When Oliver left his rooms on that terrible night, it could scarcely be said that he was a sane man. The strange, confused tinkling and pealing of the bell had seemed to him a supernatural call. When he had come to himself a little, out of the strange, wild fit of ridicule of himself and his pitiful intention of escaping from fate, which had overcome him, he had risen mechanically and gone to the door. When he found no one, the impulse of half-mad derision seized him again. It was as if he had gone through every possibility of the anguish and misery that were real, and had come out on the other side where all is distorted and fantastic, and nothing true; where there were voices without persons, calls, and jarring summonses that meant nothing, a chaos of delusion and self-deceit, in which fever and shattered nerves and reverberations out of a diseased brain were the only elements, and every impression was fictitious, ridiculous, mad and false. He went out without knowing what he was doing, the echoes of the pistol-shot circling through his head, and moving him again and again to wild laughter: to think that he should have found himself out so! that he was such a poor creature after all, capable of running away, not good enough to stand and be executed, which was his just due. Was it to be executed that he feared, or to be banished, or put in prison, tied, yes, that was it—tied to a dead body, as other men had been before him? Whatever it was, he had not been man enough to bear his punishment, but had tried to run away. And then he had been frightened, and failed.
By this time he had forgotten altogether what expedient he had intended to adopt to make his escape by, and the report, which still echoed through his head, seemed to him rather the punishment he was attempting to escape from than the means of escape. But anyhow he was running away, and was afraid to do it. He was running away and could not do it. He was somehow caught by the foot, so that all his running and walking were vain, and he was only making circles about the fatal spot in which the executioner was waiting for him—steadily, patiently waiting—until the meshes should be drawn tighter and he should be brought back. The bell continued to peal in his brain, a mocking summons, and the report of the pistol to break in at intervals, sharp, like a refrain, bringing back more or less the first effect of re-awakening, but not to reality, only to that ever-renewed derision of his own efforts to get away. The fool that he was! How could he escape with the bands ever tightening, tightening about his feet, as he kept on in his vain round, back and back in circles that lessened, every round leading nearer and nearer to the spot where Fate awaited him, grimly looking on at his vain struggles, laughing in that fierce ridicule which he re-echoed though he carried on those sickening efforts still?
He must have carried out in reality the miserable confusion in his brain, for it seemed afterwards that he had done nothing but go round and round a circle of streets and lanes, surrounding the point where his chambers were, and where he was seen by various people, appearing and reappearing, always at a very rapid pace, through the lingering darkness of the night. After a while, in all probability, recollection failed him, for his horrible sensations seemed to fade into a dull, fatigued consciousness of circling and winding, of always the band on his ankles tightening, drawing him nearer; but no longer any clear idea of what was the impending doom, from which only this perpetual movement, this effort to keep on, saved him for a time. Finally, when daylight had come, surprising and alarming him back into some effort of intelligence, he found himself at the door of his club, where the servants were but beginning to open the shutters, to sweep and clean out, in preparation for the day. He crept in there somehow as a dog might creep into a barn, or take refuge in an empty kennel, and threw himself shivering into an easy-chair, and had a cup of coffee brought him by a compassionate waiter, who saw that he had been up all night. The same kind hands covered him up when he began in his exhaustion to doze. And there he lay and slept through all the early morning hours, while still there was nobody to comment upon his appearance or to disturb him. The servants of the club chattered indeed among themselves; they shook their heads, and said he had been up to something or other as he hadn’t ought to. They suggested to each other that he had been in bad company, that he had been drugged, which was the most likely thing to account for his dazed appearance. But he lay and slept through it all, unconscious in the profound sleep of entire exhaustion. Most likely it was that exhaustion and the constant physical movement and keen air of the night which saved his brain after all.
He woke at about eleven o’clock, having slept four or five hours, shivering with a nervous chill, and in all the bodily misery of a man who has slept in his clothes on a chair, cramped and wretched; but yet in full possession of his senses, and knowing everything that had happened. It all came back to him slowly, the standing trouble first, the horror of those circumstances in which he was involved, the awful question what he was to do: how live and endure his existence since he could not abandon it? He asked himself the question almost before he remembered that he had intended to abandon it. And then the scene of last evening slowly rolled back upon him like a scene in a tragedy, the crack of the pistol, the violent jarring and jingling of the bell. He could not have dreamt or imagined the bell: it must have meant some messenger or other, someone bringing him news. What news could any messenger be bringing? Nothing but one piece of news. Nothing else was worth sending now, worth the trouble of sending—his release, perhaps. Oh, Heaven! if that might be!
Oliver got up quickly in the sudden gleam of possibility thus presented to him. It aroused him from the torpor of sleep and wretchedness and exhaustion. But afterwards he dropped heavily into his chair again, shaking his head, saying to himself that it was impossible, that release did not come to a man so placed as he was, that he had no right to release. And then it occurred to him that the messenger might return and find the door open and go in, and that his letter lay on the table, the letter addressed to his brother-in-law with its confession. By this time, then, it would be in their hands and all would be known. When that thought entered his mind, he rose from his chair, not impetuously, but in the calm of despair: ah, that was best! that everything should be known. It was all over then. Whatever might happen, Grace was lost to him for ever. Whatever might happen, his own life and its hopes were over, without any possibility of redemption. ‘So be it,’ he said to himself, bowing his head almost solemnly: ‘so be it.’ What else was possible? He would at least have discharged the dreadful duty of cutting himself off, and leaving her free.
This was his real awakening—which was, though the May morning was so bright, an awakening into the blackness and darkness, into the quiet of despair—no possibility now, no hope, all over and ended for ever and ever. He took his hat and walked out without a word, without a thought of his appearance, in the fresh daylight, in the open street, unshaven, unkempt, miserable, with a misery which no one could mistake. How he appeared was no longer anything to him. He saw nobody, took notice of nothing. He might have been walking through a desert as he made his way through some of the busiest streets of London, full of traffic and commotion, and never saw one of the people who stared at the man who seemed a gentleman, and yet had such an air of haggard misery, a wanderer who had been out all night; nothing of this did Oliver see. He went doggedly to give himself up to justice—no, that was the part of the last night’s dream: but, at least, to meet at last whatever might be coming to him, to ascertain that his letter had been sent away and that all was over. Everything was over, in any case; but it would all be more evident, more certain, if the letter had been sent away.
He went up his own staircase and came to his own door with nothing but this in his mind. The recollection of the bell, of the possible messenger who could not get admission, of the news of his release which might have come, all faded out of his mind. If that letter had been sent, it did not matter whether he was released or not: now or hereafter, what could it matter? so long as that letter had been sent. Then indeed his tale would be told, his shrift over, his fate sealed. He heard voices vaguely as he approached the room, but took no notice. What did it matter who was there so long as the letter had been sent? He stalked in like a ghost, his eyes fixed upon the table which seemed to him as he had left it—all but one thing.—Yes, redemption had become impossible and hope was over. The letter had gone.
‘Oliver!’ said a voice, whether in a dream, whether in fact, whether out of the skies, whether only sounding in the depths of his miserable heart, how could he tell? He turned round towards it slowly, pale, trembling, a man for whom hope was no more. And there she stood before him, she who had been to him as an angel, whom he had seemed to abandon, insult and betray. It seemed so; and never, perhaps, never would it be known how different—how different! He could not bear the sight of the brightness of her face. There was light in it that seemed to kill him; he put up his hands to cover his eyes, and shrank back, back, until, his limbs tottering under him, his heart failing him, he had sunk unawares upon his knees. Oh, the brightness of the presence of outraged love, more terrible than wrath! Is it not from that, that at the last the sinner, self-convicted, will flee?
‘Do not speak to me,’ he said, his voice sounding like some stranger’s voice in his own ears. ‘I know all you would say. And there is no excuse, no excuse.’
‘Oliver! you have no excuse for not trusting me. I was worthy of your trust. Should I not have chosen for you to do first what was right?’
It seemed to him that once more his brain was giving way; he felt a horrible impulse to laugh out again at the mockery of this speech. Right! there was nothing right! What had it to do with him, a man all wrong, wrong, out of life, out of hope—that there should still be some one left in the world to whom that word meant something? He uncovered his face, however, and looked up at her from out the humiliation of despair. And then he began to see that there were other people in the room, his sister, his brother-in-law, looking on at the spectacle of his downfall. He rose up slowly to his feet, supporting himself against the wall.
‘I am in great distress,’ he said; ‘I am not able to speak. Ford, will you take them away?’
Ford, who was only a man, nobody in particular, gave him a certain sense of protection in the poignancy of the presence of the others, before whom he could not stand or speak.
‘Oliver, old fellow, you needn’t look so miserable; they wouldn’t go, they know everything, they’ve got—news for you. I say they’ve got news for you.’
‘Oh, Tom, God bless you! you have a feeling heart after all. Oliver, it is all over—’
‘Oliver,’ Grace put out her warm hands and took his, which were trembling with an almost palsy of cold; ‘I should have understood, for you told me long ago—you told me there were things I would not understand. But now I do understand. And all that you have done I approve. I do not forgive you—I approve.’
He drew back ever further, shrinking against the wall. ‘I was mad last night,’ he said, ‘and it was horrible: and now I must be going mad again—and this is horrible too, but it is sweet—’
‘Oh, it is horrible,’ cried Grace, with tears; ‘for it comes out of misery and mourning. Oliver, that poor girl—that poor girl, she is dead.’
He fell down once more at her feet, with a great and terrible cry, and fainted like a woman—out of misery, and remorse, and relief, and anguish, and joy, and by reason too, since the body and the soul are so linked together—of his sleepless nights and miserable days.
He told her all afterwards, in those subdued and troubled days when happiness was still struggling to come back. But Grace would never see it as he did. To her it was an atonement, an almost martyrdom. She could not understand those deeper depths of evil in which sin is taken lightly, and called pleasure, and is but for a day. She could understand passion and the deadly harm it wrought, and how life itself might be laid down in the desire to atone. He held his peace at last, bewildered by the dulness of that innocence which could not so much as imagine what he knew. And happiness did struggle back through depths of humiliation and shame to him, with which she was never acquainted. She did not suffer, not having sinned; and he was still young. And after awhile the hideous dream through which he passed faded away, and even Oliver remembered it no more.
THE END.
