He walked out and threw open the door to the police.
CHAPTER XIX DU PARTI DU GRAND AIR
The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.—Book of Job.
Ten days later, after his examination before the Borough Bench at Westby, Gardiner was committed to the February Assizes on a charge of manslaughter. Bail not being allowed, he spent the intervening months in Westby Jail.
Lettice, in common with the rest of the world who haven't been to prison, knew nothing of the rules and regulations applying to a prisoner on remand. She did know, however, that in English law a man is held to be innocent until he has been found guilty; and she took for granted that any one so detained would be treated in a liberal way, and allowed every possible privilege of the free man except freedom. Accordingly, she wrote to Gardiner at Westby, and, getting no reply, wrote again. This time an answer came through:
My dear Miss Smith,—Your letters to me and mine to you are all read by the governor of this home of joy. In the circumstances I would rather do without. Yours very truly,
H. C. Gardiner.
Lettice did not love injustice. It made her blood boil. She was angrier than Gardiner himself. She understood the feeling which made him refuse her letters. It was not a mere cutting off his nose to spite his face; it was a real idiosyncrasy of taste, akin to that which spoiled for him the "set piece" loveliness of Frahan. What he disliked there was not the bodily presence of the tourists—he would have felt just the same under the midwinter moon—but the taint left by their eyes, which spread a film of defilement over the whole lovely scene. Even so the Governor's eyes deflowered and defiled her letters. Absurd and fanciful, no doubt; but it was just those streaks of the fantastic that made him attractive to Lettice.
She could not get him out of her head. What must it be for him, with his anchorite ways, to be under supervision, day and night, through the accursed little spy-hole in the door of his cell? Lettice knew all about that spy-hole now. Since receiving his letter she had read every book about prisons that the Museum could supply. Turning over, sifting, arranging her deductions, she had reached a fairly correct estimate of his state of mind.