The Lowest Rung Part 4

"Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained," I said earnestly. "I myself, without half your temptations, was untruthful once."

To a.s.sociate oneself with the sins of others, to show one's own scar, is not this sometimes the only way to comfort those overborne in the battle of life? Had I not chronicled my own failing in the matter of truthfulness when I foolishly and wickedly took blame on myself for the fault of one dear to me, in my first book, "With Broken Wing"? But I saw as I spoke that she had not read it, and did not realise to what I was alluding. I have so steadily refused to be interviewed that possibly also she had not even yet guessed who I was.

"I am sure--I am quite sure," I went on after a moment, "that there is a great deal of good in you, that you are by nature truthful."

"Am I? I wonder. Perhaps I was so once, in the early, untroubled days.

But I have told many lies since then."

She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as if she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on another hearthstone.

"How good it is!" she said at last, putting her cup down. "How dreadfully good it is--the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, and to be dry and warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little I thought of them when I had all these things!"

She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.

"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effect of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple of the hills behind."

"It is Madeira," I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"

"My husband died there," she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "He died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to those three little islands--I forget their names--and as the first level rays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt into half-transparent amethyst in a sea of gla.s.s, beneath a sky of gla.s.s. How calm the sea was--hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was, could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at last."

"Had he been ill long?"

"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone--not at first, but after a little bit--I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be.

But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway.

And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless I drift into prison again, which G.o.d forbid, for I should suffocate in a cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to."

She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at the remembrance of her cell.

"You are wondering how I have fallen so low," she said. "Do you remember Kipling's lines--

"We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?

"Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life, clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being caught back by compa.s.sionate hands, only to let go of it again; fighting desperately to hold on to the next rung when I was thrust from the one above it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, one after another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I would, repent as I would."

"Who beat your hands from the rungs?" I said.

"Morphia," she replied.

There was a long silence.

"Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of my misfortunes," she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me my friends?--and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inch along the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death coming towards them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch by inch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poor wretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely as drink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strange faces, some compa.s.sionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back to me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimly remember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divine music in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered, devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looks out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one could see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac gown. I can see her now. And I swore before G.o.d that I had left off the drug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machine out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrung her hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused her of putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'She is impossible!--quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like a little oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand, and thirst. I should know the room again if I saw it. There was a window opening into a little paved courtyard with a fountain in it, and doves drinking. But I shall never see it again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, and pushed me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did something dreadful, I don't know now exactly what it was, though the prison chaplain explained it to me. But it was about a cheque, and I was convicted and sent to prison."

"Then you have been in prison _twice_?" I said, anxious to make it easy for her to be entirely truthful, for I could not doubt the truth of much of this earlier history.

She did not seem to hear me.

"There is no crime," she went on, "however black, that I did not expiate then. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thought I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live.

It was months before I saw light, months of h.e.l.l, consumed in the flame of h.e.l.l which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I was saved in spite of myself. And slowly the power of thought returned to me. I had time to think. My mind drifted and drifted, but I got control of it now and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poor body rea.s.serted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I thought--I thought--I thought. And at last I made up my mind, my fierce, embittered mind. And when I came out of prison, I took to the road. Even then there were those who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart against them. There was a strange woman with a sweet face waiting at the prison door, who spoke kindly to me. But I distrusted her. I distrusted every one. And I did not mean to be helped any more. I had been helped time and time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get morphia, where I had something, if it was only my clothes, which I could sell to get it, where I could _steal_ things to sell to get it. If I had any possessions, I knew that some day--not for a time perhaps, but some day--I should sell it and get morphia somehow. They say you can't buy it, but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I always should in the future. But on the road, in rags, a tramp, down in the dust, in the safe refuge of the dust--there it was not possible. There I was out of temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That was all I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And I felt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure to all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would bring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new life instead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest, and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been in Abinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can the Elysian fields of Asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others they might seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in the woods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gave me food once or twice. And I ate the sc.r.a.ps that the trippers left after their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay in the sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and my strained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw at last what endless love and compa.s.sion had been vainly lavished on me, and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind that I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by every one. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at last that it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed forgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the only Friend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound in my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for so long, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had loved her years ago, before my husband died.

"When the weather broke, I took to the road, and the road has given me back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now.

And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their brown sails creeping among the b.u.t.tercups, everywhere there is beauty.

And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had forgotten how it was done without morphia. O G.o.d! I can sleep, every night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night, and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of G.o.d. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming.

And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug pa.s.ses off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot, unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek to cheek with us. No more wakings in h.e.l.l. No more mornings like that.

But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the open air. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean, fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendly beasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of that dreadful, maddening thirst! And to _like_ to eat--how good that is, even if you go fasting half the day! But I never do. The poor will always give you enough to eat. It hurts them to see any one hungry. Yes, I have dropped down the ladder rung by rung, and now I have reached the lowest rung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such as I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. I can do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitious once, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding city anywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before the wind.... But now I have the road. No one will take the road from me while I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when my time comes. I am provided for at last. I lead a clean life at last."

She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands folded one over the other. I looked at her with an aching heart. What strange mixture of truth and lies was all this! But I said nothing. What was the use?

And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality between us pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, G.o.d knows!

on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor soul--poor soul--on the lowest.

The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven.

She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if uncertain of her surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic look came back to her face.

"I am keeping you up," she said, rising. "I think your strong coffee has gone to my head. This outburst of autobiography is a poor return for all your kindness. I had no idea it was so late or that I could be so garrulous, and I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go into the kitchen and put on my own clothes again? They must be quite dry by now."

"Oh! let me help you," I said impulsively. "Let me get you into a Home, or help you to emigrate. Don't go back to this wandering, aimless life.

Work for others, interest in others, that is what _you_ need, what _I_ need, what we _all_ need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forget our own misery."

"I have half forgotten mine already," she said. "To-night I remembered it again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the moment for a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived."

She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found it impossible to continue the subject.

"You will never escape in those clothes," I said. "You haven't the ghost of a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can find for you."

I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but I instinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen on deaf ears.

She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes and spread them before her. But she would have none of them.

"The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor," she said, tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more curious that she should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I looked like one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But then he had never really studied them, or he would have seen their lighter side.

"I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam,"

said my visitor. "It shows how long it is since I have been 'in the know.' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things won't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so than I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulster with all the b.u.t.tons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck?

That's more my style. But of course you haven't."

"I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even give it away. So I put it in the dog's basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. He loved it, poor dear! It may be there still."

We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo's basket out from under the stairs.

The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to the basket. It tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lost darling.

"The very thing!" she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travesty of a coat shook itself free. "Quiet and un.o.btrusive to the last degree.

Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can you really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided, equipped."

We went back to the kitchen again.

"What will you do with them?" I said, pointing to her convict clothes which had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. How such quant.i.ties of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me.

"It certainly does not improve one's clothes, to hide in a wet ditch in a ploughed field," she said meditatively. "I will dispose of them early to-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here."