[II]
To Prison while the Sun Shines
Once, when I went to Holloway Gaol to visit a friend who had been sent there by a puzzled Government, the wardress who led me across the echoing stone yard was inspired to make a little pleasant conversation.
"It's pretty here in summer," she remarked sombrely.
At the time it was natural, perhaps, to credit her with a grim sense of humour; but a morning spent not long afterwards in a London police court suggested another explanation. You cannot sit in a police court and watch while men and women pass out into captivity, without realizing how many there are of us who go through the world snatching desperately at the air for some of the colour of life. I think my wardress-guide would scarcely have burst out with her involuntary remark had not some one come in from the outside to remind her that she lived in a grey semblance of a world, full of people who had tried to take a short cut to happiness and managed to get lost on the way. It was her instinctive human defence of a system that thinks to cure a desire for sunshine by shutting it out.
All the people I saw convicted in the police court that morning went to prison while the sun shone; for it was one of those irrepressible summer days that even London smoke cannot succeed in dimming. The brilliance of it had touched the official soul of the constable who guarded the door; and the little crowd on the pavement, clamouring with or without justification for admittance, was at least being handled with wit and good humour.
"Only those under remand, if you please!" remonstrated the doorkeeper politely, placing on one side the little woman who was waving a visiting-card at him. "Press, did you say, madam? Pressing to get in, I should call it, wouldn't you? Well, well, I can't say what might happen presently if you care to wait on the chance. Those under remand only. Yes, yes, to be sure! If you were let out on bail the previous evening, you're under remand; but you're not a prisoner yet, or you wouldn't be out here, would you now? Pass inside, please. The other lady is your mother? Some of you ladies can show a lot of mothers to-day, it seems to me. Right along the footway, ladies, if you please. Those under remand only!"
A man with a blue paper in his hand made a path with some difficulty through the crowd of waiting women who continued to throng the pavement with courageous patience. He was admitted without question, but wore the air of a man who felt that his natural prerogative as a frequenter of police courts was being infringed. Certainly the constable who guarded the door took far less interest in him than in the ladies on remand; and he was received without any wit at all. After him came the gentlemen of the press, who were also passed in without comment; and seeing this, the lady with the visiting-card resumed her plea.
"Oh, come along," said the indulgent constable; and she found herself at last inside, confronted by more constables and an inspector. They were all smiling. She dived in her bag for credentials, but was instantly waved aside with fresh humour.