The Way Out
The prisoner in accordance with his counsel's advice pleaded Guilty. It
was only a question of the length of the sentence, therefore, and the
judge before whom William Day appeared did not err on the side of mercy.
The heaviest sentence that it was in his power to allot to a malefactor of
that class he passed upon William Day.
None of his own were present, but the Court was filled with people to whom
the prisoner was a familiar figure of everyday life.
It was all but impossible to look upon this big, important-looking man in
the well-cut clothes, holding till the last few weeks among them the
position of gentleman, and believe that it was a criminal standing before
their eyes. The attraction of gazing at, of gloating upon, such a
phenomenon was great. He had been a hectoring kind of man, walking very
noisily among his fellows, taking to himself a great deal of room. Such an
one gives offence frequently if unconsciously. There was none who saw
William Day standing up for his sentence in the dock that day who bore a
grudge, or remembered.
With some there he had assumed an insolent superiority, with other few,
whose position entitled them to choose their acquaintance, he had been
unwarrantably familiar. For the minute he held his place after sentence
was pronounced his eyes travelled slowly but with a dreadful look of
appeal over the familiar faces. Over faces of tradespeople, with whom he
had dealt; of clients for whom he had done business; of people with whom
he had dined and whom he had entertained in return; of men who had driven
him in cabs, blacked his boots, carried his portmanteaux. The slowly
travelling gaze had in it something of a sick despair, something of a wild
appeal. The men over whom it passed, bore it in absolute, breathless
silence, but they never forgot it.
The great cheeks that had seemed ready to burst with good-living, hung
loose and flabby now, the hands that had been prompt with the grasp of
friendship, that had waved greetings from window or pavement, that had
ever been generous in giving, clung to the rail of the dock, the knuckles
whitened with the tension. The tongue that had been so loud in dispute, so
rough in anger, so boisterous in welcome, lay dry and silent in the mouth
which had lopped open.
There was a feeling upon many of those who momentarily encountered the
dreadful gaze that they were responsible; they longed to exonerate
themselves, to say to him, "I, at least, had nothing to do with it. I am
sorry, William Day. Indeed I am sorry." It was a relief when he turned, at
the warder's touch on his arm, and went below.
In the room where he was allowed to sit for a time before being driven to
prison his lawyer came to speak to him; the confidential clerk from his
own office; his friend, George Boult.
"It is very severe," George Boult kept saying with nervous reiteration.
"Very severe."
The prisoner did not speak. He was wearing, arranged across his heavy
paunch, a handsome chain of gold. With fingers stiff from their hold upon
the dock-rail he began, bunglingly, to detach this chain from his
waistcoat. His watch came out with it--a big watch, with a double gold
case. He opened the outer case in an aimless way, mechanically, and for no
object, it seemed, for he did not look at the time. Then, without a word
he held out the watch and chain to his friend, and lifted the fingers
which had fumbled with the watch-case to his lead-coloured lips.
Within a quarter of an hour from the time that William Day had listened to
his heavy sentence of penal servitude he lay on his back, dead.