THE IRONY OF FATE.
Rupert found that four weeks in prison was a lifetime.
His experience at Holloway before the trial helped him not at all;
though he remembered now, that at the time, it had shocked and horrified
him. Yet the cruelty and ugliness had all been on the surface. Looking
back on it now, after four weeks of the real thing, with the eyes of a
professional, he saw the humorous as well as the dramatic side of it.
If Holloway had been under the direction of the manager of a Drury Lane
melodrama it could not have been run on lines better calculated to
excite the common mind, and arouse the curiosity and the mirth of the
vulgar. It had all been very cheap and dramatic. The great gates,
barred and bolted in primeval fashion; the uniformed warders and
wardresses, obviously chosen for their stature and their lack of
humanity. The clanging of bells and the rattling of great bunches of
keys. The herding together of guilty and innocent in pen-like places.
The coming and going of numerous officials.
The real thing was very different. It had not got the glamour of
Holloway, or its melodramatic atmosphere with a dash of pantomime.
There was an atmosphere of "Abandon hope all ye who enter here," about
Wormwood Scrubbs, though the interior of the prison was not so
depressing as the exterior--the Scrubbs itself.
In about a week's time Rupert began to realise, not only where he was,
but what he was. The warders, neither good, bad, nor indifferent,
merely machines wrapped up in red tape, did their best to help him in
this.
The first thing he realised was that he was no longer a man, but a
cypher, number three hundred and eighty-one. He was glad he had not a
name any longer. The only drawback was that, though unknown in the
prisons, he would remain Rupert Dale to the world outside.
The next thing that dawned upon him was, that he was a criminal. A jury
of his fellow-countrymen had found him guilty. There was nothing to
grumble at in that!
The difficulty lay in behaving like a guilty man. He had a curious
feeling when eventually he was exercised with a batch of other convicts
and attended Divine Service, that they resented him. In spite of having
his head shaved, in spite of wearing a costume--a cross between a
clown's and one beloved by music-hall comedians--he knew he did not look
guilty. He was hall-marked with the broad arrow, but it took more than
four weeks for the iron of prison life to enter his soul and make him
really feel like a criminal; at times wish to be a criminal--until a
curious feeling eventually came to him that he really was one--that he
only wanted to be free again to prove the fact and show himself in his
real colours.
But for the first week or two he found himself without emotions, without
feelings. Things had turned out as he wished them to. He was
satisfied.
The woman he loved was free! Even though she had accused herself no one
believed her. What his father thought or felt he did not know. He did
not want to think--yet. Perhaps nature was kind, and caused the
reaction of the excitement and strain of the trial to act as an
anaesthetic to his brain.
At the periodical visits of his warders, when his food was brought him,
when he had to clean out his cell or make his bed, or when he was taken
out to exercise, he found himself quite unconsciously speaking to them,
trying to enter into conversation. Silence was the first blow that
struck him. After five days he began to wonder how he was going to
manage five years of it. If it were enforced it would probably send him
mad.
He tried talking to himself, but that frightened him, and the one-sided
conversation soon became brainless. He welcomed the visits of the
chaplain until he found that that official considered it his duty to do
all the talking. And, moreover, he did not want to talk about anything
but the salvation of Rupert's soul. And as the unfortunate man had for
years been dodging in and out of prison cells like a ferret in and out
of rabbit holes trying to catch souls that were not at home, he had lost
all real interest in the game and had fallen back on quoting texts in an
unconvincing tone of voice. Certainly he called Three-eighty-one his
"dear brother," but Rupert did not believe he meant it, and told him so.
And so the chaplain's visits were cut short. The doctor was the only
cheery human being in the prison.
At first Rupert was exercised alone; as soon as he joined his gang he
was slowly initiated into the conversation of eyes, lips, and
gestures--the latter by far the most effective and subtle: a movement of
a muscle of the face, the slightest elevation or depression of the
shoulders, the crook of a finger, or even the pretence of stumbling as a
man walked.
The desire to learn this conversation saved him at the critical moment
of his incarceration. Hour after hour as he lay alone in his prison
cell he thought it out, drew imaginary pictures or diagrams on the
floor. Like a dumb man every sense became preternaturally sharpened.
He learnt how to speak with his eyes as well as his lips. He learnt,
too, how to hide his eyes when he was watched or wished to be dumb.
He took an interest in the most extraordinary or trivial things. A
spider spun its web across two bars of the window in his cell. He took
more interest in that spider's larder than probably did the spider
itself; it was with mingled feelings of joy and horror that he saw the
first fly caught--his feelings were so equally divided between the
miserable captive and the other hungry insect. Once the spider dropped
down with a silken thread right on his foot. Rupert held his breath,
not daring to move a muscle, and he experienced the first thrill since
he had been in prison when the tiny thing eventually crawled up his leg
and ran across his hand!
A day later, when he cleaned out his cell, he was told to wipe away the
spider's web. He nearly refused, and the tears actually swam in his
eyes as he obeyed.
Under his breath he cursed the warder. Had the man no feelings; was he
indeed a brute in human shape!
For forty-eight hours afterwards he waited for the return of the spider,
waited for it to climb down on its silken thread and run across his hand
again: but in vain.
One day as he exercised with his gang in the prison yard he noticed a
man who once or twice before had been his leader in the dreary round--a
young fellow with dark eyes, and protruding jaws that had evidently been
broken in a fight. He noticed that he was talking to him. A spasmodic
movement of his hands told Rupert that he wanted to say something.
As they turned Rupert caught his eye and signalled that he was ready to
receive a message. He was not yet an adept in this new art of
conversation, but his senses were alert and his instincts already
preternaturally sharpened. He concentrated his whole mind on his fellow
convict, and, perhaps unconsciously, he read his thoughts even before he
understood the message which hand and foot, head and shoulders sent with
lightning-like rapidity.
Translated, it meant that some of them were going to be removed from
Wormwood Scrubbs prison.
"Good," Rupert signalled back. He found himself grinning until he read
another signal of "Shut up!" from the blue-eyed convict.
The change might be for the worse, but that did not trouble Rupert.
There was to be a change! Perhaps a journey somewhere. Outside the
prison walls. The silence would be broken.
He wanted to shout aloud with joy. The silence would be broken! They
would go out into the streets. The streets where there were cabs and
omnibuses, and great drays with horses in them, and men and women
hurrying to and fro; and children playing. They might even go a
journey; in a train through fields and forests. They would see blue sky
and perhaps sunshine.
He thought of nothing else for the rest of the day; he dreamed of it at
night. Next morning hope alternately rose and fell in his heart,
refusing to die throughout the day's routine. He continually built
pictures of the journey he might take. So far, the effect of prison had
been to make him like a child again. Time had ceased to exist; he took
no count of days, but the news of the change made him wonder how long he
had been at Wormwood Scrubbs. A week, a month, a year?----
It was curious how little he had thought of those he loved. At first,
when he had been taken away from the Old Bailey, he had been temporarily
overcome by remorse. The night after the trial he had suffered agonies.
Yet curiously enough after that night, thoughts of the outside world and
those he knew in it had not troubled him much. He had been a coward in
so much as he had been afraid to think of his father or his sister--or
Ruby.
For he could not speak of them. He could not speak of them to a living
soul. He could not write to them. If a letter had been permitted it
would have been read and censored. So, not daring to write, he dared
not think. Nature had been kind, and for weeks his brain had been
anaesthetised by the deadly routine, the bare walls of his prison, the
sudden and terrible change of environment.
This happens to some natures. Thoughts are checked, memory sleeps, but
there always comes a rude awakening. To other men it is the first few
weeks of imprisonment that are the most terrible. A few never survive;
their minds are wrecked, morally and spiritually they are ruined; then
their suffering comes to an end.
Rupert's awakening came one grey morning when at daybreak he found
himself with half a dozen of his fellow convicts paraded in the yard,
and, after a breakfast more generous than usual, marched outside the
walls of Wormwood Scrubbs and conveyed in a van to an unknown
destination--which proved to be Waterloo Station.
The thrill of joy he experienced when he found himself standing on the
platform surrounded by familiar sights, hearing familiar sounds, his
nostrils inhaling familiar smells, was almost instantly followed by a
sickening sense of fear. Fear of the unknown!
He glanced at the men by his side all wearing the convict dress--the
badge of shame. It suddenly struck him how funny they looked. He
wondered if he cut as ridiculous a figure. Perhaps there might be some
one on the platform whom he knew, some one who would recognise him.
He stared with hungry eyes at the few people who passed. Forgetting
what he was, he yearned to see a familiar face. And presently he
realised that he and the other convicts were being stared at by men who
were free.
One man made a ribald jest. Others laughed. A few men looked with dull
curiosity. A woman shuddered and turned away.
Rupert bit his lip. It was not nice. Especially when he realised the
handcuffs. He squared his shoulders and held up his head. He was not
ashamed. There was nothing to be ashamed of.
A newspaper boy passed; on his tray the morning newspapers and the
illustrated magazines. Half a dozen pairs of yearning eyes followed him.
Probably each convict would have sold his soul for a copy of the
_Morning Post_ or the _Daily Chronicle_. Opposite to where they were
lined up, the station wall was covered with posters and play bills and
advertisements.
The first thing Rupert read was the "Ingenue Theatre," a poster staring
at him in six-inch letters. His jaws dropped, and he blinked his eyes to
drive away the mist that rose before them.
Then the train backed into the station. The warder in charge gave a
sharp order. As Rupert swung round in obedience to the command he saw
another poster facing him, the _Financial Times_, and beneath in huge
letters one word--"RADIUM."
He started, a frown knitted his brows. For a moment he forgot what he
was, where he was. That one word had conjured up the past, swept the
fog from his brain.
"Now, 381, what are you about?"
He pulled himself together with an effort and rolled into a third-class
compartment of the train with his fellow convicts.
Radium! The word seemed to be burning into his brain. He said it aloud
and received a sharp reprimand from the warder seated on his left by the
window.
There rose before his eyes a vision of Dartmoor, the disused tin-mine on
his father's farm; Robert Despard and he groping in the semi-blackness
up to their knees in water.... Their discovery of pitch-blende--and
Despard's belief that, in that old worthless mine, there might lie
hidden a fortune.
A fortune for his father and his sister. His father whom he had ruined
and shamed. And his sister!
Again he blinked his eyes, driving away the mist before them. He found
himself staring straight at the convict facing him. The man was talking
to him. He saw the fingers of his handcuffed hands moving stealthily.
He saw his half-closed eyes contracting and expanding. He answered:
"Yes?"
"Dartmoor! Princetown Prison," was the reply he received.
Rupert lay back and closed his eyes. He might have guessed. It was the
irony of fate. They were taking him home, back to his own land, to
Dartmoor.
To Princetown Prison. The great monument of granite that broods over
the valley of the Dart, from whose barred windows, if a man could gaze,
he would see Blackthorn Farm ... and the disused tin-mine with its
hidden fortune waiting to be claimed.