Уильям Моэм - The Explorer

He passed his hands over his eyes.

'The evidence was damnable.'

At that moment George sprang into the room.

'There's Alec. He's just driving along in a cab.'

'Thank God, thank God!' cried Mrs. Crowley. 'If it had lasted longer I should have gone mad.'

George went to the door.

'I must tell Miller. He has orders to let no one up.'

He leaned over the banisters, as the bell of the front door was rung.

'Miller, Miller, let Mr. MacKenzie in.'

'Very good, sir,' answered the butler.

Lucy had heard the cab drive up, and she came into the drawing–room with Lady Kelsey. The elder woman had broken down altogether and was sobbing distractedly. Lucy was very white, but otherwise quite composed. She shook hands with Dick and Mrs. Crowley.

'It was kind of you to come,' she said.

'Oh, my poor Lucy,' said Mrs. Crowley, with a sob in her voice.

Lucy smiled bravely.

'It's all over now.'

Alec came in, and she walked eagerly towards him.

'Well? I was hoping you'd bring father with you. When is he coming?'

She stopped. She gave a gasp as she saw Alec's face. Though her cheeks were pale before, now their pallor was deathly.

'What is the matter?'

'Isn't it all right?' cried George.

Lucy put her hand on his arm to quieten him. It seemed that Alec could not find words. There was a horrible silence, but they all knew what he had to tell them.

'I'm afraid you must prepare yourself for a great unhappiness,' he said.

'Where's father?' cried Lucy. 'Where's father? Why didn't you bring him with you?'

With the horrible truth dawning upon her, she was losing her self–control. She made an effort. Alec would not speak, and she was obliged to question him. When the words came, her voice was hoarse and low.

'You've not told us what the verdict was.'

'Guilty,' he answered.

Then the colour flew back to her cheeks, and her eyes flashed with anger.

'But it's impossible. He was innocent. He swore that he hadn't done it. There must be some horrible mistake.'

'I wish to God there were,' said Alec.

'You don't think he's guilty?' she cried.

He did not answer, and for a moment they looked at one another steadily.

'What was the sentence?' she asked.

'The judge was dead against him. He made some very violent remarks as he passed it.'

'Tell me what he said.'

'Why should you wish to torture yourself?'

'I want to know.'

'He seemed to think the fact that your father was a gentleman made the crime more odious, and the way in which he had induced that woman to part with her money made no punishment too severe. He sentenced him to seven years penal servitude.'

George gave a cry and sinking into a chair, burst into tears. Lucy put her hand on his shoulder.

'Don't, George,' she said. 'You must bear up. Now we want all our courage, now more than ever.'

'Oh, I can't bear it,' he moaned.

She bent down and kissed him tenderly.

'Be brave, my dearest, be brave for my sake.'

But he sobbed uncontrollably. It was a horribly painful sight. Dick took him by the arm and led him away. Lucy turned to Alec, who was standing where first he had stopped.

'I want to ask you a question. Will you answer me quite truthfully, whatever the pain you think it will cause me?'

'I will.'

'You followed the trial from the beginning, you know all the details of it. Do you think my father is guilty?'

'What can it matter what I think?'

'I beg you to tell me.'

Alec hesitated for a moment. His voice was very low.

'If I had been on the jury I'm afraid I should have had no alternative but to decide as they did.'

Lucy bent her head, and heavy tears rolled down her cheeks.

Next morning Lucy received a note from Alec MacKenzie, asking if he might see her that day; he suggested calling upon her early in the afternoon and expressed the hope that he might find her alone. She sat in the library at Lady Kelsey's and waited for him. She held a book in her hands, but she could not read. And presently she began to weep. Ever since the dreadful news had reached her, Lucy had done her utmost to preserve her self–control, and all night she had lain with clenched hands to prevent herself from giving way. For George's sake and for her father's, she felt that she must keep her strength. But now the strain was too great for her; she was alone; the tears began to flow helplessly, and she made no effort to restrain them.

She had been allowed to see her father. Lucy and George had gone to the prison, and she recalled now the details of the brief interview. The whole thing was horrible. She felt that her heart would break.

In the night indignation had seized Lucy. After reading accounts of the case in half a dozen papers she could not doubt that her father was justly condemned, and she was horrified at the baseness of the crime. His letters to the poor woman he had robbed, were read in court, and Lucy flushed as she thought of them. They were a tissue of lies, hypocritical and shameless. Lucy remembered the question she had put to Alec and his answer.

But neither the newspapers nor Alec's words were needed to convince her of her father's guilt; in the very depths of her being, notwithstanding the passion with which she reproached herself, she had been convinced of it. She would not acknowledge even to herself that she doubted him; and all her words, all her thoughts even, expressed a firm belief in his innocence; but a ghastly terror had lurked in some hidden recess of her consciousness. It haunted her soul like a mysterious shadow which there was no bodily shape to explain. The fear had caught her, as though with material hands, when first the news of his arrest was brought to Court Leys by Robert Boulger, and again at her father's flat in Shaftesbury Avenue, when she saw a secret shame cowering behind the good–humoured flippancy of his smile. Notwithstanding his charm of manner and the tenderness of his affection for his children, she had known that he was a liar and a rascal. She hated him.

But when Lucy saw him, still with the hunted look that Dick had noticed at the trial, so changed from when last they had met, her anger melted away, and she felt only pity. She reproached herself bitterly. How could she be so heartless when he was suffering? At first he could not speak. He looked from one to the other of his children silently, with appealing eyes; and he saw the utter wretchedness which was on George's face. George was ashamed to look at him and kept his eyes averted. Fred Allerton was suddenly grown old and bent; his poor face was sunken, and the skin had an ashy look like that of a dying man. He had already a cringing air, as if he must shrink away from his fellows. It was horrible to Lucy that she was not allowed to take him in her arms. He broke down utterly and sobbed.

'Oh, Lucy, you don't hate me?' he whispered.

'No, I've never loved you more than I love you now,' she said.

And she said it truthfully. Her conscience smote her, and she wondered bitterly what she had left undone that might have averted this calamity.

'I didn't mean to do it,' he said, brokenly.

Lucy looked at his poor, wearied eyes. It seemed very cruel that she might not kiss them.

'I'd have paid her everything if she'd only have given me time. Luck was against me all through. I've been a bad father to both of you.'

Lucy was able to tell him that Lady Kelsey would pay the eight thousand pounds the woman had lost. The good creature had thought of it even before Lucy made the suggestion. At all events none of them need have on his conscience the beggary of that unfortunate person.

'Alice was always a good soul,' said Allerton. He clung to Lucy as though she were his only hope. 'You won't forget me while I'm away, Lucy?'