Raise a chapel with forms in rows Under the competent warders' eyes,
That day and night search out men's privacies.
God is too soft, but a warder knows
How to deal with the prisoners who kneel in rows.
Here shall you starve and shame and break,
Warming the cells and weighing the food,
And drawing up rules for the inmates' good;
Build in their souls with the rules you make;
Heap up the stones on the lives you break.
The Prison.
August, 1914, on the Semois.
 
How hot it was! The white walls of the farm, its squat white tower, its steep roofs of ink-blue slate, all stood out, crude as the painted scenery of a diorama, against the solid azure of the sky. It had been a fort, this farm, in the days when Belgium was the cockpit of Europe; but now golden straws protruded from the loopholes, and sparrows were flying out and in. The garden had its roses, the lattices their geraniums, and on the sill a sandy cat was curled up in a ball with her head tucked under, exposing a white furry throat to the sun. The tower had its fringe of chicory and trailing pink convolvulus. From it the meadow fell away, spongy and mossy-green, to a brook which tinkled in silver cascades down a crease between the hills. Beyond the stream the ground rose steeply, a stubble field flaxen in the sunshine, with its line of boundary elms and its peaceful scattered sheaves; on the sky-line a ragged little fir wood raised its head, dark spires against the blue. To the right the brook sank away, twisting round a corner out of sight, and the hills closed in, steep and wooded, upon this little nest of peace.
 
[Pg 224]
 
And yet—was it so peaceful? Look to the left. As elsewhere it fell away, so here the harvest field swelled up in a lint-white line, firm and pure, the edge of the visible world. In the pale turquoise above that line hung a cloud, a discoloration, spreading like an ink-drop in clear water. Where that cloud now hung, yesterday the village of Rochehaut had stood. Contented, squalid little place with its steaming middens, its perambulating pigs, its church squatting like a little white-and-gray cat beside its miry place! Or look across at the opposite hill. Above the firs another drift of smoke was diffusing in the radiant air. That was the direction of the Bellevue, the big new hotel which Madame Hasquin of the farm supplied with milk and eggs. Or look at the farm itself. The fowls were clucking and scratching in the yard, the cows were lowing at the gate, but Monsieur Hasquin did not come to drive them in to the milking, nor did little Denise bring her sieve full of golden peas for her pet fantails. The place was still and peaceful; but it was the stillness and the peace of death.
 
There are no daily papers in a prison, and no news from the outside world is supposed to reach the inmates. It filters in, nevertheless. Gardiner first heard of the falling of the great shadow from a laborer who had got six weeks at the Summer Assizes for beating his wife to a jelly. Out of his cups he was an amiable soul, ready to make friends with anybody; and Gardiner, who put on no airs, was ready to respond.
 
On leaving hospital, B14 had been put to work in the garden. His hand had still to be dressed every day, but by the doctor's orders he was sent into the open air to do such jobs as he could. One summer afternoon he was weeding the paths, and West, the wife-beater, was digging potatoes in the adjoining plot. Gardiner divined by his important looks that he had something to say, and contrived to linger long enough for West to catch him up.
 
"I say, matey," the wife-beater began, in that lip-whisper[Pg 225] by which prisoners communicate under the very noses of their guards, "'ave you heard there's a war on?"
 
"No! you don't say so! Who with? Mrs. Pankhurst?"
 
"It's Gawd's truth I'm telling—"
 
"Gammon! Somebody's been kiddin' you."
 
"Swelp me, they ain't then. I 'eard Old Ikey talkin' about it to Billy Blood."
 
Billy Blood was Warder Thomson, so named since Gardiner had knocked out his teeth; Old Ikey was Warder Barnes. His name happened to be Ian, but the initial was enough for the wit of the prison.
 
"Well, who are we fighting, anyway? Did you hear that?"
 
At this moment West discovered that Warder Thomson's eye was upon him, and he sheered off to the end of his row. It was some time before, cautiously regulating their progress, they managed to come together again. West discharged his whisper without preface.
 
"It's Rooshia," he announced. "Rooshia and France."
 
"Not so bad for a beginning. Who else?"
 
"Well, they did say somethin' about Injer—"
 
"Great uprising of the native races. End of the British Raj," said Gardiner with levity. "Let 'em all come! We're in for a giddy time, I don't think. What price the British army now?"
 
"Oh, of course if you ain't goin' to believe me—"
 
West had incautiously raised his voice, and authority was down on him in a moment—or rather on his companion. "Now then, B14, none o' that! Idlin' and mutterin'! I suppose you think this is a rest cure. You get on with your job, and put some beef into it, or I'll report you." And for the next ten minutes, till the "cease work" bell, while West dug potatoes diligently under the apple-trees, Billy Blood stood over B14 and counted every weed that dropped into his basket. Gardiner could have laughed in his face. For such petty pin-pricks as Warder Thomson's he cared—not a pin-prick. As Lettice had said, where he was not abnormally sensitive he was wholesomely callous.
 
[Pg 226]
 
He got no further chance of speaking to the amiable wife-beater, but that did not trouble him. Some cock-and-bull story the fellow had got hold of—he was crassly ignorant, and stupid as a hog. That evening, however, he had a visit from the chaplain. The elderly gentleman who had fallen a victim to Mr. Gardiner, and whom Mr. Gardiner's son commonly alluded to as "the old foozle," had resigned, and been succeeded by a new man of very different kidney. The Rev. and Hon. Noel Dalrymple-Roche was not more than thirty, very big, very massive, with ashen-fair hair, a regular profile, and a cold blue eye. He had been a Cambridge rowing Blue and sixth Wrangler; and to these mixed accomplishments he added a third—he possessed enough driving force to command an army corps. A misfit in his profession, thought Gardiner, summing him up with an amused eye the first time he read the service; and a double misfit as prison chaplain.
 
It was his first visit to Gardiner. He came in alone—the chaplain has that privilege. The prisoner was standing under the window, slanting his book to catch the feeble light.
 
"Reading?" asked Roche, stretching out his hand for the volume.
 
"Yes, sir. I'm very fond of a good book." Gardiner, ever imitative, had adapted his language to his surroundings. He could not, however, thus adapt his book, a small blue volume of the Colección Espa?ola Nelson. Roche raised his eyebrows.
 
"Can you read this?"
 
"Pretty well. One gets to pick up something of a good many languages, knocking about the world."
 
"You come from Chatham, don't you? A sailor, I suppose?"
 
"Ship's cook."
 
"What a pity it is you sailors can't keep off the drink," said the chaplain, closing the book and laying it down. "Why don't you sign the pledge? An intelligent young fellow like you—you ought not to be here."
 
Gardiner stared; then he laughed. "I think you've got[Pg 227] hold of the wrong pig this time, sir. I'm not a drunk and dis."
 
"You're in for beating your wife, aren't you? I hope you're not going to tell me you did that when you were sober."
 
"'Have you left off beating your wife?'" murmured Gardiner with irrepressible levity. "Neither drunk nor sober, sir. Couldn't, not possessing one. That's my next-door neighbor—West, B15. I'm B14—Gardiner."
 
Mr. Roche was not at all disconcerted. "Gardiner?" he repeated, consulting his notebook. "Oh ah; I must have mistaken the number. Gardiner. Yes, I remember about you." He looked him over with his cool eye. There was a shade of difference in his manner. B14 did not stand on a par with B15. Mr. Roche was very decidedly not a democrat. "And how much longer have you to serve?"
 
"Four months."
 
Roche's eyes continued to dwell on him with an expression that the prisoner could not read; it was speculative and appraising, and seemed to refer back to private thoughts which had nothing to do with the present. "You've never been a Territorial?" he asked unexpectedly.
 
"No," said Gardiner, a little surprised.
 
"Ah! Well, I'll see you again some other day, Gardiner. At present I must go and pay my call next door."
 
"Thank you, sir," said Gardiner dutifully. He bethought himself to add, as Roche got up: "It's not true, sir, is it, that there's a war scare on?"
 
"Who told you anything about it?"
 
"I heard something—of course, sir, we do talk among ourselves to a certain extent, can't help it. I know you're not supposed to tell us news, but I thought in a case like this perhaps you might stretch a point. Is there a row in Ireland or what?"
 
"There is no scare, and no row in Ireland," said Roche. His manner had often a touch of rhetoric. "There is Armageddon. Germany and Austria are attacking Russia, France, and ourselves."
 
[Pg 228]
 
"My hat!" said Gardiner. He straightened up; his face lighted, his eye sparkled. "Oh, my hat! What wouldn't I give to be in the army!"
 
"You won't be the first to say that to-day," said Roche; "but if you were in the army you might not be alive to congratulate yourself on the fact to-morrow. The Germans have occupied Luxemburg, they are sweeping across Belgium; soon, I expect, they will be in Paris, and then it will be our turn. And God knows—Steady, man! What are you doing?"
 
Gardiner was clutching his arm. "Belgium?" he gasped. "But they're neutral!"
 
"Germany announces that she is not to be bound by scraps of paper."
 
Gardiner sat down on his stool and took his head in his hands. Roche had heard a part of his story; not enough to explain his emotion. He laid his hand on the prisoner's shoulder. "You wish you were free to go and help?" he said, his deep musical voice vibrating. "Poor fellow, so do I—so do I."
 
One queer by-product of the war was the general eagerness to bear one another's burdens, the Christmas Carol atmosphere of good temper and good-will. In prison this feeling worked a miracle; it drew together prisoners and warders. The day's news was whispered without rebuke under the very noses of the guardians of silence; sometimes they even whispered it themselves. Roche went boldly to the governor (he did not lack courage, that young man; he had already half-a-dozen quarrels on his hands, including one with Leonard Scott about vestments), and by special permission started his Sunday service each week with a summary of news. There was not much to tell in that first month. On the 6th The Times gravely stated that mobilization could not be completed till the 16th; on the 18th came the announcement that the whole Expeditionary Force was already across the water. Liège was making its [Pg 229]gallant defense; the Russians were pouring into East Prussia; there was a battle near Dinant in which the French were victorious. Next, the evening papers of the 24th baldly announced the fall of Namur. Heart-shaking news. It shook England; it was then that the recruits began to pour in, thirty thousand a day, so that the height limit had to be raised to check the flow. All these things Roche reported to a congregation which hung upon his lips.
 
He did not at first report, because he did not believe, the rumors of atrocities at Visé and elsewhere which were current in those early days. Few responsible men did take account of such fantastic nightmares. They were whispered in the prison nevertheless. But there came a Sunday in September when Roche, making a little pause after his summary, began again, gravely: "It is stated, and I believe it to be true, that the German army in Belgium is committing, by order and in cold blood, the foulest abominations. The old university town of Louvain and its splendid library have been burned to the ground and the inhabitants massacred. The same sort of thing is reported from other towns and villages. The men—peaceable working men—are driven out in batches and shot. The women are given to the soldiery and then bayoneted. Children have been shot, stabbed, mutilated, crucified. In the little town of Dinant—"
 
There was a slight disturbance. A prisoner in one of the back rows struggled to his feet and called out something; a couple of warders popped instantly out of their sentry-boxes and hustled him away. The chapel door closed upon them; Mr. Roche continued his address. The only person who recognized the brawler, and saw the significance of the incident, was Dr. Scott; and even he, though he had heard of the Bellevue, had never heard of Lettice Smith.
 
"Is the doctor within, mistress?"
 
"What d'ye want him for?"
 
"I would like a word with him."
............