CHAPTER XIII.

THE IRONY OF FATE.

Rupert found that four weeks in prison was a lifetime.

His experience at Holloway before the trial helped him not at all; though he remembered now, that at the time, it had shocked and horrified him. Yet the cruelty and ugliness had all been on the surface. Looking back on it now, after four weeks of the real thing, with the eyes of a professional, he saw the humorous as well as the dramatic side of it.

If Holloway had been under the direction of the manager of a Drury Lane melodrama it could not have been run on lines better calculated to excite the common mind, and arouse the curiosity and the mirth of the vulgar. It had all been very cheap and dramatic. The great gates, barred and bolted in primeval fashion; the uniformed warders and wardresses, obviously chosen for their stature and their lack of humanity. The clanging of bells and the rattling of great bunches of keys. The herding together of guilty and innocent in pen-like places. The coming and going of numerous officials.

The real thing was very different. It had not got the glamour of Holloway, or its melodramatic atmosphere with a dash of pantomime. There was an atmosphere of "Abandon hope all ye who enter here," about Wormwood Scrubbs, though the interior of the prison was not so depressing as the exterior--the Scrubbs itself.

In about a week's time Rupert began to realise, not only where he was, but what he was. The warders, neither good, bad, nor indifferent, merely machines wrapped up in red tape, did their best to help him in this.

The first thing he realised was that he was no longer a man, but a cypher, number three hundred and eighty-one. He was glad he had not a name any longer. The only drawback was that, though unknown in the prisons, he would remain Rupert Dale to the world outside.

The next thing that dawned upon him was, that he was a criminal. A jury of his fellow-countrymen had found him guilty. There was nothing to grumble at in that!

The difficulty lay in behaving like a guilty man. He had a curious feeling when eventually he was exercised with a batch of other convicts and attended Divine Service, that they resented him. In spite of having his head shaved, in spite of wearing a costume--a cross between a clown's and one beloved by music-hall comedians--he knew he did not look guilty. He was hall-marked with the broad arrow, but it took more than four weeks for the iron of prison life to enter his soul and make him really feel like a criminal; at times wish to be a criminal--until a curious feeling eventually came to him that he really was one--that he only wanted to be free again to prove the fact and show himself in his real colours.

But for the first week or two he found himself without emotions, without feelings. Things had turned out as he wished them to. He was satisfied.

The woman he loved was free! Even though she had accused herself no one believed her. What his father thought or felt he did not know. He did not want to think--yet. Perhaps nature was kind, and caused the reaction of the excitement and strain of the trial to act as an anaesthetic to his brain.

At the periodical visits of his warders, when his food was brought him, when he had to clean out his cell or make his bed, or when he was taken out to exercise, he found himself quite unconsciously speaking to them, trying to enter into conversation. Silence was the first blow that struck him. After five days he began to wonder how he was going to manage five years of it. If it were enforced it would probably send him mad.

He tried talking to himself, but that frightened him, and the one-sided conversation soon became brainless. He welcomed the visits of the chaplain until he found that that official considered it his duty to do all the talking. And, moreover, he did not want to talk about anything but the salvation of Rupert's soul. And as the unfortunate man had for years been dodging in and out of prison cells like a ferret in and out of rabbit holes trying to catch souls that were not at home, he had lost all real interest in the game and had fallen back on quoting texts in an unconvincing tone of voice. Certainly he called Three-eighty-one his "dear brother," but Rupert did not believe he meant it, and told him so. And so the chaplain's visits were cut short. The doctor was the only cheery human being in the prison.

At first Rupert was exercised alone; as soon as he joined his gang he was slowly initiated into the conversation of eyes, lips, and gestures--the latter by far the most effective and subtle: a movement of a muscle of the face, the slightest elevation or depression of the shoulders, the crook of a finger, or even the pretence of stumbling as a man walked.

The desire to learn this conversation saved him at the critical moment of his incarceration. Hour after hour as he lay alone in his prison cell he thought it out, drew imaginary pictures or diagrams on the floor. Like a dumb man every sense became preternaturally sharpened. He learnt how to speak with his eyes as well as his lips. He learnt, too, how to hide his eyes when he was watched or wished to be dumb.

He took an interest in the most extraordinary or trivial things. A spider spun its web across two bars of the window in his cell. He took more interest in that spider's larder than probably did the spider itself; it was with mingled feelings of joy and horror that he saw the first fly caught--his feelings were so equally divided between the miserable captive and the other hungry insect. Once the spider dropped down with a silken thread right on his foot. Rupert held his breath, not daring to move a muscle, and he experienced the first thrill since he had been in prison when the tiny thing eventually crawled up his leg and ran across his hand!

A day later, when he cleaned out his cell, he was told to wipe away the spider's web. He nearly refused, and the tears actually swam in his eyes as he obeyed.

Under his breath he cursed the warder. Had the man no feelings; was he indeed a brute in human shape!

For forty-eight hours afterwards he waited for the return of the spider, waited for it to climb down on its silken thread and run across his hand again: but in vain.

One day as he exercised with his gang in the prison yard he noticed a man who once or twice before had been his leader in the dreary round--a young fellow with dark eyes, and protruding jaws that had evidently been broken in a fight. He noticed that he was talking to him. A spasmodic movement of his hands told Rupert that he wanted to say something.

As they turned Rupert caught his eye and signalled that he was ready to receive a message. He was not yet an adept in this new art of conversation, but his senses were alert and his instincts already preternaturally sharpened. He concentrated his whole mind on his fellow convict, and, perhaps unconsciously, he read his thoughts even before he understood the message which hand and foot, head and shoulders sent with lightning-like rapidity.

Translated, it meant that some of them were going to be removed from Wormwood Scrubbs prison.

"Good," Rupert signalled back. He found himself grinning until he read another signal of "Shut up!" from the blue-eyed convict.

The change might be for the worse, but that did not trouble Rupert. There was to be a change! Perhaps a journey somewhere. Outside the prison walls. The silence would be broken.

He wanted to shout aloud with joy. The silence would be broken! They would go out into the streets. The streets where there were cabs and omnibuses, and great drays with horses in them, and men and women hurrying to and fro; and children playing. They might even go a journey; in a train through fields and forests. They would see blue sky and perhaps sunshine.

He thought of nothing else for the rest of the day; he dreamed of it at night. Next morning hope alternately rose and fell in his heart, refusing to die throughout the day's routine. He continually built pictures of the journey he might take. So far, the effect of prison had been to make him like a child again. Time had ceased to exist; he took no count of days, but the news of the change made him wonder how long he had been at Wormwood Scrubbs. A week, a month, a year?----

It was curious how little he had thought of those he loved. At first, when he had been taken away from the Old Bailey, he had been temporarily overcome by remorse. The night after the trial he had suffered agonies. Yet curiously enough after that night, thoughts of the outside world and those he knew in it had not troubled him much. He had been a coward in so much as he had been afraid to think of his father or his sister--or Ruby.

For he could not speak of them. He could not speak of them to a living soul. He could not write to them. If a letter had been permitted it would have been read and censored. So, not daring to write, he dared not think. Nature had been kind, and for weeks his brain had been anaesthetised by the deadly routine, the bare walls of his prison, the sudden and terrible change of environment.

This happens to some natures. Thoughts are checked, memory sleeps, but there always comes a rude awakening. To other men it is the first few weeks of imprisonment that are the most terrible. A few never survive; their minds are wrecked, morally and spiritually they are ruined; then their suffering comes to an end.

Rupert's awakening came one grey morning when at daybreak he found himself with half a dozen of his fellow convicts paraded in the yard, and, after a breakfast more generous than usual, marched outside the walls of Wormwood Scrubbs and conveyed in a van to an unknown destination--which proved to be Waterloo Station.

The thrill of joy he experienced when he found himself standing on the platform surrounded by familiar sights, hearing familiar sounds, his nostrils inhaling familiar smells, was almost instantly followed by a sickening sense of fear. Fear of the unknown!

He glanced at the men by his side all wearing the convict dress--the badge of shame. It suddenly struck him how funny they looked. He wondered if he cut as ridiculous a figure. Perhaps there might be some one on the platform whom he knew, some one who would recognise him.

He stared with hungry eyes at the few people who passed. Forgetting what he was, he yearned to see a familiar face. And presently he realised that he and the other convicts were being stared at by men who were free.

One man made a ribald jest. Others laughed. A few men looked with dull curiosity. A woman shuddered and turned away.

Rupert bit his lip. It was not nice. Especially when he realised the handcuffs. He squared his shoulders and held up his head. He was not ashamed. There was nothing to be ashamed of.

A newspaper boy passed; on his tray the morning newspapers and the illustrated magazines. Half a dozen pairs of yearning eyes followed him. Probably each convict would have sold his soul for a copy of the _Morning Post_ or the _Daily Chronicle_. Opposite to where they were lined up, the station wall was covered with posters and play bills and advertisements.

The first thing Rupert read was the "Ingenue Theatre," a poster staring at him in six-inch letters. His jaws dropped, and he blinked his eyes to drive away the mist that rose before them.

Then the train backed into the station. The warder in charge gave a sharp order. As Rupert swung round in obedience to the command he saw another poster facing him, the _Financial Times_, and beneath in huge letters one word--"RADIUM."

He started, a frown knitted his brows. For a moment he forgot what he was, where he was. That one word had conjured up the past, swept the fog from his brain.

"Now, 381, what are you about?"

He pulled himself together with an effort and rolled into a third-class compartment of the train with his fellow convicts.

Radium! The word seemed to be burning into his brain. He said it aloud and received a sharp reprimand from the warder seated on his left by the window.

There rose before his eyes a vision of Dartmoor, the disused tin-mine on his father's farm; Robert Despard and he groping in the semi-blackness up to their knees in water.... Their discovery of pitch-blende--and Despard's belief that, in that old worthless mine, there might lie hidden a fortune.

A fortune for his father and his sister. His father whom he had ruined and shamed. And his sister!

Again he blinked his eyes, driving away the mist before them. He found himself staring straight at the convict facing him. The man was talking to him. He saw the fingers of his handcuffed hands moving stealthily. He saw his half-closed eyes contracting and expanding. He answered:

"Yes?"

"Dartmoor! Princetown Prison," was the reply he received.

Rupert lay back and closed his eyes. He might have guessed. It was the irony of fate. They were taking him home, back to his own land, to Dartmoor.

To Princetown Prison. The great monument of granite that broods over the valley of the Dart, from whose barred windows, if a man could gaze, he would see Blackthorn Farm ... and the disused tin-mine with its hidden fortune waiting to be claimed.