Dr. Ogilvie was wakeful, partly because he hated a hanging, partly because he might be needed any moment. Doubtless Davidson was feeling worse, being a parson and not so much used to the brutalities of life; but Ogilvie, smoking his pipe, sipping at a whisky and soda, could not sleep. A hanging was a beastly business, look at it how you would. He would fill the wretched woman up with morphia, but he didn’t dare give her too much. She would know what was happening, though the sharp edge would be taken off her apprehension. He wished that some strain of altruism in his nature hadn’t made him want to be a prison doctor. Something was wrong with society, something was wrong everywhere, particularly with education. What had been the downfall of this Starling woman? That she’d never been taught anything of her own being, and how to cope with it. He’d had dozens of women like her through his hands, and he had told them some home truths; but it was too late to tell her anything. Bit by bit he had pieced her life together as she had poured it out at him, begging him for help; tried to explain herself; gone on lying because she had the habit of it, but unable to prevent his accustomed eyes from seeing the truth.
He saw how completely at the mercy of her imagination and her body such a girl must have been; a girl whose mind had never been trained to look for truth, had never learned any thrift of thought. What guide could such a one have had but her own desires, which were not, after all, ignoble? Her desire for beauty, for something finer than the ugliness which was all that lay within her grasp? Her desire for physical pleasure, the only ecstasy that could be hers? Body and mind—or soul, as he supposed Davidson would call it—how badly adjusted they were to each other, and how carefully they needed training to chime together as they should. How many people realised that body and mind were two separate entities that had to be reconciled, enemies that had to learn how to come to terms, lovers that could not exist without each other? Yet that was the truth. People talk of marriage … of the necessity of “giving and taking”—no two human beings had such a difficult task of mutual adjustment as the two component parts of one human being, that the unthinking called “I,” as though that symbol stood for something unified and at peace.
The pain of the body, of which he had seen so much, sometimes it grew as with a strange and horrible life of its own, till nothing seemed to exist save the pain, lying like a burden upon the shoulders of the mind. Sometimes the mind triumphed over that burden in the most amazing way: he had often seen that, too. Always the struggle between the two, varied by times of accord, when the body was so healthy or so satisfied that the mind was only aware of it as something light and enjoyable. For there was a gift of pleasure, pleasure in the sweet uses of the flesh, that had been slipped within all its tissues, that knitted body to mind if it were rightly understood. … The mind could triumph over the body’s pains, could exult in its pleasures, or could be almost overthrown by its pains, in this perpetual marriage that was everyone’s from birth to death.
Death—that was the dissolution of the partnership, of the only marriage that ever really mattered in the long run. That wretched creature in her cell at the present moment wasn’t, he was prepared to swear, thinking of her lover, except perhaps with anger. Her relationship with her husband and her lover, and any other man she’d had, would seem extraordinarily unimportant. It was the divorce of the marriage within herself, that marriage which neither her body or her mind had ever been taught anything about, which was worrying her now.
Two things were hanging Julia Starling—her birth-certificate, and her place in the social scale. If only she had not been seven years older than Carr, and if only she had been higher or lower in the world! In the class above hers the idea of divorce would not have shocked, and a private income would even have allowed her and Carr to live together without divorce, and no one would have been unduly outraged. Had their walk in life been the lowest, had they been tramps or part of the floating population of the docks down London River, they could have set up in one room together, and no one thought twice about it, as long as the husband wasn’t a big strong man who made a row and tried to do them in.
Starling’s two gifts had undoubtedly been her business capacity and the finely attuned orchestra of her body—if only she had combined the two, the most sensible thing to do! But he supposed that was immoral. Why, many people would have thought the worse of her if they knew even that her body was a source of pleasure to her. If she actually marketed that talent, she would be lost indeed. What had there been for her but escape? And such was the compulsion of circumstances, it was only into a world that she had dreamed for herself that she could escape. And a dangerous world it had of necessity proved, but surely not the vulgar world that a vulgar-minded judge had called it?
It was bad luck, all of it. Bad luck for her, bad luck for the stupid husband—who had as good a right to live, poor devil, as anybody else, and bad luck for that other poor devil, who also had to toe the line that morning. And bad luck for himself, and the rest of the poor devils who had to assist at the beastly business in both places. In both prisons the prisoners would be unmanageable and gloomy, and officers would feel like criminals. Here he would have the job of testing the heart that had been stilled for ever, of noting at which cervical the fracture had occurred, even of noting the haemorrhage that might burst forth.
And why, in spite of all logic and reason, did the idea persist, even in his well-balanced mind, that it was somehow worse to hang a woman than a man? The dark consciousness of the womb was present with every man who had to do with the business, of the womb that was the holder of life, from which every living soul had issued in squalor and pain. Some deep awareness of the mother, the source of life, worked in the mind of every man. Perhaps, too, they felt that such a job should be left to another woman to carry through; but then women wouldn’t carry it through. Women, as this poor creature had been, were rather the instigators of deeds than the performers.
They were borrowing a couple of warders from the men’s prison for to-morrow’s performance, the female officers wouldn’t go to the scaffold, except the unfortunate Lady Superintendent, whose duty obliged her to do so.
This Julia Starling had evaded the womb’s responsibilities, while partaking of its pleasures; but, nevertheless, that dark consciousness of it as the medium by which each one of them had come into the world, would be present to every man at the execution. Ogilvie agreed that if a guilty man were hanged, a guilty woman should meet the same fate, but even with him persisted that dark awareness of the womb.
At that other prison nature would take her last ironic revenge in the body of the man who had killed for what he had called love, making a final gesture, lewd as a sneer. The very officers, the doctor who examined his body afterwards, would feel an almost superstitious dread of that impudent and useless jibe of nature’s. And, God knew, hanging a man was a bad enough business, even without that wretched commentary on love which the hanged man presented despite himself.
Davidson made no attempt at sleep. He prayed, and when he could pray no more he tried to read. Then he would make himself some black coffee, lest sleep should come over him. For he had a curious idea that little as he had been able to do for her, he would be doing still less if he let his mind slip into unconsciousness; that perhaps the intensity of his thoughts and his prayers would be permitted to be of some slight help to her in her extremity. Irresistible as temptation’s self, sleep came over him at about three in the morning, but he forced it back, drank more coffee, and went on wrestling with the dark angel. A phrase began to repeat itself again and again in his head. Whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder … That was out of the marriage service … he’d repeated it hundreds of times. What was it that Ogilvie had been theorising about … something about everyone alive being a marriage, generally an ill-assorted one, between body and mind? If that were so, he was going to assist next morning at the forcible sundering of a marriage.
He was tortured by the knowledge that he h
ad been of very little help to Julia Starling. The thing that he had tried to appeal to was not there—that sense of spiritual awareness which had made his own life; this was lacking in Starling. Armed as he was with the authority of voluntary celibacy, with the fervour of intense conviction: burning as he was with the love of souls, he had not succeeded in finding hers—much less in awakening it.
During the last few weeks he had been reading, not for the first time, the reminiscences of the Abbé Pirot, who had attended that most notorious and cold-blooded of poisoners, Marie-Madeleine de Brinvilliers. He had been turning over and over the pages of these portentous tomes, which somehow gained instead of losing by their naïve repetitions. The classic beauty of style might have been lost, but the passion survived just because the Abbé Pirot hadn’t troubled over-much over the niceties of fine writing, because he had simply poured out on paper, day by day, every little thing that this penitent had said or done. That last day, that terrible last day, he had recorded moment by moment. Pirot had succeeded in obtaining remorse, not a mere regret, from his penitent, but he, Davidson, had failed. He was not, he admitted humbly, a Pirot. But then, on the other hand, poor Julia Starling, whatever the measure of her guilt, had not attained to those horrible peaks of depravity of the Brinvilliers. Perhaps the times were out of joint. Starling could not care enough about her immortal soul, she was too occupied with the thought of her mortal body. Who was not nowadays? And, not for the first time in his life, Davidson found himself regretting bitterly that he hadn’t been able, as he expressed it to himself, to “go the whole way.” If he had had the authority of Rome behind him; if instead of trying to impress upon Starling his belief of the necessity of the Sacraments he had had behind that belief the whole authority of his church, instead of, as he knew only too well, a mere mass of conflicting opinions!
But then, even so, and even admitting that he could have obtained an emotional response from Starling, how much would she really have known, or cared or understood? She was thinking of nothing but the injustice that was to be meted out to her; of nothing but the terrifying death of her body. Of her soul she knew nothing, and cared less. In the days of the Brinvilliers there had been more crime, and more cruelty; but nevertheless everybody believed. There had been no initial difficulty of a complete lack of interest to be overcome; and so the Marquise de Brinvilliers, with murder thick upon her conscience, had made the most edifying end, and the Abbé Pirot, having wrestled with the dark angels for her soul until he was almost as exhausted as his penitent, was convinced of her ultimate salvation.
None of these words would convey anything to Julia Starling, or to those of her generation brought up as she had been. The Brinvilliers had been able to say: “But are there any sins that by their gravity, or their number, cannot be forgiven, even by the Church?” and Pirot, conscious that the voice of centuries spoke through his mouth, to one who listened with ears which the centuries had not yet dulled, was able to reply: “Madame, there are no sins which cannot be expiated.” And with his ardour, his faith, he had succeeded in assuring the cold-blooded woman, who had poisoned for profit from her youth, that there was a gate, straight and narrow indeed, through which she could pass to a remission of her sins.
Why, the very word “sin” meant nothing to Julia Starling. The Brinvilliers had hours when she lapsed from grace, when the tigress in her had shown itself, when her anger at humanity had been too strong for her newfound grace—hours such as that dread one after her torture when once again she was the jungle animal who hated all humanity—and yet Pirot, endlessly patient, had once again brought her to the foot of the cross. What could Davidson offer? Only a belief as passionate, an ardour as intense, a pity as deep as Pirot’s, but without Pirot’s conviction and authority. More important still, what could Julia receive? Nothing. What she must be suffering now, unless God were good and sent her sleep. And even so there would be the awakening …
He told himself that the actual business would be over very quickly, everyone assured him of that. But what did “quickly” mean? Who could say how long that moment of dropping seemed? Time was relative, an hour of happiness could whip through a man’s mind like the flaunt of a blown banner. In misery, five minutes could seem hours. In sleep a lifetime could be lived through in the space of time taken to lift the latch of a door. Who could say how long those few moments seemed to the prisoner, those moments that the authorities flattered themselves were over so swiftly? There was a theory that a man’s whole life flashed before him in the moment of drowning. What was time, as the clock knew it, in the face of such tricks as these? One didn’t even know to what one was condemning the victim, that was what it worked out at … “A thousand years in Thy sight are but as yesterday”… easy for Him if that was how He was able to look at it, seeing Time all in one piece. Not easy for man, to whom the next moment is the horizon which, like the sea’s horizon, always advances with his own advance, so that never is he able to peer over the rim.
At the other prison men turned uneasily, or paced their cells, or broke up the furniture in the cell, head in hands, wishing the hours would go more quickly. All excepting Leo, who wished they would go more slowly. He still had so much to do—another letter to his mother, one to his shipmates. He was getting sleepy by the time he’d finished them. Might as well take a rest. Christ Almighty! what a fool he’d been. Well, it was no good crying over spilt milk. Anyway, he’d show them he wasn’t afraid. When his shipmates heard of him, they’d know he’d met it all right. No brandy for him, he’d leave that for the others—they’d want it. He slept—so peacefully, that the officers looked at him and then at each other. Poor devil … let him sleep. What a pity he couldn’t go off in his sleep, like you did to sick dogs and cats. He’d never know anything about it then.
One of the officers wished, rather uneasily, that the hangman hadn’t altered the drop that evening. It wasn’t a good thing to experiment with drops at the last moment. It was bad enough, of course, if the man’s head were torn off. You had to go down below and clean up the mess; but at least the man himself knew nothing of it. But suppose the drop were wrong the other way about …? Then the poor devil just thrashed about, kicking with his pinioned legs against the brick sides of the pit, so that you had to rush down and hang on to his feet, as in the days of hanging by strangulation. Nothing like that, he hoped, would happen to this nice young chap. A damned shame that a woman should have brought him to this. A decent young chap, who didn’t make the warders’ job any harder for them than needs be. You’d have thought something better could have been found to put out the light of a fine young chap with such guts, and such a lot of good in him.
Julia tried to lie quietly, even tried to keep her eyes shut. But what was the good? She opened her eyes and saw the shadows of the watching women like great birds against the green and white wall. She shut her eyes again, so as to be able to try and pretend she was alone.
She was very tired, and it seemed to her for a while that she suffered very little. Her nerves, aided by the bromide, were more relaxed than they had been for days past. She had been a fool to be so frightened, of course they didn’t mean to do that dreadful nightmare thing to her. Things like that couldn’t happen. Her imagination had always been her curse, everyone on both sides had said so at the trial … it had actually led her into believing the Governor when he had told her that the appeal was turned down. She had screamed and fought then, and tried to climb up the bare wall, and they had given her all that bromide and it hadn’t done her any good, because she was so frightened. But now she saw that she had been a fool to believe it. They were only doing it to frighten her, that was it. Perhaps she did deserve a little punishment, and this was how it was being given to her. They were letting her own imagination give it to her on this night that they pretended was to be her last. But it couldn’t really be so, because this sort of thing didn’t happen to people who were in perfect health. Only dying people knew for a certainty that their last nig
ht had come. When healthy people died suddenly it was by an accident, not by a set and certain catastrophe. That would be too arbitrary and silly, it just couldn’t happen. She relaxed still more in that blessed certainty.
She was in a big shop, it was important she should finish buying what she wanted before the shop closed, and it was going to close any moment now. The stocking department was on the top floor, she must hurry or it would be too late, and she would not be allowed to go up to it. Already the shop assistants were leaving. There was the lift, one of those terrifying lifts one worked oneself; she got in, pulled the iron gates across, and pressed the button.
She had made an awful mistake, it was a lift that went down, not up, she’d been on the top floor and not known it. And the lift was out of order, she couldn’t stop it, it was falling … falling. With a thin scream she awoke and sat up, wet with sweat. For a moment it was a relief to be awake, to realise that that falling lift had been a dream … but the next moment full realisation of everything had flooded in upon her. All relaxation of the nerves had gone, she knew what the Governor had told her was the truth, that it wasn’t impossible that they should do that dreadful thing to her next morning. These were her last hours of life; never after to-night would she see shadows on a wall, feel the prickle of a blanket against her cheek, draw her finger down the flesh of her inner arm. Not much to want—to see shadows, to touch your own flesh, rub your skin against a blanket, yet they were going to take it from her. Everything was to be taken from her, and yet she’d never asked or wanted much. Was it her fault that she’d married Herbert when she was too young to know what she was doing? Had it been her fault that she’d thought she’d loved Leo? Who wouldn’t have thought they loved almost anybody who came along and was nice, leading the dreary sort of life she’d had to lead? Leo … a faint thought of him, perhaps also lying awake in that other dread place not far away, brushed across the surface of her mind like a moth’s wing, and was gone. She’d always worked hard and worked well. Mr. Coppinger and Gipsy had always said so. She’d never had the chance to do all she could have with her gifts; life had always been against her. Naturally she’d tried to make a dream world where she had all she wanted, where she was admired and beloved; naturally she’d snatched at any love and admiration that came her way in actuality. Who wouldn’t have, who didn’t? Everyone tried to get what they wanted, and it didn’t go wrong for all of them. Just because in spite of the dreariness of her life, she had been able to create a sort of fairy story that ran alongside the drab reality, was she to be punished in this dreadful fashion? As though she’d intended the fairy story to be real! Leo ought to have known she hadn’t meant it to be real; it was all his fault. Just because she was seven years older than he—that seven years which, she had once heard, saw the changing of the whole fabric of the body—people seemed to think that she was responsible for what Leo had done.
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