In time, as the years went on, it seemed as though, as I grew older, a sort of mental mist descended over all that life I had led before my trial—so that things were blurred, and I did not see them distinctly. Mercifully, too, I grew to take an interest in the work I did inside the prison walls; to be keen and anxious to do it well, and to do it better than my fellows. The prison life had worn and broken me, and I know that I was prematurely old, and a little feeble and fretful compared with what I should have been. And I was shocked one day when, in the tinsmith's shop, I got a brief vision of myself in a shining sheet of tin; I was old and haggard, and the little hair I had was quite grey. It frightened me; and I know that I lay awake that night, thinking bitterly of the years that had been stolen from me, and trying to remember how old I was.
Then the time came, quite unexpectedly, when I was set free. I cannot now write of that time, or think of it, without remembering how frightened I was, or how strange the sensation of freedom seemed to me. I had noticed that something was different—had feared that something was going to happen—because they had not cropped my hair for a little time, and would give me no explanation; and then at last one morning—one bitter winter morning, when I flogged myself with my arms to keep myself warm—I was sent for to the governor's room.
I had been there once or twice before, because the governor took an interest in me, and had tried to get me to talk. I would never do that, and I fear that he had thought that I was sullen or morose. He had asked me about my life before I had come to prison; had tried even to consult my wishes as to what work I should do; he had been uniformly kind and considerate. Now, as I went along to his room, I wondered petulantly what new thing this was that he wished to say to me. I did not like the room; it was a dreadful place to me, hung about with brightly polished steel chains and fetters, and with only a little table in the middle, at which he sat while any poor prisoner talked to him. I was left alone with him there, and he looked at me for a moment or two in silence. He had been a soldier, I think; he was a fine-looking old fellow, with a trim moustache and deep-set grey eyes.
"I have some news for you," he said in his abrupt fashion, "and I want you to prepare yourself for it. You are not strong, and I do not want to give you a shock of any sort."
I thanked him, and wondered dully what he meant.
"If you could have at the present moment anything for which you liked to ask, what would you choose?" he asked me.
I shook my head stupidly, and said that I did not know; corrected myself in a moment, and asked, wistfully enough and almost with tears in my eyes, that I might have the making of some particular sort of pan in the tinsmith's shop; I had fancied it greatly, but they had given it to another man. He seemed touched by that, and laughed and shook his head; I had never heard him laugh before.
"An order has come to me from the Home Office in regard to you," he said. "Can you guess what it is?"—I shook my head; I did not understand that anything could happen to me.—"An order for your release."
I did not understand, and I suppose I stood staring at him as stupidly as before. For I had been condemned for life; what could this mean now? More than that, I had become settled in the place, and the idea that I should never leave it had sunk gradually into my mind, and had nailed me, as it were, to that spot, so that it would be difficult to tear me from it. I murmured that I did not understand.
"I have sent reports concerning you again and again to the Home Office," went on the governor; "I have been able to point out that you have been an exemplary prisoner; I have urged that fact upon them again and again. Do you know, Avaline, how long you've been here?"