"He is still alive?"
'Tes."
"No one has seen him . . . since he went in there?"
The minister sighed deeply.
"At first I tried to keep in touch with him through the prison chaplain but he met my advances with such resentment — I might even say ferocity — that I was forced to discontinue them. As for your mother . . . well, my dear Paul . . . she felt that she had been used most cruelly. Moreover, she had you to consider. In your interest she judged it better to obliterate this awful chapter from your young life. That she has not altogether succeeded makes no difference. You are fine enough to stand the shock of this revelation and that is why, rather than dupe you with half truths, I have made it to you in full. But now it is done, I want
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you to cleanse your mind of it. You are your own man, and your life lies ahead. You must go forward as though all that I have told you had never been, forward, forward, not only with faith but in forgetfulness."
CHAPTER IV
A WEEK had passed since the interview in Fleming's study. It was Sunday afternoon and the Merrion Scripture class was over. The last of the children had gone, and Ella stood waiting for Paul at the door of the hall, wearing her best blue costume and the neat straw hat she had herself trimmed with navy ribbon. He got down stiffly from his desk and moved between the empty benches towards her. Although he took the class mainly to please his mother, usually he enjoyed the experience, the sharp-witted urchins from Merrion Street amused him, but today, his brain dazed, his head ringing from another sleepless night — heaven alone knew how he had gone through with it.
Ella addressed him tactfully.
"I'm sure you don't feel like music, Paul. But it's fair now, if you'd like us to take our walk."
In the ordinary way, before their regular Sunday stroll, he sat down at the little organ and, in his good-humoured style, played for her: he had more than average talent, and knowing her taste — which was not his own — would play Handel or Elgar, anything likely to meet her restricted choice. But today such a performance was beyond him. For that matter, he had little wish to go walking, but since he felt she had suggested it to distract his mind — he offered no objection.
She took his arm, with a faint possessive pressure, and he accompanied her along the street in the direction of Ormeau Park. They were early, yet a fair number of promenaders were abroad, the women exhibiting their finery, the men looking respectable and self-satisfied in their Sunday suits — a note of Sabbatarian
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orthodoxy which for once jarred on Paul. As they passed through the gates of the park he muttered in a strained voice:
"I'm not in the mood for this parade."
She looked vexed at this, but kept silent. Although her nature had no profound capacity for emotion, her affections had long been centered upon him. Her acute sense of the conventions did not permit her to reveal this, and Paul himself, though he accepted her as an intimate friend, though his mother from time to time dropped fondly encouraging hints, had drifted into the relationship with careless good nature, not realizing the utter incompatibility between his free and generous character and the narrow stereotyped piety which marked her every action. Nevertheless, Ella regarded the matter as settled — all her plans for the future were based upon the certainty of their marriage. She was highly ambitious both for herself and for him, recognizing that his cleverness matched well with her own talent for "managing." Already she saw her good influence advancing his career until he stood finally in a high academic position, moving with her in the most distinguished circles.
In these circumstances, the recent disclosure had been a severe injury to her pride. She saw also how great had been the shock for Paul. Yet if she was willing to get over it why should not he? The damage was not deadly, the whole thing lay buried in the past, with a little care no one need ever remotely suspect it. Such was her attitude. And now, finding him still pressed into the dust, a touch of grievance, even of annoyance, began to qualify her sympathy. Although she controlled it admirably she had a pretty temper — not violent, but vixenish — and at this present moment, as he spoke again, it was costing her a struggle to subdue it.
"It seems as if all these years I've been living under false pretenses." In a shamed manner he tried to give form to his tormenting thoughts. "I can't even call myself Burgess any more — my name is Mathry, Paul Mathry ... if I don't use that name I'm a liar and a cheat. If I do use it, everywhere I go, I'll imagine I see people pointing me out, whispering about me . . . that's Mathry, son of the man who . . ."
"Don't, Paul," she interrupted. "You're making it too hard for yourself. No one need ever know."
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"Even if they don't, I know." He strode on, his hurt gaze fixed on the gravel drive before him. "Yes, what about me . . . myself . . . what am I going to do about it?"
"You must forget about the whole thing."
"Forget?" he repeated incredulously.
"Yes." Her patience was wearing thin. "It's perfectly simple. You must put all thought of ... . this man Mathry right out of your head."
He turned to her with haggard eyes.
"Disown my father?"
"Is he someone to be proud of?"
"Whatever he's done, he's paid for it, shut up for half a lifetime . . . poor devil."
"I was only thinking of you," she answered sharply. "And kindly do not swear in my presence."
"I didn't say anything."
"You did." She could contain herself no longer. The blood rushed into her face. She snapped at him. "You used a bad word that no lady would tolerate, I think you're behaving inexcusably."
"How do you expect me to behave?"
"With a little more civility. You don't seem to understand that this affects me just as much as it does you."
"Oh, Ella, for God's sake don't let us be childish at a time like this."
She drew up suddenly, overcome by her sense of injury, by the desire to exert her influence over him. Her face had taken on a greenish colour, her eyes were moist, with the whites upturned.
"I'm afraid ... in your present mood . . . there's no point in our walking any further."
There was a pause. He gazed at her numbly. His thoughts were far away.
"Just as you please."
Disconcerted at being taken at her word, she bit her lip to keep back angry tears. Then, since he made no effort to detain her, she gave him a pale smile, full of reproach and outraged goodness — the martyred smile of an early-Christian virgin when they tore her bosom with hot pincers.
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"Very well. I'll turn and go home. Goodbye, lor the present. I hope you're in a better frame of mind when next we meet."
She swung round and moved off with her head in the air, a shamefully ill-used figure. For a few moments he gazed after her, regretting their unaccountable misunderstanding, yet relieved, deeply relieved, to be alone. When she was lost to view, he moved off slowly in the other direction.
He could not endure to return to Lame Road. There he would find his mother awaiting him with anxious, unbearable solicitude. He shrank from the hushed voice, the putting out of his slippers, the mute coaxing to a safe and peaceful evening in the home.
How strange was this new attitude to his mother! But stranger still, and more illogical, was the feeling, forming unconsciously within him, towards his father. Here, in truth, was the criminal, the cause of all his misery. Yet Paul could not hate him. Instead, during these last tortured, sleepless hours, his thoughts had flown towards him with a singular pity. Fifteen years in prison — was not that punishment enough for any man? Recollections of his early childhood, vague yet poignant, surged upon him. What tenderness he had received, always, from his father — not one harsh memory marred the picture. Tears suddenly blurred his vision.
He had now reached Donegal Quay, the poor dockside district of the city. Unknown to himself, the strange impulse growing wi
thin him had brought him here. Head down, he tramped on, across the railway tracks, threading his way through the confusion of bales, sacks, and carboys which littered the cobbled wharfs. An evening mist was stealing in from the sea, mingling with the brackish emanations from the harbour pool, turning the tall pier derricks to spectral shapes. The foghorn of the outer breakwater began to sound its deep melancholy note.
At last, brought up by a barrier of merchandise piled between the sheds, he sat down on a packing case. Immediately opposite, a small rusty freighter was making preparations for departure on the tide — he recognized her as the Vale of Avoca, a cross-channel cargo boat plying between Belfast and Holyhead. Occasionally she carried a few steerage passengers and at the gangway a small group of men and women, potato pickers bound for the Lincoln-
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shire farms, stood with their belongings, taking goodbye of their friends.
Seated there, in the mist, which swirled around him in wraith-like forms, with the foghorn sounding, sounding in his ears, Paul stared at the vessel with a growing intensity. With his holidays begun, his plans for the summer school broken off, time stretched before him mercilessly. A sudden excitement, strange and predestined, passed over him. Impulsively, he took out his notebook and scribbled two lines:
/ am going away for a few days. Do not worry.
Paul
He tore out the page, folded it over, and wrote his mother's name and the address on the back. Summoning a boy from amongst the onlookers, he gave the note to him with a coin to ensure delivery. Then he stood up, advanced steadily to the shipping company's kiosk, and for a few shillings purchased a ticket for Holyhead. They were already casting off as he crossed the gangplank. A moment later a heavy rope splashed; then, with a throbbing of her old engines, the freighter lurched and shuddered to the outer seas.
CHAPTER V
IT was six o'clock next morning and raining heavily when the Avoca berthed at Holyhead. Stiff and chilled, Paul stepped ashore and crossed the tracks to the railway station. There was scarcely time for him to swallow a cup of tea in the refreshment room before the southbound train was signalled. He paid the half-awakened waitress and hurried to take a place in the corner of a third-class compartment. Then the engine shrieked and started off. It was a lengthy journey, through Shrewsbury and Gloucester,
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with two changes at junction stations where, having no coat to protect him, he got thoroughly drenched. Yet with this physical discomfort, more and more his spirit hardened. As though in keeping with this darker mood, gradually the pastoral character of the country altered to a wilder, bleaker note. Stony moors and straggling heaths supplanted the square, hedged fields. Tall monoliths, grouped in circles, weird and prehistoric, struck upon his vision. To the west, from out the pine woods, a livid ridge of mountains rose, capped with grey clouds and veined by tumbling cataracts. The engine laboured as the wind came blasting from the sea, and at a curve of the line Paul saw cold waves beating against high cliffs.
At -last, towards four o'clock in the afternoon, the train drew into a small moorland station — it was his destination. The single platform was almost deserted as, with the blood pounding in his ears, he surrendered his ticket to the solitary porter. He had meant to ask the man to direct him to the prison, but somehow the words thickened on his tongue; he passed through the white wicket in silence. However, once outside, he saw in the distance, across the red earth and rain-drenched heath, crouching behind its castellated walls, the great grey bulk of Stoneheath. He set off along the narrow road which wound across the moor.
The nearer he drew to that grim citadel, the faster his pulse raced. His mouth was dry, his chest constricted, he felt sick and empty: except for a cup of tea and a sandwich he had eaten nothing all day. At an incline on the path he leaned against the bole of a stunted birch tree to gain his breath. Now a patch of greenish opalescent sky had opened on the western horizon, and against this delicate screen he could, from the slight eminence, discern acutely the details of the prison.
There it rose, a great blank windowless square, pierced by a low portcullis, with watch towers hovering like eagles at each corner, sheer as a rock, stern as a medieval fort. Two rows of warders' houses stood outside, with sheds and other workshops, and all around was the desolation of the moor. An unscaleable wall, with spikes on the coping, enclosed the whole domain in which, like enormous wounds, three red stone quarries caught the eye. In one of these some gangs of prisoners were working, seen at
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that distance like grey ants, guarded by tour warders in blue, each promenading slowly, yet menacingly, with a gun. Under Paul's rigid gaze the little drab figures bent and strained and toiled, and over the place was a silence like eternity.
A sudden step behind him, startling as the crack of doom, made him spin around. A shepherd had come up the hill, followed by a shaggy sheep-dog. The man had a close and secret aspect, as though tainted bv this gloomy wilderness, and when he halted beside Paul and leaned upon his crook, a native suspicion was in his eye.
"Not a pretty view," he remarked at length.
"No." Paul spoke with an effort.
The other nodded in slow agreement.
"It's a plague spot if ever there was one. And I should know, I've lived here forty years." He paused. "They had a riot last month — five of the convicts and two of the warders got killed — and it looked just the same then as it does now. Quiet and blind. Ay, even as we're talking here, a guard in that tower has a pair of field glasses levelled on us, watching every move we make."
Paul suppressed a shiver, and forced himself to ask the question uppermost in his mind.
"When do they have visiting days?"
"Visiting days." The crofter looked at him with open derision. "There are no such days in Stoneheath."
Paul felt his heart contract. Quickly, he exclaimed:
"But surely ... on certain days . . . the prisoners' relatives are allowed to see them?"
"They have no visitors," the other said briefly. "No, not ever." His weathered face, never given to merriment, twitched grimly. "It's as hard for us to get in there as it is for them to get out. And now good evening, young sir."
He whistled to his dog and, with a final nod, was gone.
Alone and re-enveloped by the stillness, Paul remained absolutely motionless, all his sanguine expectations dashed to the ground. No visitors . . . never! He could not see his father . . . could not even speak one word with him . . . what he had come to do was quite impossible. Indeed, at this moment, confronted by the chilling reality of the prison, he knew that the hope he had
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entertained and his impetuous, sentimental journey to this benighted spot were both unutterably futile.
The landscape darkened and, as he still lingered, a bell in the prison began slowly and heavily to toll, breaking the everlasting silence as though tolling for the dead. Then he saw the convicts cease their work and, marshalled by their keepers, move in slow line towards the prison. Presently the portcullis was raised to engulf them, then lowered. At that, the last of the green transparency departed from the sky.
Something broke within Paul's breast. Torn by grief, pain, and a terrible frustration, he gave a wild inarticulate cry. Scalding tears burst from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. He turned from the accursed heath and made his way back blindly to the railway station.
CHAPTER VI
UPON the outskirts of the city of Wortley, at the corner of Ayres Street and Eldon Avenue, there stands a tobacconist's shop, bearing the faded sign: a. prusty, importer of burma cheroots. This emporium, old-fashioned, yet with a solid and well-established air, has two windows, the one carrying a sober display of cigars, snuff, meerschaums, and the better grades of cut tobacco, the other an opaque blank — except for a small gilt-circled peephole shielding the bench at which the proprietor makes by hand the cigarettes, Robin Hood Straight Cut, for which he is locally r
enowned.
Towards noon, on tins June day, Mr. Prusty was, in fact, seated at his bench, in apron and shirtsleeves, rolling out his special brand with a rapid and delicate touch. He was a skinny little man, past sixty,-with a blunt porous nose and a choleric complexion. He was bald, except for a single tuft of white hair, and a large wen grew like a plum on his bare scalp. His straggling white moustache was fumed with nicotine and his fingers showed
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the same bright yellow stain. He wore steel-rimmed pince-nez.
Perched on his stool and peering through his peephole, Mr. Prusty had for some minutes been following with inquisitive suspicion the movements of a bareheaded young man who, pacing up and down outside, had several times approached the shop, as though about to enter, only to hesitate at the last moment and turn away. In the end, however, he seemed to muster all his will power. Pale but resolute, he crossed the street with a rush and came through the door. Mr. Prusty, who kept no assistant, slowly got off his stool.
"Yes?" he inquired brusquely.
"I'd like to see Mr. Albert Prusty. That's to say ... if he's still alive."
The tobacconist gave his visitor an acidulous smile.
"So far as I know he's alive. I am Albert Prusty."
The young man, like a diver plunging into any icy sea, took a deep determined breath.
"I am Paul Mathry." It was over. Once he had articulated that name a flood of relief suffused him, his tongue seemed no longer paralysed. "Yes, Mathry. Spelled M-a-t-h-r-y. Not a common name. Does it convey anything to you?"
The cigarette maker's expression had not changed. He answered irritably:
"What would it convey to me? I remember the Mathry case if that's what you mean. I'm not likely to forget the most unpleasant time in my whole life. But what the devil has it to do with you?"