The Benefactress

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

"May I have a light of some sort?" asked Axel, "and writing materials? I absolutely must be able to——"

"You cannot expect the luxuries of a Schloss here," said the Public Prosecutor with a scowl, turning on his heel and signing to the warder to lock the door again. And he continued his rounds, congratulating himself on having demonstrated that in his independent eye the bearer of the most ancient name and the offscourings of the street, tried or untried, were equal—sinners, that is, all of them—and would receive exactly the same treatment at his hands. Indeed, he was so anxious to impress this laudable impartiality on the members of the little prison-world, which was the only world he knew, that he overshot the mark, refusing Axel small conveniences that he would have unhesitatingly granted a suppliant called Schmidt, Schultz, or Meyer.

It was now quite dark, except for the faint light from the lamps in the street below. Weary to death, Axel flung himself down on the little bed. He had brought a few necessaries, hastily thrown into a bag by his servant, necessaries that had first been carefully handled and inspected with every symptom of distrust by the Junior Public Prosecutor Meyer; but he did not unpack them. Judging from the shortness of the bed, he concluded that criminals must be a stunted race. Sleeping was not made easy by this bed, and he lay awake staring at the shadows cast by the iron bars outside his window on to the ceiling. These shadows affected him oddly. He shut his eyes, but still he saw them; he turned his head to the wall and tried not to think of them, but still he saw them. They expressed the whole misery of his situation.

He had dozed off, worn out, when a bright light on his face woke him. He started up in bed, confused, hardly remembering where he was. A feeling very nearly resembling horror came over him. A bull's-eye lantern was being held close to his face. He could see nothing but the bright light. The man holding it did not speak, and presently backed out again, bolting the door behind him. Axel lay down, reflecting that such surprises, added to anxiety and bad food, must wear out a suspected culprit's nerves with extraordinary rapidity and thoroughness. There could not, he thought, be much left of a man in the way of brains and calmness by the time he was taken before the judge to clear himself. The incident completely banished all tendency to sleep. He remained wide awake after that, tormented by anxious thoughts.

Towards dawn, for which he thanked God when it came, the silence of the prison was broken by screams. He started up again and listened, his blood frozen by the sound of them. They were terrible to hear, echoing through that place. Again a feeling of sheer horror came over him. How long would he be able to endure these things? The screams grew more and more appalling. He sprang up and went to the door, and listened there. He thought he heard steps outside, and knocked. "What is that screaming?" he cried out. But no one answered. The shrieks reached a climax of anguish, and suddenly stopped. Death-like stillness fell again upon the prison. Axel spent what was left of the night pacing up and down.

The prison day did not begin till six. Axel, used to his busy country life that got him out of his bed and on to his horse at four these fine summer mornings, heard sounds of life below in the street—early carts and voices—long before life stirred within the walls. He understood afterwards why the inmates were allowed to lie in bed so long: it was convenient for the warders. The prisoners rose at six, and went to bed again at six, in the full sunshine of those June afternoons. Thus disposed of, the warders could relax their vigilance and enjoy some hours of rest. The effect, moralising or the reverse, on the prisoners, who could by no means get themselves off to sleep at six o'clock, was of the supremest indifference to everyone concerned. Axel, not yet having been tried, and not yet therefore having been placed in the common dormitory, was not forced into bed at any particular time. He might enjoy evenings as long as those of the warders if he chose, and he might get up as early as though his horse were waiting below to take him to his hay-fields if he liked; but this privilege, without the means of employing the extra hours, was valueless. He watched anxiously for the broad daylight that would bring his lawyer and put an end to this first martyrdom of helpless waiting. Towards seven, one of the prisoners, whose good conduct had procured him promotion to cleaning the passages and doing other work of the kind, brought him another loaf of bread and a pot of coffee. From this young man, a white-faced, artful-looking youth, with closely-cropped hair and wearing the coarse, brown prison dress, Axel heard that the ghastly screams in the night came from a prisoner who had delirium tremens; he had been put in the cellar to get over the attack; he could scream as loud as he liked there, and no one would hear him; they always put him in the cellar when the attacks came on. The young man grinned. Evidently he thought the arrangement both good and funny.

"Poor wretch," said Axel, profoundly pitying those other wretched human beings, his fellow-prisoners.

"Oh, he is very happy there. He plays all day long at catching the rats."

"The rats?"

"They say there are no rats—that he only thinks he sees them. But whether the rats are real or not it amuses him trying to catch them. When he is quiet again, he is brought back to us."