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[Pg 162] 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[Pg 163] 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[Pg 164] 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.[Pg 165] 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, bu............