Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

"Gardiner, my poor, poor fellow! what is it? what's wrong?"

"I can't stand it, I can't stand it." The words came in a rushing murmur, barely intelligible in their ebb and flow. "Get me out, Scott! oh, get me out! Say it's killing me. Say it's driving me mad—it is. Say anything, only get me out. You will, won't you? Oh, God bless you! I knew you would." He raised for a moment his haggard and exhausted face, and crawled a little closer. "Not to be let off altogether. I don't ask that. Just long enough to get across and back again—I'd give my parole, and serve double time afterwards, to make up. A month would do it. It's as easy as winking. I pass anywhere as a Spaniard, and with a forged passport—Ribeira would lend me his, I know—why, I could do it in a fortnight, less! Oh, get me out, Scott; you can't keep me here, you can't, you can't! For the love of Christ, get me out somehow!"

He lay panting in heavy gasps, like a dying animal. Scott's heart sank down, down; how could he tell this frantic creature that what he asked was impossible? Get him out!—he had already strained his influence to the uttermost for B14; he could hear Captain Harding's sarcastic little laugh: "Your pet patient again, doctor?" Laws are not to be bent because prisoners suffer. He could not quite make out what it was all about, or why Gardiner should be so desperately anxious to get over to Belgium; something to do with his property, he supposed; yet this did not seem like a question of property. Meanwhile the prisoner was off again on a fresh stream of supplications, this time in a murmur so low, so wild and incoherent, that Scott had to bend right down to his lips. What in heaven's name was he raving about now?

"If it had been anything but this, anything else on earth but this; you can't keep a man here looking on at this; eyes weren't given you for this. Because it's not nightmare, you know, it's fact; they do do it; there were those stories Denis used to tell of 1870 ... and you heard Roche yourself ... all night long, all night long ... given to the soldiery and bayoneted ... perhaps its happening now, this instant, and I here, oh, my God, my God, my God, my God!—and if you'd only let me free, I know I could have saved her!"

He broke down suddenly into the most frightful sobbing. "Gardiner! Stop it!" the doctor's voice rang out. The prisoner quivered and cowered under the word of command; his voice went up in a sort of hysterical crow, and stopped, dead. He lay like a log. Scott tried to speak again, and found his throat dry. So that was it! There were things in this war which had tried even his faith. Neither wounds, nor death—secure of eternity, he could afford to disregard the sufferings of this span-long life—but the fate of the women. It did not seem right, he could not reconcile it with his idea of the divine justice, that evil men should be allowed to stain the soul. What was he to say now to Gardiner? Platitudes? He had nothing else to offer. He was helpless—and at that word faith sprang up to claim the aid of omnipotence. He had known the love of God all those years; could he not trust Him to do what He would with His own?

He turned to the prisoner.

"I can't let you out, Gardiner," he said sadly, giving him the truth because he had no choice. "I'll do what I can, but I know it won't be any good. Here you are and here you'll have to stay for the next four months, and if what you are afraid of happens it will have to happen, and you will have to bear it. God is the judge. Only it's up to you to choose how you'll bear it: whether you'll give in, as you're doing now, or whether you'll stand up like a man and fight it out. If you can't save your friends, you may be able to avenge them—"

As he spoke his eye fell on Gardiner's hand, and the words died on his lips. Those contracted fingers would never hold a rifle. Scott felt sick. He got up from his knees.

"Will I light the gas, sir?" asked Mackenzie's business-like tones.

Scott assented mechanically, feeling for his clinical; but when the light sprang out he had to take himself in hand and fairly force himself to work, against the most intense reluctance he had ever felt in his life. Gardiner stirred not; he had to prize open his teeth before he could insert the thermometer. A gleam of white showed under the eyelids. When Scott felt his pulse, the hand fell back inert.