THE PRISONER
On the following morning, as I emerged from my room, I met Polton coming
up with a tray (our bedrooms were on the attic floor above the
laboratory and workshop), and I accordingly followed him into my
friend's chamber.
"I shan't go out to-day," said Thorndyke, "though I shall come down
presently. It is very inconvenient, but one must accept the inevitable.
I have had a knock on the head, and, although I feel none the worse, I
must take the proper precautions--rest and a low diet--until I see that
no results are going to follow. You can attend to the scalp wound and
send round the necessary letters, can't you?"
I expressed my willingness to do all that was required and applauded my
friend's self-control and good sense; indeed, I could not help
contrasting the conduct of this busy, indefatigable man, cheerfully
resigning himself to most distasteful inaction, with the fussy behaviour
of the ordinary patient who, with nothing of importance to do, can
hardly be prevailed upon to rest, no matter how urgent the necessity.
Accordingly, I breakfasted alone, and spent the morning in writing and
despatching letters to the various persons who were expecting visits
from my colleague.
Shortly after lunch (a very spare one, by the way, for Polton appeared
to include me in the scheme of reduced diet) my expectant ear caught
the tinkle of a hansom approaching down Crown Office Row.
"Here comes your fair companion," said Thorndyke, whom I had acquainted
with my arrangements, "Tell Hornby, from me, to keep up his courage,
and, for yourself, bear my warning in mind. I should be sorry indeed if
you ever had cause to regret that you had rendered me the very valuable
services for which I am now indebted to you. Good-bye; don't keep her
waiting."
I ran down the stairs and came out of the entry just as the cabman had
pulled up and flung open the doors.
"Holloway Prison--main entrance," I said, as I stepped up on to the
footboard.
"There ain't no back door there, sir," the man responded, with a grin;
and I was glad that neither the answer nor the grin was conveyed to my
fellow-passenger.
"You are very punctual, Miss Gibson," I said. "It is not half-past one
yet."
"Yes; I thought I should like to get there by two, so as to have as long
a time with him as is possible without shortening your interview."
I looked at my companion critically. She was dressed with rather more
than her usual care, and looked, in fact, a very fine lady indeed. This
circumstance, which I noted at first with surprise and then with decided
approbation, caused me some inward discomfort, for I had in my mind a
very distinct and highly disagreeable picture of the visiting
arrangements at a local prison in one of the provinces, at which I had
acted temporarily as medical officer.
"I suppose," I said at length, "it is of no use for me to re-open the
question of the advisability of this visit on your part?"
"Not the least," she replied resolutely, "though I understand and
appreciate your motive in wishing to do so."
"Then," said I, "if you are really decided, it will be as well for me to
prepare you for the ordeal. I am afraid it will give you a terrible
shock."
"Indeed?" said she. "Is it so bad? Tell me what it will be like."
"In the first place," I replied, "you must keep in your mind the purpose
of a prison like Holloway. We are going to see an innocent man--a
cultivated and honourable gentleman. But the ordinary inmates of
Holloway are not innocent men; for the most part, the remand cases on
the male side are professional criminals, while the women are either
petty offenders or chronic inebriates. Most of them are regular
customers at the prison--such is the idiotic state of the law--who come
into the reception-room like travellers entering a familiar hostelry,
address the prison officers by name and demand the usual privileges and
extra comforts--the 'drunks,' for instance, generally ask for a dose of
bromide to steady their nerves and a light in the cell to keep away the
horrors. And such being the character of the inmates, their friends who
visit them are naturally of the same type--the lowest outpourings of the
slums; and it is not surprising to find that the arrangements of the
prison are made to fit its ordinary inmates. The innocent man is a
negligible quantity, and no arrangements are made for him or his
visitors."
"But shall we not be taken to Reuben's cell?" asked Miss Gibson.
"Bless you! no," I answered; and, determined to give her every
inducement to change her mind, I continued: "I will describe the
procedure as I have seen it--and a very dreadful and shocking sight I
found it, I can tell you. It was while I was acting as a prison doctor
in the Midlands that I had this experience. I was going my round one
morning when, passing along a passage, I became aware of a strange,
muffled roar from the other side of the wall.
"'What is that noise?' I asked the warder who was with me.
"'Prisoners seeing their friends,' he answered. 'Like to have a look at
them, sir?'
"He unlocked a small door and, as he threw it open, the distant, muffled
sound swelled into a deafening roar. I passed through the door and found
myself in a narrow alley at one end of which a warder was sitting. The
sides of the alley were formed by two immense cages with stout wire
bars, one for the prisoners and the other for the visitors; and each
cage was lined with faces and hands, all in incessant movement, the
faces mouthing and grimacing, and the hands clawing restlessly at the
bars. The uproar was so terrific that no single voice could be
distinguished, though every one present was shouting his loudest to make
himself heard above the universal din. The result was a very strange and
horrid illusion, for it seemed as if no one was speaking at all, but
that the noise came from outside, and that each one of the faces--low,
vicious faces, mostly--was silently grimacing and gibbering, snapping
its jaws and glaring furiously at the occupants of the opposite cage. It
was a frightful spectacle. I could think of nothing but the
monkey-house at the Zoo. It seemed as if one ought to walk up the alley
and offer nuts and pieces of paper to be torn to pieces."
"Horrible!" exclaimed Miss Gibson. "And do you mean to say that we shall
be turned loose into one of these cages with a herd of other visitors?"
"No. You are not turned loose anywhere in a prison. The arrangement is
this: each cage is divided by partitions into a number of small boxes or
apartments, which are numbered. The prisoner is locked in one box and
his visitor in the corresponding box opposite. They are thus confronted,
with the width of the alley between them; they can see one another and
talk but cannot pass any forbidden articles across--a very necessary
precaution, I need hardly say."
"Yes, I suppose it is necessary, but it is horrible for decent people.
Surely they ought to be able to discriminate."
"Why not give it up and let me take a message to Reuben? He would
understand and be thankful to me for dissuading you."
"No, no," she said quickly; "the more repulsive it is the greater the
necessity for me to go. He must not be allowed to think that a trifling
inconvenience or indignity is enough to scare his friends away. What
building is that ahead?"
We had just swung round from Caledonian Road into a quiet and
prosperous-looking suburban street, at the end of which rose the tower
of a castellated building.
"That is the prison," I replied. "We are looking at it from the most
advantageous point of view; seen from the back, and especially from the
inside, it is a good deal less attractive." Nothing more was said
until the cab drove into the courtyard and set us down outside the great
front gates. Having directed the cabman to wait for us, I rang the bell
and we were speedily admitted through a wicket (which was immediately
closed and locked) into a covered court closed in by a second gate,
through the bars of which we could see across an inner courtyard to the
actual entrance to the prison. Here, while the necessary formalities
were gone through, we found ourselves part of a numerous and very motley
company, for a considerable assemblage of the prisoners' friends was
awaiting the moment of admission. I noticed that my companion was
observing our fellow-visitors with a kind of horrified curiosity, which
she strove, however, and not unsuccessfully, to conceal; and certainly
the appearance of the majority furnished eloquent testimony to the
failure of crime as a means of worldly advancement. Their present
position was productive of very varied emotions; some were silent and
evidently stricken with grief; a larger number were voluble and excited,
while a considerable proportion were quite cheerful and even inclined to
be facetious.
At length the great iron gate was unlocked and our party taken in charge
by a warder, who conducted us to that part of the building known as "the
wing"; and, in the course of our progress, I could not help observing
the profound impression made upon my companion by the circumstance that
every door had to be unlocked to admit us and was locked again as soon
as we had passed through.
"It seems to me," I said, as we neared our destination, "that you had
better let me see Reuben first; I have not much to say to him and shall
not keep you waiting long."
"Why do you think so?" she asked, with a shade of suspicion.
"Well," I answered, "I think you may be a little upset by the interview,
and I should like to see you into your cab as soon as possible
afterwards."
"Yes," she said; "perhaps you are right, and it is kind of you to be so
thoughtful on my account."
A minute later, accordingly, I found myself shut into a narrow box, like
one of those which considerate pawnbrokers provide for their more
diffident clients, and in a similar, but more intense, degree, pervaded
by a subtle odour of uncleanness. The woodwork was polished to an
unctuous smoothness by the friction of numberless dirty hands and soiled
garments, and the general appearance--taken in at a glance as I
entered--was such as to cause me to thrust my hands into my pockets and
studiously avoid contact with any part of the structure but the floor.
The end of the box opposite the door was closed in by a strong grating
of wire--excepting the lower three feet, which was of wood--and looking
through this, I perceived, behind a second grating, Reuben Hornby,
standing in a similar attitude to my own. He was dressed in his usual
clothes and with his customary neatness, but his face was unshaven and
he wore, suspended from a button-hole, a circular label bearing the
characters "B.31"; and these two changes in his exterior carried with
them a suggestiveness as subtle as it was unpleasant, making me more
than ever regretful that Miss Gibson had insisted on coming.
"It is exceedingly good of you, Dr. Jervis, to come and see me," he said
heartily, making himself heard quite easily, to my surprise, above the
hubbub of the adjoining boxes; "but I didn't expect you here. I was told
I could see my legal advisers in the solicitor's box."
"So you could," I answered. "But I came here by choice because I have
brought Miss Gibson with me." "I am sorry for that," he rejoined, with
evident disapproval; "she oughtn't to have come among these riff-raff."
"I told her so, and that you wouldn't like it, but she insisted."
"I know," said Reuben. "That's the worst of women--they will make a
beastly fuss and sacrifice themselves when nobody wants them to. But I
mustn't be ungrateful; she means it kindly, and she's a deuced good
sort, is Juliet."
"She is indeed," I exclaimed, not a little disgusted at his cool,
unappreciative tone; "a most noble-hearted girl, and her devotion to you
is positively heroic."
The faintest suspicion of a smile appeared on the face seen through the
double grating; on which I felt that I could have pulled his nose with
pleasure--only that a pair of tongs of special construction would have
been required for the purpose.
"Yes," he answered calmly, "we have always been very good friends."
A rejoinder of the most extreme acidity was on my lips. Damn the fellow!
What did he mean by speaking in that supercilious tone of the loveliest
and sweetest woman in the world? But, after all, one cannot trample on a
poor devil locked up in a jail on a false charge, no matter how great
may be the provocation. I drew a deep breath, and, having recovered
myself, outwardly at least, said--
"I hope you don't find the conditions here too intolerable?" "Oh, no,"
he answered. "It's beastly unpleasant, of course, but it might easily be
worse. I don't mind if it's only for a week or two; and I am really
encouraged by what Dr. Thorndyke said. I hope he wasn't being merely
soothing."
"You may take it that he was not. What he said, I am sure he meant. Of
course, you know I am not in his confidence--nobody is--but I gather
that he is satisfied with the defence he is preparing."
"If he is satisfied, I am," said Reuben, "and, in any case, I shall owe
him an immense debt of gratitude for having stood by me and believed in
me when all the world--except my aunt and Juliet--had condemned me."
He then went on to give me a few particulars of his prison life, and
when he had chatted for a quarter of an hour or so, I took my leave to
make way for Miss Gibson.
Her interview with him was not as long as I had expected, though, to be
sure, the conditions were not very favourable either for the exchange of
confidences or for utterances of a sentimental character. The
consciousness that one's conversation could be overheard by the
occupants of adjacent boxes destroyed all sense of privacy, to say
nothing of the disturbing influence of the warder in the alley-way.
When she rejoined me, her manner was abstracted and very depressed, a
circumstance that gave me considerable food for reflection as we made
our way in silence towards the main entrance. Had she found Reuben as
cool and matter-of-fact as I had? He was assuredly a very calm and
self-possessed lover, and it was conceivable that his reception of the
girl, strung up, as she was, to an acute pitch of emotion, might have
been somewhat in the nature of an anticlimax. And then, was it possible
that the feeling was on her side only? Could it be that the priceless
pearl of her love was cast before--I was tempted to use the colloquial
singular and call him an "unappreciative swine!" The thing was almost
unthinkable to me, and yet I was tempted to dwell upon it; for when a
man is in love--and I could no longer disguise my condition from
myself--he is inclined to be humble and to gather up thankfully the
treasure that is rejected of another.
I was brought up short in these reflections by the clank of the lock in
the great iron gate. We entered together the gloomy vestibule, and a
moment later were let out through the wicket into the courtyard; and as
the lock clicked behind us, we gave a simultaneous sigh of relief to
find ourselves outside the precincts of the prison, beyond the domain of
bolts and bars.
I had settled Miss Gibson in the cab and given her address to the
driver, when I noticed her looking at me, as I thought, somewhat
wistfully.
"Can't I put you down somewhere?" she said, in response to a
half-questioning glance from me.
I seized the opportunity with thankfulness and replied--
"You might set me down at King's Cross if it is not delaying you;" and
giving the word to the cabman, I took my place by her side as the cab
started and a black-painted prison van turned into the courtyard with
its freight of squalid misery.
"I don't think Reuben was very pleased to see me," Miss Gibson remarked
presently, "but I shall come again all the same. It is a duty I owe both
to him and to myself."
I felt that I ought to endeavour to dissuade her, but the reflection
that her visits must almost of necessity involve my companionship,
enfeebled my will. I was fast approaching a state of infatuation.
"I was so thankful," she continued, "that you prepared me. It was a
horrible experience to see the poor fellow caged like a wild beast, with
that dreadful label hanging from his coat; but it would have been
overwhelming if I had not known what to expect."
As we proceeded, her spirits revived somewhat, a circumstance that she
graciously ascribed to the enlivening influence of my society; and I
then told her of the mishap that had befallen my colleague.
"What a terrible thing!" she exclaimed, with evidently unaffected
concern. "It is the merest chance that he was not killed on the spot. Is
he much hurt? And would he mind, do you think, if I called to inquire
after him?"
I said that I was sure he would be delighted (being, as a matter of
fact, entirely indifferent as to his sentiments on the subject in my
delight at the proposal), and when I stepped down from the cab at King's
Cross to pursue my way homewards, there already opened out before me the
prospect of the renewal of this bitter-sweet and all too dangerous
companionship on the morrow.