Convict B 14: A Novel

by R. K. Weekes

"Gardiner—I'm sorry! Perhaps after all, if a competent surgeon sees your hand, instead of that wretched little sawbones—"

"Oh, that's all right, I shall get my whack by and by, even if I can't go into the trenches. Which reminds me: you won't forget to put through that little bit of business I asked you about, will you? (There's old Busy Bee locking up for the night, you'll have to clear out in two twos.) Just a word of introduction to Lord Ronayne, that's all I want. You see a criminal just out of jail does need some sort of sponsor." Gardiner's grin was quite free from bitterness.

"I won't forget," said Roche hurriedly, "I hadn't forgotten. I can answer for my father. Good-by, Gardiner—God bless you!"

Again he wrung the prisoner's hand, and again left him laughing and swearing and shaking his fingers—a characteristic farewell.

Chim-chime. Chim-chime. Chim-chime. A quarter to five. St. Agnes' clock was striking as Roche came out into the lilac and gold of the October sunset, which lightened and broadened down the clean deserted streets, and glittered like tongues of fire in all the western windows. The trees in the square were brilliant, gold lace over iron filigree. Beyond them three tall chimneys stood, slender, black, and tapering against the cornflower-blue of distant hills. A train, just arrived in the station, was veiling itself in snowy mist, sun-smitten; and as Roche turned into the High Street St. Agnes' bells began to play The King of Love, merry and clear, a sweet little rocking tune in triplets. How bright the town was, and how peaceful in its Sunday rest! Not a soul was about, except the half-dozen travelers from the train; one of these, a tall man in the then unfamiliar uniform of the Royal Flying Corps, stopped to ask Roche the way to the prison.

In B14's cell it was already night. There was no sunshine here, not even light enough for him to throw his shoe at the blackbeetle which had crawled up the hot-water pipes, and was running about on the concrete floor. Gardiner lay on his back, hands clasped behind his head, staring at the gray oblong of his window, and wondering how he was going to get through the thirteen hours of darkness. He was not laughing now. He would have given twenty pounds for a candle and a book to read, fifty for a cigarette—he might as well have offered to buy the moon.

In the padded cell he had touched bottom; nothing could ever be so bad again as the days before that night, in their agony of impotence, or the night itself, in its agony of despair. Prison—it was a tedious business, no doubt, but what of that? He could only wonder why he had ever made a fuss about such a trifle. He had grappled with his bogy, and behold it turned out to be only a turnip-lantern ghost after all. Difficulties, once surmounted, have a way of sinking back and effacing themselves in the past; absorbed in a greater trouble, Gardiner did not realize that he had at last fought and won the battle, long impending, which made him master of himself.

He did believe, from the first he had never doubted, that Lettice was dead. Wandesforde's message, which he faithfully delivered in person, had not shaken that conviction. It had only made him feel that Denis was dead too. Yes, they were both gone; but Gardiner no longer held himself responsible. That dreadful crazy feeling of guilt, which his sanity, half insane, had used to save him from himself, had passed with the crisis it provoked. He had not killed her; yet she was dead, and he missed her more instead of less every day; every day he came upon fresh tracts of his mind marked broad with her mark, and saw with dismay the widening scope of his loss. But no one knew of it, and no one was going to know, through him. "Not that anybody would be particularly interested," he reflected. "My dear daddy—he would, bless his heart, but he'll never see, and I shall never tell him; he'd get the shock of his life to think I was old enough to want to get married. Married! Oh, my Lord, I wish I had married her; I could have stood it better now if I'd ever had one ounce of satisfaction.... And besides daddy, who else? Tom? Roche? I don't think!" He laughed. "Little Scott, then—he'd be all agog, but he isn't going to have the chance, confound him! I wish old Denis were here. I could have talked to him. He would have understood. He knew me pretty well, did Denis, after all these years. I wonder how I'm going to get on without him. 'Their soul was much discouraged because of the way.' Hard going: that's what I'm to expect, I suppose, for the rest of my wanderings in this wilderness.... There was a lot of likeness between them at bottom. I expect that's why I feel as though I'd known her all my life and before I was born—I did know her, in him. But he would always try to hide his dear old head in a bag whenever I did anything to upset his little feelings, and she never did. Not she! She'd go picking her way with her little lamp round all your dark corners, inexorably showing you every cobweb and every speck of dust that her highness didn't approve, and all without a word spoken, just by the poise of that darling little head of hers and those inimitable hazel eyes—hazel? No, b' Jove! What was it she used to say? 'Weak Bovril, with little bits of carrot floating about'—oh, Lettice, Lettice! oh, why the devil did I let myself begin on this?"

He flung his arm across his eyes, as if he would have hidden his trouble even from himself. Blind instinct had first dragged him to Lettice, a straw in the current; he felt he needed her long before he knew he loved her. But love, and even passion, had come since, flooding in by back ways, filling him to the brim. He was tormented by his lost opportunities. "When I had her to myself there in Rochehaut, why didn't I make her marry me? She'd have done it if I'd put the screw on; you can get pretty well anything out of Lettice if she's only sorry enough for you. Or here in prison, why couldn't I have put my arm round that little waist of hers and taken a kiss? What would she have done if I had? Would she have had the impertinence to ruffle up all her pretty feathers and make believe to be affronted? Or could I have got right down through all her defenses to the very heart of her, and made her drop her lashes, and color, and—acknowledge me? I'd give my eyes to know, and I never shall, never. She had more reticences and reserves and evasions than any human being I have ever met. She was as delicate as the bloom on a butterfly. Angelita de mi corazón, I would have respected your little fads; you should have kept your fenced garden and your fountain sealed. I could have held your life in my hand and never closed my fingers on it—yes, I could; even that. I was your very true lover. I wonder, was it a bayonet—"

To this precipice Gardiner always came, sooner or later. We talk of unimaginable horrors; there were none he had not imagined. How do men live, with thoughts like these? God knows.