a man who, getting old, thinks in a circle, and so sees his childhood first and most clearly, I saw my own boyhood, that had had nothing in common with this man. But gradually I began to fumble my way blindly to the point at which he touched my life. And gradually my old horror of him swept over me, and taught me instinctively that he was something to be feared and to be avoided. Without knowing what I did, I sprang up, and made a leap for the opposite door of the carriage, with the blind determination to get out of the moving train. But before I had got the door open he had wound his long arms about me, and had pulled me back on to the seat.

"Not that way!" he cried, as I feebly struggled with him. "Death is not for you – yet. Don't you understand that you belong to me; when your time comes I'll settle what manner of death you'll die. What have you to be afraid of? We're in the same boat, you and I; the world has kicked us both pretty hard; we may do better together than we have done apart. Don't be ungrateful; your loving guardian has come back to you after twenty years; we'll see life together, Charlie."

I shrank away from him, and put up my arm as though to ward off a blow. "Where are you taking me?" I asked in a whisper.

"To London – and back into the world," he said, seizing my upraised arm, and dragging it down, and shaking me playfully. "There's work for you to do in the world, Charlie – great work."

"Where are you taking me?" I asked again, shuddering, and hiding my face in my hands.

"Before your hair was grey, poor fool, and while the world smiled upon you, you lived and loved and laughed. You shall live and love and laugh again; you shall forget your prison and the fear of death that has been upon you; you shall live again."

"Who can do all this for me?" I asked.

He tapped himself on the breast. "I can – and I will," he said. "There was a woman you loved in those old days – have you forgotten her name?"

"It was – it was 'Barbara!'" I whispered.

"Barbara!" he repeated, and I did not notice the sneer that was in his tones. "Barbara it was, and Barbara you shall see again. She shall rise up in the flesh before you, and show you what love is – and perhaps something else beside!"