“It is,” said William carefully, “connected with a case of which you are well-informed. A case in which you testified and made a strong impression against a gentleman I am honoured to regard as my friend. It came to me from a prisoner, and was got within the prison walls.”
“Aye. I thought as much.”
“Every wrong,” added William, “every wickedness, every guilt, every crime, every thief and murderer, every whore and thief-taker, every ill we have seen or guessed this night, as on all others, finds a way to those gates, and returns from them.”
The bells of the town began tolling, faintly, and at the bottom of Cracksheart Hill, a watchman took up the call, and cried the hour, that all was well.
Captain Grimsborough rubbed his jaw. “The matter is out of hand. I have taken too little care of this.”
AND SO William mused, as he picked his way homeward, Midnight has fallen on the darkened streets of Haught and Battens Hill, and the watchman saith, All is well. We have prospered by the day, set our lock and bolt, and tried the windows, and all is well. Want, murder, desperation, and despair still roam in the filthy alleys and tenements of The Steps and breed countless wrongs in their path, yet the watchman passing cries, All is well. The watchman clears away the hungry children who hunt for scraps behind the New Theatre while a nobleman’s carriage rolls by, but decent folk turn, sighing in their sleep, and faintly hear the report: all is well. The prison gates are shut, and what is within is surely confined there, and touches us not; therefore, all is well.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Closing In.
“YOUR OPENINGS ARE tolerable,” said Mr. Ravenscraigh, “but you do not hold to a strategy. You are improvisational; you veer between calculation and guesswork.”
Thaddeus Grainger frowned. “A thorough critique, but too subtle for me.”
It was a bitter winter’s night, after a sudden, harsh snow and a weak thaw. The wind threw flecks of ice mixed with rain against the curtain walls of the Bellstrom, and frozen snow stubbornly clung about the corners of its roof. The chill of the prison, rising from the very marrow of the hill, penetrated even Mr. Ravenscraigh’s snug chamber, and both men forbore to discard their scarves and greatcoats and wraps.
Grainger peered at the board.
“You are not in haste,” remarked Ravenscraigh dryly.
“It is a delicate position,” said Grainger. “My king is besieged. My bishop is cornered; my rook isolated.”
“Your queen is free.”
“And, therefore, I fear for her most.”
“Capital. Concentrate on the position. You are apt to overvalue particular pieces.”
“You mean: hold your tongue and play!” exclaimed Grainger with good humour.
“You have received many visitors of late,” said Ravenscraigh, when Grainger had still not moved. “Our fellow collegians have seen that pretty girl who attends on you, and the law-writer, Bensey, and the young gentleman, your friend, often at the lock. I have no wish to be presumptuous, but I hazard that your case proceeds.”
“No more than usual,” said Grainger, with a snort. “Prison gossip. But you are well informed, as always.”
“It is an ill-bred pastime, by which the collegians hawk the news to each other. But I must own that prison rumour has its value. It is often most acute.”
“I shall remember that. I have heard some singular rumours concerning you.”
Ravenscraigh showed no discomfort, but raised one brow, amused and quizzical. “Quite. They are latterly most droll, but change year by year. Do not believe all that you hear, especially from those old hands who confuse their own interests with history and tend to embroider their accounts with whatever they perceive will be most intriguing to you. Rumour is swift, but not infallible.”
Grainger looked up. “Another aphorism of your prison philosophy?”
Ravenscraigh nodded gravely. “Your philosopher of the prison, as you might say, has a deal of practical wisdom sharpened by circumstances. Much more than your ordinary observer of human nature.”
Grainger smiled at the board. “I am intrigued. Pray continue.”
“If I am to act the philosopher, let me put this question, by way of an example: what do you desire most?”
Grainger made his move, blew on his fingertips to warm them, and folded his hands again. “To regain my freedom,” he said. “To restore my good name.”
“A gentlemanly ambition. It does you credit. But the philosopher of the prison begs to enquire: what constitutes this freedom?”
“Is it not plain?”
“Look to your shopkeeper, your labourer, your country squire, your street-sweeper. Is there one that does not follow his prescribed round, day by day? All men and women are subject to the constraints of their station, their society, their trades and their commerce. Wherefore are they free, when our habits, prejudices, and manners are subject to our position?”
“This has the taste of sophistry about it,” replied Grainger. “Better the genteel constraints of civil society than the rude confines of a felon’s cell.”
“But what is the difference between your common fellow and the prisoner? For, if all of us live under the law, how is this altered when we are confined by the court? We have merely exchanged regimes. Consider your prison. Like your society, it has its gatekeepers, arbiters, functionaries, and citizens. Inside we find the same cares and concerns. Your society is not the counterpart to the prison, but its perfection, where every act is seen, judged, approved, or disapproved directly, and the marvel is that outside the gaolhouse we persist in serving as our own turnkeys. There is no more effectual gaoler than custom and habit.”
“So what does your philosopher of the prison make of manners and morals?” asked Grainger, as the other man paused.
Ravenscraigh snorted. “Morals? Manners? A means to quell the masses. We check their hungers and savagery thereby. That is all.”
Almost negligently, Ravenscraigh made his move.
Grainger sighed and hunched over the board again. “Say then,” he said, “I would have the truth come out.”
“You would have truth proclaimed in the courts and published about the town? Your truth of the courts and the public is like your conventional freedom: the counterfeit coin by which power buys our assent to our own subservience.”
“And what would you prefer to truth?” asked Grainger, with a trace of asperity.
The old man drew himself straight, and his shadow waxed and shifted upon the board. “Have power, sir. And if you have not power, influence. We are gentlemen. Let us not talk falsely. We know the way of the world, and it is not in truth but in force.”
Grainger said, “Can a gentleman put his honour in the service of naked force?”
“But allow me to put the test to you, for I am an old man, and old men acquire knowledge and presumption in equal measure.”
“Make your case.”
“You achieve your end. You are free and returned to your place in good society. Now, there is that lively, handsome girl who attends on you. While you are a prisoner and she a serving-girl, you are matched in your estates and freely maintain your intercourse. But after the prison, what is your position with respect to her? There are bonds of sympathy and experience between you, but your stations are unequal. Having gained your position, would you dare the censure of society to maintain your intimacy?”
“You strike near the mark,” said Grainger coldly.
“Forgive me. I merely sketch the conditions in which your sentiments and your reason are at odds with the imperatives of society, and ask you to contemplate what you would force, had you the power.”
“What lies between Miss Redruth and myself, I reserve to our own good sense and discretion,” said Grainger, with a caution and a gravity that was unusual in him, and all the more sincere for that. “I will only say that I am not so faltering in my duty to her, or so selfish, as to make her any promises or advance any undertakings that would dishonour her or diminish my good wo
rd. Miss Redruth has stood by me. For that I can never adequately recompense her; but it does not follow from that that I would not stand by her in all contingencies.”
“Fine words. Very finely said. Perhaps, Mr. Grainger, you will one day find the power to effect your excellent intentions.” There was a flicker, as from the lowering candle, in Ravenscraigh’s eye, but whether it betokened mockery or dawning respect, not even the first liar, who tricked us into our fallen estate, could say.
“There is precious little power or influence to be had in a cell,” said Grainger suddenly. “That is a material objection to all our earnest philosophy.”
Ravenscraigh laughed aloud. He hummed a fragment of a tune, rose, and went to the little grate, and tried to rouse up the fire. “You are correct, and so my discourse ends in weariness and confusion.”
For a moment, the older man stared into the crimson flames and crumbling ash. Grainger made his move. There was a rattle of windblown ice against the shutters.
Ravenscraigh rose with a little difficulty. In the dim light, his face was pale, amused, inscrutable. “Your queen is en prise.”
“But I attack your king,” replied Grainger.
“Quite so.”
Shortly, the game was concluded. They retired from the board and shook hands.
“Recall the words of the poet,” Ravenscraigh said, as Grainger made his way into the cold and lightless landing. “‘I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space—’”
“‘— were it not that I have bad dreams,’” Grainger finished and went down the stairs into the bowels of the prison, repeating those words to himself.
MISS REDRUTH was not yet entirely a stranger to the Withnails’ house in Staverside, for below the stairs of that house, where Mrs. Scourish ruled unquestioned and unapproachable, Cassie still had regular access. It may be that her new status as a high servant made her more sympathetic to that lady, who always had a rough regard for her good sense, but the truth is that Mrs. Scourish, in all other respects grimly genteel, had a fascination for the gaudy and disreputable (and desirable) society that revolved around her sister, Mrs. Wenrender, and that at least once a month, over tea, she immersed herself in the lively gossip for which Cassie was her conduit. A tray was brought to Mrs. Scourish’s office, which was beside the pantry, and here that lady would retire and remove from her waist the heavy ring of keys she wore everywhere else in the house, and leave it on a hook on the inside of her old pine desk, while she and Cassie conversed by the fireside. Curiously, her interest seemed not to be much on the accomplishments and refinements of Mrs. Wenrender’s circle, but in their narrow feuds, their excesses and presumption, their fashions and their rivalries.
Said Cassie one evening: “Lord Frey swears he is in love and will go all to pieces if he is denied, but Miss Darton has six or seven lovers at least, and insists that she cares not a thing for any of them.”
“And does she care nothing?” enquired Mrs. Scourish.
“She is quite cold-hearted,” concluded Cassie soberly. “But she has a perfect passion for receiving gifts and starting duels.”
“Miss Redruth,” observed Mrs. Scourish regally, “you are developing a character.”
“Miss Cozzens believes I have too much character already, but Mrs. Wenrender don’t care.”
“You have no nonsense about you, girl, unlike those flirts.”
Before Cassie could respond to this high compliment, there was a nervous tap on the door.
“Yes,” barked Mrs. Scourish.
The maid said, “If you please, ma’am, there is a porter boy at the door who won’t go away.”
“Won’t go away? Whatever do you mean?”
“He said he must speak to the mistress of the house and no one else.”
“Mistress of the house? There’s no mistress of this house.”
“If you please, ma’am, he’s a dirty, rude boy, and he won’t go away afore he speaks to the mistress.”
“Surely,” said Cassie, putting down her cup, “you are mistress of this house.”
“Have the grooms beat him if he won’t go,” said Mrs. Scourish loftily.
“Nay,” said Cassie, rising, “you must see what he wants. What if he wakes the masters? What if he has a message? What will they say then?”
“He’s making a row,” fretted the maid. “And getting mud on the steps.”
“Fiddle-faddle,” scolded Mrs. Scourish, but she ascended majestically and stepped towards the door.
Momentarily, Cassie was left alone. The candle flames seemed to grow dimmer and smaller, as the steps retreated from the door and the little room took on the night-hush of the house.
In a moment, Cassie was at the pine desk and had the ring of keys in hand. In another moment, she had selected two keys, one large and of iron, with an ornate barrel, and one small and old.
A noise at the door startled her. It was only a maid going by.
Both keys were pressed, left and right, into a square of wax she carried in her top-skirts.
You are a fool, Cassandra Redruth, the girl told herself. You are trading your honesty on the respect and friendship of an old woman—and for what cause?
But her hands were steady, and swiftly the impress of the keys was concealed and the key-ring returned to its hook in the desk, and Cassie was sitting demurely by the fire, seemingly nodding a little with her hands in her lap, when Mrs. Scourish returned.
“Fuss and bother over nothing,” said Mrs. Scourish. “The boy was a mere beggar. I told him there are no beggars here, but he went away with a crust of bread.”
“You are over kind, ma’am,” murmured Cassie, pouring the old lady more tea.
LATER, leaving by the mews, Cassie saw, at the end of the street, the lanky figure of a young man who came slouching towards her as she hurried away. As he passed from the dark street corner into the light, she saw the lean, sour face, the sparse, boyish whiskers and greasy black hair of Toby Redruth.
“What a fright that old dame is,” he remarked. “Did you get them?”
In answer, she pressed the lump of wax into his hands. “Your man can make keys from these?”
“As good as the patterns,” the boy boasted. “They’ll fit your locks smooth.”
“Then away, as quick as you can,” she said.
IT WAS A NIGHT of rain, when the weight of water descending from the sky utterly effaced all trace of moon or stars, and the city lay, drenched and shivering, under the downpour. Toby and Cassie returned to the mews behind the Withnail house. The boy’s threadbare coat was plastered to his shoulders. The girl was in a streaming cloak and hood. They stopped beneath the arch.
“Wait here,” said Cassie.
“I want to go in with yer,” said Toby.
“You’ve done enough. You could be taken as a thief.”
“You could be took as a thief.”
“But I know this house. Wait until the watchman goes by, and if I don’t come out, call on Mr. Bensey. He will know what to do. Toby?”
“I hear yer,” grumbled the youth. He had a little shuttered lantern with him that he passed to his sister.
The girl dashed across the yard, while her brother concealed himself. The house was dark, but the roar and gurgle of water in the pipes was such that no subtlety could reveal whether those within slumbered or not. Cassie went to a door she knew, drew out the first new-made key, and fumbling in the dark and the wet, pressed it into the lock. It stuck, was shaken, drawn out, tried again, and turned. With her heart beating madly in her breast and throat, Cassie undid the latch and opened the door.
The corridor was dark, still, empty. Yet such a tumult of terror and anticipation was within Cassie that she peered for a long minute through the half-opened door before she stepped inside. She closed the door as softly as she could behind her back. Even the steady dripping from her cloak seemed intolerable to her, as she strained every sense to detect some movement abroad. She heard only the rain, and the sedate t
icking of a clock. A glimmer showed through the shutters of her lantern as she stole forward. She crossed the hallway, but the hush of the rain, the darkness, the sense of terrible exposure, seemed to magnify the space, so that it seemed that she crept across a very cathedral floor. At last she came, by memory and touch, to one of the concealed doors for the servants, opened it, and slipped into the back stairs.
She climbed through the slumbering house, by its maze of confined stairs and passages, with an ember’s glow to guide her, with the fear of another door opening, of another servant, roused and made sleepless by the rainstorm, coming upon her. A dreary refrain of worry and recrimination ran through her head: You are a fool, girl. You have made yourself a fraud, and now a thief in the night.
She opened another door. She flittered like a faerie-spirit through the upper-house. The rain beat against a window. A sash rattled. The brothers entertained at home but rarely: but what if they had a guest tonight?
You are a fool, girl.
She came to the end of a corridor, in the highest storey of the house. A door here, concealed by the wainscoting, opened to her touch. Behind were spiral stairs. They led down to the library or up to the attics. Cassie went up, daring more light so that she might see her shaky way on the coiling steps. There was a locked door at the top. Cassie tried her second key. She had to hold it with both hands, to steady herself. The door opened with an oily snicker.
She was within: a tiny room, a dry bare floor, and on every side plain wooden shelves, loaded with dusty black boxes. Her foot creaked on the bare boards. She caught her breath and hid the light, but the rain persisted, and no one came.
Each box had a small white label, some yellowed with age. Unshuttering her lantern again, she went to each box in turn, reading the labels in a whisper, to calm her agitation. At last she stood before the one she sought, and at this moment, all her devotion and determination deserted her.
You are a fool, girl. Here is the end of your honesty; a liar and sneak-thief. And what for? With what aim?
She raised her hand to the shelf, and it trembled. The rain was beating on the roof. If she was taken here, if someone came upon her, she would have no warning.
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