DARK HOURS
There are very few, if any, prisoners, be they innocent or guilty, who, accused of murder, or of any other crime considered too serious to admit of release on bail, do not endure agonies of mind during that terrible interval between their committal and trial.
Possibly the innocent suffer the most; for to all the restraints and humiliations of prison life—less severe, indeed, than those imposed on convicted criminals, but still irksome and wearing to a degree—are added a bitter sense of injustice and often almost intolerable anxiety on account of those, their nearest and dearest, who, innocent as themselves, are yet inevitably involved in the disaster, subjected to all the agonies of separation, of suspense, sometimes of piteous privation. Even the fortitude induced by the inner consciousness of innocence is seldom strong enough to overcome this mental and physical distress.
So Roger Carling suffered—all the more because he strove to show no sign, endeavoured always to appear cheerful and confident in his interviews with his solicitors and counsel, and above all with Grace, whose visits, albeit under the strict regulations as to time, and under more or less official surveillance, were the great events of this grim and dreary period.
Like the blessed sunshine she came into that bare, formal room, always beautifully dressed, with a smile on her dear lips, the lovelight in her eyes; and they would sit hand in hand and chat almost gaily for the prescribed time, which sped all too swiftly, while the dark intervals between dragged on leaden feet.
Only God, Who knows the secret of all hearts, knew what effort that courage required, or how nearly their hearts were breaking!
For the days and weeks were drifting by, and no fresh light whatever had been shed on the mystery of Paula Rawson’s death. The trial was to take place early in the New Year, the first on the list for the session, and Cummings-Browne, K.C., had been secured for the defence. If anyone could secure acquittal on such slight grounds of defence as were at present available it was he. But although the faithful few never wavered in their belief of Roger Carling’s innocence, they knew it would be a stern fight—in fact, almost a forlorn hope.
Only Grace herself would never acknowledge that. How his deliverance would be brought about, his innocence established before all the world, she did not know; but not even in those long nights when she lay awake, thinking of and praying for her beloved in anguish of soul, did she allow herself to doubt that he would be delivered, he would be vindicated.
That sublime faith alone enabled her to endure these dark winter days of loneliness and sorrow.
Always she kept before her the one thought: “When Roger comes home.” On that she shaped her whole life.
That was why she insisted on living alone in the little flat that was to have been their first home, which she told herself should yet be their home together.
Day after day she laboured, putting it in beautiful order, arranging Roger’s writing-table, their chair that was to be his special one, his favourite books, just where she felt sure he would like them to be; and while she was so employed she was almost happy. It seemed as though any moment he might come in.
Only when each day’s task was over, and she strove to concentrate her mind on reading or sewing, the thought of him in his bare prison room was almost more than she could endure, and slow, quiet tears would fall on the work or the page, while in her ears and in her aching heart echoed that haunting strain, last heard in Canterbury Cathedral on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday after their marriage:
Hear my prayer, O Lord, incline thine ear:
Consider, O consider the voice of my complaint.
It seemed now to have been prophetic!
She never spoke to Roger of these her dark hours, nor he to her of his own; but they both knew. There was no need of words.
Rather, in those precious minutes when they were together, they recalled that brief interlude at St. Margaret’s, those “immortal hours” when little Miss Culpepper had hovered around them like a quaint, tutelary goddess.
“I’ve had another letter from Miss Culpepper,” Grace told him one day. “Full of flourishes as usual, dear old thing. She’s so upset at the idea that I haven’t even one maid that if I said half a word I believe she would come up herself and take charge of me!”
“I wish you would say the half word, darling,” Roger urged, not for the first time.
“I know; but I really can’t. Think of her here in London; it would be like pulling up a little old silver birch from a forest glade and sticking it in Shaftesbury Avenue!”
“I hate to think of your being alone,” he said wistfully.
“You mustn’t think of it! I’m a great deal better by myself than I should be with anyone else in the world just now. And I have lots of visitors: daddy pretty often, of course, and Winnie when she is at home, though she’s been away so much lately—more engagements than ever this winter, and most of them in the country, worse luck!”
“So Austin’s left at a loose end, eh?”
“I suppose so. I haven’t seen him for some days. Winnie will be back for Christmas.”
“You’re going to her then?” he asked quickly.
“I’m going about with her. As usual, we shall have quite a big day—a midday dinner in Bermondsey, high tea and a Christmas tree at Battersea, and a beano for the padre’s poorest, and possibly blackest, sheep in the evening. Winnie will be a bright particular star, of course—they’d keep her singing for hours if they could! While I shall be just an all-round helper, in my old canteen get-up.”
“Good! I shall be thinking of you all the time. But don’t wear yourself out, darling,” he said tenderly.
It was no new thing for her to devote herself through most of the season of conventional “festivity” to the poorest of her fellow-creatures, bringing a few hours of mirth and warmth and good fare to the starving and the squalid, giving to many of them fresh hope and strength that perhaps might help them to struggle out of the abyss of misery and destitution into which they had fallen.
Last year he had been with her, and a wonderful experience it was—an utter revelation to him of the grim underworld of humanity here in the greatest city of the world, the very heart of “Christian” civilization! Very many of the guests they had then helped to entertain had passed most of their lives in prison: now the prison walls had closed around himself. He indeed was innocent; he had not sunk into the grim underworld—had not as yet endured the lot of a common convict; but already he could sympathize, as never before, with the prisoners and captives, with all who suffered, whether for their own sins or for the sins of others.
“Oh, I shan’t wear myself out,” Grace assured him. “I shall be happier on duty. Mother is going down to Hove, as usual, and insists on father going too. He doesn’t want to, but it’s less trouble to give way than to argue the point; and the change may do him good. He’s not very fit, poor daddy!”
In fact that poor professor was having a very trying time at home, for Mrs. Armitage furiously resented the fact that he had contributed the utmost amount he could raise to the fund for Roger’s defence, and on the rare occasions when she saw her daughter made Grace writhe under the sense of obligation, that was far more distressing than any consideration of her mother’s utter lack of sympathy; she had been accustomed to that from her early childhood, and it had long ceased to hurt her.
It did seem hard that she should feel more humiliation in accepting this loan from her own people than in accepting those from friends—Austin Starr and the Winstons and the dear jolly padre, Mr. Iverson, who had all been as good as their word. But she never let Roger have a hint of this; kept from him, so far as she could, everything disquieting, even the fact that there was still a lot of money needed, and had begged Mr. Spedding, the lawyer, not to reveal this to him.
“We shall have quite sufficient in good time, by the New Year,” she assured Spedding, on such occasions as the point was raised in the course of their many conferences.
She had already made arrangements to raise the utmost possible on their wedding presents, and everything else of value that they possessed; also, if necessary, to sell up the furniture they had bought so gaily and lovingly in the months before their marriage, and so break up the home which, to “get ready for Roger” had been her great solace in this awful interval; and where she was now living frugally as any nun, denying herself everything beyond the barest necessaries of life, in order that she might save.
And with all this there would not be enough. Where the balance was to come from she did not know, racked her poor brains to discover, sought to buoy her mind with the faith that her prayers would be answered, that help and guidance would come in time.
She brooded anxiously over it again to-day as she made her way back to Westminster. As usual, after parting with Roger reaction followed the joy of the meeting, and a sense of utter desolation was upon her. If Winnie had been at home she would have gone along to Chelsea before returning to the loneliness of the little flat at the very top of a big block. As it was, she lingered aimlessly outside the station, staring with sad, unseeing eyes into the nearest shop window, then made her way through to St. James’s Park, and sat down on the seat inside the gates by the bridge.
It was a chilly, wistful winter afternoon, the westering sun showing like a dim red ball through the haze. Very few people were about; near at hand there were but two strolling towards her—a young couple in earnest conversation.
She looked at them dully, then with quickened interest, as she recognized the man as Austin Starr, bending from his great height to listen attentively to his companion—a very attractive-looking girl, even in the distance, who was talking with animation. Any casual observer would have imagined them a pair of young lovers, and Grace felt an instant and curious sense of dismay.
It flashed to her mind that she had not seen Austin once at the Winstons’ flat during the few days’ interval when Winnie had been at home, though for months before their engagement, which had come about so suddenly in the midst of her own trouble, there was seldom a day that he did not turn up early or late, for a few minutes at least. Also that Winnie had been strangely reticent about him, though, absorbed in her own anxieties, she had not given a second thought to that.
As they drew near she half rose from her seat, but resumed it. They passed, evidently too intent on each other to spare a glance for anyone else, and as they did so she heard the girl say, in a rich, vibrant voice, peculiarly distinct in the quietude:
“It may be as you say, but what does Sir Robert want with him?”
Sir Robert! Of whom were they speaking? Could it be Sir Robert Rawson?
She could not hear Austin’s reply, and though she started up impulsively she did not follow them—merely watched them cross the bridge and disappear from view.
She guessed that the girl was Cacciola’s niece, whom Austin certainly had mentioned when he told her of his visit, and of the disappointing result of his inquiries up to the present, but only in a casual manner. He must have developed the acquaintance swiftly in these few weeks!
She walked slowly back, turning the matter over in her mind perplexedly.
“There’s a lady waiting to see you, ma’am,” said the lift-man, a cheery, grizzled old veteran, and one of her staunch admirers.
“Waiting—where?”
“Why on the landing outside your door, ma’am. Sitting on a box she came with. I wanted her to come down to my missus, knowing you were out, but she wouldn’t.”
He swung open the lift-gates and Grace stepped out.
There, outside her door, as he had said, sitting on a small tin box, with an open basket beside her and something that looked like a little black fur muff cuddled in her arms—cold, tired, travel-stained but quite cheerful—was little Miss Culpepper!