Part 61 (1/2)

”The _Lion's_ home,” I repeated.

The turnkey snarled, ”She was posted as overdue three days ago.”

I couldn't believe it was true.

”I saw it in the papers,” he grumbled on. ”I dursn't tell you.” He continued violently, ”Blow my d.i.c.key. It would make a cat sick.”

My sudden exaltation, my sudden despair, gave way to indifference.

”Oh, coming, coming!” he shouted, in answer to an immense bellowing cry that loomed down the pa.s.sage without.

I heard him grumble, ”Of course, of course. I shan't make a penny.” Then he caught hold of my arm. ”Here, come along, someone to see you in the press-yard.”

He pulled me along the noisome, black warren of pa.s.sages, slamming the inner door viciously behind him.

The press-yard--the exercising ground for the condemned--was empty; the last batch had gone out, _my_ batch would be the next to come in, the turnkey said suddenly. It was a well of a place, high black walls going up into the desolate, weeping sky, and quite tiny. At one end was a sort of slit in the wall, closed with tall, immense windows. From there a faint sort of rabbit's squeak was going up through the immense roll and rumble of traffic on the other side of the wall. The turnkey pushed me towards it.

”Go on,” he said. ”I'll not listen; I ought to. But, curse me, I'm not a bad sort,” he added gloomily; ”I dare say you'll make it worth my while.”

I went and peered through the bars at a faint object pressed against other bars in just another slit across a black pa.s.sage.

”What, Jackie, boy; what, Jackie?” Blinking his eyes, as if the dim light were too strong for them, a thin, bent man stood there in a brilliant new court coat. His face was meagre in the extreme, the nose and cheekbones polished and transparent like a bigaroon cherry. A thin tuft of reddish hair was brushed back from his high, s.h.i.+ning forehead.

It was my father. He exclaimed:

”What, Jackie, boy! How old you look!” then waved his arm towards me.

”In trouble?” he said. ”You in trouble?”

He rubbed his thin hands together, and looked round the place with a cultured man's air of disgust. I said, ”Father!” and he suddenly began to talk very fast and agitatedly of what he had been doing for me. My mother, he said, was crippled with rheumatism, and Rooksby and Veronica on the preceding Thursday had set sail for Jamaica. He had read to my mother, beside her bed, the newspaper containing an account of my case; and she had given him money, and he had started with violent haste for London. The haste and the rush were still dazing him. He had lived down there in the farmhouse beneath the downs, with the stackyards under his eyes, with his books of verse and his few prints on the wall------My G.o.d, how it all came back to me.

In his disjointed speeches, I could see how exactly the same it all remained. The same old surly man with a squint had driven him along the muddy roads in the same ancient gig, past the bare elms, to meet the coach. And my father had never been in London since he had walked the streets with the Prince Regent's friends.

Whilst he talked to me there, lines of verse kept coming to his lips; and, after the habitual pleasure of the apt quotation, he felt acutely shocked at the inappropriateness of the place, the press-yard, with the dim light weeping downwards between immensely high walls, and the desultory snowflakes that dropped between us. And he had tried so hard, in his emergency, to be practical. When he had reached London, before even attempting to see me, he had run from minister to minister trying to influence them in my favour--and he reached me in Newgate with nothing at all effected.

I seemed to know him then, so intimately, so much better than anything else in the world.

He began, ”I had my idea in the up-coach last night. I thought, 'A very great personage was indebted to me in the old days (more indebted than you are aware of, Johnnie). I will intercede with him.' That was why my first step was to my old tailor's in Conduit Street. Because... what is fit for a farm for a palace were low.” He stopped, reflected, then said, ”What is fit for _the_ farm for _the_ palace were low.”

He felt across his coat for his breast pocket. It was what he had done years and years ago, and all these years between, inscribe ideas for lines of verse in his pocket-book. I said:

”You have seen the king?”

His face lengthened a little. ”Not _seen_ him. But I found one of the duke's secretaries, a pleasant young fellow... not such as we used to be. But the duke was kind enough to interest himself. Perhaps my name has lived in the land. I was called Curricle Kemp, as I may have told you, because I drove a vermilion one with green and gilt wheels....”

His face, peering at me through the bars, had, for a moment, a flush of pride. Then he suddenly remembered, and, as if to propitiate his own reproof, he went on:

”I saw the Secretary of State, and he a.s.sured me, very civilly, that not even the highest personage in the land....” He dropped his voice, ”Jackie, boy,” he said, his narrow-lidded eyes peering miserably across at me, ”there's not even hope of a reprieve afterwards.”

I leaned my face wearily against the iron bars. What, after all, was the use of fighting if the _Lion_ were not back?

Then, suddenly, as the sound of his words echoed down the bare, black corridors, he seemed to realize the horror of it. His face grew absolutely white, he held his head erect, as if listening to a distant sound. And then he began to cry--horribly, and for a long time.