"E"
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._
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 miry _place_! 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-whisper by 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 got hold 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 6th
_The Times_ gravely 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 its
gallant 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 angle between 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; you _can't_ keep 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 but _this_, anything else on earth but _this_;
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, I _know_ I 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 not going 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 the wire-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."