The Autobiography of a Slander Part 6

For some time there was no reply, but after a while Sigismund rapped faintly the despairing words:--

"Dead beat!"

Valerian felt the tears start to his eyes. It was what he had all along expected, and for a time grief and indignation and his miserable helplessness made him almost beside himself. At last he remembered that there was at least one thing in his power. Each day he was escorted by a warder to a tiny square, walled off in the exercising ground, and was allowed to walk for a few minutes; he would take this opportunity of begging the warder to get the doctor for his friend.

But unfortunately the doctor did not think very seriously of Zaluski's case. In that dreary prison he had patients in the last stages of all kinds of disease, and Sigismund, who had been in confinement too short a time to look as ill as the others, did not receive much attention.

Certainly, the doctor admitted, his lungs were affected; probably the sudden change of climate and the lack of good food and fresh air had been too much for him; so the solemn farce ended, and he was left to his fate.

"If I were indeed a Nihilist, and suffered for a cause which I had at heart," he telegraphed to Valerian, "I could bear it better. But to be kept here for an imaginary offence, to bear cold and hunger and illness all to no purpose--that beats me. There can't be a G.o.d, or such things would not be allowed."

"To me it seems," said Valerian, "that we are the victims of violated law. Others have shown tyranny, or injustice, or cruelty, and we are the victims of their sin. Don't say there is no G.o.d. There must be a G.o.d to avenge such hideous wrong."

So they spoke to each other through their prison wall as men in the free outer world seldom care to speak; and I, who knew no barriers, looked now on Valerian's gaunt figure, and brave but prematurely old face, now on poor Zaluski, who, in his weary imprisonment, had wasted away till one could scarcely believe that he was indeed the same lithe, active fellow who had played tennis at Mrs. Courtenay's garden-party.

Day and night Valerian listened to the terrible cough which came from the adjoining cell. It became perfectly apparent to him that his friend was dying; he knew it as well as if he had seen the burning hectic flush on his hollow cheeks, and heard the panting, hurried breaths, and watched the unnatural brilliancy of his dark eyes.

At length he thought the time had come for another sort of comfort.

"My friend," he said one day, "it is too plain to me now that you are dying. Write to the procurator and tell him so. In some cases men have been allowed to go home to die."

A wild hope seized on poor Sigismund; he sat down to the little table in his cell and wrote a letter to the procurator--a letter which might almost have drawn tears from a flint. Again and again he pa.s.sionately a.s.serted his innocence, and begged to know on what evidence he was imprisoned. He began to think that he could die content if he might leave this terrible cell, might be a free agent once more, if only for a few days. At least he might in that case clear his character, and convince Gertrude that his imprisonment had been all a hideous mistake; nay, he fancied that he might live through a journey to England and see her once again.

But the procurator would not let him be set free, and refused to believe that his case was really a serious one.

Sigismund's last hope left him.

The days and weeks dragged slowly on, and when, according to English reckoning, New Year's Eve arrived, he could scarcely believe that only seventeen weeks ago he had actually been with Gertrude, and that disgrace and imprisonment had seemed things that could never come near him, and death had been a far-away possibility, and life had been full of bliss.

As I watched him a strong desire seized me to revisit the scenes of which he was thinking, and I winged my way back to England, and soon found myself in the drowsy, respectable streets of Muddleton.

It was New Year's Eve, and I saw Mrs. O'Reilly preparing presents for her grandchildren, and talking, as she tied them up, of that dreadful Nihilist who had deceived them in the summer. I saw Lena Houghton, and Mr. Blackthorne, and Mrs. Milton-Cleave, kneeling in church on that Friday morning, praying that pity might be shown "upon all prisoners and captives, and all that are desolate or oppressed."

It never occurred to them that they were responsible for the sufferings of one weary prisoner, or that his death would be laid at their door.

I flew to Dulminster, and saw Mrs. Selldon kneeling in the cathedral at the late evening service and rigorously examining herself as to the shortcomings of the dying year. She confessed many things in a vague, untroubled way; but had any one told her that she had cruelly wronged her neighbour, and helped to bring an innocent man to shame, and prison, and death, she would not have believed the accusation.

I sought out Mark Shrewsbury. He was at his chambers in Pump Court working away with his type-writer; he had a fancy for working the old year out and the new year in, and now he was in the full swing of that novel which had suggested itself to his mind when Mrs. Selldon described the rich and mysterious foreigner who had settled down at Ivy Cottage.

Most happily he laboured on, never dreaming that his careless words had doomed a fellow-man to a painful and lingering death; never dreaming that while his fingers flew to and fro over his dainty little keyboard, describing the clever doings of the unscrupulous foreigner, another man, the victim of his idle gossip, tapped dying messages on a dreary prison wall.

For the end had come.

Through the evening Sigismund rested wearily on his truckle-bed. He could not lie down because of his cough, and, since there were no extra pillows to prop him up, he had to rest his head and shoulders against the wall. There was a gas-burner in the tiny cell, and by its light he looked round the bare walls of his prison with a blank, hopeless, yet wistful gaze; there was the stool, there was the table, there were the clothes he should never wear again, there was the door through which his lifeless body would soon be carried. He looked at everything lingeringly, for he knew that this desolate prison was the last bit of the world he should ever see.

Presently the gas was turned out.

He sighed as he felt the darkness close in upon him, for he knew that his eyes would never again see light--knew that in this dark lonely cell he must lie and wait for death. And he was young and wished to live, and he was in love and longed most terribly for the presence of the woman he loved.

The awful desolateness of the cell was more than he could endure; he tried to think of his past life, he tried to live once again through those happy weeks with Gertrude; but always he came back to the aching misery of the present--the cold and the pain, and the darkness and the terrible solitude.

His nerveless fingers felt their way to the wall and faintly rapped a summons.

"Valerian!" he said, "I shall not live through the night. Watch with me."

The faint raps sounded clearly in the stillness of the great building, and Valerian dreaded lest the warders should hear them, and deal out punishment for an offence which by day they were forced to wink at.

But he would not for the world have deserted his friend. He drew his stool close to the wall, wrapped himself round in all the clothes he could muster, and, s.h.i.+vering with cold, kept watch through the long winter night.

"I am near you," he telegraphed. "I will watch with you till morning."

From time to time Sigismund rapped faint messages, and Valerian replied with comfort and sympathy. Once he thought to himself, "My friend is better; there is more power in his hand." And indeed he trembled, fearing that the sharp, emphatic raps must certainly attract notice and put an end to their communion.

"Tell my love that the accusation was false--false!" the word was vehemently repeated. "Tell her I died broken-hearted, loving her to the end."

"I will tell her all when I am free," said poor Valerian, wondering with a sigh when his unjust imprisonment would end. "Do you suffer much?" he asked.

There was a brief interval. Sigismund hesitated to tell a falsehood in his last extremity.

"It will soon be over. Do not be troubled for me," he replied. And after that there was a long, long silence.

Poor fellow! he died hard; and I wished that those comfortable English people could have been dragged from their warm beds and brought into the cold dreary cell where their victim lay, fighting for breath, suffering cruelly both in mind and body. Valerian, listening in sad suspense, heard one more faint word rapped by the dying man.

"Farewell!"

"G.o.d be with you!" he replied, unable to check the tears which rained down as he thought of the life so sadly ended, and of his own bereavement.

He heard no more. Sigismund's strength failed him, and I, to whom the darkness made no difference, watched him through the last dread struggle; there was no one to raise him, or hold him, no one to comfort him. Alone in the cold and darkness of that first morning of the year 1887, he died.

Valerian did not hear through the wall his last faint gasping cry, but I heard it, and its exceeding bitterness would have made mortals weep.

"Gertrude!" he sobbed. "Gertrude!"

And with that his head sank on his breast, and the life, which but for me might have been so happy and prosperous, was ended.

Prompted by curiosity, I instantly returned to Muddleton and sought out Gertrude Morley. I stole into her room. She lay asleep, but her dreams were troubled, and her face, once so fresh and bright, was worn with pain and anxiety.

Scarcely had I entered the room when, to my amazement, I saw the spirit of Sigismund Zaluski.

I saw him bend down and kiss the sleeping girl, and for a moment her sad face lighted up with a radiant smile.

I looked again; he was gone. Then Gertrude threw up both her arms and with a bitter cry awoke from her dream.

"Sigismund!" she cried. "Oh, Sigismund! Now I know that you are dead indeed."

For a long, long time she lay in a sort of trance of misery. It seemed as if the life had been almost crushed out of her, and it was not until the bells began to ring for the six o'clock service, merrily pealing out their welcome of the new year morning, that full consciousness returned to her again. But, as she clearly realised what had happened, she broke into such a pa.s.sion of tears as I had never before witnessed, while still in the darkness the new year bells rang gaily, and she knew that they heralded for her the beginning of a lonely life.

And so my work ended; my part in this world was played out. Nevertheless I still live; and there will come a day when Sigismund and Gertrude shall be comforted and the slanderers punished.

For poor Valerian was right, and there is an Avenger, in whom even my progenitor believes, and before whom he trembles.