"Denis darling, this is God. I tried to steal you away from Him, but He won't let me have you. I knew all the time how wrong it was. It has all been my fault. I am going where I can pray for you and pray to be forgiven. Oh! don't be angry with me, and don't let her be angry with me. I have been very wicked, but I did love you so.
"Evey."
The decorous Morris, who read this note (for of course Mrs. Byrne had omitted to seal it), got little by his scrutiny. The visitor did not stamp, nor swear, nor turn red, nor pale; he read through his dismissal with a very singular expression of gravity, turned away, came back absently to slip a tip into the man's hand, and finally strode off down the drive, carrying his handsome head, as poor Camille said of his enemy, like the saint sacrament, his dark blue Irish eyes fixed on far distant horizons.
CHAPTER XXIV THE FIRST ROUND
Better is he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.—Proverbs.
Seven years of prison doctoring had not blunted the first fine temper of Leonard Scott's sympathy. Doctors in general, even in ordinary practice, have to harden themselves or break down; Scott stuck to his work year after year, and yet contrived to remain as tender-hearted as a novice at his first death-bed. He was steeped in that fount of love and strength, romance and poetry, known as the Catholic faith. Not the Roman Catholic faith, be it observed. Nothing annoyed him more than to be called a papist—except to be called a Protestant.
He was a dreamer, a saint, a mystic, this dapper little man with the snappy manner and the aggressively white linen; a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, whose ports of pearl and streets of shining gold were more real to him than the walls of Westby Jail. Saints and martyrs crowded heaven to applaud his progress; warrior angels fought at his right hand; Christ himself stooped to him in the mystery of the Eucharist. In this faith he was able to go on working hopefully at his hopeless task—for what, after all, was the use of patching up these wretched bodies which in a few weeks must go back to the dirt and the vices that had bred their disease? Leonard Scott thought it was a great deal of use; he loved his criminals. The sociologist would have seen Westby Jail as a garbage heap meet for the furnace; the Christian idealist went about joyfully picking up pearls.
But a faith which removes mountains may fail to console the man who has to appear in knickerbockers at a dinner-party; and this child of heaven was made very uncomfortable by the addition of Gardiner to his happy family of jail-birds. He hated attending as prison doctor on the man whom his evidence had helped to convict, and he did not like Gardiner himself. He thought him flippant, a quality which arises punctually to answer expectation. Since he did not like him, he felt he ought to cultivate him; your man of conscience always feels his duty to be the thing he doesn't want to do. In this case, however, Scott fell short of his duty. He carefully avoided Gardiner, and was rather annoyed to find that Gardiner seemed equally anxious to avoid him. Never did he bother his doctor for pills and potions. Yet Scott, who kept an uneasy eye upon his embarrassing patient, could see that prison life was not agreeing with his health.
One day he overheard two warders comparing notes about B14. He had been getting into hot water; he had smashed everything in his cell, and finished up by smashing a warder. "My word! he did give us ginger. You never see anything like it!" said Warder Barnes, with a touch of surprised admiration. "It's what I always 'ave said—them quiet, eddicated ones gives twice as much trouble as the others when they do give trouble," assented Warder Mason. B14 was now in the punishment cells on a chastening diet of bread and water. Scott felt more than ever that he ought to find some pretext for seeing him, but he didn't do so.