“Can you read and write, D.4.12?” asked the newcomer.
“Yes,” said Paul.
“Public or secondary education?”
“Public,” said Paul. His school had been rather sensitive on this subject.
“What was your standard when you left school?”
“Well, I don’t quite know. I don’t think we had standards.”
The Schoolmaster marked him down as “Memory defective” on a form and went out. Presently he returned with a book.
“You must do your best with that for the next four weeks,” he said. “I’ll try and get you into one of the morning classes. You won’t find it difficult, if you can read fairly easily. You see, it begins there,” he said helpfully, showing Paul the first page.
It was an English Grammar published in 1872.
“A syllable is a single sound made by one simple effort of the voice
,” Paul read.
“Thank you,” he said; “I’m sure I shall find it useful.”
“You can change it after four weeks if you can’t get on with it,” said the Schoolmaster. “But I should stick to it, if you can.”
Again the door was locked.
Next came the Chaplain. “Here is your Bible and a book of devotion. The Bible stays in the cell always. You can change the book of devotion any week if you wish to. Are you Church of England? Services are voluntary—that is to say, you must either attend all or none.” The Chaplain spoke in a nervous and hurried manner. He was new to his job, and he had already visited fifty prisoners that day, one of whom had delayed him for a long time with descriptions of a vision he had seen the night before.
“Hallo, Prendy!” said Paul.
Mr. Prendergast looked at him anxiously. “I didn’t recognize you,” he said. “People look so much alike in those clothes. This is most disturbing, Pennyfeather. As soon as I saw that you’d been convicted I was afraid they might send you here. Oh dear! oh dear! It makes everything still more difficult.”
“What’s the matter, Prendy? Doubts again?”
“No, no, discipline, my old trouble. I’ve only been at the job a week. I was very lucky to get it. My bishop said he thought there was more opening for a Modern Churchman in this kind of work than in the parishes. The Governor is very modern too. But criminals are just as bad as boys, I find. They pretend to make confessions and tell me the most dreadful things just to see what I’ll say, and in chapel they laugh so much that the warders spend all their time correcting them. It makes the services seem so irreverent. Several of them got put on No. 1 diet this morning for singing the wrong words to one of the hymns, and of course that only makes me more unpopular. Please, Pennyfeather, if you don’t mind, you mustn’t call me Prendy, and if anyone passes the cell will you stand up when you’re talking to me. You’re supposed to, you see, and the Chief Warder has said some very severe things to me about maintaining discipline.”
At this moment the face of the warder appeared at the peephole in the door.
“I trust you realize the enormity of your offence and the justice of your punishment?” said Mr. Prendergast in a loud voice. “Pray for penitence.”
A warder came into the cell.
“Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I’ve got to take this one to see the Governor. There’s D.4.18 down the way been asking for you for days. I said I’d tell you, only, if you’ll forgive my saying so, I shouldn’t be too soft with ’im, sir. We know ’im of old. ’E’s a sly old devil, begging your pardon, sir, and ’e’s only religious when ’e thinks it’ll pay.”
“I think that I am the person to decide that, officer,” said Mr. Prendergast with some dignity. “You may take D.4.12 to the Governor.”
Sir Wilfred Lucas-Dockery had not been intended by nature or education for the Governor of a prison; his appointment was the idea of a Labour Home Secretary who had been impressed by an appendix on the theory of penology which he had contributed to a report on the treatment of “Conscientious Objectors.” Up to that time Sir Wilfred had held the Chair of Sociology at a Midland university; only his intimate friends and a few specially favoured pupils knew that behind his mild and professional exterior he concealed an ardent ambition to serve in the public life of his generation. He stood twice for Parliament, but so diffidently that his candidature passed almost unnoticed. Colonel MacAdder, his predecessor in office, a veteran of numberless unrecorded campaigns on the Afghan frontier, had said to him on his retirement: “Good luck, Sir Wilfred! If I may give you a piece of advice, it’s this. Don’t bother about the lower warders or the prisoners. Give hell to the man immediately below you, and you can rely on him to pass it on with interest. If you make prison bad enough, people’ll take jolly good care to keep out of it. That’s been my policy all through, and I’m proud of it” (a policy which soon became quite famous in the society of Cheltenham Spa).
Sir Wilfred, however, had his own ideas. “You must understand,” he said to Paul, “that it is my aim to establish personal contact with each of the men under my care. I want you to take a pride in your prison and in your work here. So far as possible, I like the prisoners to carry on with their avocations in civilized life. What was this man’s profession, officer?”
“White Slave traffic, sir.”
“Ah, yes. Well, I’m afraid you won’t have much opportunity for that here. What else have you done?”
“I was nearly a clergyman once,” said Paul.
“Indeed? Well, I hope in time, if I find enough men with the same intention, to get together a theological class. You’ve no doubt met the Chaplain, a very broad-minded man. Still, for the present we are only at the beginning. The Government regulations are rather uncompromising. For
