Martha was harsh and pale with anger. Her masterful pride throbbed in her. Between her clenched teeth she said:
“I don’t believe it. I’ll never believe it.”
Slowly Annie withdrew her eyes from the place where Sammy might be. Her eyes were dry. A great shadow lay upon her face, she looked more than ever as though she laboured under a heavy burden. She handed Martha the telegram in her hand.
Martha took the telegram. The telegram was to Mrs. Annie Fenwick. The telegram said: Regret to inform you your husband Corporal Samuel Fenwick killed in action March 19th.
TWENTY
On the 24th of April, 1918, Arthur’s sentence expired and at nine o’clock of that day, dressed in his own clothes, he passed through the prison gates. He came out of the grey stone archway with his head down and walked cautiously away. It was a grey, dank morning, but to Arthur the sense of light and space was unbelievable. He could scarcely understand, his eyes blinked apprehensively. Why was there no cell, no wall to stop him? He walked faster, suddenly aware that the walls lay behind him now. He wanted to get away.
But soon he had to give over walking quickly; he wasn’t fit for that. He was like a man just out of hospital, very weak and easily tired, with a stoop and a sickly pallor ingrained into him. His hair was cropped close, too, right down to the bone — Warder Collins had seen to that a couple of days before, it was Collins’ last little joke — so that he looked as if he had been through an operation on his brain, a serious operation on his brain in that large hospital he had left behind.
It was this operation on his brain, no doubt, which made him glance nervously at everybody he met to see if they were looking at him. Were people looking at him? Were they looking? Were they?
He walked for about a mile until he came to the outskirts of Benton, then he went into a workman’s coffee-house: Good pull up for lorries was on the sign outside. He sat down, keeping his hat on to cover his shaven head, and his eyes on the table, and he ordered coffee and two poached eggs. He did not look at the man who served him, but he saw the man’s boots and dirty apron and yellow nicotined fingers. The man asked to be paid whenever he brought the coffee and poached eggs.
Bowed over the table with his hat on, Arthur drank the coffee and ate the poached eggs. The strong knife and fork felt clumsy in his hands after the tin cutlery of the prison, and his clothes sat loosely and awkwardly upon him. He had shrunk a little in the place back there. But he thought, I’m out. I’m out, he thought. Oh, thank God, I’m out.
The coffee and eggs made him feel better and he was able to look at the man on the way to the door and ask him for a packet of cigarettes.
The man had red hair and an expression of vulgar inquisitiveness.
“Twenty?”
Arthur nodded abruptly and put a shilling on the counter.
The red-haired man put on a confidential air.
“Been in long?” he asked.
Then Arthur knew that the man knew he had been in prison — probably most of the convicts stopped at this place on their release — and a wave of colour rushed into his sallow face. Without answering he walked out of the shop.
The first cigarette was not very good, it made him slightly giddy but it made him feel less conspicuous in the street. A little boy going to school saw him open the packet and ran after him asking for the cigarette card. Arthur fumbled eagerly for the card with his calloused and insensitive fingers and held it out. It helped him in some mysterious way to be spoken to by this little boy, to feel for an instant the warm contact of his hand. He felt himself suddenly more human.
At Benton terminus he took the tram to Tynecastle and in the tram he sat thinking with his eyes on the floor. When he had been in prison he could think of nothing but the outside. Now he was outside he could think of nothing but the prison. The good-bye of the governor, of the prison chaplain, rang in his ears: “I hope this has made a man of you.” The doctor’s inspection: “Pull up your shirt, let your trousers down.” Hicks’s final pleasantry over the shoulder at exercise: “Little bit of skirt to-night, Cuthbert?” Yes, he remembered. He remembered particularly the last satire of Warder Collins. Something had made him offer his hand to Collins when the warder had made the key sound for the last time. But Warder Collins had said:
“Not on your bloody life, Cuthbert,” and expectorated neatly into Arthur’s hand. As he thought about it Arthur instinctively wiped his palm against his trouser leg.
The tram blundered into Tynecastle, through crowded familiar streets, and finally stopped outside Central Station. Arthur got out of the tram and entered the station. He meant to buy a ticket for Sleescale, but when he got to the booking-office he hesitated. He could not bring himself to do it. He went up to a porter.
“When is the next train for Sleescale?”
“Eleven fifty-five.”
Arthur looked at the big clock above the bookstall. He had five minutes in which to take his ticket and catch the train. No, no, he couldn’t decide so quickly, he didn’t want to go home yet. He had been informed, at the time, of his mother’s death and now, with a queer self-deception, he tried to attribute his indecision to the fact that she was gone. He wavered away from the booking-office and stood before the bookstall, studying a placard. Big Push Begins. He liked the crowd about him, the bustle, movement, obscurity. As a girl brushed past him he remembered Hicks’s remark again: Little bit of skirt to-night, Cuthbert?
He reddened and turned away. To put off time he went into the refreshment-room and ordered a mug of tea and a roll. Why disguise the fact? He wanted to see Hetty. He was so weak, so tired, so sick with pain and longing, he wanted to be with her, to fall on his knees before her, put his arms about her. Hetty really loved him. She would understand, pity and console him. A melting tenderness consumed him, nothing else mattered, tears filled his eyes. He must, he must see Hetty.
Towards one o’clock he left the station and started to walk towards College Row. He took the slight incline slowly, partly because he was quite exhausted, but chiefly because he was afraid. The mere thought of seeing Hetty again drove the blood from his heart. When he reached No. 17 he was in a pale anguish of expectation. He stood on the opposite side of the street staring across at the Todds’ house. Now that he was here he shrank from going in, a host of unhappy thoughts deterred him. How pleased they would be to see him, walking in unexpectedly like this, straight from prison. No, he had not the courage to walk up these steps and ring the bell.
He hung about in an agony of indecision, longing with all his soul to see Hetty, hoping he might have the luck to find her leaving or entering the house. But there was no sign of Hetty. Towards three o’clock the faintness came over him again and he felt he must sit down. He turned towards the Town Moor, which lay at the top of College Row, making for one of the benches under the lime trees, telling himself he would return later and resume his watch. He crossed the road, his feet dragging languidly, and, at the corner, he walked straight into Laura Millington.
The unexpectedness of the meeting was quite startling; it made him catch his breath. At first Laura did not recognise him. Her face, wearing a look of preoccupation, almost of apathy, remained unchanged. She made to pass on. And then she knew him.
“Why, Arthur!” she gasped, “it’s you.”
His eyes remained upon the pavement.
“Yes,” he stammered, “it’s me.”
She gazed at him intently, her expression altered, shocked from its fixed melancholy.