13. (Handed in at 12 noon Gloucester Road.) Come at once detained pending arrival police Drysalter at counter when arrived mad about loss of notes listen no apology explained my voucher carried gold-mounted umbrella much more valuable didn’t mend things foamed threatens worst this by curator.
I omit, at this point, my comments on the situation. They lacked nothing in vigour because I was in a measure responsible for it. But I could not on that or any account abandon my friend to the consequences of his insane act. However, almost before I had time to look out a train to London, a final telegram arrived, acquainting me of his, and my release, thus:—
Hasten inform free much difficulty tried impress with grafto only effect Drysalter said might prove useful Wormwood Scrubbs declared saved since reading Revelations considered giant tortoise somewhat softened compromised finally with gift of hundred pounds to Society for promoting abstemiousness among total abstainers coming back to-morrow.
Not if I could prevent it. There and then I sat down to indite him twenty reasons for his staying for the present where he was. They might convince, or only wound him. I could not help it. It was out of the question having him actively interesting himself any more in my affairs, and at this crisis of them. His answer, in fact, when it came, showed him a little hurt—poor Johnny. There was a consciousness, a reproach in it of exile from more than my company. Well, I couldn’t help that either.
CHAPTER XIX.
LADY SKENE KNEELS TO ME
His that is just written passes as an entr’acte, the fooling of a clown before the curtain, the merry jigging of the fiddles. It ends; and the lights are down once more, the dark curtains heave and lift, waste glooms and sorrows repossess the stage—and only now, always in their deep midmost, travels a little bloody star, the soul of a murdered child.
Winter has gripped the land in earnest, and, screaming upon the heavy dawns, come winds and ashy flights of snow. They are like tempests of defiance, hissing down and heaping at my feet to dispute my way. But I shout them back their blasphemies, and spurn them and drive on. I have a deadly purpose at my heart, and I am not to be deterred by bluster. The right shall be vindicated and the guilty soul stripped naked, whatever befall of frost or storm. On and on, to the relentless end!
Down in my damp holt that winter the cold became intense—not crisp and dry as in the open, but mortal chill, penetrating to one’s bones like the sodden embrace of a vampire. The ice underfoot there had always a spongy crackle, and the snow in the leafy hollows a cankered scar about its centre. I had hard ado to keep my resolution thawed at blazing fires; but I heaped the coal on lavishly, recklessly, drawing from a plentiful store which had been packed into a shed close by; and presently my lodge was like a charcoal-burner’s covert in a forest. Coming down to it at night, I could feel the radiations of its warmth a rod away. I sometimes wonder now it never leapt into roaring flame before my eyes.
This balmy southern climate had not known such a visitation in all my memory of it; nor, in all my memory of it, had I so rejoiced to cross its moods. If, as it appeared, it had rallied itself greatly to the cause of villainy, throttling, delaying, stultifying, so much greater, relatively, was the force of doggedness it evoked in me. A point gained was a gain triumphant, if won through buffeting winds and drifts of snow. And the most sinister gain of all was to be won from its deepest drift.
I had delayed going up to the house until the receipt of Johnny’s final telegram set my mind and conscience at rest. Then, having written to the dear boy, I turned at once to face the ordeal which awaited me.