COMING from where they cooked their food, we passed down a passage. The old warder in the dark blue uniform and a cap whose peak hung over his level iron-grey eyebrows, stopped.
“This,” he said, “is the jewel room;” and, taking a key that hung below his belt, he opened an iron door. A convict with a yellow face, in yellow clothing marked with arrows, and in his yellow hand a piece of yellow leather, darted a look at us, dropped his glance, and with a dreadful, silent, swift obsequiousness passed us and went out. We stood alone amongst the jewels, that he had evidently been polishing.
“We call it the jewel room for fun,” the old warder said, and a smile, the first of the morning, visited his face, but quickly left his eyes again to that strange mournful look, which some eyes have in the depths of them—a look, as if in strict attention to the outer things of life, their owner had parted with his soul. He took one of the jewels from the wall, and held it out. It was a light steel bangle joined by a light steel chain to another light steel bangle.
“That’s what they wear now when it’s necessary to put them on.”
One may see in harness rooms, bits, and chains, and stirrups glisten, but never was harness room so garnished as this little chamber. The four walls were bright as diamonds to the very ceiling with jewels of every kind; light and heavy bangles, long chains, short chains, thin chains, and very thick iron chains.
“Those are old-fashioned,” said the warder; “we don’t use them now.”
“And this?”
It stood quite close, made of three very bright steel bars, joined at the top, wide asunder at the bottom, and clamped together by cross bars in the middle.
“That’s the triangles,” he said a little hurriedly.
“Do you flog much?”
He stared. You are lacking—he seemed to say—in delicacy.
“Very little,” he answered, “only when it’s necessary.” And unconscious that he had proclaimed the spirit of the system that he served, the spirit of all systems, he drew his heels together, as though saluting discipline.
To his old figure standing there, tall, upright, and so orderly, and to his grave and not unkindly face, it was impossible to feel aversion. But in this little room there seemed to come and stand in line with him, and at his back, in an ever-growing pyramid, shaped to an apex like the very triangles themselves, the countless figures of officialdom. They stood there, upright, and orderly, with the words: “Only when it’s necessary,” coming from their mouths. And as one looked, one saw how chiselled in its form, how smooth and slippery in surface, how impermeable in structure, was that pyramid. Wedged in perfect symmetry, bound together man to man by something common to their souls, this phalanx stood by the force of its own shape, like dead masonry; stone on stone, each resting on the other, solid and immovable, in terrifying stillness. And in the eyes of all that phalanx—blue eyes, brown eyes, grey eyes, and mournful hazel eyes, converging on one point—there was the same look: “Stand away, please—don’t touch the pyramid!”
Turning his back on the triangles, the old warder said again:
“Only when it’s necessary.”
“And when is it necessary?”
“The rules decide that.”
“Of course. But who makes them?”
His smile faded. “The system,” he replied.
“And do you know how the system has come about?”
He frowned—a strange question, this, to ask him!
“That,” he said with slight impatience in his voice, “is not for me to say.” And he jerked his neck, as though continuing:
“Ask that of him behind me!”
Involuntarily I looked, but there was no one there, behind him; only the triangles, beautifully bright. Then, with the same uncanny suddenness there sprang up again a vision of that solid pyramid of men, and the head of each seemed turned over his shoulder, saying:
“Ask that of him behind me.”
With a sort of eagerness I tried to see the apex of that pyramid. It was too far away.
“We’ve got to maintain order,” he said suddenly, as though repelling a subtle onslaught on his point of view.
“Of course; everything in this room, I suppose, is for that purpose?”
“Everything—that’s in use.”
“Ah, yes! I think you said there are some things that are not used now?”
“Those big iron chains, and these weights here—they weighted the prisoner down with those; that’s all out of date.”
“They look rather queer and barbarous, certainly.”
He smiled.
“You may say that,” he said.
“And can you tell me how they came to be disused?”
He seemed again to check the action of turning his head round.
“No,” he said, “I couldn’t tell you that. They found they weren’t necessary, I suppose.”
“When they were used, I take it the authorities believed in them?”
“No doubt,” he answered, “or they wouldn’t have used them.”
“They never thought that we should be looking at these things, and calling them barbarous, like this!”
He stared at the great manacles.
“They used them,” he said, “and never thought about it, I dare say.”
“They must have considered them necessary for discipline.”
“Just that.”
“And was discipline any better then than it is now?”
“Oh, no! Worse! They had a lot more trouble with the prisoners than we have, from what I hear.”
“If any one had told the authorities then that those heavy things did no good they’d have laughed at him.”
He answered with a smile: “Little doubt of that.”
“I wonder whether, a few years hence, people will be standing here and saying the same thing about those triangles, and all these other jewels, and calling us barbarians for using them. It would be interesting to know.”
His brows contracted: “Not likely,” he said; “you can’t do without them.”
“You think it would not be possible?”
Again he seemed to check his eyes from looking round.
“No,” he repeated stolidly, “you can’t do without them.”
“It would be dangerous to try?”
He shook his close-cropped head under the peaked cap.
“I shouldn’t like to see it tried. We must keep order.”
“At the time they left off using those heavy chains, they must have thought they ran a risk?”
He answered coldly: “I don’t know anything about that.”
“The present state of things is final, then?”
He put the bangles back upon their nail, and turning rather suddenly, as though fearing to be attacked behind, said:
“We don’t trouble about such things; we’re here to administer the system as we find it. We don’t use these, except when it’s necessary.”
“Have you not begged the question?”
He said with dignity: “That is not my business,” laying his hand upon the triangles. And as he did so there seemed to spring up once more that solid phalanx, man linked to man, all with the same schoolmaster’s eyes—a living pyramid, turned to stone by the force of its own shape. And a sound came forth from them as though they were assenting, but it was only the scraping of the triangles, as the old warder pushed them a little farther back.
He went to the door and opened it; and going out in answer to this invitation, I looked back at the jewels. They hung in perfect brightness, round about the triangles; and suddenly, with that same dreadful, silent, swift obsequiousness, the man in yellow clothing marked with arrows, with the yellow face, and the yellow leather in his hand, passed us and went in. The iron door closed on him with a clang; but before it closed, I saw him at work already, polishing those shining jewels.
In dreams I have seen him since, alone with those emblems of a perfect order, working without sound! And in dreams too, guiding me away, I see the old warder with his regular, grave face, and his eyes mourning for something he has lost.