Israel Rank

by Roy Horniman

Chapter XXVIII

I suppose I must be thoroughly selfish, for at this moment of extreme depression and misery I was thinking chiefly of myself. Of course, I am curiously constituted, quite artificial from the world’s point of view. I cannot say that I was a victim to the agony and woe which I believed would have been the lot of most people in my condition.

I, who had staked so much to win what I coveted, might have been expected to suffer tortures at the reflection of what I had lost. I had always thought that the most terrible thing about shame and imprisonment must be the complete triumph of those who have hated one—the triumph of the ‘I told you so.’ This and the irrevocable loss of earthly pleasures and the binding hand and foot as if one had no passions or emotions, were the things I had always dreaded. My consolation was that my failure could not be a commonplace one. Ordinary criminals might wear out their lives in captivity and lose their identity through long years of vile slavery, but the law, stupid and sordid as it is, had at least a due sense of the dignity of my crime, and would meet a defiance like mine with the dignified retort of death. Sordid crimes must meet with sordid rewards. Death is never sordid, and it shuts out the derision of a virtuous world.

I was caged, and through my own folly. A little patience and ordinary care would have saved me. To have failed after such triumphs, and to have failed where failure was irretrievable, was maddening. I hated myself more than a converted sinner could have done. It was all quite dreadful. A miserable fiasco, with a tragedy as the result. I turned hot and cold whenever I thought of it—I mean the fiasco, not the tragedy. I felt like an actor who has mangled his part and knows it. The only thing to do was to make the end as flamboyant as possible. There was strong temptation to proclaim my triumphs forthwith. I was certain that for all hope there could be of retrieving the position I might do so. I had, however, thrown away too many cards. One never knows how time, even of the briefest, will deal with facts, so I determined to be wary. I would fight every inch of the ground. It would, at any rate, be an amusement till the end, and my memoirs would keep my fame alive after death. One does not sin greatly to be forgotten, and, after all, the great sinners of history have had their share of posterity, and without the aid of public monuments. The world is always more curious to hear about vice than virtue.

For the first few days after my arrest I was a prey to savage rage, and found it difficult to reduce myself to that condition of mind in which a fighter who wants to make the best of things should be.

The first visit I received was from Lord Gascoyne. I was sorry for him. He looked ghastly, and avoided my eye. I was sure now that suspicion had done its work. Yet I knew he was blaming himself for even wondering how it came about that I was in the hotel when his son was poisoned. He had believed in me so thoroughly that he was trying to drive off the horrid thoughts that would pursue him. My wife’s belief in me did not waver. Women like her do not lightly throw down the idols they have once set up. She loved me still, and she was steadfast. I wondered what Sibella and Esther were thinking. I was chiefly sorry for Sibella. It may have been because in my heart of hearts I loved her best. I knew how helpless she would feel. She would be obliged to conceal her grief, and she was the sort of woman to whom repression might mean hysteria. She had nothing to hold on to. The morbid horror of the whole thing would terrify her. I found it better for my peace of mind not to think of her.

I had caught sight of Esther for one moment before I left Hammerton. No one else saw her, but I was sure that she would be about somewhere. She was in the woods as I drove past. Her face was not pleasant to look upon. It was like the wraith of a memory, the pitiful phantom of a disembodied soul. It seemed to me as I sat alone during the quiet summer evenings, with the immense stillness of the prison around me, that sometimes her presence passed into my cell and made it curiously uncanny. I felt as if the arms of her soul had reached as far as my prison home in her agony, and once I even thought I heard her speak to me in a still, small voice.

I am no disbeliever in the unseen world, but curiously enough it has never had any terrors for me. Its concreteness has always seemed to me a difference in kind; a plane on which the idea is shaped with more fluidity; that is all.

I wondered if she would confess our relations. She had, I am sure, a high sense of honour, and her loyalty would probably stand any test. Still, hers was a subtle mind, and might, its white light having once been split, display a variety of tones and colours.

I do not think Lord Gascoyne had confided his suspicions to his wife, for I received from her nothing but the kindest and most encouraging of letters.

So I lay in gaol and waited, and the day for my examination came. The police-court where I appeared was packed. The county turned up in force; they were the same people who would have fawned on me had I succeeded in my object. Perhaps it is unworthy of an artist to suggest so much bitterness as lies in the word fawn. I had been taken by Fate on my own terms, and if I had failed, it was not for me to show a bitter spirit; in fact, it was illogical and small. I had played for their admiration and, having failed, obtained instead their derision.

My wife was in court the first day, and spoke to me in such a way as to impress upon the world her absolute confidence. I had no wish, however, to add to her sorrow, and I told her it would make me happier if she remained away.

The case was gone into most exhaustively, and, despite the fact that my lawyer declared that there was absolutely nothing on which to go to a jury, I was committed for trial.

I am pleased to say that the newspapers were unanimous in noticing my absolute calm of demeanour.