“How’s business?” asked Paul abruptly.
“Paul, you mustn’t be nasty to me,” said Margot in a low voice. “I don’t think you’d say that if you knew quite how I was feeling.”
“I’m sorry, Margot. As a matter of fact, I just wanted to know.”
“I’m selling out. A Swiss firm was making things difficult. But I don’t think that business has anything to do with the—the ostracism, as Maltravers would say. I believe it’s all because I’m beginning to grow old.”
“I never heard anything so ridiculous. Why, all those people are about eighty, and anyway you aren’t at all.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t understand,” said Margot, and there was another pause.
“Ten minutes more,” said the warder.
“Things haven’t turned out quite as we expected them to, have they?” said Margot.
They talked about some parties Margot had been to and the books Paul was reading. At last Margot said: “Paul, I’m going. I simply can’t stand another moment of this.”
“It was nice of you to come,” said Paul.
“I’ve decided something rather important,” said Margot, “just this minute. I am going to be married quite soon to Maltravers. I’m sorry, but I am.”
“I suppose it’s because I look so awful?” said Paul.
“No, it’s just everything. It’s that, too, in a way, but not the way you mean, Paul. It’s simply something that’s going to happen. Do you understand at all, dear? It may help you, too, in a way, but I don’t want you to think that that’s the reason, either. It’s just how things are going to happen. Oh dear! How difficult it is to say anything.”
“If you should want to kiss goodbye,” said the gaoler, “not being husband and wife, it’s not usual. Still, I don’t mind stretching a point for once …”
“Oh, God!” said Margot, and left the room without looking back.
Paul returned to his cell. His supper had already been served out to him, a small pie from which protruded the feet of two pigeons; there was even a table-napkin wrapped round it. But Paul had very little appetite, for he was greatly pained at how little he was pained by the events of the afternoon.
V
The Passing of a Public School Man
A day or two later Paul again found himself next to Grimes in the quarry. When the warder was out of earshot Grimes said: “Old boy, I can’t stand this much longer. It just ain’t good enough.”
“I don’t see any way out,” said Paul. “Anyway, it’s quite bearable. I’d as soon be here as at Llanabba.”
“Not so Grimes,” said Grimes. “He just languishes in captivity, like the lark. It’s all right for you—you like reading and thinking, and all that. Well, I’m different, you know. I like drink and a bit of fun, and chatting now and then to my pals. I’m a sociable chap. It’s turning me into a giddy machine, this life, and there’s an awful chaplain, who gives me the pip, who keeps butting in in a breezy kind of way and asking if I feel I’m ‘right with God.’ Of course I’m not, and I tell him so. I can stand most sorts of misfortune, old boy, but I can’t stand repression. That was what broke me up at Llanabba, and it’s what’s going to break me up here, if I don’t look out for myself. It seems to me it’s time Grimes flitted off to another clime.”
“No one has ever succeeded in escaping from this prison,” said Paul.
“Well, just you watch next time there’s a fog!”
As luck would have it, there was a fog next day, a heavy impenetrable white mist which came up quite suddenly while they were at work, enveloping men and quarry in the way that mists do on Egdon Heath.
“Close up there,” said the warder in charge. “Stop work and close up. Look out there, you idiot!” for Grimes had stumbled over the field-telephone. “If you’ve broken it you’ll come up before the Governor tomorrow.”
“Hold this horse,” said the other warder, handing the reins to Grimes.
He stooped and began to collect the chains on which the men were strung for their march home. Grimes seemed to be having some difficulty with the horse, which was plunging and rearing further away from the squad. “Can’t you even hold a horse?” said the warder. Suddenly Grimes, with remarkable agility considering his leg, was seen to be in the saddle riding away into the heath.
“Come back,” roared the warder, “come back, or I’ll fire.” He put his rifle to his shoulder and fired into the fog. “He’ll come back all right,” he said. “No one ever gets away for long. He’ll get solitary confinement and No. 1 diet for this, poor fish.”
No one seemed to be much disturbed by the incident, even when it was found that the field-telephone was disconnected.
“He hasn’t a hope,” said the warder. “They often do that, just put down their tools sudden and cut and run. But they can’t get away in those clothes and with no money. We shall warn all the farms tonight. Sometimes they stays out hiding for several days, but back they comes when they’re hungry, or else they get arrested the moment they shows up in a village. I reckon it’s just nerves makes them try it.”
That evening the horse came back, but there was no sign of Grimes. Special patrols were sent out with bloodhounds straining at their leashes; the farms and villages on the heath were warned, and the anxious inhabitants barred their doors closely and more pertinently forbade their children to leave the house on any pretext whatever; the roads were watched for miles, and all cars were stopped and searched, to the intense annoyance of many law-abiding citizens. But Grimes did not turn up.
