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?’