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[Pg 162] 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.
Denis she had not seen since they parted at Rochehaut. Using a sort of defensive frankness, he had told her by letter about Dorothea's sojourn at Bredon, which he could do quite naturally without touching on their personal relations. Lettice tried to read between the lines, but Denis in those months had traveled too far for her to follow, at least on paper. He had of course attended to give evidence before the Borough Bench; he had seen Gardiner then, and once since. "I wish the confounded place weren't at the other end of the earth," he wrote. "I can't possibly get up there again at present, it's not fair on Wandesforde; he wants the seaplane finished for the Olympia show, and it'll take me every minute of my time. Mr. Gardiner was up in November, but now I hear he's sick; and Tom, the brother, is stationed at Queenstown, so he's no good. Which means that Harry's seen no one for a month. I don't like it. It's too long. I'm rather badly worried about him." And, as an afterthought, written across the top: "Why don't you run down there yourself? I wish you would."
That letter came to Lettice on a day of December fog, which had found its way into the Museum. Overhead in a smelly haze the arc lamps waxed and dwindled, milky moons, each with its pin-point core of white incandescence; and on all sides tremendous sneezes went resounding like minute guns round the dome. Any regular attendant of the[Pg 163] reading-room may become a connoisseur in sneezes. Lettice herself sneezed at times, a minute one-syllable explosion like a kitten's. She was always a slow worker, slow but accurate; to-day her pen moved more deliberately than ever. Then it stopped and she sat immobile, staring at nothing.... Explicit: she got up: within five minutes she had returned her books, retrieved her umbrella from the cloak-room, and was out in the street. She caught the midnight express from Euston, and reached Westby at eight the next morning.
Visitors were not admitted to the prison until ten. Lettice spent her time of waiting in a church near by. When the hour struck she was at the gates, which were set, huge and gloomy, under an arch in the outer wall. No one else was waiting. Lettice tugged at the bell chain. A slip door in the carriage gate was opened by a porter, to whom she stated her errand. She was handed over to a warder, who led her across a court laid out in grass and flower-beds to the second gate, in a wall thirty feet high. Beyond this was a vestibule closed by an iron grille—the third gate; beyond, again, the central hall of the prison.
Wards radiated from it in all directions like the spokes of a wheel; each a long rectangle lined with cells, tier above tier, regular as a honeycomb, all the way up to the roof. Across the central well a light iron staircase zigzagged from story to story. The walls were gray, the woodwork tan-brown, the floor of concrete: all was clean, commonplace, tragic. At each landing a stout wire-netting inclosed the staircase. Lettice's guide pointed it out. "See that, miss? That's to prevent 'em throwing themselves over. They will do it, if you give 'em the chance. We'd a man here last year as threw himself down from that top landing up there. Cracked his skull he did, and cracked the paving-stone too, that's more! He was in hospital for a bit, but he got over it, and took his discharge; and if you'll believe me, miss, six months after we'd got him back for something else."
The remand cells were not in this part of the prison. Lettice was taken to a waiting-room to get the necessary[Pg 164] permit, and then led on through many corridors. She caught glimpses of cells as she passed, and saw prisoners, in their ugly drab uniforms, sweeping and scrubbing the floors. They stared at her with avid, furtive curiosity which made her feel half ashamed of her freedom. She saw Gardiner in those debased figures, cringing out of the way at the officer's curt word of command. "Here you are, miss!" said he at last, briskly unlocking one of those innumerable doors: and Lettice passed in.
She saw a cell like any of the others and a figure sitting under the window reading. The book went down on the floor, anyhow and anywhere, as he started to his feet.
"Lettice!"
Till that moment Lettice had been doubtful of her mission; after it she doubted no more. She stood, letting him hold her hands; she did not speak; she could not have found words, if she had tried, for the contraction of her throat. Gardiner was clutching her like a drowning man. Dim shades of feeling passed across his face, like wind over a corn-field. He was yellow as a lemon and bony as a castaway, but the worst was to see him so near to losing control. For a moment Lettice was afraid he would break down altogether. But with a mighty effort he pulled round, released her hands and began to talk almost in a natural way.
"Well, this is most fearfully noble of you! How in the world did you find your way here? You surely didn't come up on purpose?"
"I thought I would like to see what a prison is like," explained Lettice in her delicate, deliberate way. She sat down on the chair he offered and looked round his domain. Gardiner rented a "private room" about eight feet square, lighted by a strip of ground glass, which was set immediately under the ceiling, well out of reach. An iron spring bedstead was reared against the wall. The mattress and striped blanket, neatly buttoned into a roll, were stowed under a bracket in the corner. This bracket held books; a second, in the corresponding corner opposite, had a tin mug and plate. The jug and basin, also of tin, stood on the floor.[Pg 165] Lettice had the only chair, and Gardiner might sit on his thumbs. There was no other furniture.
"I haven't seen a soul for months," he said, contemplating her with admiring gratitude. "Denis has been inseparably wedded to that darned aeroplane of his, and my daddy's in bed, bless his heart. You don't know how one gets to pine after somebody from outside. It's a piece of luck, too, having it to ourselves like this. I had to interview Denis in the visitors' room, under the eye of a warder. But when my daddy came to see me he raked up such an appalling amount of dust that ever since, as a special concession, I've been allowed to see visitors here. My daddy is rather talented at raking up a dust. I can do it, too, but not so tactfully as he does. The Governor simply loves daddy, but with me he's at daggers drawn. Are you looking at my choice of literature? Tom keeps me supplied, but it's no good sending anything but sixpennies, because I have to leave 'em all behind when I go, for the benefit of the prison library. Vingt Ans Après—jolly tale, isn't it? I always have agreed with Rochefort—je ne suis que d'un parti, c'est du parti du grand air!"
Lettice put down the book—quite quickly. "And what do you do all day?" she asked.
"What do I do? Would you like a time-table? I get up about five, have breakfast, then tidy my room. Chapel's at seven; visitors between ten and twelve; exercise between eleven and twelve, if it's fine—if it's wet I don't get any. That's about the worst part of this place. I told the Governor one day it would do me less harm to get soaked outside than to dry-rot in here, but he wouldn't see it. A rule is a rule. Silly business, what?"
"But what do you do? Don't you go out to work?"
He shook his head, laughing. "I'm still innocent. I don't mix with the convicted prisoners. I should be allowed to work at my own trade in my cell, if they had the necessary tools; but I'm afraid they're not likely to import a hotel to be run. I've sewn mail-bags from time to time, when I got very bored."
[Pg 166]
"Then do you mean to say you're in this, this, this—this horrid little hole of a place the whole day long when it's raining, and all except one hour when it isn't?"
He laughed again. "Lettice, what a first-class rebel you'd make! I never knew any one sit down more uncomfortably under what you think injustice than you do!"
To that Lettice said nothing; she never would talk about herself. "And does nobody come to see you?" she asked.
"To be sure they do. The chaplain's perseveringly chatty; he's another who fell a victim to my daddy. The doctor's been once—and that was really rather funny. You know, by a most odd coincidence, he was actually at the Easedale at the time of the row—was called to view the body and gave evidence at the inquest. Of course it's not etiquette for him to remember that now, and you may bet he doesn't! Only we look at each other with what you might call an eye. I'm not his regular patient yet, but I shall be when I'm convicted."
"You think you will be convicted?"
"Sure of it. So is my lawyer; I made him practically own it last time he was here. He wouldn't say how long I shall get, though—I suppose it's impossible to forecast. Three days, or three months, or three years, either's on the cards. It's a thoroughly sentimental case, and I've no doubt Mrs. Trent will appeal strongly to the sensibilities of the jury. But the law isn't sentimental, praise the pigs!"
"I wish you would tell me exactly what happened at Grasmere."
"Why, I did, didn't I? Trent came down spoiling for a fight, and I set out to tame his savage breast. I soon had him drinking out of my hand, and then he began to be confidential. I stood it as long as I could, Denis simmering like a kettle in the background, and then I up and shied the first thing that came to hand at his head. You read the report of the inquest, didn't you? It was all there, bar that last exchange of courtesies. I believe I called him a filthy swine."
"Why?"
[Pg 167]
"Because he was one, to be sure."
"What had he been saying?"
"Really, do you think that's a nice question for a young lady?"
"I was only thinking it might have been something inexcusably bad."
"How do you mean?"
"If he had been talking about Mrs. Trent."
She took Gardiner's breath away. "Well, you certainly have an imagination!" he said. "Don't go making suggestions of that kind to any one else, I beg!"
"It would have meant your getting off."
"It would have been the deuce and all for Mrs. Trent."
To that again Lettice answered nothing, but her under lip hardened slightly. She glanced at her watch. Five minutes more. Looking up, she met Gardiner's eyes fixed on her in urgent and unmistakable appeal. For a moment Lettice quailed. She saw something very big, very grave approaching, and she wanted ignominiously to run away. In all her generous giving there was always a reserve, a barrier of privacy, the fenced garden and the fountain sealed where she walked alone. But if he wanted to come in there for sanctuary—well, he must, it was no good, she could not deny him: this was not the time to think of herself.
"Lettice," he began—and for the first time she noticed his use of her name—"Lettice, there's one thing I want to tell you. You think I was caught red-handed in the act of bolting. It wasn't so. I had made up my mind to go back and give myself up. I was just off to do it when they arrested me. And I want you to know that it was all you—what you had said in town. I couldn't go on with it after that."
"I'm glad," said Lettice.
"I'm glad too," said Gardiner, his voice shaking, "partly, at any rate. I should be altogether glad if I were sure about the future."
"The future?"
"If I'm convicted. If I get a long sentence. If I have[Pg 168] to stand much more of this—Lettice! I can't humbug you. I've told Denis a stack of lies as high as a house, of which he may or may not believe one-third. I can't let him see the truth, because it's his evidence that's going to convict me. He has enough on his shoulders without that, poor old chap. But you—I don't care how much you know. And I want your help. I'm afraid."
She looked at him, questioning.
"I'm afraid," he repeated under his breath, lower than a whisper. The perspiration started on his forehead. "I'm not like Denis, you know. He's A1 quality, sound all through—if he wanted to go wrong I believe he wouldn't know the way! But I'm different. I'm second-rate. I ought not to be, being the son of my daddy, but I haven't kept up to his standard. He doesn't see it, bless his heart; but you do, and Denis does, though he tries to blind his eyes, and even Tom—in his heart of hearts he can't help feeling that his brother is a bit of a bounder. Oh yes, I always know when I grate on people. I see my own shortcomings plainer than any of you. I'm second-rate in manners, and in morals, and in essential stuff." He looked straight at her, and though Lettice could have contradicted him, she did not; for she saw what he meant, and was not afraid to admit to herself that there was a measure of truth in his self-condemnation. "Thanks," said Gardiner, with a fleeting smile, bending his head in acknowledgment of her honesty. "That's me, and I never forget it. I wanted to put you wise before I went on to what I have to say. I can just stand this now because it's not final. I still hope to get out in February, though I may swear I don't. I daren't leave off hoping it. I'm holding on to that. But if—if it isn't—If I get a long sentence—years, perhaps—I'm afraid, Lettice. I—I—I'm afraid of myself.... So may I hold on to you? May I tell myself that I can come to you when it's over?"
"Yes," said Lettice.
Against the drag of his urgent need she stood like a rock in flood-time. It was not merely love that drew them [Pg 169]together; for lovers, even devoted lovers, may part without injury to their characters; sometimes, indeed, to their own ultimate gain. But these two could not have parted without grave loss and damage, especially to Gardiner. Yes, and to Lettice also; for he called out faculties which but for him would have slept for ever in comfortable laziness. Instinct drove them together, as two drops of water are driven to coalesce. He had her hands again in a desperate clutch; for a moment he rested his forehead on them.
"Time's up, miss," said the warder at the door.
Lettice freed herself without haste or embarrassment.
"Till February, then," said she.
"You're surely not coming up to the trial?"
"Of course I am," said Lettice.