CHAPTER XXXIII
The trial then was over. And it seemed indeed that before very long Philip Meadowes’ life too would be over. He who had laughed at imprisonment and laughed at trial could laugh no longer; he was forced to believe at last that the world held him to be a murderer, and that as such he must die. But even sitting in his cell, a man under sentence of death, Philip could not realise it. This the end of him? this, this, this? It was frankly impossible that this could be the end of Philip Meadowes and all his ambitions! of the beautiful life he and Carrie had meant to live together, of that passion clean and hot as flame that burned between them! Impossible! impossible!
And then, even above this cry of the heart, rose that keener note of anguish, that supreme utterance of the soul, the terror of unfulfilment. It lurks in every man, this protest of vitality against encompassing and ever encroaching mortality, and has its roots in life itself. With most men the feeling is quite unformulated and vague. ‘They would not like to be altogether forgotten’ is about all that it amounts to, and the fear, such as it is, finds ready cure in the laws of their being; having given hostages to Fortune they have no further dread that their memory will perish—the next generation will carry it on. But with another type of man the case is very different; for though the child of his body may be dearer to him than his own flesh, the child of the soul will be dearer yet.
It is this law of aspiration, effort, what you will, that moves on our world at all; for though it is not written that one man in a thousand shall influence the race, or one in a million leave an undying memory, yet it is written that every man, though half of them unknowingly, shall strive after some star, and some even shall succeed. And these myriads of agonising atoms form a great aggregate of achievement out of all proportion to their puny individual efforts, and slowly push the world on in its destined course.
Something of all this came over Philip now; above all his memories of this dear, warm, wooing world, that had so loved and courted him, came the agonising thought, ‘I am virtually dead; I must depart, leaving nothing behind.’ With extraordinary vividness of sensation he had lived; life had appeared to him as a long feast of rich and varied good things to which he had sat him down gaily. Some day he had thought to rise from it, gird on his armour, and go forth to some stirring and valorous enterprise; he had never decided what the enterprise would be, but trusted that the kind and bountiful Giver of life’s banquet would provide his children with work when they had feasted long enough. Now all these vague dreams of the future came down like a house of cards: he stood face to face with death, his work undone.
This was the thought which eclipsed every other as these strange days rolled on, each of them it seemed an eternity for length, each of them bringing Phil nearer and nearer to the gallows. The very gaolers pitied Philip for his youth and beauty; but they pitied Carrie more that day she obtained entrance to Newgate and a half-hour’s interview with her husband.
Phil sat, as he always sat then, his eyes fixed on the floor, his chin resting on his hands. He did not even look up as the door was unlocked, but said merely, ‘Lay it down, gaoler; I have little appetite these days,’ thinking his food had been brought in. Then with a cry, inarticulate, between joy and agony, Carrie ran towards him. Phil did not stir nor speak, and Carrie knelt down beside him, and buried her face against his shoulder, sobbing. He passed his arm round her, but still he did not speak.
‘O Phil! my darling, my joy, why can you not speak to me?’ cried Carrie. She took his hand in hers, and held it to her heart, kissing it and crying over it; but Phil was silent.
When he raised his eyes from the ground at last and looked at her, Carrie started, such a grave new look there was in them, and all the shine seemed to have gone from them.
‘What will you do, Carrie?’ he said suddenly. They were the first words he uttered. ‘Do you think your father will forgive you when you are left alone? will take you back to his home and care for you?’
‘Don’t! don’t!’ cried Carrie; but Phil went on—
‘I shall be hanged on the 12th of next month, Carrie; there’s no chance of a reprieve, they’ve tried for it in vain, the facts are too strong against me. I wish ’twere sooner, even for your sake, my poor darling. You’ll dream of me being hanged each night twice over ere then.’
Carrie put her fingers in her ears. ‘Stop, Phil! for Heaven’s sake do not say these things,’ she cried; ‘they cannot kill you. Have you stopped speaking now? May I take my fingers from my ears?’
‘Yes,’ laughed Philip. ‘Come, Carrie, tell me, have you no doubt of your husband these days when all the world calls him a murderer?’
‘Phil!’
‘Well, what do you make of it all—all this evidence?’
‘How did it happen?’ asked innocent Carrie.
‘I fear you know as much as I do. Prior did it, I fancy; took off his shoes and followed my father and killed him—that’s all I can think, but there’s not a ghost of fact to go to prove this. They had not even quarrelled, to my knowledge at least.’
‘O Phil! don’t look like that! Oh, you are not a boy any longer,’ said Carrie, for she had caught the strange new expression of his eyes again as he spoke.
‘I have been a boy too long,’ said Philip; he shook his head and smiled at Carrie as if she were a child; ‘and now I have grown old in a night—like Jack’s bean-stalk. Come and let me speak all my discontent to my love, and years after this she will remember, and will credit me with all I wished to do rather than all I left undone.’
Carrie looked up wonderingly, and Philip spoke on—
‘Oh, that’s the bitterness, Carrie; it’s not a shameful death, or leaving the happy world even—and hasn’t it been happy! No; I’d stand that if I left anything behind. But just to go out like a candle—phew!’—he blew into the air as if at a flame,—‘bright one minute, snuffed out the next. ’Tis ghastly. I cannot realise, it, Carrie; I won’t—I won’t, ’tis miserable injustice.’
Phil rose and paced about the cell for a moment, then he came and sat down beside Carrie again, and took her hand in his.
‘You don’t understand, you know, my heart,’ he said with something of his old lightness for a moment; ‘for I scarce think you ever felt thus. You now, if you were to die along with me, would not feel a pang, I believe.’
‘No, indeed, Phil; I should die gladly with you,’ said Carrie, mystified.
‘Ah, there’s the rub. I cannot die, Carrie; my personality cries out so loud against extinction ere it hath fulfilled itself. Foolish, vain talk; but I’ve thought of no other thing night and day since they passed sentence on me, except of you.’
Carrie, you know, was of another clay; she sat and looked at Phil with such a puzzled air that he fairly laughed aloud, and his ringing laugh struck strangely on the walls of Newgate. The poor old walls had heard many a groan, but so few laughs that the sound was scarcely recognised!
‘Did I puzzle her dear brains with nonsense?’ he said, taking Carrie’s face between his hands and kissing her. ‘Carrie, our jesting days are over, and sweet, sweet they’ve been for all their shortness.’
‘O Phil, they cannot be over,’ said Carrie; she was only twenty, poor child, an age that has little realisation.
‘Carrie, you must believe this,’ said her husband—he looked into her eyes as he spoke, and let his words fall slowly,—‘I shall be both dead and buried this day next month—dead and buried, Carrie, and you will be a widow. You must face this, must talk with me of what you are to do afterwards.’ But Carrie would only shudder and hide her face in her hands. Phil spoke on—a curious task to set his eloquence this—telling her unflinchingly all that would be, explaining, describing, till Carrie whitened and clutched his hand more tightly than ever.
‘Stop, Phil,’ she said, in a little choked whisper, ‘I believe it now.’
Then with a rattle of the bolts the door fell open, and the gaoler silently signed to Carrie that she must say her farewells.
‘I shall be allowed to see you once again, Phil,’ she whispered, before she turned away.
Carrie’s coach had been waiting for her at the prison gate all this time. And when she came out, Peter stepped forward to assist her. Carrie got in, and then sat staring before her in a bewildered fashion.
‘Shall we drive home, madam?’ asks Peter, his voice very husky.
‘To——. Yes—to my father’s,’ said Carrie.