was but his temperament exaggerated beyond life-size and put in perfect
order--it was but the concretion of his constant feeling that nothing
could be trusted to behave, freed from the still, cold hands of Power.
He had never trusted himself to act save under the authority of this
peculiar deity, much less, then, could he feel that others could be
trusted. This lack of trust--which was only, perhaps, a natural desire
for putting everything and everybody in their proper places--had made
him from a child eligible for almost any post of trust. And Nature,
recognising this, had used him a hundred thousand times, weeding him out
from among his more irregular and trustful fellows, and piling him in
layers, one on another, till she had built out of him in every division
of the State, temples of Power. Two qualifications alone had she
exacted; that he should not be trustful, and that he should be content
to lie beneath the layer above him, until he should come in time to be
that upper layer himself. She had marked him down as quite a tiny boy,
walking with his governess, chopping the heads off thistles with his
stick, and ordering his brothers’ games precisely, so that they should
all know what they were playing at. She had seen him take his dog, and,
squatting on the floor, hold it close to the biscuit that it did not
want to eat; and she had marked the expression in his grey eyes, fixed
on that little white fox-terrier, trying so hard to back out through her
collar. She saw at once that he did not trust the little creature to
know whether it required to eat the biscuit; it was her proper time for
eating it, and even though by holding her nose close he could not make
her eat it, he could put her in the corner for not eating it. And having
in due course seen him do so, Nature had felt ever since that he would
keep himself apart, year by year and step by step, till he was safely
serving in the cold, still corridors of Power. She watched him, then,
with interest, throughout his school and university career, considering
what division of the State she had best build with him, though whether
he should work at feeding soldiers, at supervising education, or
organizing the incarceration of his fellows, did not seem to her to
matter much. In all these things order was essential, and the love of
placing the hand kindly but firmly on the public head, desirable;
further, these were all things that must be done, and with her unerring
instinct for economy, Nature saw that he should do them.
He had accordingly entered the State’s service at a proper age, and had
remained there, rising.
Well aware that his was an occupation tending to the constriction of the
mind, he had early made a practice of keeping it elastic by reading,
argument, and a habit of presenting every case in every light, before
pronouncing judgment; indeed, he would often take another person’s point
of view, and, having improved on it, show that it was not really what
the person thought it. Only when he was contradicted did a somewhat ugly
look come into his eyes, and a peculiar smile contract his straight lips
between his little fair moustache and his little, carefully kept, fair
beard. At such moments he would raise his hands--red, and shapely,
though rather large--as though about to press them on the head or
shoulders of the presumptuous person. For, certain as he was that he
always took all points of view before deciding any matter, he knew he
must be right. But he was careful not to domineer in any way,
recognising that to domineer was peculiarly unbecoming in a bureaucrat.
Keeping his mind elastic, he was always ready to welcome any sort of
progress; the word indeed was often on his lips, and he regarded the
thing itself as essential to the well-being of any modern State; it was
only when some particular kind of progress happened to be mentioned that
he felt any doubt. Then, caressing his beard slowly, and, if possible,
taking up a pen, he would point out the difficulties. These were, it
seemed, more numerous than the lay mind had imagined.
In the first place one must clearly understand what was meant by this
word progress; he would personally not admit that it meant advancing
backwards. If this were established as a premise, it became imperative
to ask whether the public were in a fit condition to assimilate this
measure of so-called reform. Personally he had grave doubts; he was open
to conviction, but his doubts were grave. And a very little smile would
part his lips, seeming to say: “Yes, yes, my dear sir; progress--you use
the word most glibly, and we all of us admit that it is necessary; but
if you suppose that we are going to progress by trusting human
nature--well, pardon me, but is there any precedent? One could trust
oneself, no doubt, because of one’s sense of duty to one’s deity,
but--men at large! If you think a minute you will see that they have
practically no sense of duty or responsibility at all. You say you wish
to foster it, but, my dear sir, if we foster it, what becomes
of--Government? Depend on it, a sense of duty is only the possession of
a few who have been trained to have it; and I cannot think it wise to
take the slightest risk in a matter of this gravity. The bonds that
keep us all together, and me on the top--in my place, the machinery of
morals and the State, are being daily loosened by disintegrating forces,
and considering that I am here--by natural selection, not by
accident--to keep the ship together, I am not exactly likely to help
another wave to knock the ship to pieces. ‘It is,’ you say, ‘a question
of degree.’ I consider that a very dangerous saying. I have little doubt
that all so-called reforms at all times have been ushered in by the use
of that expression. You make the fundamental error of overtrusting human
nature. Believe me, if you lived here, and saw the machinery of things
as closely as I see it, and worked, as I do, in this powerful
atmosphere, and knew the worry and the difficulty of changing anything,
and the thanklessness of the public that one works for, you would soon
get a very different notion of the necessity of what you call reform.
You must bear in mind the fact that the State has carefully considered
what is best for all, and that I am only an official of the State. And
now I have three hours at least before I can get away, of important
details (which you, no doubt, despise), connected with the business of
the State, and which it is my duty and my pride to transact efficiently;
so that you will forgive me if I drop a subject, on which of course I am
still open to conviction. Progress, we must all admit, is necessary,
but, I assure you, in this case you are making a mistake.”
The little smile died off his lips, and preceding the intruder to the
door, he politely opened it. Then, in the marble corridor, he raised his
eyes above his visitor’s retiring back. There, with its great red hands
on the knees parted beneath a white and flowing robe, sat Power--his
deity; and a silent prayer, far too instinctive and inevitable to be
expressed in words, rose through the stagnant, dusty atmosphere:
“O great image that put me here, knowing as thou must the failings of
my fellow-beings, give me power to see that they do right; let me
provide for them the moral and the social diet they require. For, since
I have been here, I have daily, hourly, humbly felt more certain of what
it is they really want; more assured that, through thy help, I am the
person who can give it them. O great image, before thou didst put me
here I was not quite certain about anything, but now, thanks be to thee,
everything is daily clearer and more definite; and I am less and less
harassed by my spirit. Let this go on, great image, till my spirit is
utterly at rest, and I am cold and still and changeless as this marble
corridor.”
THE HOUSE OF SILENCE
XIII
THE HOUSE OF SILENCE
Within the circle of the high grey wall is silence.
Under a square of sky cut by high grey buildings nothing is to be seen
of Nature but the prisoners themselves, the men who guard the prisoners,
and a cat who eats the prison mice.
This house of perfect silence is in perfect order, as though God Himself
had been at work--no dirt, no hurry, no lingering, no laughter. It is
all like a well-oiled engine that goes--without a notion why. And each
human thing that moves within this circle goes, day after day, year
after year--as he has been set to go. The sun rises and the sun goes
down--so says tradition in the House of Silence.
In yellow clothing marked with arrows the inhabitants are working. Each
when he came in here was measured, weighed, and sounded; and, according
to the entries made against his number, he received his silent task, and
the proper quantity of food to keep his body able to fulfil it. He
resumes this silent task each day, and if his work be sedentary, paces
for an hour the speckless gravel yard from a number painted on the wall
to a number painted on a wall. Every morning, and on Sundays twice, he
marches in silence to the chapel, and, in the voice that he has nearly
lost, praises the silent God of prisoners; this is his debauch of
speech. Then, on his avid ears the words of the preacher fall; and
motionless, row on row he sits, in the sensual pleasure of this sound.
But the words are void of sense, for the music of speech has drugged his
hearing.
Before he was admitted to this House of Silence he had endured his six
months’ utter solitude, and now, in the small white-washed space, with a
black floor whence he has cleaned all dirt, he spends only fourteen
hours out of the twenty-four alone, except on Sundays, when he spends
twenty-one, because it is God’s day. He spends them walking up and down,
muttering to himself, listening for sound, with his eyes on the little
peephole in the door, through which he can be seen but cannot see. Above
his mug and plate of shining tin, his stiff, black-bristled brush and a
piece of soap, is raised a little pyramid of godly books; no sound or
scent, no living thing, no spider even, only his sense of humour comes
between him and his God. But nothing whatever comes between him and his
walking up and down, his listening for sound, his lying with his face
pressed to the floor; till darkness falls, that he may stare at it, and
beg for sleep, the only friend of prisoners, to touch him with her
wings. And so, from day to day, from week to week, and year to year,
according to the number of the years set opposite the name that once was
his.
The workshops of the House of Silence hear no sound but that of work;
the men in yellow, with arrows marked on them, are busy with a fearful
zest. Their hands and feet and eyes move all the time; their lips are
still. And on these lips, from mouth to mouth is seen no smile--so
perfect is the order.
And their faces have one look, as though they said: We care for
nothing--nothing; we hope for nothing--nothing; we work like this for
fear of horror! Their quick dull stare fastens on him who comes to watch
their silence; and all their eyes, curious, resentful, furtive, have in
the depths of them the same defiant meaning, as though they saw in their
visitor the world out of which they have been thrown, the millions of
the free, the millions not alone all day and every day, the millions who
can _talk_; as though they saw Society, which bred them, nurtured them,
and forced their steps to that exactly fitting point of physical or
mental stress, out of which they found no way but the crime rewarded
with these years of silence; as though they heard in the footsteps and
the muttered questions of this casual intruder the whole pronouncement
of man’s justice:
“You were dangerous! Your souls, born undersized, were dwarfed by Life
to the commission point of crime. For our protection, therefore, we have
placed you under lock and key. There you shall work--seeing, hearing,
feeling nothing, without responsibility, without initiative, bereft of
human contact with your kind. We shall see that you are clean, and have
a bare sufficiency to eat, we shall inspect and weigh your bodies, and
clothe them with a bare sufficiency of clothes by day and night; divine
service you shall have; your work shall be apportioned to your strength.
Corporal punishment we shall very seldom use. Lest you should give us
trouble, and contaminate each other, you shall be silent, and, as far as
possible, alone. You sinned against Society; your minds were bad; it
were better if in our process you should lose those minds! For some
reason which we cannot tell, you had but little social instinct at the
start; that little social instinct soon decayed. Therefore, through
bitter brooding and eternal silence, through horror of your lonely
cells, and certainty that you are lost--no good, no mortal good to man
or thing--_you shall emerge cleansed of all social instinct_. We are
humane and scientific, we have outgrown the barbarous theories of
old-fashioned law. We act for our protection and for your good. We
believe in reformation. We are no torturers. Through loneliness and
silence we will destroy your minds that we may form fresh minds within
the bodies of which we take such care. In silence and in solitude is no
real suffering--so we believe, for we ourselves have never passed one
single silent day, one single day alone!”
This, by the expression of their eyes, is what the men in yellow seem to
hear, and this, by the expression of their eyes, is what they seem to
answer:
“Guv’nor! You tell me I did wrong to get in here, brought up like what I
was--born in the purple--Brick Street, ’Ammersmith. My father was never
up against the police; epileptic fits is what he went in for--I oughtn’t
to have had him for a father; I oughtn’t to have had a mother that
liked her drop o’ trouble, leavin’ me what you might call violent from a
child. That’s where the little difficulty was, you see. The bloke that
came about my girl knows that, seein’ he laid two years upon his back
after I’d done with ’im. That set ’em on reformin’ me. To do the
business proper, guv’nor, they gave me six months solitary to start on.
All them six months I asks meself: ‘If I were out again, an’ he came
hangin’ round my girl--what would I do?’ And I answers: ‘Hit ’im like I
done!’ You tell me I oughtn’t to been thinkin’ that; guv’nor, I ’adn’t
nothin’ else to think on. Only that, an’ what was goin’ on outside, with
me there buried-up alive. You tell me that ther’ solitude ought to ha’
done a lot for me, an’ so it did. I ain’t never been the same man since.
Well, when I came out I made a big mistake, I find, to have that
sentence up against me, in the earnin’ of me livin’ honest, like as
though I’d never been in prison. I oughtn’t to ’ave been a carpenter, I
guess, or anythin’ where people ’as to trust yer, not likin’ them about
their houses ’as has been in quod; I ought to ha’ had a trade that
didn’t need no dealings with my fellow-creatures. You tell me what I
wanted was to love me neighbour? But guv’nor, after I come out, I go
regular wasted on _that_ job. When you get wasted, guv’nor, you take to
drink; your stomach feels a funny shiverin’; what it wants is warmth, a
bit of fire--so, when you gets a sixpence, you lays it out in warmth.
That’s wrong, you say. But, lucky guv’nor, drink puts heart into a man
as has to get his livin’ out of lovin’ of his neighbour.... Soon after
that I got another little lot, with six months’ solitude again, to put
me straight. When you eat your heart out for want o’ somethin’ else to
do, when your mind rots for the need of ever such a little bit to chew
on, when you feel all day and every day like a poor dumb varmint of a
caged-up rat--like as not you hit a warder, guv’nor. When you hit a
warder, it’s the cat. This time I ought to ha’ come out p’raps a
different man--an’ so I did. I ought to ha’ had a different mind, bein’
chastened and taught the love o’ God; but, seein’, guv’nor, that when I
come to think it over, which was all day and every day, I couldn’t
really find out what I had done which in my case any other man would ha’
stopped short o’ doin’--bein’, _not any other man, but me_--I come out
that time meanin’ to go upon my own. And on my own I went, and ever
since I’ve been--an out-an’-outer, as you can see with lookin’ at me
now. An’ if you ask me what I think of all o’ you outside, I can’t
reply, seein’ I’m not allowed to speak.”
This is the answer that they seem to make, their lips move, but no sound
comes.
The warder watches these moving lips, his eyes, the eyes of a keeper of
wild beasts, are saying: “Pass on, sir, please, and don’t excite the
convicts--you have seen all there is to see!”
And so the visitor goes out into the prison yard.
On to the grey old buildings a new grey block is being built; it runs up
high already towards the square of sky; and on the pale scaffolding are
prisoners cementing in the stones. A hundred feet up, they move with
silent zest, helping to make the little whitewashed spaces safe, to
hold--themselves; helping to make thick the walls, that they may hear
nothing, and their own moaning may be smothered; helping to join stone
to stone, and fill the cracks between, that no creature, however small,
may come to share their solitude; helping to make the window-spaces high
above their reach, that from them they shall look at--nothing; helping
to hide themselves away out of the minds of all who have not sinned
against man’s justice; for, to forget them in their silence and their
solitude is good for man, and to remember them, unpleasant. The sky is
grey above them, they are grey against the sky; no sound comes down but
the smothered tapping of their tools.
The visitor goes out towards the prison gate; and, meeting him, come
three convicts marching in--the tallest in the centre, an old man with
active step and grey bristles on his weather-darkened face. Light darts
into his eyes fixed on the visitor; he bares his yellow teeth and
smiles. His lips move, and out of them come words. So, when skies have
been dark all day, the sun gleams through, to prove the beauty of the
Earthly Scheme. These words--the precious evidence of purifying
solitude, the only words that have been spoken in the House of Silence,
come faintly on the prison air: “Ye ---- ----!”
ORDER
XIV
ORDER
Coming from where they cooked their food, we passed down a passage. The
old warder in the dark blue uniform and a cap whose peak hung over his
level iron-grey eyebrows, stopped.
“This,” he said, “is the jewel room;” and, taking a key that hung below
his belt, he opened an iron door. A convict with a yellow face, in
yellow clothing marked with arrows, and in his yellow hand a piece of
yellow leather, darted a look at us, dropped his glance, and with a
dreadful, silent, swift obsequiousness passed us and went out. We stood
alone amongst the jewels, that he had evidently been polishing.
“We call it the jewel room for fun,” the old warder said, and a smile,
the first of the morning, visited his face, but quickly left his eyes
again to that strange mournful look, which some eyes have in the depths
of them--a look, as if in strict attention to the outer things of life,
their owner had parted with his soul. He took one of the jewels from the
wall, and held it out. It was a light steel bangle joined by a light
steel chain to another light steel bangle.
“That’s what they wear now when it’s necessary to put them on.”
One may see in harness rooms, bits, and chains, and stirrups glisten,
but never was harness room so garnished as this little chamber. The four
walls were bright as diamonds to the very ceiling with jewels of every
kind; light and heavy bangles, long chains, short chains, thin chains,
and very thick iron chains.
“Those are old-fashioned,” said the warder; “we don’t use them now.”
“And this?”
It stood quite close, made of three very bright steel bars, joined at
the top, wide asunder at the bottom, and clamped together by cross bars
in the middle.
“That’s the triangles,” he said a little hurriedly.
“Do you flog much?”
He stared. You are lacking--he seemed to say--in delicacy.
“Very little,” he answered, “only when it’s necessary.” And unconscious
that he had proclaimed the spirit of the system that he served, the
spirit of all systems, he drew his heels together, as though saluting
discipline.
To his old figure standing there, tall, upright, and so orderly, and to
his grave and not unkindly face, it was impossible to feel aversion. But
in this little room there seemed to come and stand in line with him, and
at his back, in an ever-growing pyramid, shaped to an apex like the very
triangles themselves, the countless figures of officialdom. They stood
there, upright, and orderly, with the words: “Only when it’s necessary,”
coming from their mouths. And as one looked, one saw how chiselled in
its form, how smooth and slippery in surface, how impermeable in
structure, was that pyramid. Wedged in perfect symmetry, bound together
man to man by something common to their souls, this phalanx stood by the
force of its own shape, like dead masonry; stone on stone, each resting
on the other, solid and immovable, in terrifying stillness. And in the
eyes of all that phalanx--blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, and mournful
hazel eyes, converging on one point--there was the same look: “Stand
away, please--don’t touch the pyramid!”
Turning his back on the triangles, the old warder said again:
“Only when it’s necessary.”
“And when is it necessary?”
“The rules decide that.”
“Of course. But who makes them?”
His smile faded. “The system,” he replied.
“And do you know how the system has come about?”
He frowned--a strange question, this, to ask him!
“That,” he said with slight impatience in his voice, “is not for me to
say.” And he jerked his neck, as though continuing:
“Ask that of him behind me!”
Involuntarily I looked, but there was no one there, behind him; only the
triangles, beautifully bright. Then, with the same uncanny suddenness
there sprang up again a vision of that solid pyramid of men, and the
head of each seemed turned over his shoulder, saying:
“Ask that of him behind me.”
With a sort of eagerness I tried to see the apex of that pyramid. It was
too far away.
“We’ve got to maintain order,” he said suddenly, as though repelling a
subtle onslaught on his point of view.
“Of course; everything in this room, I suppose, is for that purpose?”
“Everything--that’s in use.”
“Ah, yes! I think you said there are some things that are not used now?”
“Those big iron chains, and these weights here--they weighted the
prisoner down with those; that’s all out of date.”
“They look rather queer and barbarous, certainly.”
He smiled.
“You may say that,” he said.
“And can you tell me how they came to be disused?”
He seemed again to check the action of turning his head round.
“No,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you that. They found they weren’t
necessary, I suppose.”
“When they were used, I take it the authorities believed in them?”
“No doubt,” he answered, “or they wouldn’t have used them.”
“They never thought that we should be looking at these things, and
calling them barbarous, like this!”
He stared at the great manacles.
“They used them,” he said, “and never thought about it, I dare say.”
“They must have considered them necessary for discipline.”
“Just that.”
“And was discipline any better then than it is now?”
“Oh, no! Worse! They had a lot more trouble with the prisoners than we
have, from what I hear.”
“If any one had told the authorities then that those heavy things did no
good they’d have laughed at him.”
He answered with a smile: “Little doubt of that.”
“I wonder whether, a few years hence, people will be standing here and
saying the same thing about those triangles, and all these other jewels,
and calling us barbarians for using them. It would be interesting to
know.”
His brows contracted: “Not likely,” he said; “you can’t do without
_them_.”
“You think it would not be possible?”
Again he seemed to check his eyes from looking round.
“No,” he repeated stolidly, “you can’t do without them.”
“It would be dangerous to try?”
He shook his close-cropped head under the peaked cap.
“I shouldn’t like to see it tried. We must keep order.”
“At the time they left off using those heavy chains, they must have
thought they ran a risk?”
He answered coldly: “I don’t know anything about that.”
“The present state of things is final, then?”