Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone:Dreary, weary with the long day's work:Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;When, in a moment just a knock, call, cry,Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!—"What, and is it really you again?" quoth I."I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.The Householder.
Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone:Dreary, weary with the long day's work:Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;When, in a moment just a knock, call, cry,Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!—"What, and is it really you again?" quoth I."I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.The Householder.
Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone:Dreary, weary with the long day's work:Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;When, in a moment just a knock, call, cry,Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!—"What, and is it really you again?" quoth I."I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.The Householder.
Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone:
Dreary, weary with the long day's work:
Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:
Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;
When, in a moment just a knock, call, cry,
Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!—
"What, and is it really you again?" quoth I.
"I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.
The Householder.
The gas was not carried up to the attics of No. 22 Canning Street. Late-comers had to stumble in the dark up the last flight of stairs, and bark their shins over the brooms and pails which Beatrice invariably left standing about on the landing. One evening in April Lettice was sitting at work, brow buried in her hands, tensely courting the Muse, when she was startled by a sudden tremendous clatter. The door burst open and Denis fell into the room, in company with a mop and a banister brush.
"Dear, dear!" said Lettice with her usual inadequacy.
"I wish you'd not keep an ironmonger's shop on your landing," said Denis, annoyed, and rubbing his knee.
"You, you—you are soviolent!" Lettice protested in her pianissimo drawl. She went outside for a moment. "There, I've put them all away in the cupboard, so you won't have to break your poor nose when you go home," she consoled him. "Now, how nice it is to see you again! And what have you been doing with yourself all this long time?"
"Selling four monoplanes to the War Office," said Denis, with the simple satisfaction of bygone days. "What do you think of that?"
"No! have you really?"
"A man I used to know in the Sappers came over toDent-de-lion and fixed up the order last Saturday. It's been in the air for some time, but of course I couldn't say anything till it was settled. Wandesforde's awful pleased. It's no end of a leg-up for us."
"Four all at once!" cooed his sympathetic hostess.
"Yes, the Government's rather keen on the Air Service these days. There's a lot goin' on we don't hear anything about—a lot; and they don't mean to be caught napping."
"Did your friend tell you that?" asked Lettice, interested, as always, in politics.
Denis nodded. "He did. And more. He was askin' me, among other things, what percentage of our civilian flyers would volunteer in case of a war."
"Oh! What did you say?"
"I said all, of course—every man jack of 'em who wasn't needed as an instructor at home."
"You'd go yourself?"
"Rather so! What do you take me for? I should join up with the R.F.C. at once. Oh, it's coming, and they know it's coming; that's been obvious ever since Agadir. The only question is, when. I hope I shan't smash myself first. I'd be sorry to be out of the fun."
He lapsed into silence, leaning back in the big chair which Lettice kept on purpose for him, his long legs extended half across the hearth. How many months was it since he had last filled that place? Lettice had not so much as seen him since the Olympia day; but neither by word nor look did she remind him of the gap. She was an adept at taking things for granted. It was enough to see him sitting there, the same old Denis, talking in the same old way. And yet, not quite the same. Even in his silence there was a new quality. He had matured; he had lived through the wreck of an ideal, and built up his faith again, steady and sure, upon a rock.
Lettice put away her papers with delicate neatness, and sat down in a low chair with her needlework—not a green dragon this time, but a pair of combinations, which she darned serenely under the masculine eye. Denis had a nicemind, he would never see. Now if it had been a certain other person—Lettice made a graceful figure, soft brown hair and hazel eyes, long throat and little head, slight drooping shoulders and slim waist, set off by the soft gray-blue silk of her dress. She was fond of that peculiarly soft and feminine fabric known to dressmakers as crêpe de Chine. She could not spend much on her clothes, but she chose and wore them with that French fineness and perfection of detail which she, in common with her sisters, had learned from their foreign upbringing.
"Well, I didn't come here to talk about German invasions," said Denis, rousing himself. "The fact is, I'm rather badly worried about Gardiner, Lettice. I didn't like that last piece of news at all. Did you?"
"You've not heard anything fresh?" asked Lettice quickly, her work dropping in her lap.
"Not a syllable; and can't till June. That's the worst of it; it's such a deadly long time. I'd half thought of running down there and lookin' up little Scott—he's quite a decent little chap, and he'd know. But I suppose it wouldn't do."
"I suppose not," agreed Lettice, who was, as has been said, a dandy in affairs of honor. She made her funny little pause to collect words before she got rid of her next speech. "I suppose if it had gone any further we should have heard by now."
"Heard?"
"The prison people would have let us know."
"Let us know what?"
"Why, if he'd been ill, or gone off his head, or anything of that sort."
"You think there's a danger of his going off his head?"
"Well, that's what you're talking about, isn't it?"
"No," said Denis, "I'd not got so far as that." He regarded her thoughtfully. "I wish you'd tell me how it strikes you, Lettice. I can't see my way at all."
"There's nothing to tell," said Lettice, a trifle restless at being asked to explain the obvious. "He must havebeen off his balance to hit a warder, mustn't he? And when that begins, with anybody like him, you never know where it will stop. He isn't any too steady."
(Certainly there was no one like Lettice for pulling things off pedestals. Hitting a warder—it didn't sound nearly so bad as assaulting an officer!)
"Well, I've known Gardiner five and twenty years, and I'd never have called him unsteady. Hard as nails, more like."
"So he is that too."
"Now what on earth do you mean?"
"Well, of course he'd be hard so long as he hadn't anything to face he really minded, wouldn't he? And till this he didn't, did he? It's what you said yourself—he's always been lucky. But if you get him off his guard he's rather unusually sensitive. Look at the way he feels pain!"
"I never saw him feel pain. In my company he's always been brutally robust."
"Well, but can't youtellhe would, by the set of his lips?"
"No," said Denis, "I can't. I've not your imagination."
To this Lettice made no reply, unless one might count the slight derisive lift of her chin. She never would take up the personal question. She would never, if she could help it, say: "I thought." She was sometimes driven to say, "I did," but even then she kept to the bald facts, uncolored by her personality. Denis, shifting in his chair to a more convenient angle, continued to regard her with attention, in which now mingled some amusement.
"Oh ah," he said, "you were there when he damaged his hand, weren't you? I'd forgotten. How long was it you stayed on at Rochehaut after I left?"
"About six weeks."
"And you were actin' as his secretary all that time?"
"Part of it."
"Of course that accounts."
"Accounts whatfor?" asked Lettice unwisely, with her little air of distraction.
"For the sympathetic insight you display," said Denis, now openly smiling. Lettice had chaffed him all her life; it was a new thing for him to turn the tables. "He swears it was you sent him back, and I believe him now. You've eased my mind quite a lot. He won't go under. He may knock out a warder or so, but he'll come through all right in the end—with such backin'!"
"Rubbish," said Lettice with acerb decision. She folded her work, got up, lighted a small paraffin lamp and carried it outside. Denis watched her hang it on the wall above the stairs.
"Is that a gentle hint to me to be off?" he asked, still smiling, as she reëntered. "Because if so I'm not takin' any. I'll go when my time comes, but there's ten minutes yet."
"It's not for you at all, it's for Dot O'Connor."
"For Dot O'Connor!"
"She always tumbles over the brooms worse than you did," Lettice explained, "so I give her a light on the stairs when I'm expecting her to supper. I'd have given you one, too, if I'd known you were coming."
She had banished Denis's smile. He shifted in his chair once more, but this time away from her. "Dot O'Connor!" he repeated for the third time, in that altered voice. "Do you mean Mrs. Trent?"
"She doesn't like being called that now."
"Do you see much of her?"
"So so," said Lettice. She had mentioned Dorothea, not to get away from Denis's chaff—that would have been too cruel—but of set purpose, because there was something she had to say before he went. "Will you stay and have supper with us? Ithinkthere'll be enough to go round, if you aren't too hungry."
"No, Lettice."
"I don't see why you shouldn't."
"Don't you?"
His tone was not encouraging, but it made not a pin's difference to Lettice; her difficulties came always from within,not from without, and once she had made up her mind to speak all the king's horses and all the king's men would not have stopped her. She did not imagine that she could move Denis, but there were certain things he ought to know, and which, in justice to Dorothea, she meant to set before him. They would not move him now, but he would not forget them; and in time to come they might sink in and soften his judgment.
"I don't see why you shouldn't forgive her," she pronounced.
"I'd rather not discuss it."
"Very well, don't you say anything, but will you listen?" Denis moved restlessly in his chair. "You're too hard on her," said Lettice, hitting straight and hard. "You will treat her as a woman, when she's only a child. And you don't realize what marrying a—a beast like that does to a girl. It bruises her innocence. It's like tearing open the eyes of a blind kitten. You can't expect her to see right and wrong like other people." So far beyond herself had Lettice been carried by that potent loosener of tongues, a sense of injustice! She went on with the same resolute candor: "Besides, there's another thing. She loves you. And she can love; you won't meet what she has to give twice in a lifetime. I know"—Lettice spoke with an effort; it was as near to an avowal as she could go, and the fact that she thought her cause worth such a sacrifice added tenfold to the weight of her words—"I know she's often made me ashamed of my stockishness. Are you prepared to throw all that away?"
She had finished, and she stopped. Denis sat silent, staring into the fire and pulling absently at his forelock, a trick he had when deep in thought. The soft sounds of Lettice's business did not break the stillness of the room. The alarm clock which Denis had given her to get up by in the morning (Lettice had long been mortally afraid of the alarm, and she still handled it as gingerly as if she expected it to explode) ticked on through the stillness. It struck seven; Denis glanced at his watch, and got up.
"I must go," he said confusedly. "I—I'd no idea it was so late."
He took his hat and stick, and Lettice thought he was really going then and there, without another word; but he thought better of it, and from the landing came back and stood in the doorway, visibly struggling with himself. "You—you mustn't think I mind what you said, Lettice," he got out. "I'd always listen to you. But I can't do this—I can't—"
Lettice looked him in the face. "She would have something to forgive you now," she said deliberately.
"No, she would not," said Denis with equal deliberation; and he met her eyes, fair and square. "But that's not anything to do with it. It's not a question of forgiveness. It's—I—oh, Ican'tdo it, Lettice—I can't explain—"
"Well—" said Lettice, summing up with that sad, vague word which looks back, unsatisfied, over the past, and forward, unhopeful, towards the future. And that was all she learned, then or for many months to come, of Denis's feelings for Dorothea, of his wanderings in the wilderness, of the manner of his deliverance. Not till many months later, in alien scenes, in unimaginable circumstances, in a different world, did he reopen that subject.
He straightened himself, glancing again at his watch. "I really must go. I'm dinin' with the Wandesfordes, to celebrate, and I'll never hear the last of it if I'm late. Wandesforde always thinks he can do the funny dog about Irish people—silly ass. Wish you were coming too."
"Me?" asked Lettice, opening her eyes.
"You. It's not much fun sittin' here alone and thinkin' about things—is it?" said Denis; and to her wide amazement he put a brotherly arm round her and kissed her cheek. Lettice turned slowly and deeply pink; not on account of the kiss, however. She took her lamp and stood torch-bearer to light him down the stairs. When the quick military tread had reached the lower landing she was turning back to her room, but a quick scuffle in the cupboard and a breathless voice stopped her.
"Lettice—wait!"
And Dorothea scrambled out from among the brooms and brushes, bringing a shower of them with her. "Oh, bother!" said she, turning to stuff them back unceremoniously, and precipitating a fresh avalanche. Lettice found her voice again.
"You—you've got a black on your nose," she remarked originally.
"So would any one have, in this horrid little hole! I'd just reached the landing when your door opened, and I bundled straight in here, and all the things fell every which way, and I had to clutch them up in both hands all the time. I made sure you'd hear."
"I did," said Lettice, "but I thought it was Black Maria."
"Well, I'dbeBlack Maria if I could, I know you'd like me better," retorted Dorothea, expending the last of her temper in a spiteful kick at a pail, and slamming the door before more disasters could happen. "But oh, Lettice, oh, Lettice, isn't it glorious news?"
"You heard what we were saying?"
"Well, of course. How could I help it? You can't put your fingers in your ears when you're holding up six brooms and a mop. I heard every word. And I don't care! I don't care a scrap! Oh, I am so glad!"
"Glad?" Lettice repeated. She had not known quite what to expect; certainly not this. How the child's eyes were sparkling!
"Well, of course!" she cried. "Didn'tyouhear? Didn't you see what he was like? Oh! now I know that's all right I don't care about anything else—I don't carewhathappens, so long as that doesn't!"
She flung herself down on the rug with a tempestuous sigh, and tried to dry her eyes on a wisp of lace. That proving inadequate, she rummaged through half a dozen pockets and dragged out a dingy red square which had evidently been used as an oil rag. She held it out by the corners. "Oh dear, I must have stolen Turner's—oh dear, I wish I could manage to hit something between a doilyand a duster—never mind, a hanky's a hanky," said she, and blew her nose and dried her tears forthwith. Then, looking up sharply, "Lettice! why don't you say something? Aren't you pleased too?"
"O-oh, oh yes," said Lettice hastily; "only you see I'd had time to get over it before you came."
"I shan't get over it—I shan't ever get over it," murmured Dorothea, nestling round to gaze into the fire. "You don't know how awful it's been to feelthaton me. I'd rather I killed him than see that woman—Do you know, Lettice, I do think there must be a God after all. I didn't ever use to, but ever since that Olympia day I've been praying, oh! so hard, that He'd save Denis—I didn't see how even God could stop him then, but there wasn't anything else I could do, and I just had to do something. And now you see he has. He didn't tell you anything about how it happened?" Lettice shook her head. "Oh, well, that doesn't really matter, it's his being saved that counts," said Dorothea, relapsing again into one of her boneless attitudes, and smiling rosily over clasped hands into the fire.
"Did you hear—" began Lettice.
"What he said about me? Oh yes. Well, of course I'd love to have him forgive me, but I know he couldn't possibly, and anyway I don't matter about," said Dorothea, her voice softened into dreams. "It's him—it's him. It does mean such a lot, Lettice! It isn't only that he is what he used to be, what I thought he never could be again; it's ever so much more than that. Denis wasn't made to think of women as he thought of—of me and Mrs. Byrne. He was made to marry, Lettice. Can't you see how perfectly sweet he'd be to his wife?—yes, and to his boys and girls too; how he'd love them (I expect he'd have a pet little girl, and call her Letty), and how they'd all adore him? He's one of those men who—who only trulymellowin their own homes. If he could only find some nice girl who'll love him—no, not better than me, nobody ever could do that, but well enough to make up to him for the horrid little wretch I've been—Iwish you would, Lettice, but I'm afraid that's past praying for."
"Me?" said Lettice. "I don't think that would do."
"Why not?" demanded Dorothea. Lettice failing to reply at once, she whisked round suddenly, with an eel-like twist. "Why do you say it like that? Why aren't you gladder? Is there anything wrong? There is, there is! Oh, Lettice, what is it?"
She was kneeling up now, and had seized Lettice's hands. "You're making me spill the milk, and I can't getanymore," Lettice warned her; but she was not to be diverted. "You've been worried for ages, only I've been such a blind donkey thinking of Denis I haven't noticed," she cried. "Why did he say you oughtn't to be let sit alone and think? What did he mean? Lettice—oh, Lettice! is it about Mr. Gardiner? Have you any bad news? Oh, don't, don't tell me I've done that too!"
Lettice freed herself summarily. Dorothea had room in her little head for but one idea at a time, and therefore was apt to overlook what lay under her little nose; but, her attention once aroused, she was keen on a scent, and her intuition, the prerogative of semi-civilized minds, had a way of landing her dead on the truth. Now there were certain things which Denis might be permitted to see, but which Dorothea might not—no! not on any account.
"There isn't any news at all, if you want to know," she said. "He hit a warder, so all his letters and things have been stopped off."
"But isn't Denis going to visit him quite soon?"
"That's stopped too."
"Oh!" said Dorothea blankly, "oh dear! I see."
She did see, only too plainly. Oh, what a little donkey she had been! But who would ever have imagined that Lettice—and with Mr. Gardiner, of all people! oh, how could she? She did, though, no doubt about that, and with Lettice that would mean a dreadfully big thing, the whole of her life, and—oh, good gracious! how she would simply hate to haveany one know! Oh, she mustn't, she mustn't be allowed to guess! All this passed through Dorothea's mind in the space of half-a-second, and under the stimulus of that last thought she pulled herself round, with a mighty effort, to ask as innocently as she could: "Did—did Denis know about this the day of the show?"
"He'd just heard."
"Oh," said Dorothea, "oh, I wonder he didn't strike me to the ground! Oh, how wicked, how wicked I've been!"
There was nothing visible but the red handkerchief. Lettice looked at her sharply; but the pose was so natural, and any pose seemed so foreign to Dorothea, and Lettice so much wanted to be taken in, that she was. Not wholly; but she stuck her head in the sand and refused to see her own doubts. And behind the red handkerchief Dorothea, too much overwhelmed to cry, sat among the ruins which she had pulled down on her own head and wondered helplessly when shewouldsee the end of all the harm she had done. "I was so happy about Denis, and now there's this!" Her love for Denis had been a sort of sublimated selfishness, but now she was thinking about other people—about Lettice, yes, and about Gardiner, though there she was all at sea. "I don't know what I've done to him, but it must be something very bad for Lettice to be like this!" she reflected. "But, oh dear! after all, what should I feel like if it were Denis in prison? And what would he feel like himself? And Mr. Gardiner's led such a free sort of out-of-doors life—"
In the depths below a bell rang; Beatrice's feet pounded up from the basement. They came on from flight to flight, up the bare boards to the attics, and ended with a single bang on the door. "Miss Lettus, 's a letter for you!" Lettice went with her soft, unhurried step to take it in. She carried it to the lamp, and stood arrested, staring at the envelope.
Dorothea was sitting up, her dark hair tumbling about her eyes. "Oh, Lettice, what is it?"
"From the prison," said Lettice, opening the envelope and drawing out the enclosure with a steady hand. From acrossthe room Dorothea could see that it was not in Gardiner's handwriting; and then she saw Lettice's face change, and her heart turned over in her breast.
"Lettice—!"
"What?" said Lettice, absorbed. "O-oh no, it's all right; it's only that—he's hurt his hand—"
Dorothea turned her face to the wall and said her prayers.
This was the letter which Lettice received:
Dear Miss Smith,—I have permission to write you a short note on business.I am anxious about my hotel. It has been in the hands of a caretaker all winter; but for the summer season I had arranged for my housekeeper to come back, and most of the servants. The housekeeper is a trustworthy person, and quite competent to run the place herself; but I can't very well give her carte blanche with my banking account, and I'm sure she wouldn't accept it if I did. What I want is somebody to sign checks, manage the correspondence, and act as figurehead. Practically what you did last year. Will you take it on again? I should have every confidence in you, and of course it is your proper place. As far as I know at present, I propose, if it suits you, to be married as soon as I leave in October, and go out to Rochehaut for the winter. Please let me know if this fits in with your views.I must apologize for my writing, but I have been laid up in hospital with a touch of the old trouble in my hand. When I come out, I believe I am to go on the farm. The governor has most kindly remitted the rest of my punishment, and I shall be allowed to see a visitor next month as usual. Will you let Merion-Smith know, if you are writing to him?Sincerely,H. C. Gardiner.
Dear Miss Smith,—I have permission to write you a short note on business.
I am anxious about my hotel. It has been in the hands of a caretaker all winter; but for the summer season I had arranged for my housekeeper to come back, and most of the servants. The housekeeper is a trustworthy person, and quite competent to run the place herself; but I can't very well give her carte blanche with my banking account, and I'm sure she wouldn't accept it if I did. What I want is somebody to sign checks, manage the correspondence, and act as figurehead. Practically what you did last year. Will you take it on again? I should have every confidence in you, and of course it is your proper place. As far as I know at present, I propose, if it suits you, to be married as soon as I leave in October, and go out to Rochehaut for the winter. Please let me know if this fits in with your views.
I must apologize for my writing, but I have been laid up in hospital with a touch of the old trouble in my hand. When I come out, I believe I am to go on the farm. The governor has most kindly remitted the rest of my punishment, and I shall be allowed to see a visitor next month as usual. Will you let Merion-Smith know, if you are writing to him?
Sincerely,H. C. Gardiner.
Dorothea at first had turned her eyes scrupulously away; but they were back now, and searching Lettice's face for news. That face wore a decidedly queer and pensive look. She refolded the letter with careful exactness.
"Well? What does he say?"
"O-oh, he wants me to go out to Rochehaut and look after his old hotel."
"Then he's all right? He isn't ill or anything? Denis won't have to be anxious any more?"
"He's in hospital, but it's nothing much." Lettice read out what Gardiner said about his hand, and the description of her duties as well. But she did not read those sentences of barefaced impudence which transformed an apparently decorous business communication into a proposal of marriage. Dorothea drew a long breath.
"And you'll do it, Lettice? You'll go? Oh!mayI come too? I won't be intense, truly I won't, and perhaps I might even help you a little—I would love to do something for Mr. Gardiner, to try and make up for all the harm I've done him! You are going yourself, anyhow, aren't you?"
"Oh, I suppose so," said Lettice, with a long-suffering air.
This was in the month of April, 1914.
Raise a chapel with forms in rowsUnder the competent warders' eyes,That day and night search out men's privacies.God is too soft, but a warder knowsHow to deal with the prisoners who kneel in rows.Here shall you starve and shame and break,Warming the cells and weighing the food,And drawing up rules for the inmates' good;Build in their souls with the rules you make;Heap up the stones on the lives you break.The Prison.
Raise a chapel with forms in rowsUnder the competent warders' eyes,That day and night search out men's privacies.God is too soft, but a warder knowsHow to deal with the prisoners who kneel in rows.Here shall you starve and shame and break,Warming the cells and weighing the food,And drawing up rules for the inmates' good;Build in their souls with the rules you make;Heap up the stones on the lives you break.The Prison.
Raise a chapel with forms in rowsUnder the competent warders' eyes,That day and night search out men's privacies.God is too soft, but a warder knowsHow to deal with the prisoners who kneel in rows.
Raise a chapel with forms in rows
Under the competent warders' eyes,
That day and night search out men's privacies.
God is too soft, but a warder knows
How to deal with the prisoners who kneel in rows.
Here shall you starve and shame and break,Warming the cells and weighing the food,And drawing up rules for the inmates' good;Build in their souls with the rules you make;Heap up the stones on the lives you break.The Prison.
Here shall you starve and shame and break,
Warming the cells and weighing the food,
And drawing up rules for the inmates' good;
Build in their souls with the rules you make;
Heap up the stones on the lives you break.
The Prison.
August, 1914, on the Semois.
How hot it was! The white walls of the farm, its squat white tower, its steep roofs of ink-blue slate, all stood out, crude as the painted scenery of a diorama, against the solid azure of the sky. It had been a fort, this farm, in the days when Belgium was the cockpit of Europe; but now golden straws protruded from the loopholes, and sparrows were flying out and in. The garden had its roses, the lattices their geraniums, and on the sill a sandy cat was curled up in a ball with her head tucked under, exposing a white furry throat to the sun. The tower had its fringe of chicory and trailing pink convolvulus. From it the meadow fell away, spongy and mossy-green, to a brook which tinkled in silver cascades down a crease between the hills. Beyond the stream the ground rose steeply, a stubble field flaxen in the sunshine, with its line of boundary elms and its peaceful scattered sheaves; on the sky-line a ragged little fir wood raised its head, dark spires against the blue. To the right the brook sank away, twisting round a corner out of sight, and the hills closed in, steep and wooded, upon this little nest of peace.
And yet—was it so peaceful? Look to the left. As elsewhere it fell away, so here the harvest field swelled up in a lint-white line, firm and pure, the edge of the visible world. In the pale turquoise above that line hung a cloud, a discoloration, spreading like an ink-drop in clear water. Where that cloud now hung, yesterday the village of Rochehaut had stood. Contented, squalid little place with its steaming middens, its perambulating pigs, its church squatting like a little white-and-gray cat beside its miryplace! Or look across at the opposite hill. Above the firs another drift of smoke was diffusing in the radiant air. That was the direction of the Bellevue, the big new hotel which Madame Hasquin of the farm supplied with milk and eggs. Or look at the farm itself. The fowls were clucking and scratching in the yard, the cows were lowing at the gate, but Monsieur Hasquin did not come to drive them in to the milking, nor did little Denise bring her sieve full of golden peas for her pet fantails. The place was still and peaceful; but it was the stillness and the peace of death.
There are no daily papers in a prison, and no news from the outside world is supposed to reach the inmates. It filters in, nevertheless. Gardiner first heard of the falling of the great shadow from a laborer who had got six weeks at the Summer Assizes for beating his wife to a jelly. Out of his cups he was an amiable soul, ready to make friends with anybody; and Gardiner, who put on no airs, was ready to respond.
On leaving hospital, B14 had been put to work in the garden. His hand had still to be dressed every day, but by the doctor's orders he was sent into the open air to do such jobs as he could. One summer afternoon he was weeding the paths, and West, the wife-beater, was digging potatoes in the adjoining plot. Gardiner divined by his important looks that he had something to say, and contrived to linger long enough for West to catch him up.
"I say, matey," the wife-beater began, in that lip-whisperby which prisoners communicate under the very noses of their guards, "'ave you heard there's a war on?"
"No! you don't say so! Who with? Mrs. Pankhurst?"
"It's Gawd's truth I'm telling—"
"Gammon! Somebody's been kiddin' you."
"Swelp me, they ain't then. I 'eard Old Ikey talkin' about it to Billy Blood."
Billy Blood was Warder Thomson, so named since Gardiner had knocked out his teeth; Old Ikey was Warder Barnes. His name happened to be Ian, but the initial was enough for the wit of the prison.
"Well, who are we fighting, anyway? Did you hear that?"
At this moment West discovered that Warder Thomson's eye was upon him, and he sheered off to the end of his row. It was some time before, cautiously regulating their progress, they managed to come together again. West discharged his whisper without preface.
"It's Rooshia," he announced. "Rooshia and France."
"Not so bad for a beginning. Who else?"
"Well, they did say somethin' about Injer—"
"Great uprising of the native races. End of the British Raj," said Gardiner with levity. "Let 'em all come! We're in for a giddy time, I don't think. What price the British army now?"
"Oh, of course if you ain't goin' to believe me—"
West had incautiously raised his voice, and authority was down on him in a moment—or rather on his companion. "Now then, B14, none o' that! Idlin' and mutterin'! I suppose you think this is a rest cure. You get on with your job, and put some beef into it, or I'll report you." And for the next ten minutes, till the "cease work" bell, while West dug potatoes diligently under the apple-trees, Billy Blood stood over B14 and counted every weed that dropped into his basket. Gardiner could have laughed in his face. For such petty pin-pricks as Warder Thomson's he cared—not a pin-prick. As Lettice had said, where he was not abnormally sensitive he was wholesomely callous.
He got no further chance of speaking to the amiable wife-beater, but that did not trouble him. Some cock-and-bull story the fellow had got hold of—he was crassly ignorant, and stupid as a hog. That evening, however, he had a visit from the chaplain. The elderly gentleman who had fallen a victim to Mr. Gardiner, and whom Mr. Gardiner's son commonly alluded to as "the old foozle," had resigned, and been succeeded by a new man of very different kidney. The Rev. and Hon. Noel Dalrymple-Roche was not more than thirty, very big, very massive, with ashen-fair hair, a regular profile, and a cold blue eye. He had been a Cambridge rowing Blue and sixth Wrangler; and to these mixed accomplishments he added a third—he possessed enough driving force to command an army corps. A misfit in his profession, thought Gardiner, summing him up with an amused eye the first time he read the service; and a double misfit as prison chaplain.
It was his first visit to Gardiner. He came in alone—the chaplain has that privilege. The prisoner was standing under the window, slanting his book to catch the feeble light.
"Reading?" asked Roche, stretching out his hand for the volume.
"Yes, sir. I'm very fond of a good book." Gardiner, ever imitative, had adapted his language to his surroundings. He could not, however, thus adapt his book, a small blue volume of the Colección Española Nelson. Roche raised his eyebrows.
"Can you read this?"
"Pretty well. One gets to pick up something of a good many languages, knocking about the world."
"You come from Chatham, don't you? A sailor, I suppose?"
"Ship's cook."
"What a pity it is you sailors can't keep off the drink," said the chaplain, closing the book and laying it down. "Why don't you sign the pledge? An intelligent young fellow like you—you ought not to be here."
Gardiner stared; then he laughed. "I think you've gothold of the wrong pig this time, sir. I'm not a drunk and dis."
"You're in for beating your wife, aren't you? I hope you're not going to tell me you did that when you were sober."
"'Have you left off beating your wife?'" murmured Gardiner with irrepressible levity. "Neither drunk nor sober, sir. Couldn't, not possessing one. That's my next-door neighbor—West, B15. I'm B14—Gardiner."
Mr. Roche was not at all disconcerted. "Gardiner?" he repeated, consulting his notebook. "Oh ah; I must have mistaken the number. Gardiner. Yes, I remember about you." He looked him over with his cool eye. There was a shade of difference in his manner. B14 did not stand on a par with B15. Mr. Roche was very decidedly not a democrat. "And how much longer have you to serve?"
"Four months."
Roche's eyes continued to dwell on him with an expression that the prisoner could not read; it was speculative and appraising, and seemed to refer back to private thoughts which had nothing to do with the present. "You've never been a Territorial?" he asked unexpectedly.
"No," said Gardiner, a little surprised.
"Ah! Well, I'll see you again some other day, Gardiner. At present I must go and pay my call next door."
"Thank you, sir," said Gardiner dutifully. He bethought himself to add, as Roche got up: "It's not true, sir, is it, that there's a war scare on?"
"Who told you anything about it?"
"I heard something—of course, sir, we do talk among ourselves to a certain extent, can't help it. I know you're not supposed to tell us news, but I thought in a case like this perhaps you might stretch a point. Is there a row in Ireland or what?"
"There is no scare, and no row in Ireland," said Roche. His manner had often a touch of rhetoric. "There is Armageddon. Germany and Austria are attacking Russia, France, and ourselves."
"My hat!" said Gardiner. He straightened up; his face lighted, his eye sparkled. "Oh, my hat! What wouldn't I give to be in the army!"
"You won't be the first to say that to-day," said Roche; "but if you were in the army you might not be alive to congratulate yourself on the fact to-morrow. The Germans have occupied Luxemburg, they are sweeping across Belgium; soon, I expect, they will be in Paris, and then it will be our turn. And God knows—Steady, man! What are you doing?"
Gardiner was clutching his arm. "Belgium?" he gasped. "But they're neutral!"
"Germany announces that she is not to be bound by scraps of paper."
Gardiner sat down on his stool and took his head in his hands. Roche had heard a part of his story; not enough to explain his emotion. He laid his hand on the prisoner's shoulder. "You wish you were free to go and help?" he said, his deep musical voice vibrating. "Poor fellow, so do I—so do I."
One queer by-product of the war was the general eagerness to bear one another's burdens, the Christmas Carol atmosphere of good temper and good-will. In prison this feeling worked a miracle; it drew together prisoners and warders. The day's news was whispered without rebuke under the very noses of the guardians of silence; sometimes they even whispered it themselves. Roche went boldly to the governor (he did not lack courage, that young man; he had already half-a-dozen quarrels on his hands, including one with Leonard Scott about vestments), and by special permission started his Sunday service each week with a summary of news. There was not much to tell in that first month. On the 6thThe Timesgravely stated that mobilization could not be completed till the 16th; on the 18th came the announcement that the whole Expeditionary Force was already across the water. Liège was making itsgallant defense; the Russians were pouring into East Prussia; there was a battle near Dinant in which the French were victorious. Next, the evening papers of the 24th baldly announced the fall of Namur. Heart-shaking news. It shook England; it was then that the recruits began to pour in, thirty thousand a day, so that the height limit had to be raised to check the flow. All these things Roche reported to a congregation which hung upon his lips.
He did not at first report, because he did not believe, the rumors of atrocities at Visé and elsewhere which were current in those early days. Few responsible men did take account of such fantastic nightmares. They were whispered in the prison nevertheless. But there came a Sunday in September when Roche, making a little pause after his summary, began again, gravely: "It is stated, and I believe it to be true, that the German army in Belgium is committing, by order and in cold blood, the foulest abominations. The old university town of Louvain and its splendid library have been burned to the ground and the inhabitants massacred. The same sort of thing is reported from other towns and villages. The men—peaceable working men—are driven out in batches and shot. The women are given to the soldiery and then bayoneted. Children have been shot, stabbed, mutilated, crucified. In the little town of Dinant—"
There was a slight disturbance. A prisoner in one of the back rows struggled to his feet and called out something; a couple of warders popped instantly out of their sentry-boxes and hustled him away. The chapel door closed upon them; Mr. Roche continued his address. The only person who recognized the brawler, and saw the significance of the incident, was Dr. Scott; and even he, though he had heard of the Bellevue, had never heard of Lettice Smith.
"Is the doctor within, mistress?"
"What d'ye want him for?"
"I would like a word with him."
"Well, you'll have to go without it, then. Think I'm goin' to rout him out from his breakfast for the likes of you? No fear!"
"I'm thinkin', mistress, he'll maybe no' be pleased if ye refuse. The thing is pressing—"
"And so's his breakfast pressing, ain't it? I've no patience with the lot of you—comin' trapesin' round here at all hours, never letting him get a bite in peace—"
"What's the matter, Katie?" asked Dr. Scott himself, coming out into the passage with his napkin in his hand. "Who wants me? Oh, it's you, Mackenzie, is it? What's brought you round here at this time of day?"
Chief Warder Mackenzie, a large and fatherly Scot, smiled his acknowledgments; he was one of those who liked the little doctor. "Well, sir, I'd no' have disturrbed ye at yrr breakfast, but I thought ye should know. There is one of the men took sick. Warder Barnes tellt me when I came on duty this mornin', and I'm no' sure what to think o' the matter maself. He'll make no reply to any words o' mine; I doubt he didna hear what I said. I thought maybe if ye'd take a look at him—"
"Take a look at him? Of course I'll take a look at him! Who is it?"
"B14, sir."
"B14!"
Casting down his napkin on the nearest chair, Scott came as he was, bare-headed, across the prison grounds in the early sunshine. Gardiner was still in the old wing of the prison; as his visitors came into the gloomy corridor, after the brightness outside, they had to look to their feet to avoid tumbling over the orderly's broom. When the cell was opened, Scott at first could see nothing. He made a step forward at random. "Take care, sir, Barnes tellt me he was violent the morn!" said Mackenzie, brushing hastily past; and then, in gruff but not unkindly tones: "Now then, B14, wake up! Here's the doctor for ye!"
There was no answer; but Scott could see now. B14 lay on the ground, pressed, flattened, wedged into the anglebetween the floor and the wall, his head burrowing blindly into the corner; and there he continued to lie, a mere line against the wall of his cell. He was in shirt and breeches, but his bed, which should have been folded up and put away hours ago, was still standing with the blankets tossed about it. Mackenzie stooped to shake him up, but he was put aside. "Leave this to me, officer," said the doctor with authority, and knelt down himself beside the prisoner.
"Gardiner, my poor fellow!" he said with exquisite gentleness. "Come, come! What are you doing here on the ground?" He laid a hand on his shoulder. "Gardiner! don't you hear me?"
With a shudder which seemed literally to tear him away from the wall, Gardiner rolled over and clutched that friendly hand in both his own.
"Scott, Scott! for God's sake get me out of this!"
His forehead sank down till it rested, burning, on Scott's wrist. Moved beyond all knowledge of himself, the doctor laid his free hand on the cropped head. It was streaming with sweat; a continuous tremor shook the whole frame.
"Gardiner, my poor, poor fellow! what is it? what's wrong?"
"I can't stand it, I can't stand it." The words came in a rushing murmur, barely intelligible in their ebb and flow. "Get me out, Scott! oh, get me out! Say it's killing me. Say it's driving me mad—it is. Say anything, only get me out. You will, won't you? Oh, God bless you! I knew you would." He raised for a moment his haggard and exhausted face, and crawled a little closer. "Not to be let off altogether. I don't ask that. Just long enough to get across and back again—I'd give my parole, and serve double time afterwards, to make up. A month would do it. It's as easy as winking. I pass anywhere as a Spaniard, and with a forged passport—Ribeira would lend me his, I know—why, I could do it in a fortnight, less! Oh, get me out, Scott; youcan'tkeep me here, you can't, you can't! For the love of Christ, get me out somehow!"
He lay panting in heavy gasps, like a dying animal.Scott's heart sank down, down; how could he tell this frantic creature that what he asked was impossible? Get him out!—he had already strained his influence to the uttermost for B14; he could hear Captain Harding's sarcastic little laugh: "Your pet patient again, doctor?" Laws are not to be bent because prisoners suffer. He could not quite make out what it was all about, or why Gardiner should be so desperately anxious to get over to Belgium; something to do with his property, he supposed; yet this did not seem like a question of property. Meanwhile the prisoner was off again on a fresh stream of supplications, this time in a murmur so low, so wild and incoherent, that Scott had to bend right down to his lips. What in heaven's name was he raving about now?
"If it had been anything butthis, anything else on earth butthis; you can't keep a man here looking on at this; eyes weren't given you for this. Because it's not nightmare, you know, it's fact; they do do it; there were those stories Denis used to tell of 1870 ... and you heard Roche yourself ... all night long, all night long ...given to the soldiery and bayoneted... perhaps its happening now, this instant, and I here, oh, my God, my God, my God, my God!—and if you'd only let me free, IknowI could have saved her!"
He broke down suddenly into the most frightful sobbing. "Gardiner! Stop it!" the doctor's voice rang out. The prisoner quivered and cowered under the word of command; his voice went up in a sort of hysterical crow, and stopped, dead. He lay like a log. Scott tried to speak again, and found his throat dry. So that was it! There were things in this war which had tried even his faith. Neither wounds, nor death—secure of eternity, he could afford to disregard the sufferings of this span-long life—but the fate of the women. It did not seem right, he could not reconcile it with his idea of the divine justice, that evil men should be allowed to stain the soul. What was he to say now to Gardiner? Platitudes? He had nothing else to offer. He was helpless—and at that word faith sprang up to claim the aid of omnipotence. He had known the love of God all those years;could he not trust Him to do what He would with His own?
He turned to the prisoner.
"I can't let you out, Gardiner," he said sadly, giving him the truth because he had no choice. "I'll do what I can, but I know it won't be any good. Here you are and here you'll have to stay for the next four months, and if what you are afraid of happens it will have to happen, and you will have to bear it. God is the judge. Only it's up to you to choose how you'll bear it: whether you'll give in, as you're doing now, or whether you'll stand up like a man and fight it out. If you can't save your friends, you may be able to avenge them—"
As he spoke his eye fell on Gardiner's hand, and the words died on his lips. Those contracted fingers would never hold a rifle. Scott felt sick. He got up from his knees.
"Will I light the gas, sir?" asked Mackenzie's business-like tones.
Scott assented mechanically, feeling for his clinical; but when the light sprang out he had to take himself in hand and fairly force himself to work, against the most intense reluctance he had ever felt in his life. Gardiner stirred not; he had to prize open his teeth before he could insert the thermometer. A gleam of white showed under the eyelids. When Scott felt his pulse, the hand fell back inert.
"Puir fellow, he looks bad," said Mackenzie dispassionately.
"Yes, it's a case for the hospital. You did quite right to fetch me, Mackenzie. I'll send a couple of orderlies with a stretcher. When's your best time? I should like you to be here to superintend."
"I'll no' be on duty the morn, but I'll be back again after dinner, sir."
"Very well, I'll have them here at one o'clock. Leave the bed as it is, and tell Barnes to keep an eye on him in the meanwhile."
"Verra good, sir."
Scott was going out, without another glance at the prisoner, when Mackenzie touched his arm. "He's lookin'at you, sir," he whispered. Scott turned. The line of white under the eyelids had widened slightly; the gleam of the pupil was visible. While he watched, the lips unclosed, and the dead (indeed it had that effect) spoke:
"I—won't—go to hospital."
"You'll be better off there, Gardiner," said Scott very gently. "I'll give you something to send you to sleep."
The eyes opened a little further. After a moment the prone figure heaved itself up and struggled into a sitting position against the wall.
"I won't go to hospital, and I won't take your bloody stuff, you —— —— ——."
Impossible to convey the low ferocity, the bestial drawling insolence of voice and manner. Scott flushed like a schoolgirl and involuntarily recoiled a step. "Hold your mouth, ye foul-tongued, ungratefu' devil; the doctor's the best friend ye have, and better than ye deserve!" cried Mackenzie angrily.
"Hold your own mouth, Sandy Mackenzie, or I'll knock every bloody one of those gold-stopped teeth you're so proud of down your bloody throat—by God, I will!"
Mackenzie turned purple; but before he could get into action Scott intervened.
"Let be, officer," he commanded with authority. "This has gone beyond you and me. The man's not responsible; he doesn't know what he is saying."
"I won't go to your bloody hospital—I won't—I won't," cried Gardiner, his voice rising to a shriek. Scott turned in the doorway: Mackenzie, staunch U.P., was less shocked than he would have believed possible to watch him make the sign of the cross and to catch the muttered Latin of his commendation. If ever he had seen a man possessed with a devil and in need of exorcism, he saw him then.
When they had gone out, Gardiner lay for some moments passive; then with infinite toil, steadying himself with his shaking hand against the wall, he got to his feet. What was he going to do next? He knew that perfectly. He was notgoing to hospital; not he! He was going to escape. For in the terminology of the jail suicide is only a form of prison-breaking, and the letter "E" is inscribed impartially over the door of the convict who makes a dash for liberty through the fogs of Dartmoor, and of the wretched youth who tries to hang himself by his neckerchief from the ventilator of his cell.
Why should he go on living? Lettice was dead, or would be by the time they let him free to save her; and he absolutely declined to lie here and watch her die. One night of that was enough. Not that at this moment Gardiner cared a straw for Lettice or any one else; he was lower than the lowest criminal in the jail; he was in the mood to join the Germans in their hellish work. Broken with that night of agony, he had clutched like a drowning man at Scott's hand, he had crawled in abject abasement to his feet, imploring mercy, and had been refused. "Hissing hot with burning tears," he had been plunged into the waters of despair. The shock was too great. A flaw started out, running right across his nature, separating him from his former self. Gardiner had gone over to the devil.
Well, if he meant to do it he must do it at once, before he was transferred to hospital, where his bed would be one among a dozen in a ward. The best time would be between dinner at twelve and the resumption of work at one, the interval when the warders went off by relays to their own meal. He had heard through his torpor enough to know that he was safe until then. This settled, he lay down on his bed and took up his book, presenting a disarming picture of tranquillity when the orderlies came round with the tins of food. The flap of his spy-hole was raised just as he finished his meal, and he was glad to see it; now, in all probability, he would have a good twenty minutes to himself before he was disturbed again.
Suicide is common in prisons, and prisoners have their own ways of compassing it. You may hang yourself—a disagreeably slow death where no drop is available. You may, if you are strong and active, throw yourself over thewire-netting that guards the staircase, and be dashed to pieces on the flags below. You may even, if you are very resolute, hack your throat open with the blunt piece of corrugated tin which serves as a dinner knife. Gardiner had his own plan. Some time since his gas globe had got broken, and he had managed to secrete a splinter of glass. Difficult to hide it, since every prisoner is searched twice a day; but, again, they have their own ways of hiding things. It is on record that a sovereign has been found on a man who had been in jail for a year. Gardiner hid his bit of glass under his tongue. It was small enough for that, but it was large enough to sever the artery in his thigh.
He turned his back to the door and drew the bed-clothes round him to hide the flow of blood. Then he leant out to find the splinter in the crack where it lay hid. At that moment he heard the tread of a warder outside. They wear list slippers, and to a free man would be inaudible; but prisoners have cat's ears. Gardiner drew in his hand to let the man go by. Lucky he did so. With the usual tremendous rattle and crash his door was unlocked and flung wide.
"Ye're to dress yoursel', B14, and come along with me."