Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

Going back to prison after his trial seemed to Gardiner like entering the black mouth of a tunnel. There were the unescapable walls on either side, and the weight of a mountain overhead, the horror of panic pressing up behind, and the interminable stretch of black blank darkness through which he must grope before he could hope to see, far off, the first faint whiteness of deliverance. Yet the first days were not so bad as he had expected. Some of the outer light lingered on for a time; Lettice's face—she had not looked at him while giving her evidence, but at the end, just as she was leaving the box, she had turned deliberately and smiled at him across the court. That look went with him far into the darkness. It was the nights that were the worst. There were moments, then, when he had to hold off panic by the throat. But he was carefully prudent; he worked with all his might during the eight hours he was at work, and studied with all his might during the sixteen he spent in his cell. That was his last charge to his brother: "You send along some books to the prison library. Grammars and texts—I want to learn Flemish and Dutch, and I could do with some Portugoosh as well. I'm getting a bit rusty, and they all come in handy." On these terms he found himself actually better off as a convicted criminal than he had been as a prisoner on remand. Regular work and exercise were by no means a bad exchange, even for the high privileges of wearing his own clothes and paying for his own dinner.

March came in with balmy days of relaxing sweetness. The sun at dawn stole into his cell through the ground glass of his window; and by standing on his stool, with his nose pressed as close to the ventilator as it would go, he could even at times smell violets. Persistent little friendly flowers, they had found their way into the prison yard and niched themselves between the stones of the wall; and in March every tiny seedling was a knot of blue.

"When the moon their hollows lights,

And they are filled with balms of spring,

And in the glens, on starry nights,

The nightingales divinely sing—

Ah! then a longing like despair

Is to their inmost caverns sent."

Gardiner had lived all his life too close to nature to escape the call of the spring. If his work had been out of doors, in the garden or the farm, he might have come through better; but he was in the printing room; always hot and stuffy with glue, and his exercise was limited to the five minutes' walk to and fro. He lost his sleep, and in the long vigils he was tormented by visions of Rochehaut. He saw the great solemn autumnal hills, sallow in the moonlight, the leafless woods, the white crags matted with ivy and with the rusty growth of ferns, the Semois in flood, chrome-yellow, surging from side to side of her naked valley. He remembered the large cool rooms of his home, the green light filtering through the jalousies, the white cloth blowing round the legs of the little table under the pines where he took his meals, the sound and smell of the coffee machine, the summer apples which he gathered in the orchard, "faintly red even beneath the crimson skin." Like many southerners, Gardiner lived very largely on fruit; and one of the minor trials of his prison life was the prison diet, where fruit and vegetables are not. Most prisoners suffer from this; he suffered more than most, and could less afford the steady lowering of his health.

It happened one day, owing to some alterations, that Gardiner had to change his cell, and was put into the older part of the prison. His new quarters were so dark that the occupant was regularly allowed a light in the daytime. The warder in charge was too busy to see to it at the moment; next day he promised to do so, but forgot, the prisoner meanwhile being left to twiddle his thumbs during the sixteen empty hours he spent each day in his cell. When, for the third time, he put forward his submissive request, Warder Thomson, a surly fellow, happened to be out of temper, and told him curtly not to bother. To his amazement the well-conducted B14 flew at him like a fury. He slipped out just in time, and blew his whistle for help. B14 meanwhile amused himself by smashing everything smashable in his cell; he kicked his tins into cocked hats, he rent his bed-clothes to ribbons, he tore his books out of their bindings and strewed them about the floor. It was a glorious smash, and it was followed by an even more glorious fight; for directly the door opened he flew again upon the offending Warder Thomson with the leg of his dismembered stool, and succeeded in breaking his head and knocking out two of his teeth, before he in his turn was "coshed" by an assistant, and finally brought to earth. For the space of ten exciting minutes Gardiner enjoyed himself.