Gardiner bought himself an outfit at a second-hand dealer's in one of the back streets off the Vauxhall Bridge Road. His plan was to ride as far as the next station before Southampton, leave his machine at the cloak-room there, and change his clothes in some wood before going on into the town. Once among the docks, he would slip on board some outward-bound ship, if he could find one about to sail and if he could evade the night watchman, and stow away till she was at sea. Such things are still done by gentlemen whose reasons for not signing on in public are urgent. Of course the captain might hand him over to the British consul at the end of the voyage—but he preferred not to think of that.
From the Portobello inn to London is exactly twenty-one miles, from London to Southampton is something under eighty: a longish journey for an out-of-practice rider on a strange machine. Gardiner left town by the Portsmouth road. The first green he passed (by such things did he count off the stages of his journey, where another man would have reckoned by inns), was Clapham Common, a dismal vision of lamps, railings, wet asphalt, unhappy grass, and avenues of suicidal trees. Next came Wandsworth Common; then, beyond Roehampton, Wimbledon and Richmond Park. They gave him a breath of true night sweetness, but he was in Surbiton directly, with its blazing lamps and self-complacent villas. Gardiner hated suburbs. Better the frank vulgar life of the Vauxhall Bridge Road than their soul-destroying, smug respectability. He raced on through Esher, sedate and pleasant old town; and with the end of Esher came the beginning of the real country.
Beyond the palings of Claremont Park, at the entrance of the Oxshott woods, he was brought up by a puncture. He mended it, crouching under a lamp beside the road. Unfenced, alluring, dangerous, the woods pressed up behind. They sent forward their scouts, silver birches up to their knees in bracken which crept out to the very edge of the road, black pines stalking forward, stealthy as red-skins, to peer down at the stranger. Scents and sounds of the forest floated out, filaments of enticement. Gardiner glanced irresolutely down the road, while under the solemn-burning, stately procession of lamps, which marched away through the night over valley and hill. A car rushed by, steaming golden vapors: it glared at him for an instant with big golden eyes, and was gone, with dying roar. He looked down the road of mankind; and then over his shoulder at the silent tempting ranks of the pines and the soft savage darkness that pressed close on every side. If he rested here for ten minutes or so? He was tired; and there was no hurry. He dragged his bicycle out of the ditch and wheeled it into the woods.
Moss underfoot; on either side the pines, scattered at first among fine-leaved undergrowth, then closing up in ordered ranks. His lamp tiger-striped their dark even columns till he left the machine propped against one of them. Even by day the heart of these woods is lonely. The trippers who sit by companies along every green ride, with their buns and oranges, never wander far from the path. Presumably they are afraid of bears. Now, by night, the whole forest was triumphantly savage, solitary, and dark, so dark that Gardiner, though he had cat's eyes, sometimes greeted his friends the trees by running into them. He soon strayed from the track. Underfoot the ground became swampy. Pools of red-brown rain-water splashed him to the knee; long brambles trailed their thorns across his face.
The ground rose beneath his feet, and he found himself stumbling up a hill, his feet sinking deep in soft masses of pine-needles. Here was the summit of a ridge, so steep and narrow that on either side he could see the pallor of the sky between the dark columns of the trees. As he followed the line of the ridge downwards the woods closed again, but there grew before him, low among the stems, a sort of pool of whiteness: not the sky this time, but the light of some clearing. The ridge came to its end in an abrupt round knoll, the ground fell away at his feet, and there—O miracle of sudden loveliness!—before him shone a lake. Ebony and silver, polished like a mirror, misted with faint gauze, it lay in a cup of soft black woods. A rustling throng of rushes, pale and ghostly, stepped forward into the water among their slim reflections. Silver-gray and even-tinted, the sky arched above, cut by the small incisive crescent of the moon.
Gardiner threw himself down among the pine-needles. He gave himself to the woods, and let them work on him with their melancholy and voluptuous charm. The night took his spirit in her cool hands and smoothed it out, as the sun smoothes and strengthens the crumpled wings of a new-hatched butterfly. It was not enough that he should steep himself in loveliness; a thousand light touches were stilling and charming every nerve of sensation, smell and touch and hearing as well as sight. There was the surging murmur of the wind among the pines; night perfumes of water and forest; warm elastic softness of the fir-needles under his tired body. The old pagan earth was whispering her seductions into his ear.
"If you're afraid of a thing, I should think you'd want to face it and prove to yourself that you aren't."
The words floated into his head out of nowhere. He could hear the very intonation of Lettice's voice. "What folly!" he said to himself, and laughed the memory away. Nevertheless, a sharp little dart of discomfort stuck fast in his self-complacency, and, smarting, forced him to think. How much better it was to lie here free in the woods than in a police court cell! to listen to the wind in the pines rather than to a casual "drunk and dis" banging on his door! Yes, said a voice, rising unexpectedly within him to take sides with Lettice, but does one live only for what is comfortable? "That's all the more reason for staying." There was Lettice's answer, net and uncompromising. She would not have run away. Denis, then: how would he have taken it? Denis, more single-minded, would not even have felt the temptation—it would never have occurred to him that to run away was possible. No, the fact was not to be blinked; what he was doing would surprise and disappoint both these friends of his. Be it so, then, he told himself, defiant; he would still do it, even in the face of these disapproving witnesses.
In the face of another Witness, moreover. Men who live close to nature cannot escape from the presence of God. Only for a very few years of his very early youth had Gardiner been able to be a materialist. As soon as the soul was born in him (about the age of eighteen; for boys haven't souls, only the rudiments) he had begun to be conscious of the august and gracious Power which held him as in the hollow of a hand. The feeling was intermittent, the grip at times relaxed, but it never let him free. Now, to his anger and terror, he felt again the pressure of that control. The Hand that held him forced on him no action: but gently, steadily, inexorably, it turned him to face the truth, bidding him see what he was doing. He struggled against it with passion, trying to avert his eyes, trying to get back to the spirit of the woods, but in vain. And then suddenly his resistance collapsed, and he looked. Yes! he was running away. He was letting his weakness rule. He was destroying the love of his friends, failing them, failing too the Power which had created him to be a fighter, not a shirker. He blinded his eyes no longer, he did not tell himself that he was taking the only sensible course; he owned that his flight was contemptible. But what else could he do? "I can't go back now!" he said, panic knocking at his heart. "If I'd owned up in the first instance it would have been all right, and I wish to God I had; but now—now I've made it impossible for them to do anything but convict. Oh, what on earth shall I do?"
"Face it," said the inner voice. "Look your fear in the eyes, and look it down. Never mind the cost." And after a pause of struggling terror it spoke again: "If you fail now, it will not be the end; it will be the beginning. You will fail again, and worse. You will go down among the cowards and weaklings. You will lose Denis; you will lose Lettice. Do you know what that means? Look, my child, look well before you do this thing. Weigh what it will cost you."
He weighed it, desperate now under that soft inexorable pressure. He saw, rebelling against the vision, all his future loss. Turning from that, he saw, on the other side, prison, and the tide of panic rushing towards him. Already it was cold about his feet. He could not bear it; he fled for refuge to his old purpose. He must get away. To that thought he clung, lifting his agonized face. "What else can I do? What else can I do?"
And then down came the thunder of the Presence all around him, sweeping him from his poor little foothold. "Do, poor weak human child? Trust Me. I will be your strength. Lay your hand in mine and have no fear."
He went down, down, drowned in gulfs of agony, blinded by the light of God. Did he decide for himself, of free will, or was the choice taken out of his hands? It seemed so to him; but in reality it was his own past self which decided, the sum of the courage and the discipline which he had learned in common practice day by day. For God does not save us against our will; and the measure of the triumphant strength which he pours into us in moments of stress is the measure of our own past efforts.
Gardiner lifted his head. The moon was gone now, behind the trees, which threw black shadows across the argent of the lake. He was cold and stiff and desperately tired, but he stood up and began to retrace his steps towards the road. Soon the topaz-gleaming lamps shone through the trees, and he came out not a hundred yards from the point where he had left his bicycle. There was Mars, the star of battles, shining over the glow of London. In the opposite direction lay Southampton and the sea. He turned his back on these, and rode towards that star.
CHAPTER XVIII WHEN THE HEART SUFFERS A BLOW
Flying is no sport for the sluggard. The calmest hours of the twenty-four are often those before the dawn, and the earnest aviator must be ready to turn out of his warm bed at six, five, four, even three o'clock in the morning, whether in the pleasant summer, or in the correspondingly unpleasant winter. He may then have to spend long hours at the 'drome waiting for the fog to lift, or the rain to clear, or the wind to drop; and in the end, as like as not, he may have to go home, wet, chilly, and sleepy, without having flown a yard. Decidedly not the sport for a sluggard.
Six A.M. in mid-October, and bitterly cold. There was a gray sky, ripple on ripple of quilted cloud with never a gleam, and a small icy wind that blew persistently from the north. The coarse bice-green of the marshes was all discolored; the sedge, biscuit-pale, was clotted with mud from the September floods; the brimming dikes were ruled by the wind into long ripples, hard and black against the dawn. The dawn itself, how wan and threatening! Denis, surveying the signs of the sky as he unlocked the hangar, exerted himself to remark to Simpson that it looked like rain. Simpson, expert mechanic and latter-day Grimaud, assented with his civil grunt. His uncivil grunt he did not use on Denis, who had once been his officer.
Like every worker who spins his stuff out of his own brain, Denis at times "went stale." For the past ten days the flying boat had been laid aside, and he had been tinkering at the monoplane by way of relaxation. Never losing sight of the function for which she had been built, that of a small fast scout in the war which he expected, he was always adding small improvements. Thus, after his experience in the Birmingham race, he had fitted her with self-starting gear, which enabled the pilot to get away at will, independent of outside help. Now he was working at a brake. Landing is still one of the chief dangers in cross-country flying, especially in England, where fields are small, and there is often a web of overhead wires. At that time (1913) there were not a dozen aerodromes in the kingdom, and not one aëroplane in ten had a brake of any sort.
Theoretically, Denis's new design was all it should be; practically, of course, it might upset the machine and kill the pilot. Not that Denis ever believed he would be killed. "The airman hath said in his heart, Tush, I shall never be cast down, there shall no harm happen unto me." He believed other people might be killed, however, and for this reason had severely snubbed Simpson when he offered to take on the trials. Simpson, faithful dog, bore no resentment. He had been watching the events of the past few weeks, and had come to the conclusion that 'e (in Simpson's mind Denis was always 'e) wasn't to say accountable just now. "You'd 'a' thought 'e might 'a' took warning by Muster Wandesforde," he reflected. "'E's a nice gent spoiled by the women, if ever there was one. But no. Jane! JANE! 'Ave you got that stooed steak on yet? You ain't? Then it'll be as tough as your shoe again. 'E ain't complained? 'E lef' the lot at the side of 'is plate last time, and if that ain't complainin' I dono what is. Now you get it on at once and let's hear no more chat. Seems to me you ain't good for anything, 'cep that bein' so deaf you can't gossip. Women," added Simpson, knocking out his pipe against his boot, "they're the devil!"
After some preliminary "taxi-ing" on the ground, Denis rose, circling over the marshes. The country was asleep; pillars of smoke rose from cottage chimneys, but not a soul was abroad except the milkman, with his rattling silver cans, and a solitary cyclist, spinning down the road towards Dent-de-lion. The cyclist waved a greeting; the blasé milkman did not so much as glance up. Denis sailed over them, over the roof of his house, turned into the wind, "flattened out" (i.e. brought level the nose of his machine, which had been gliding down a slant) and grounded on the turf without a jar. The brake acted perfectly. Simpson ran up, almost enthusiastic. He and Denis stood together talking shop (which was the sum of Simpson's talk) with zeal (Simpson supplying the zeal).
"Hi!"
Denis turned, screwing up his short-sighted eyes. At sight of the approaching figure his jaw dropped; he spoke one curt imperious sentence over his shoulder to Simpson, seized the new-comer's arm, dragged him back to the house, thrust him into the parlor and locked the door upon him, all without a word. Gardiner was left gasping. Here was a reception! But in a minute Denis was back, pushing open the door with a tray of breakfast crockery and the inevitable sausages. He deposited his burden on the table, which was already laid, and turned to lock the door again.
"What on earth possessed you to come here? I've shut up Simpson, and he'll hold his tongue, but I'd not answer for Miss Simpson, if she saw you. You must be mad!"
"Mad?—to come here? I'm not running from the police, my good Denis; did you think I was?"
"I understood your brother to say—"
"Oh, you've heard from Tom, have you?" Gardiner's tone was a shade less confident. "Yes, I admit I did do a bunk from Woodlands; they took me by surprise, and I wasn't ready for 'em; I had two-three things to finish off—among others, I wanted a word with you. Which is why I'm here. But as soon as I've swallowed the sausage which I trust you're going to offer me I'm off to Margate to surrender to the minions of the law."
"I thought you couldn't stand prison," said Denis. "I thought it was the one risk you weren't prepared to face. However, it's no business of mine. If you can face it, I certainly think you're wise to. Mustard? Oh, I forgot, you don't take it, do you?"
He poured out a cup of Miss Simpson's rich, muddy coffee for Gardiner and another for himself, but he did not drink; he went to the window and stood looking down the road. Gardiner, who was famished, drew up his chair; but his eyes kept straying to that silent figure. There was something in the wind that he did not like. Denis was utterly unlike himself, unlike any self his friend had ever had a glimpse of. He was so unapproachable that Gardiner knew not how to broach the errand that had brought him there. Presently, however, he turned to attend to Geraldine, who was winding round his boots and opening her little pink mouth in soundless mews of ecstasy. As he rose from putting down the saucer, he caught Gardiner's eye, and smiled faintly.
"Sorry, Harry. 'Fraid I've rather let you down over this business. Anybiddy else would have made a better hand at it. But I'm not much good at dissembling, and tell a lie I cann't—any babe could see through it. Else I'd have done my best."
"My dear chap, I don't want you to tell lies for me!" said Gardiner hastily. He was more than surprised; he was appalled. "In point of fact, I'm not sorry it has come out. I've had no peace of my life these last two months, with Mrs. Trent going about like an unexploded bomb. I knew she'd never rest till she harried me into the dock." He perceived, as he spoke, a certain change in the atmosphere. Denis had been sufficiently far away before; now he seemed to recede to the North Pole. There was a snapshot of Dorothea in her flying kit on the mantelpiece. Was this the explanation? Surely not! Surely she was the last woman in the world to attract a man like Denis! Gardiner, be it remembered, had never met that eager child who had learned to fly. "It's about her I want to speak to you," he broke the ice determinedly. "Here's the point. Do you, or do you not, remember what Trent said in that last speech of his, just before I let fly at him?"
"I'm hardly likely to forget it."
"No, no, not the sense, the words; the actual phrasing he used. Do you remember that?"
He took a moment to think. "Perhaps not. No, not to swear to."
"Good! Then it's all plain sailing. Tell everything that happened up till then; be as discursive as you please about my share in the business; but say, and swear, and stick to it that you can't remember that last speech, and at any price don't let it be dragged out of you."
"Very well."
"At any price, you understand?"
"At any price?"
"Yes; absolutely without reserve, at any price."
"I understand."
"That's off my mind, then," said Gardiner with a breath of relief. "I had to see you, to make sure we should both be in the same tale. Now I'll be off to Margate while the iron's hot."
"Wait a moment," said Denis, detaining him. "Before you go into this quixotic business I think you ought to see what it means. Of course I know you've been making light of it to spare my feelings, but I don't believe you yourself realize what it is you're up against. It's serious. I'm afraid they're going to make it a perjury charge. I had the police up here for hours yesterday—they wanted to run me in too—"
"You? Oh, my God, Denis! They're not going to do that?"
"No, I don't think so. What's the matter with you?"
"I never dreamed of that," said Gardiner, holding his head in his hands. "I swear I never dreamed there was the remotest possibility of that! To drag you, of all men, into this filthy mess—" He dropped his hands and looked up, speaking fast and free: "Of course you're right. I have been humbugging. I know I'm in for a stiff sentence. I'd never thought of perjury as a possible charge. But I give you my word, Denis, if I'd ever had the faintest idea there was the faintest risk of involving you, I'd have—I'd have blown my brains out first. Oh, Lettice was right; it is a fatal thing to be a coward."
"Lettice?"
"I went to her on my way. Yes, I did mean to bolt in the first instance; I've got my rig-out strapped on my bike at this instant. It was she stopped me. She does know how to sting up your conscience! But they can't really drag you in, Denis, can they? You never did actually say one syllable beyond the truth. Did you make them see that?"
"I think so," said Denis. "I don't think they'll take it any further. And if they did, they couldn't convict. It's all right. I don't know what you're putting yourself about for."
"Perjury, Denis? It's not a pretty charge."
"No," said Denis. "Still, I don't know that it much matters."
How quietly he spoke! At Grasmere he had shrunk from the slightest innocent contact with the story; but here was the stain black on his own honor, and it moved him no more than did his friend's remorse. Gardiner had once said it would go hard with Denis if his idols tumbled off their pedestals. This indifference was worse than his worst fears. Would he ever find his way back? Or was there some hidden mischief, some deadly internal injury at which Gardiner could only guess? What had Dorothea done—what had she killed when she struck her blow? There grew on the young man, watching, a sense of disaster....
Denis had drifted back to the window and stood there, absently whistling his one tune:
Suddenly he broke off and bent forward in quick attention.
"Anything up?" said Gardiner.
Denis wheeled and swiftly pushed him back from the window.
"The police."
"What, have they come to pump you again?"
"No, it's you they're after."
"Nonsense, man! How can they know I'm here?"
"Evans has told them."
"Who's Evans?"
"The man who brings the milk. He was at the door when you arrived. He's coming up the road with them now."
"But how the deuce should Evans—"
"Your description's out, and a reward. Five hundred pounds. He must have gone straight off to the police station."
"Five hundred pounds!" Gardiner was as white as his shirt. "Who offered it?"
Denis would not answer or look at him. There was no need; Gardiner knew well enough who had offered it, and the shock made him sick. Did she indeed hate him so much as all that?
"Well, they'll save me the trouble of going to Margate," he said as lightly as he could, and moved towards the door. Denis stopped him.
"Wait. Think. If you're taken now, like this, you'll not be allowed bail. You'll be in prison till the February Assizes."
"—Break me in by degrees!" said Gardiner in a sort of gasp, still pressing towards the door. Denis still held him back.
"Will you cut it?"
"How can I?"
"Quite simple. The monoplane's out at the back—I told Simpson to have her ready. He'll swear anything I like to tell him, and Miss Simpson never saw you at all. You've only to say the word, and I'll set you down in France within the hour."
"You, Denis? You advise me to run?"
"Why not?" said Denis. "I think the point-of-honor stunt is overdone. It doesn't pay."
Gardiner's ideas of right and wrong were all tumbling about his ears. That Denis should advise such a thing! It went more than half-way towards making it seem right. It showed, too, that he dreaded the ordeal of the witness-box, and lent a specious color of unselfishness to the plan. And in those last moments of liberty Gardiner, like the prisoner of the Inquisition, seemed to feel the flaming walls sliding together, contracting, closing in upon his life to drive him into the pit.... "If you're afraid of a thing"—That voice again! There was the touchstone.
"No," said Gardiner. "No, I'm damned if I will!"
He walked out and threw open the door to the police.
CHAPTER XIX DU PARTI DU GRAND AIR
The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.—Book of Job.
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 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 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 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. 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."
"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?"
"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 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 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.
CHAPTER XX ROUGH JUSTICE
A true witness delivereth souls.—Proverbs.
Late in February a blizzard swept over the north; it was followed by still, intense, stringent cold. By night the fogs were dense; by day the white world glittered in sunshine. Trees of snow-blossom and iron filigree raised their heads, as white as plumes, against a china-blue sky. Posts, hedges, buildings, snow-hooded and sparkling, rising out of pearly frost-haze, threw azure shadows on the softly rippled velvet of the drift. Country lanes were buried many feet deep, but a passage had been carved down the Westby road; the slow carts, lumbering in to market, crunched their way between tall, strange, silvery and chalky-white cliffs, like the sugar icing on a bridecake, along tracks made golden with the scattered sand. The sun found rainbows in the icicles and diamonds in the snow, but it did not melt them; and at night, under the sweet influences of the Pleiades and the jeweled bands of Orion, the frost struck deeper and deeper into the earth, the ice grew thicker and thicker on the steely lakes.
In spite of the weather, Westby was full. Not only was it market-day, but the Assizes were on, with a sensational case. Everybody knew that the late owner of the Easedale Hotel was to be tried for killing one of his own guests. The celebrated Hancock, K.C., had been retained for the Crown; and Bullard, for the defense, was only less popular. Moreover, the case was to be tried before Mr. Justice Beckwith, who was said to be dead nuts on crimes of violence. Blue look-out for the prisoner, every one agreed. The court was crowded, stuffy, and bitterly cold. Mr. Gardiner, a valorous and pathetic little figure, shivered and coughed under his rusty inverness. Tom was doing his best to keep him covered up; but as often as he tucked the capes round his father's shoulders, that perverse and petulant invalid tossed them back. "I can't listen stuffed up like that!" he complained.
Tom was gloomy. This was the second day of the trial; he had heard Hancock open for the Crown, he had listened to the evidence of the police, Dr. Scott, Miss Marvin, Louisa; and he felt it was all up with his brother. What was more, he knew that Kellett the lawyer thought so too. "It's unlucky, most unlucky, that Mr. Gardiner can't remember Major Trent's actual words," was all he would say when they discussed it; and he pulled a very long face on hearing the name of the judge. "Beckwith? Well, he hasn't a reputation for leniency, certainly!" Tom was fully expecting penal servitude. He saw no ray of hope. Unless, by any wild chance—there were those unexpected and seemingly aimless questions which Bullard had put to Miss Marvin, questions about the rooms and the other guests—was it possible that they had a hidden meaning? Had something fresh turned up at the last minute? Had Kellett a surprise up his sleeve? No, Tom decided, it was not possible, it was absurd to imagine it. He returned to his gloom.
As to the prisoner, he had summoned just enough surface gayety to take in the reporters and his father, whose eyes were dim; but beneath it he looked sick, and sorry, and desperately tired. Heavy lines were drawn to the corners of his mouth, and his jaw-bone stuck out, gaunt and ugly, from hollows under the ear where his neck was corded like an old man's. Tom could see his throat swelling with suppressed yawns; but he woke up at any stir among the spectators. Again and again his eyes went questing eagerly round the benches. What was he looking for? Tom had no idea. He had never heard of Lettice Smith.
"Who's that? Who is it going into the box now, Tom?"
"That's Mrs. Trent, sir."
General thrill in court. Dorothea had resumed her widow's weeds together with her married name; and very young she looked, and fair, and pathetic, under the flowing veil. From Hancock's point of view, this was as it should be. It would take a deal of sentiment to make her past proceedings go down with the jury. Perhaps Dorothea knew this. Perhaps she was playing to the gallery. Perhaps, on the other hand, she was only playing to herself—acting what she knew she ought to feel, in order to persuade herself that she did feel it. Dorothea was a great hand at believing what she wanted to. However that might be, she was undoubtedly pathetic; and with her romantic story fresh in their minds from Hancock's opening speech, the jury were duly impressed.
She struck the right note at once. "My husband was not intoxicated!" she said indignantly. "He was only very, very anxious for my comfort!" Half-a-dozen credible witnesses had sworn that Trent was intoxicated, but no matter; the point was that, after nearly a year of marriage, he appeared as still a hero to his wife. Next came Dorothea's own part in the drama. She described the scene: the lamp on the floor, the confusion of both men, Denis's attempt to keep her out, Gardiner's unconcealed terror. "I told him he had murdered my husband, and he didn't deny it. He cowered back against the wall with his arm across his eyes, so, but he never attempted to deny it!" She told how, kneeling on the floor beside her dead husband, she had come upon the chisel. "I slipped it under my cloak. No, I didn't mean to hide it. It was only that I—I—I couldn't speak just then. I was thinking of my husband." Was it art that made her voice fail, or nature? "I don't know what happened next. I don't remember speaking to my maid. I don't remember anything. I think I fainted. I was ill afterwards. No, I didn't accuse the prisoner later on because I knew it wouldn't be any good. I was sure in my own mind that he had killed my husband, but I had no proof. I knew people would say it was just my fancy. So then I set myself to get proofs—"
Because he knew it was bound to come out, Hancock took her through the story of her attempt on Gardiner. That gun must be surrendered to the enemy, but he would see that it was spiked first. Dorothea's behavior must be palliated by showing her fanatical devotion to her husband. No need to dwell on the scene at the crucifix, what Gardiner himself called the shilling-shocker part of the affair. Both sides were equally anxious to leave that in a decent obscurity. "Yes, I did pretend to be friends with him, and I did ask him, as a friend, to tell me the truth," Dorothea defiantly avowed. "Yes, I did know I was being hateful, and mean, and contemptible. But what did that matter? I had to see justice done!" Jael, and Judith, and Charlotte Corday—and Dorothea Trent? Her story ended in a storm of tears, which broke, strange to say, after she had done with Gardiner and was telling of her sojourn at Dent-de-lion. But no one in court dreamed of connecting her emotion with that part of her tale.
"I'd be sorry to be a Broad Churchman and not believe in hell," Mr. Gardiner commented with gusto. "Who's this now, Tom?"
"That? Oh, that's Merion-Smith—poor beggar!"
Another general stir. This was due partly to Denis's profession (for airmen weren't so common in the Lakes then as they have since become), and partly to his dramatic share in the story. A whisper went round, which was the well-informed telling the ignorant about the inquest. Denis's chin went up a shade higher. He had set his back against his family tree, and looked down arrogantly through his eyeglass on the court and all therein. It was plain he meant to give trouble.
The beginning ran smoothly. He told of Trent's intrusion, bending aside the questions to show how Gardiner had gone out of his way to avoid a quarrel. This was familiar ground; not so the conversation that had followed. Counsel would fain have passed over the details of Trent's discourse, but Denis intended the court to hear as much as he could possibly get in. Out came the story of the little girl at Chatham, sounding twice as bad by contrast on Denis's lips. The prisoner grinned. While ostensibly giving his evidence with distaste and reluctance (and indeed both sentiments were genuine enough), Denis was supplying the best, the only excuse for his friend. Vainly did his questioner try to show him as the straight-laced Puritan, to whom the mildest of jokes is an offense. Denis would not fit into the part.
"At last, when we had stood as much as we could, the prisoner suggested it was gettin' late. Trent made a joking answer. What he said was grossly offensive, worse than anything before. The prisoner caught up a chisel and flung it at his head. No, it was not premeditated. No, there had been no quarrel. Simply, the man was saying indecencies that had to be stopped, and the prisoner took the first way of stoppin' them—and if he hadn't, I'd've done it myself," Denis put in, unasked. "No, I cann't remember what it was he said—"
Instantly Hancock pricked up his ears. "You don't remember what Major Trent said?"
"I do not. Not the exact words."
"Not any of them?"
"Not to swear to."
"Indeed! Yet you could tell us in detail all about his other speeches?"
"Not so," Denis corrected, rather stiff. "I did not tell you in detail, I told you in substance. That is quite another thing."
"With considerable fullness and fluency, however," said his questioner dryly. "Well, then: you remember all these other stories, so far as you do remember them, but you have forgotten every single word of this—which you say was the worst of all? Can't you give us the substance of that too?"
"It was not a story," said Denis, now very stiff indeed, "it was a few broken sentences. I cann't remember them accurately, and I won't make guesses. I dismissed them from memory as soon as I could. I don't burden my mind with pornographic details."
"Quite so; but surely without infringing either truth or decency you can give us some rough idea as to what this mysterious speech was about? Was it about a woman, for example?"
Denis remained obstinately silent.
"Can't remember even that? Only you are sure it was offensive?"
"It was insufferable."
The barrister leaned forward persuasively. "How about this for a suggestion? I put it to you: was it not to the prisoner personally that the deceased was offensive? And did not the prisoner lose his temper, and retaliate by throwing the chisel?"
"Nothing of the sort. I have told you before: there was no quarrel of any kind. The deceased was laughing up to the last moment, and what the prisoner did was done in the interests of decency. It was impossible to sit still and listen to the things that were comin' out of that man's mouth."
"Come, come, Mr. Smith! As a man of the world, are you going to ask us to believe that the prisoner—who, I gather, has knocked about all over the world, in countries which aren't precisely like a Sunday school—do you seriously expect us to understand that he was so much upset by an ordinary after-dinner story as to lose all self-control, and endanger his liberty, if not his life?"
"I do not expect you to understand anything," said Denis, serenely insolent. "I was addressin' the gentlemen of the jury."
"Why can't he speak out? What's he hiding?" Mr. Gardiner whispered feverishly to Tom. Tom could only shake his head and pull his mustache. Certain memories were stirring uncomfortably. What was it Harry had said about having his hands tied, not being free to explain? He had never given it another thought until this minute.
Meanwhile Denis, already convicted of tampering with the truth on behalf of his friend (for every one believed he had suppressed a speech that told against the prisoner), was being taken through the rest of his evidence. Hancock was trying to show his bias: that he would twist the truth in Gardiner's favor, and tell only the minimum against him. In this topsy-turvy business Denis was virtually on the side of the defense. He had to suffer for his sympathies. His self-respect was stripped bare. Yet it was only by guesswork that Gardiner could divine his feelings; the harder Fate hit him, the stiffer grew his back. How Gardiner envied that effortless and natural control!
Hancock finished, and counsel for the defense rose to cross-examine. Bullard, K.C., was a long, lank, untidy figure, and had a hesitating, negligent way of speech. He began with some unimportant minor points slurred over in the examination-in-chief. Then came a pause, during which he gazed at his brief, the people whispered, and the prisoner yawned. Then a bombshell.
"I have only one more question to trouble you with, Mr. Merion-Smith," he said, looking up. "Did the deceased, in that last speech which you cannot remember, make any mention of Mrs. Trent?"
Denis's head went up with a jerk. A thrill went round the court, but was instantly stilled. Bullard was repeating his question in another form.
"Did not the prisoner suggest that Mrs. Trent would be tired; and did not the deceased answer by a coarse allusion to her state of health?"
The witness was seen to struggle for words—in vain.
"Thank you, that will do."
Upon this followed the luncheon interval. Through the excited crowd Tom carried off his father to a quiet inn near by, where he had ordered lunch. The old man sat over the fire with his basin of soup (he would take nothing else, and did not drink that), shrunken, and silent, and aged. Once he looked up piteously. "What does it mean, Tom? What does it all mean?" Tom could only answer: "I've no idea, sir. Shall I go and see if I can get hold of Kellett?" But Mr. Gardiner shook his head and crouched closer to the fire, muttering: "No, no. Time enough, time enough. We shall hear it all presently." Tom, though he was longing to find the lawyer, durst not leave him.
The court was crowded to its last seat when they reassembled, and Bullard opened for the defense. He was a clever advocate; perhaps a little too clever. He was apt to hint his points instead of making them, to cut and refine his phrases like some fastidious literary artist. This is not the way to get a verdict from plain men accustomed to plain language, clear outlines, the black and white of fact. They do not understand half-tones and intellectual subtleties. On the other hand, Bullard had a reputation for incorruptible honesty; and he rose at times to eloquence.
He began, in his negligent way, to recapitulate the facts, a touch here and there serving to rearrange them to the prisoner's advantage. He did not, he said, propose to deny that his client had thrown the tool; but he submitted that the evidence proved, first, that the death of the deceased was due to the fall and not to the blow; second, that if he had been perfectly sober he would not have fallen. Very lucid was he, very persuasive. But his audience was waiting for what was to come.
"Finally, gentlemen, I hope to show that in throwing that chisel the prisoner was guilty of no crime; rather that he was the necessary unofficial policeman of the moral law. There are still," he went on, dwelling on the words like an epicure, "there are still offenses which are not amenable to ordinary justice, which can be dealt with only by ... punching the offender's head, cramming his words back down his own throat. This was such a case. Look first at the dead man." He broke off to give a summary of Trent's glorious-inglorious career: the ribbon on the one hand, disgrace on the other. "Brilliant promise, you see, marred by a single fault. 'It was never wine with me'—we have that on his own authority; it was a fouler vice. The man was rotten: still showing a fair outside, still preserving some traits of kindliness, but black-rotten within. When a decent man gets a glimpse of that sort of thing, he doesn't stay to argue; he hits out.
"Now in defending the prisoner I was met at first by a singular difficulty. Neither he nor the only known witness of the scene could remember the words which provoked the outbreak. Strange, you will say; most strange; suspicious, even. Surely they could make some sort of rough guess? But no, both persisted; they could not. What pointed the moral was the fact that these two were conferring together at the moment of the prisoner's arrest. It looked like a conspiracy of silence. Now why should they conspire to keep silence? In order to hide some fact damaging to the prisoner. That is the obvious deduction, which of course you have already drawn. And, gentlemen, the prisoner would have left it at that: he would have let your judgment go by default against him, and taken the consequences: you would never have heard the facts, never, but for a totally unexpected circumstance, which came to my knowledge not forty-eight hours ago.
"There was another witness to that scene in the hotel. Unknown to my client or to his friend, another of the guests saw and overheard everything that happened. I shall not attempt to summarize this testimony. I shall leave it in the witness's own words, and I shall leave you to draw your own conclusions; asking you to bear in mind, as you do so, the story of her dealings with the prisoner which you have heard from Mrs. Trent.
"This only I will say: We men of the law, seeing nothing but meanness and crime, day after day, year after year, grow sometimes to despair of the world, to see nothing before it but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. Acts such as the prisoner's redress the balance. They show us once again the sense of tears in mortal things, the indestructible nobility of the human heart, the God in human nature. 'Through such souls alone God stooping shows sufficient of his light for us i' the dark to rise by.' Gentlemen, I should like to thank the prisoner.
"Call Lætitia Jane Smith."
Lettice stepped into the witness-box. She did not look at Gardiner, gazing at her with his haggard eyes as at a dream come true; nor at Dorothea, shrinking away like a child from the lash. Self-withdrawn and expressionless, she looked straight at the examining counsel, and to him alone she gave her evidence.
Yes, she had been staying at the prisoner's hotel on the night in question. She had gone there to meet her cousin, Mr. Merion-Smith. She had not told him that she meant to do so; she wanted to take him by surprise. She engaged a room on the ground floor of the west wing. She did not go in to dinner, nor did she try to see her cousin that evening, because she had a bad headache. She stayed in her room writing. About ten o'clock she went out for a breath of air. She came back at twenty-two minutes past ten. How did she know the time? Because she stopped to set her watch by the clock in the hall. Afterwards she went straight to her room. It was in darkness, but the room opposite, the prisoner's room, was lighted up. Her window and his were both open. She could see in clearly. The distance was not great. She had very good sight. "I can read the papers in your hand," said Lettice concisely. There were three persons in the room: her cousin, sitting by the window; the prisoner, at the table: and a third man, whom from a photograph she had since identified as Major Trent, leaning back against the mantelpiece. Major Trent was speaking. He seemed to be finishing some story. He was laughing. The prisoner did not laugh, nor did Mr. Merion-Smith. The latter leaned forward and spoke to the prisoner, and the prisoner answered. She could not hear what was said because they spoke in whispers. Her cousin seemed angry. "He was bristling all over," said Lettice. The prisoner then turned and addressed the deceased. Yes, she could hear that. What he said? He suggested it was getting late, and that Mrs. Trent would be tired. Was she sure he mentioned Mrs. Trent? Quite. Major Trent said, "Oh, my wife!" and burst out laughing. He came up to the table, leaned across to the prisoner, and added another sentence. Yes, she had heard every word. Yes, she remembered every word. Would she tell the court exactly what it was?
Lettice looked back at her questioner and answered him alone, isolating him and herself, as though judge, jury, prisoner, and spectators did not exist. She spoke with colorless precision:
"He said, 'Ever hear of what they call an interesting situation? Damn uninteresting I find it—especially to look at!'"
The truth was out. Useless for Hancock to cross-examine; not a soul in court but knew they had the facts at last. The jury made up their minds upon their verdict. As juries often do, they had set up among themselves a standard of rough justice, and neither the prisoner's own statement nor the judge's summing up could avail to change them. If Lettice had not spoken, they would have found the prisoner guilty; if he himself had not tried to evade justice, they would have found him innocent. As it was, their verdict was a compromise. Guilty of manslaughter, but very strongly recommended to mercy.
Mr. Justice Beckwith may have thought he was carrying out their recommendation in sentencing Gardiner to nine months' imprisonment in the second division.