Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  For three months I worked hard at learning the trade of a quarryman, and succeeded far better than any of the other new hands who were set to learn at the same time with me. Their heart was not in it; mine was. Anything to escape that gnawing agony.

  The other men in the gang were not agreeable or congenial companions. They taught me their established modes of intercommunication, and told me several facts about themselves, which did not tend to endear them to me. One of them, 1247, was put in for the manslaughter of his wife by kicking; he was a low-browed, brutal London drayman, and he occupied the next cell to mine, where he disturbed me much in my sleepless nights by his loud snoring. Another, a much slighter and more intelligent-looking man, was a skilled burglar, sentenced to fourteen years for “cracking a crib” in the neighbourhood of Hampstead. A third was a sailor, convicted of gross cruelty to a defenceless Lascar. They all told me the nature of their crimes with a brutal frankness which fairly surprised me; but when I explained to them in return that I had been put in upon a false accusation, they treated my remarks with a galling contempt that was absolutely unsupportable. After a short time I ceased to communicate with my fellow-prisoners in any way, and remained shut up with my own thoughts in utter isolation.

  By-and-by I found that the other men in the same gang were beginning to dislike me strongly, and that some among them actually whispered to one another — what they seemed to consider a very strong point indeed against me — that I must really have been convicted by mistake, and that I was a regular stuck-up sneaking Methodist. They complained that I worked a great deal too hard, and so made the other felons seem lazy by comparison; and they also objected to my prompt obedience to our warder’s commands, as tending to set up an exaggerated and impossible standard of discipline.

  Between this warder and myself, on the other hand, there soon sprang up a feeling which I might almost describe as one of friendship. Though by the rules of the establishment we could not communicate with one another except upon matters of business, I liked him for his uniform courtesy, kindliness, and forbearance; while I could easily see that he liked me in return, by contrast with the other men who were under his charge. He was one of those persons whom some experience of prisons then and since has led me to believe less rare than most people would imagine — men in whom the dreary life of a prison warder, instead of engendering hardness of heart and cold unsympathetic sternness, has engendered a certain profound tenderness and melancholy of spirit. I grew quite fond of that one honest warder, among so many coarse and criminal faces; and I found, on the other hand, that my fellow-prisoners hated me all the more because, as they expressed it in their own disgusting jargon, I was sucking up to that confounded dog of a barker. It happened once, when I was left for a few minutes alone with the warder, that he made an attempt for a moment, contrary to regulations, to hold a little private conversation with me.

  “1430,” he said in a low voice, hardly moving his lips, for fear of being overlooked, “what is your outside name?”

  I answered quietly, without turning to look at him, “Harold Tait.”

  He gave a little involuntary start. “What!” he cried. “Not him that took a coin from the British Museum?”

  I bridled up angrily. “I did not take it,” I cried with all my soul. “I am innocent, and have been put in here by some terrible error.”

  He was silent for half a second. Then he said musingly, “Sir, I believe you. You are speaking the truth. I will do all I can to make things easy for you.”

  That was all he said then. But from that day forth he always spoke to me in private as “Sir,” and never again as “1430.”

  An incident arose at last out of this condition of things which had a very important effect upon my future position.

  One day, about three months after I was committed to prison, we were all told off as usual to work in a small quarry on the cliff-side overhanging the long expanse of pebbly beach known as the Chesil. I had reason to believe afterwards that a large open fishing boat lying upon the beach below at the moment had been placed there as part of a concerted scheme by the friends of the Hampstead burglar; and that it contained ordinary clothing for all the men in our gang, except myself only. The idea was evidently that the gang should overpower the warder, seize the boat, change their clothes instantly, taking turns about meanwhile with the navigation, and make straight off for the shore at Lulworth, where they could easily disperse without much chance of being recaptured. But of all this I was of course quite ignorant at the time, for they had not thought well to intrust their secret to the ears of the sneaking virtuous Methodist.

  A few minutes after we arrived at the quarry, I was working with two other men at putting a blast in, when I happened to look round quite accidentally, and to my great horror, saw 1247, the brutal wife-kicker, standing behind with a huge block of stone in his hands, poised just above the warder’s head, in a threatening attitude. The other men stood around waiting and watching. I had only just time to cry out in a tone of alarm, “Take care, warder, he’ll murder you!” when the stone descended upon the warder’s head, and he fell at once, bleeding and half senseless, upon the ground beside me. In a second, while he shrieked and struggled, the whole gang was pressing savagely and angrily around him.

  There was no time to think or hesitate. Before I knew almost what I was doing, I had seized his gun and ammunition, and, standing over his prostrate body, I held the men at bay for a single moment. Then 1247 advanced threateningly, and tried to put his foot upon the fallen warder.

  I didn’t wait or reflect one solitary second. I drew the trigger, and fired full upon him. The bang sounded fiercely in my ears, and for a moment I could see nothing through the smoke of the rifle.

  With a terrible shriek he fell in front of me, not dead, but seriously wounded.

  “The boat, the boat,” the others cried loudly. “Knock him down! Kill him! Take the boat, all of you.”

  At that moment the report of my shot had brought another warder hastily to the top of the quarry.

  “Help, help!” I cried. “Come quick, and save us. These brutes are trying to murder our warder!”

  The man rushed back to call for aid; but the way down the zigzag path was steep and tortuous, and it was some time before they could manage to get down and succour us.

  Meanwhile the other convicts pressed savagely around us, trying to jump upon the warder’s body and force their way past to the beach beneath us. I fired again, for the rifle was double-barrelled; but it was impossible to reload in such a tumult, so, after the next shot, which hit no one, I laid about me fiercely with the butt end of the gun, and succeeded in knocking down four of the savages, one after another. By that time the warders from above had safely reached us, and formed a circle of fixed bayonets around the rebellious prisoners.

  “Thank God!” I cried, flinging down the rifle, and rushing up to the prostrate warder. “He is still alive. He is breathing! He is breathing!”

  “Yes,” he murmured in a faint voice, “I am alive, and I thank you for it. But for you, sir, these fellows here would certainly have murdered me.”

  “You are badly wounded yourself, 1430,” one of the other warders said to me, as the rebels were rapidly secured and marched off sullenly back to prison. “Look, your own arm is bleeding fiercely.”

  Then for the first time I was aware that I was one mass of wounds from head to foot, and that I was growing faint from loss of blood. In defending the fallen warder I had got punched and pummelled on every side, just the same as one used to get long ago in a bully at football when I was a boy at Rugby, only much more seriously.

  The warders brought down seven stretchers: one for me; one for the wounded warder; one for 1247, whom I had shot; and four for the convicts whom I had knocked over with the butt end of the rifle. They carried us up on them, strongly guarded, in a long procession.

  At the door of the infirmary the Governor met us. “1430,” he said to me, in a very kind voice, “you have behaved m
ost admirably. I saw you myself quite distinctly from my drawing-room windows. Your bravery and intrepidity are well deserving of the highest recognition.”

  “Sir,” I answered, “I have only tried to do my duty. I couldn’t stand by and see an innocent man murdered by such a pack of bloodthirsty ruffians.”

  The Governor turned aside a little surprised. “Who is 1430?” he asked quietly.

  A subordinate, consulting a book, whispered my name and supposed crime to him confidentially. The Governor nodded twice, and seemed to be satisfied.

  “Sir,” the wounded warder said faintly from his stretcher, “1430 is an innocent man unjustly condemned, if ever there was one.”

  II.

  On the Thursday week following, when my wounds were all getting well, the whole body of convicts was duly paraded at half-past eleven in front of the Governor’s house.

  The Governor came out, holding an official-looking paper in his right hand. “No. 1430,” he said in a loud voice, “stand forward.” And I stood forward.

  “No. 1430, I have the pleasant duty of informing you, in face of all your fellow-prisoners, that your heroism and self-devotion in saving the life of Warder James Woollacott, when he was attacked and almost overpowered on the twentieth of this month by a gang of rebellious convicts, has been reported to Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for the Home Department; and that on his recommendation Her Majesty has been graciously pleased to grant you a Free Pardon for the remainder of the time during which you were sentenced to penal servitude.”

  For a moment I felt quite stunned and speechless. I reeled on my feet so much that two of the warders jumped forward to support me. It was a great thing to have at least one’s freedom. But in another minute the real meaning of the thing came clearer upon me, and I recoiled from the bare sound of those horrid words, a free pardon. I didn’t want to be pardoned like a convicted felon: I wanted to have my innocence proved before the eyes of all England. For my own sake, and still more for Emily’s sake, rehabilitation was all I cared for.

  “Sir,” I said, touching my cap respectfully, and saluting the Governor according to our wonted prison discipline, “I am very greatly obliged to you for your kindness in having made this representation to the Home Secretary; but I feel compelled to say I cannot accept a free pardon. I am wholly guiltless of the crime of which I have been convicted; and I wish that instead of pardoning me the Home Secretary would give instructions to the detective police to make a thorough investigation of the case, with the object of proving my complete innocence. Till that is done, I prefer to remain an inmate of Portland Prison. What I wish is not pardon, but to be restored as an honest man to the society of my equals.”

  The Governor paused for a moment, and consulted quietly in an undertone with one or two of his subordinates. Then he turned to me with great kindness, and said in a loud voice, “No. 1430, I have no power any longer to detain you in this prison, even if I wished to do so, after you have once obtained Her Majesty’s free pardon. My duty is to dismiss you at once, in accordance with the terms of this document. However, I will communicate the substance of your request to the Home Secretary, with whom such a petition, so made, will doubtless have the full weight that may rightly attach to it. You must now go with these warders, who will restore you your own clothes, and then formally set you at liberty. But if there is anything further you would wish to speak to me about, you can do so afterward in your private capacity as a free man at two o’clock in my own office.”

  I thanked him quietly and then withdrew. At two o’clock I duly presented myself in ordinary clothes at the Governor’s office.

  We had a long and confidential interview, in the course of which I was able to narrate to the Governor at full length all the facts of my strange story exactly as I have here detailed them. He listened to me with the greatest interest, checking and confirming my statements at length by reference to the file of papers brought to him by a clerk. When I had finished my whole story, he said to me quite simply, “Mr. Tait, it may be imprudent of me in my position and under such peculiar circumstances to say so, but I fully and unreservedly believe your statement. If anything that I can say or do can be of any assistance to you in proving your innocence, I shall be very happy indeed to exert all my influence in your favour.”

  I thanked him warmly with tears in my eyes.

  “And there is one point in your story,” he went on, “to which I, who have seen a good deal of such doubtful cases, attach the very highest importance. You say that gold clippings, pronounced to be similar in character to the gold Wulfric, were found shortly after by a cleaner at the Museum on the cocoa-nut matting of the floor where the coin was examined by you?”

  I nodded, blushing crimson. “That,” I said, “seems to me the strangest and most damning circumstance against me in the whole story.”

  “Precisely,” the Governor answered quietly. “And if what you say is the truth (as I believe it to be), it is also the circumstance which best gives us a clue to use against the real culprit. The person who stole the coin was too clever by half, or else not quite clever enough for his own protection. In manufacturing that last fatal piece of evidence against you he was also giving you a certain clue to his own identity.”

  “How so?” I asked, breathless.

  “Why, don’t you see? The thief must in all probability have been somebody connected with the Museum. He must have seen you comparing the Wulfric with your own coin. He must have picked it up and carried it off secretly at the moment you dropped it. He must have clipped the coin to manufacture further hostile evidence. And he must have dropped the clippings afterwards on the cocoa-nut matting in the same gallery on purpose in order to heighten the suspicion against you.”

  “You are right,” I cried, brightening up at the luminous suggestion— “you are right, obviously. And there is only one man who could have seen and heard enough to carry out this abominable plot — Mactavish!”

  “Well, find him out and prove the case against him, Mr. Tait,” the Governor said warmly, “and if you send him here to us I can promise you that he will be well taken care of.”

  I bowed and thanked him, and was about to withdraw, but he held out his hand to me with perfect frankness.

  “Mr. Tait,” he said, “I can’t let you go away so. Let me have your hand in token that you bear us no grudge for the way we have treated you during your unfortunate imprisonment, and that I, for my part, am absolutely satisfied of the truth of your statement.”

  III.

  The moment I arrived in London I drove straight off without delay to Emily’s. I had telegraphed beforehand that I had been granted a free pardon, but had not stopped to tell her why or under what conditions.

  Emily met me in tears in the passage. “Harold! Harold!” she cried, flinging her arms wildly around me. “Oh, my darling! my darling! how can I ever say it to you? Mamma says she won’t allow me to see you here any longer.”

  It was a terrible blow, but I was not unprepared for it. How could I expect that poor, conventional, commonplace old lady to have any faith in me after all she had read about me in the newspapers?

  “Emily,” I said, kissing her over and over again tenderly, “you must come out with me, then, this very minute, for I want to talk with you over matters of importance. Whether your mother wishes it or not, you must come out with me this very minute.”

  Emily put on her bonnet hastily and walked out with me into the streets of London. It was growing dark, and the neighbourhood was a very quiet one; or else perhaps even my own Emily would have felt a little ashamed of walking about the streets of London with a man whose hair was still cropped short around his head like a common felon’s.

  I told her all the story of my release, and Emily listened to it in profound silence.

  “Harold!” she cried, “my darling Harold!” (when I told her the tale of my desperate battle over the fallen warder), “you are the bravest and best of men. I knew you would vindicate yourself sooner or later.
What we have to do now is to show that Mactavish stole the Wulfric. I know he stole it; I read it at the trial in his clean-shaven villain’s face. I shall prove it still, and then you will be justified in the eyes of everybody.”

  “But how can we manage to communicate meanwhile, darling?” I cried eagerly. “If your mother won’t allow you to see me, how are we ever to meet and consult about it?”

  “There’s only one way, Harold — only one way; and as things now stand you mustn’t think it strange of me to propose it. Harold, you must marry me immediately, whether mamma will let us or not!”

  “Emily!” I cried, “my own darling! your confidence and trust in me makes me I can’t tell you how proud and happy. That you should be willing to marry me even while I am under such a cloud as this gives me a greater proof of your love than anything else you could possibly do for me. But, darling, I am too proud to take you at your word. For your sake, Emily, I will never marry you until all the world has been compelled unreservedly to admit my innocence.”

  Emily blushed and cried a little. “As you will, Harold, dearest,” she answered, trembling, “I can afford to wait for you. I know that in the end the truth will be established.”

  IV.

  A week or two later I was astonished one morning at receiving a visit in my London lodgings from the warder Woollacott, whose life I had been happily instrumental in saving at Portland Prison.

  “Well, sir,” he said, grasping my hand warmly and gratefully, “you see I haven’t yet entirely recovered from that terrible morning. I shall bear the marks of it about me for the remainder of my lifetime. The Governor says I shall never again be fit for duty, so they’ve pensioned me off very honourable.”

  I told him how pleased I was that he should have been liberally treated, and then we fell into conversation about myself and the means of re-establishing my perfect innocence.