Moondyne/The Door of the Cell

It was winter again. A sunburnt, foreign-looking man stood on the poop deck of a steamer ploughing with decreased speed past the docks in the long line of Liverpool shipping. The man was young, but, with deep marks of care and experience on his face, looked nearly ten years older than he really was. From the face, it was hard to know what was passing in the heart; but that no common emotion was there might be guessed by the rapid stride and the impatient glance from the steamer's progress to the shore.

It was Will Sheridan; but not the determined, thoughtful Agent Sheridan of the Australian sandalwood trade. There was no quietness in his soul now; there was no power of thought in his brain; there was nothing there but a burning fever of longing to put his foot on shore, and then to turn his face to the one spot that had such power to draw him from the other side of the world.

As soon as the steamer was moored, heedless of the Babel of voices around him, the stranger passed through the crowd, and entered the streets of Liverpool. But he did not know the joy of an exile returning after a weary absence. He did not feel that he was once more near to those who loved him. It was rather to him as if he neared their graves.

The great city in which be walked was as empty to him as the great ocean he had just left. Unobservant and unsympathetic, looking straight before him, and seeing with the soul's vision the little coast village of his boyhood, he made his way to the railway station, bought a ticket for home, and took his place in the car.

At first, the noise and rush of the train through the cold evening of a winter day, was a relief to the restless traveller. The activity fell upon his morbid heart like a cold hand on a feverish forehead. But, as the sun sank, and the cheerless grey twilight crept round him, the people who had travelled from the city were dropped at the quiet country stations, and sped away to their happy homes.

A man came and lighted a lamp in the carriage, and all the outer world grew suddenly dark. The traveller was alone now; and, as the names of the wayside stations grew more familiar, a stillness fell upon him, against which he made no struggle.

At last, as once more the train moved to a station, he arose, walked slowly to the door, and stepped on the platform. He was at the end of his journey—he was at home.

At home! He passed through the little station-house, where the old porter stared at his strange face and strange clothes, and wondered why he did not ask the way to the village. On he strode in the moonlight, glancing at familiar things with every step; for ten years had brought little change to the quiet place. There were the lone trees by the roadside, and the turnpike, and down in the hollow he saw the moon's face reflected through the ice in the mill-pond; and seeing this, he stopped and looked, but not with the outward eye, and he saw the merry skaters, and Alice's head was on his shoulder, and her dear voice in his ear, and all the happy love of his boyhood flooded his heart, as he bowed his face in his hands and sobbed.

Down the main street of the village he walked, glancing at the bright windows of the cottage homes, that looked like smiles on well-known faces. He passed the post office, the church, and the inn; and a few steps more brought him to the corner of his own little street.

The windows of the Draper's house were lighted, as if for a feast or merry-making within; but he passed on rapidly, and stopped before the garden gate of the widow's cottage. There, all was dark and silent. He glanced through the trees at his own old home, which lay beyond, and saw a light from the kitchen, and the moonlight shining on the window of his own room.

But here, where he longed for a light, there was no light. He laid his hand on the gate, and it swung open before him, for the latch was gone. He passed through, and saw that the garden path was rank with frozen weeds, and the garden was itself a wilderness. He walked on and stood in the porch, and found a bank of snow against the bottom of the cottage door, which the wind had whirled in there, perhaps a week before.

He stood in the cheerless place for a moment, looking into his heart, that was as empty as the cottage porch, and as cold; and then he turned and walked down the straight path, with almost the same feeling that had crushed him so cruelly eleven years before.

He passed on to his own home, which had been shut out from his heart by the cloud that covered his way; and a feeling of reproach came upon him, for his long neglect of those who loved him. Those who loved him! There was something warming in his heart, and rising against the numbness that had stilled it in the cottage porch. He stood before the door of his old home, and raised his hand and knocked twice.

The door opened, and a strange face to William Sheridan met his look. Choking back a something in his throat, he said, with an effort—

"Is this Mrs. Sheridan's house?"

"It was Mrs. Sheridan's house? Sir!" answered the man; "but it is my house now. Mrs. Sheridan is dead."

Another cord snapped, and the stranger in his own place turned from the door with a moan in his heart.

As he turned, a young woman came from within to the porch; and the man, with a sudden exclamation, stepped after him, and placing his hand on his shoulder, said earnestly,

"Be this William Sheridan that we thought were dead?" and, looking in his face and recognizing him, he muttered "Poor lad! poor lad! dont'ee know thy old schoolmate, Tom Bates, and thy own sister Mary?"

Taking him by the arm, the kind fellow led Sheridan to the door, and said—

"Wife, here be thy brother Will, safe and sound, and not drowned, as Sam Draper told us he were—and d—n that same Draper for all his evil doin's!"

Then William Sheridan felt his kind sister's arms on his neck, and the associations of his youth thronged up like old friends to meet him, and with them came the sweet spirit of his boy's love for Alice. They came to his heart like stormers, to a city's gate, and, seeing the breach, they entered in, and took possession. For the second time that night, the strong man bowed his head and sobbed—not for a moment as before, but long and bitterly, for the suppressed feelings were finding a vent at last; the bitterness of his sorrow, so long and closely shut in, was flowing freely.

Brother and sister were alone during this scene; but after a while, Mary's kind-hearted husband entered, a rugged but tender-hearted Lancashire farmer; and knowing that much was to be said to Will, and that this was the best time to say it, he began at once; but he knew, and Will Sheridan knew, that he began at the farthest point he could from what he would have to say before the end. Will Sheridan's face was turned in the shadow, where neither his sister nor her husband could see it,—and so he listened to the story.

"Will," said his brother-in-law, "tha knows 'tis moren ten years since thou went to sea, and that great changes have come to thee since then; and tha knows, lad, thou must expect that changes as great have come to this village. Thy father took sick about a year after thou went, and grieved that he died, hear from thee. Samuel Draper wrote to his people that thou'd turned out a bad lad in foreign countries, and had to ran away from the ship; and when that news came, it made th' old people sorrowful. Thy father took to his bed in first o' th' winter, and was dead in a few months. Thy mother followed soon, and her last words were a blessing for thee if thou were living. Then Samuel Draper came back from sea, looking fine in his blue uniform; and he said he'd heard thou'd been drowned on a voyage from China. He went to sea again, six months after, and he's never been here since; and 'tis unlikely," Mary's husband said very slowly, "that he ever will come to this village any more."

Tom Bates ceased speaking, as if all were told, and stared straight at the fire; his wife, Mary, who was sitting on a low seat near him, drew closer, and laid her cheek against his side, weeping silently; and he put his big hand around her head and caressed it.

Will Sheridan sat motionless for about a minute, and then said, in a hard monotone—

"What became of Alice Walmsley? Did she—Is she dead also?"

"Nay, not dead," said his brother-in-law," but worse than that. Alice Walmsley is in prison."

Will Sheridan raised his head at the word, repeating it to himself in blank amazement and dread. Then he stood up, and faced round to the two people who sat before him, his sister hiding her weeping face against her husband's side, the husband patting her head in a bewildered way, and both looking as if they were the guilty parties who should be in prison instead of Alice.

Had they said that she was dead, or even that she was married, he could have faced the news manfully, for he had prepared his heart for it; but now, when he had come home and thought he could bear all, he found that his years of struggle to forget had been in vain, and that a gulf yawned at his feet deeper and wider than that he had striven so long to fill up.

"In the name of God, man, tell me what you mean! Why is Alice Walmsley in prison?"

Poor Tom Bates still stared at the fire, and patted his wife's head; but a moment after Sheridan asked the question, he let his hand close quietly round the brown hair, and raising his eyes to Will's face, said, "yes" in a low voice—

"For murder. For killing her child!"

Will Sheridan looked at him with a pitiful face, and uttered a sound like the baffled cry of a suffering animal that finds the last door of escape shut against it.

His brother-in-law knew that now was the time to tell Will all, while his very soul was numbed by the strength of the first blow.

They were married in the church, as you know," said Mary's husband, "and they lived together for some time, seeming very happy—though Mary and I said, when it was all over, that from the very clay of the wedding there was a shadow on Alice's face, and that she was never seen to smile. Draper was a captain, and his ship was going to India, and Alice wanted very bad to go with him. But he refused her at last so roughly, before her mother, that poor little Alice said no more. Five months after his going, her child was born, and for six months the poor ailing thing looked like her old self, all smiles, and kindness, and love for the little one. Then, one day, there walked into her house a strange woman, who said that she was Samuel Draper's wife. No one knows what passed between them—they two were alone; but the woman showed the papers that proved what she said. She was a desperate woman, and, with no one else in the house, she was like to kill poor Alice with her dreadful words. Alice's heart was changed to stone from that minute. The woman left the village that day, and never was seen here again. But that night the little child was found dead beside the mother, with marks of violence on it. Poor lass! she was charged wi' killing it—she made no defence; she never raised her head nor said a word. She might have told how the thing happened, for we knew—Mary and I knew—that Alice never did that. But she couldn't speak in her own defence—all she wanted was to get out of sight and hide her poor head. Poor little Allie—poor little Allie! She never raised her hand to hurt her child. It was accident, or it was someone else; but she couldn't or wouldn't speak. She was sent to prison, and her mother died from the blow. God help the poor lass to-night! God help poor little Allie!" And the warm heart overflowed, and husband and wife mingled their tears for the lost one.

"And this was Samuel Draper's work?" asked Sheridan, slowly.

"Ay, damn him for a scoundrel!" said the strong yeoman, starting to his feet, and clenching his fist, the tears on his cheeks, and his voice all broken with emotion. "He may keep away from this village, where the people know him; but there's no rest for him on this earth—no rest for such as he. Mother and child curse him—one from the grave, the other from the prison; and sea or land cannot shut them out from his black heart. Her father was a seaman, too, and he'll sail wi' him until the villain pays the debt to the last farthing. And Allie's white face will haunt him, even in sleep, with her dead child in her arms. Oh, God help poor Alice to-night. God comfort the poor little lassie!"

William Sheridan said no more that night. His sister prepared his own old room for him, and he went to it; but not to sleep. Up and down he walked like a caged animal, moaning now and again, without following the meaning of the words—

"Why did I come here? O, why did I come here?"

He felt that he could not bear this agony much longer that he must think, and that he must pray. But he could do neither. There was one picture in his mind, in his eye, in his heart—a crouching figure in a dock, with a brown head sunk on her white hands—and were he to try to get one more thought into his brain, it would burst and drive him mad.

And how could he pray—how could he kneel, while the miscreant walked the earth who had done all this? But from this hateful thought he reverted with fresh agony to her blighted heart. Where was she that night? How could he find her and help her? If he could only pray for her, it would keep him from delirium until he saw her.

And he sank on his knees by the bed where he had knelt by his mother's side and learned to pray; and again the old associations came thronging to his heart, and softened it. The sweet face of his boy's love drew to him slowly from the mist of years; and gradually forgetting self, and remembering only her great sorrow, he raised up his face in piteous supplication, acknowledging his utter dependence on divine strength, and prayed as he had never prayed before. Such prayers are never offered in vain. A wondrous quiet came to the troubled heart, and remained with it.

When he arose from his knees, he looked upon every familiar object around him with awakened interest, and many things that he had forgotten came back to his memory and affection when he saw them there. Before he lay down to rest, for he felt that he must sleep, he looked through the window at the deserted cottage, and had strength to think of its former inmates.

"God give her peace, and in some way enable me to bring comfort to her," he said. And when he arose in the morning this thought was uppermost in his mind—that he must search for means to bear comfort to the afflicted heart of Alice Walmsley.

From his sister and her husband he learned that Alice was confined in Millbank Prison in London, and he made up his mind to go to London that day. They, seeing that he was determined on his course, made no effort to oppose him. He asked them not to mention his visit to anyone in the village for he did not wish to be recognized; and so he turned from the kind-hearted couple, and walked towards the railway station.

Sheridan now remembered that he had brought from West Australia some letters of introduction, and also some official dispatches; and he thought it might be a fortunate circumstance that most of the official letters were addressed to the Colonial Office and the Board of Directors of Convict Prisons.

In the penal colony of West Australia, where there are few free settlers, and an enormous criminal population, a man of Sheridan's standing and influence was rarely found—and the Government of the colony was desirous of introducing him to the Home Government, knowing that his opinions would be treated with great consideration. He began to think that these letters might be the means he sought for, and he made up his mind to deliver them at once.