Part 2

He looked at me as though he wished he had removed the troublesome rules. “You forget,” he said, “these aren’t ordinary times. You are under martial law now. The soldiers are the masters of us all now, so they are. I amn’t very sure that I know where I am myself. Rules don’t apply now. Nothing applies. I get my instructions from day to day. They might take you out to-morrow morning and shoot you, so they might, and nobody to save you. Isn’t the whole of the City of Dublin in ruins? I cannot give you but what I’m bid, and those rules don’t relate to you—they don’t relate to anybody.”

He granted me permission, however, to send out for my meals, if I so wished it, and to write one letter each day, on a sheet provided for that purpose. As a tally against the failure of my other rights he agreed that I might keep my bed-board down for certain hours of the day a concession that very much perplexed my northern warder.

I learnt from the other prisoners afterwards that this Governor was very rough and harsh with them. At first he was so with me; but finally he shewed me as much kindliness as was possible under the circumstances. He did so in a strange way. He would enter my cell and shout at me as harshly as at any; and then he would close the door, sit on my stool, and begin to talk quite humanly. Such conversations would conclude as brusquely and sharply as they began. Thus a certain kinship emerged between us. We were both Irishmen, with a stranger’s martial hand against us both, thrusting me into jail, and abrogating his rules. In that mood he always spoke to me as one fellow-countryman might to another of some unintelligible foreigner that had come into our land; and then he would remember that he was leagued with the foreigner, whereas I was pledged against him, when he would make some curt remark and leave me.

V.

Later in the morning I heard the jingle of the warder’s keys, the grating of locks, and the tramp of feet down the wooden passage outside. Presently it came to my turn, and my door was flung open. When I made no move, my warder appeared in the doorway with angry countenance to ask me what I was doing.

“Am I wanted?” I asked.

“You’re to come out to exercise, and look sharp. If you’ve a coat there, bring it with you, it’s raining.”

Through the small high window, ribbed with heavy bars and paned with thick, dirty glass, it was impossible to say what sort of a day passed by outside. The different texture of the twilight within was the only indication.

I was taken to the big yard, and there, for the first time, I saw my fellow-prisoners. There was an Excise Officer, two men whom I did not know, and two Gaelic League organisers. One of these last, as I entered the yard, threw up his hand in a Connacht salute, and greeted me: “[Gaelic: Sé do ḃeaṫa, a ḋuine ċoir]” It was surely a strange welcome to a prison yard; and the warder’s voice barked out across the yard: “Stop that talking there.” I was instructed to keep my distance from the others behind and before, and in silence we all walked round and round the yard under a cold drizzling rain.

Afterwards I learnt that a large batch of Westport men had been sent to Dublin two days before, and that the prison was now beginning to fill up again. This, apparently, was the reason of the delay in my arrest. The police could only arrest as the prisons gave them space.

* * * * *

For Ireland’s prisons were not able to keep pace with this new (and yet not so very new) manufacture of criminals.

For an hour we marched round in silence; and then we were taken in for our dinners. The two Gaelic League organisers had been appointed as the prison orderlies. Warders never do any work, that being an offence to the relative height at which they are placed; all work is done by prisoners under their direction. Therefore, Sean Seoighe brought me in my dinner; and when I in my ignorance asked for a knife and spoon with which to eat it, he, on his week-old experience of jails, passed quickly out into the passage to control his mirth, leaving me to the astonishment of the warder, who asked me if I knew where I was. The astonishing nature of my request seemed to rob the warder of his asperity, for he went out in silence, leaving me to an old horn prison spoon.

At three o’clock we were taken out again for exercise, and by that time I had already fallen into prison craft. Old criminals, I was told, develop it to such an extent that their communications with one another, in the friendships they establish, become almost as complete as in ordinary life, despite the close scrutiny under which they are kept at all times. I can well understand it; for here were we, new to the game, and without any experienced hand among us, bringing all our wits to work in order to establish communication with one another—that communication between man and man without which life is as unhealthy as a standing pool. Our minds became cunning and crafty; the whole being became watchful and alert for opportunities that had to be caught swiftly as they passed, while the outward manner maintained a deceptive innocence. The result was not conscious; or at least it was only half-conscious; for a new kind of reflex seemed to be developed. As we walked round the yard for instance, we timed our journey with the warder, who walked up and down a small path by the prison wall. The result was that we were walking toward the far end of the yard as he walked away from us toward the prison door. Thus his back would be turned just as we reached the most favourable part of our round, and by that time the distances between us would have become reduced as though quite naturally. It was a manœuvre that, ordinarily, would have been difficult to execute, yet it was managed quite simply, and, as it were, naturally. Then, as we passed round the favourable bend—while the warder was walking away from us down his little path—a swift conversation would proceed, in voices pitched just to reach the man before or the man behind, and without any perceptible movement of the lips. And by the time the warder had turned about we were slowly finishing the bend with lengthening distances between us, erect, and with calm faces forward. Thus we came to know who we all were, where we were taken, the circumstances that attended our arrests, and soforth. This play of wit became no small part of the daily life; and the penalties that were involved gave spice to existence.

When we were taken back to our cells I had a fairly exact knowledge of who my fellow-prisoners were, and who had been there before me, and when they had been removed. One became part of a new continuity, and I had a strange feeling as though I had been in prison for a long time. Supper was taken at five, and consisted of prison cocoa and bread. It was the last meal for the day, and the only thing left to do was to wait for darkness. In Castlebar Jail the gas jet projects an inch into the cell, and is never lit except during the winter months. For though prisons are sometimes spoken of as reformatories of character, yet elaborate precautions are taken to prevent suicide. Hence the horn spoons. Hence also the rope or wire netting beneath the landings. Hence the gas jet, for from anything in the nature of a bracket a man might hang himself. And such precautions are very necessary. As I sat in my cell waiting for darkness to come, I felt for the first time the beginnings of the system on me. The blank, bare walls, the high, dark window, the deathly silence outside, broken only by the occasional tread of the warder, the jingle of his keys by his side, and the sound of the cover of the spy-hole as he slid it aside to spy in upon me—all these outward things joined, with the instant repression of every sign of humanity, by communication with a fellow-prisoner, or by a word with the warder, to produce a mental blank and a complete absence of any part of the rhythm or colour of life. One never sees anything resembling a smile on warders’ faces: they seem tutored to graveness or sullenness, as though they wore masks, and the only human exchange one can sometimes catch is through the eyes—a quick flash there will sometimes let one know that this warder at least is still a man and has yet not wholly become a machine. So one never sees flowers in prison (save for one exception that I was to meet, where the exception was rooted in literary history); and prison yards are always floored with shards of flint or coal slack, or something very like ashes. Colours are never seen, and I remember later with what extraordinary joy I feasted my eyes on a blanket with which I was provided—crimson, and yellow, and claret—a wonderful thing. Everything is toneless, colourless, featureless, expressionless, noiseless (unless the noise be the harsh voice of a warder) void and unhuman.

In the twilight that thickened in my cell I sat that first night feeling these influences sink into my soul—or rather, I felt them advancing toward me, with intent to blot out the thing that was I, the personality that was my being, without which I was not. And I was afraid, afraid as of some last obscenity. I have read those who have recommended meditation before such a grey void, so to purchase the final liquidation into the great everlastingly-flowing Nirvana. To such, a prison can be commended. Such a philosophy has never commended itself to me, to whom Life is meaningless unless it be for the production and perfection of personality; and personality is meaningless unless it be the utmost differentiation of mind, the utmost liberty of thought and action, the utmost canvassing of desire and will, without any regard to authorities and bans and interdictions, or monstrous (literally monstrous) attempts at uniformity, imperial or otherwise. And so I sat there on my stool beside my little table, feeling the first pressure of a cold enormity muffling Life at every turn, seeking to reduce me to the utter blankness that is its ideal. The prison system protects itself by a number of contrivances against the suicide of its victims; but suicide is indeed the logical outcome of the system, it is its final perfection. When personality has been so far repressed that it can make no demonstration of itself, neither by voice nor signal; when personality looks upon faces that are as expressionless as the white-washed wall and flint-strewn yard; when the mind at last echoes the blankness it meets with a blankness as fitting, and the outer world becomes forgotten, literally forgotten:—what difference is there between such a state and the final quenching of the spark of life in a body whose only value is that a soul inhabits it? The last state is simply a logical completion of the first.

Thought? I had during my life conceived of prison as a place where a man could in silence and solitude think out things. As I sat in my cell that first night in prison I knew on a sure insight (what I was later to prove) that this was all wrong. As though something spake it in my soul, I knew that thought would become sluggish and slow, and finally would not exist at all, until even the effort to recall the names and faces of friends would be relinquished as too fatiguing. I knew that; I divined it that first night instantly; and I was afraid. Some of the others told me that they wept every night; and I understood it. But when the darkness compelled me to make up my bed, I simply took off my coat and collar and boots, and rolled the blankets about me as I lay down, determined that I was going to make a fight for it.

The following morning, when the Chief Warder came to see me, I started again on the rules and regulations. We fought long and hard; and finally he granted me permission to get a daily paper and to smoke one pipe a day. “Only,” he said, “you must smoke it outside, and you must smoke it in a special yard by yourself where the smell of the tobacco won’t annoy the others.” I agreed; and before he left me he took the “Rules” from the wall and bore them away with him.

So I took my exercise that morning by myself, in the small yard between the forks of the prison building. My pipe was presented to me, and my pouch. When the pipe was filled, I was presented with a match, and I was watched while I lit up. Then my pouch was taken away and the door was locked behind me and I was left alone.

The yard was very small, and triangular. It had apparently not been much used, for the flints lay loose upon the surface of the ground, save for one little circle in the centre that had been trodden hard. Two sides of the triangle were formed by the prison, the walls of which rose sheer above me, cold and grey, with menacing barred windows at regular intervals. On the third side a high wall of masonry made the base of the triangle. The day was sunlit, but the sunlight could only fall across a small corner of the yard. Two daisies were growing in the centre of the circle: which I picked, and instantly regretted the selfishness and vandalism of the deed.

I walked round and round, smoking my pipe; but when my pipe was finished, the folly of my decision faced me. Here I was shut for another hour on a floor of flints, surrounded by oppressive grey walls that rose sheer above me, with nothing to look upon but walls and floor, and high above me a patch of blue sky, across which clouds sailed. Deeply I envied the other men their sight of one another, and their craft and tricks to outwit the warder. I walked round and round the little circle, first one way and then the other; and gave that up. I tried lying down in the corner, where the sunlight fell; but found flint shards not the most inviting of seats. And it seemed an interminable time before the warder unlocked the door to unloose me from what had become a refined form of torture.

Yet I did not admit defeat. As I came away, the Chief Warder offered me another pipe in the afternoon, on the same terms; and I accepted. But that was enough. The prison cell was better than that little yard, flint-strewn, beneath grey walls and barred windows. When I came back in the afternoon I took occasion to slip up the flap from the spy-hole, unobserved; and the warder closed the door without noticing this. So I was enabled to relieve the tedium of my cell by looking out. Opposite my spy-hole was a window looking down into the yard that I had left; and there, to my astonishment, I saw a hat passing round and round, coming into sight, and passing out of sight. The hat just appeared over a bar of the window, which hid the face of the wearer. A hat, and no more; like a tantalising glimpse into another world; but something about that hat struck me as familiar. It was astonishingly like the hat of P. J. D., the editor and proprietor of “The Mayo News,” the one paper that had refused to print any rumours during the week of the Rising. Had he then joined me in jail?

That night when at supper I asked for the daily letter I had been promised, the Chief Warder informed me that he had received instructions from the military authorities that I was not to be permitted any sort of communication with the outer world, by letter or by visit. The previous day I had written to my wife saying that my daily letters were to be a sign to her that I was safe and well, and would show her where I was. I wish no man the hours I spent that night.

VI.

The next morning I asked the Chief Warder if he had any labour gang at which I could be employed, for I dreaded a continuance of the thoughts that had been with me through the night.

“I can put you moulding my potatoes,” he said, with the air of a man who spoke of something so ridiculous that it disposed of itself.

“Very well,” I said.

“Can you mould potatoes?” he said.

He seemed to be diffident now when his humour took actual shape.

“I can try,” I said. “I was eight hours setting them the day before you took me.”

So a Gaelic League organiser, an Excise man,

* * * * *

were employed throughout that day moulding the Chief Warder’s potatoes; we enjoyed the work; and we enjoyed it none the less because of the new warder under whom we were placed. This warder had made his first appearance, as far as I was concerned, the previous day. The mask he wore was not sour, but melancholy; and that in itself was a great difference. His voice, too, suggested possibilities. It was southern, and somewhere muffled in its official brevity a human quality echoed. I had heard that quality instantly when, the previous day, he came into my cell to bid me hasten as he had others to attend to besides myself. I had not hastened; but, quite deliberately, I had stood and looked at him. “’Tis queer criminals you have these times, warder,” I said. I looked at him; and he looked at me. Then he went to the door, looked up and down the passage, and returned to me. “Faith, you’re right, sir,” he said. “’Tis a queer sort of criminals these times.” It would be hard to express all that he managed to convey in those few words. Perhaps the melancholy mask he wore was all the more melancholy because of the thoughts he could not utter. Strange pass for a man when his hand is bought against his fellow-countrymen; and strangest of all when his heart is not bought with his hand. We had no cause to regret our warder during that day’s labour; but I am sure he was not as sorry for us as I was for him.

He was with us on Sunday also. It being Sunday, we only received one hour’s exercise during the morning; and as the Chief Warder and his other officials had gone to Mass the warder was in sole charge of us. Therefore we all had exercise together; and when I entered the yard I saw that my guess of Friday was correct, for there was P. J. D. already before me. He threw up his hand in welcome, and a smile lit over his face. I passed over and walked behind him.

There were many new faces there. There were about sixteen or seventeen of us. Some were in prison clothes.

* * * * *

Some had come into conflict with English troops with whom they had been stationed.

I turned to note the others in civilian clothes. One was an elderly man, with grey beard and majesterial manner: I never found out who he was. The man, however, who struck me most walked just ahead of P. J. D. Tall and athletic of build, he strode round and round the path, the very embodiment of wrath. His face, when I caught a side glance of it as he turned each bend, was black and lowering. Once as we came round the corner that served so well for our quick interchanges, he turned about, took a quick glance at the warder’s retreating back, and shook his fist at the prison and all it signified, and said: “By God, but there’ll be a big judgment to pay for all this yet.” Then he strode on again, striking his heels on the ground. He had probably just completed his first night in jail; and his emotion had not yet become transmuted into something more settled and grim. “Keep your heart up, man, keep your heart up,” I heard P. J. D. whisper. “There’s plenty of time before all of us.”

VII.

When I was wakened the following morning I was informed that I had to be ready for removal in an hour’s time. The Chief Warder did not know where I was to go, only that at six a guard of soldiers would come for me. It was his opinion that I was to be taken for the courtsmartial in Dublin. That meant anything; it meant, to be more precise, whatever the police desired or intended, for the reign of terror was abroad in the land, and every man’s fate was decreed by whatever the police had decided would make an appropriate chapter in his _leabhran_ at Dublin Castle, without other evidence than the evidence of the compilers. During those days that man was safest who was permitted to remain in any one place for a length of time, for presumably the present orgy of blood and long sentences, of courtsmartial, and authority on its war-steed champing the ground, would begin to pall. Nevertheless, I welcomed the change. Anything seemed better than inaction. It was better to go out and take one’s fate than to stay skulking in a cell. My only anxiety was for my wife, who would know nothing of my removal, and from whom it seemed decided to withhold all knowledge of me.

P. J. D. came down after me to the office where our “effects” were handed back to us. We were to be fellow travellers on the road, and we were marched through the streets of Castlebar to the Railway Station under a sergeant’s guard of eight men. It was too early for the town to be astir, and those who were abroad seemed rather abashed by the spectacle. At the station, as the train came in, to my great joy I was hailed by my wife, who, not getting the promised daily letter, had travelled down by the same train that was to take me to Dublin to discover what was happening. A little tactful authority with the sergeant included her in the same carriage with ourselves; and thus began a co-operation, from without and from within jail, that was to be of rare value in the future.

Again I was fortunate in my custodian. The sergeant belonged to one of the North Staffordshire battalions that had been rushed over for the Rising-Out, and he was a kindly, homely man, very much unlike some of his guard. The songs that came from the adjoining compartment were clearly meant to hearten us with the thought of friendship. There was no timidity in the choice of theme, and the peeler who accompanied us (as guide to the strangers in charge of his own countrymen) was clearly restive hearing songs it had become his first instinct to baton. But the sergeant was in command, and he maintained a strict dignity. At Athlone our companions next door managed to convey the state of affairs to others on the platform, with the result that the cheering crowd had time to vent their feelings outside our door before they were swept away. Then a peeler on the platform beckoned to our sergeant, and whispered something to him. When he returned to his seat beside me, I asked him what had been said to him.

“He was telling me to be careful, as there are sympathisers of yours in the next compartment and on the platforms.”

“That doesn’t surprise you, sergeant, does it?” I asked.

He thought for a moment; then, “No, sir, it doesn’t,” he said. And after a minute’s further thought, he added: “It’s easy for me to see who has the people’s wish, and who has the unpleasant job. You mustn’t think, sir, I like it; for I don’t. It wasn’t for this kind of thing I joined up. Why every nation can’t manage its own affairs without other nations butting in, I can’t for the life of me imagine. I thought it was to stop that kind of thing they told me I was wanted out in Belgium.”

Apparently he had been driven to thought. He was a tall, strongly-built man, with a long head and grave face—the kind of man who takes life very seriously and very earnestly. He came from the pottery district, where he had been employed in some clerical capacity; and when he told me he was fond of books I knew at once what kind of company he kept and what kind of books he read. In that company the cause of small nationalities had given him much heart-searching. Very earnestly he had thought the thing out, and in an international morality not at all lightly gotten-by, he had donned khaki, won his stripes, and been dispatched to Ireland for first service. I have wondered sometimes how he got on in Belgium. Perhaps he laid down his life in order that small nations should have freedom declared as their indefeasible right.

At Dublin, when I suggested that P. J. D. and I should hire cars across to Richmond Barracks, and that he should divide his guard between us, he willingly accepted the proposal.

VIII.