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Page 57
"Neither of us talked, and I imagined that the people in the streets
knew we were going to prison, and I kept my eyes on the enamel card on
the back of the apron. I suppose I read, 'Two-wheeled hackney
carriage: if hired and discharged within the four-mile limit, 1_s_.'
at least a hundred times. I got more sensible after a bit, and when we
had turned into Gray's Inn Road I looked up and saw a tram in front of
us with 'Holloway Road and King's X,' painted on the steps, and the
Colonel saw it about the same time I fancy, for we each looked at the
other, and the Colonel raised his eyebrows. It showed us that at least
the cabman knew where we were going.
"'They might have taken us for a turn through the West End first, I
think,' the Colonel said. 'I'd like to have had a look around,
wouldn't you? This isn't a cheerful neighborhood, is it?'
"There were a lot of children playing in St. Andrew's Gardens, and a
crowd of them ran out just as we passed, shrieking and laughing over
nothing, the way kiddies do, and that was about the only pleasant
sight in the ride. I had quite a turn when we came to the New Hospital
just beyond, for I thought it was Holloway, and it came over me what
eight months in such a place meant. I believe if I hadn't pulled
myself up sharp, I'd have jumped out into the street and run away. It
didn't last more than a few seconds, but I don't want any more like
them. I was afraid, afraid--there's no use pretending it was anything
else. I was in a dumb, silly funk, and I turned sick inside and shook,
as I have seen a horse shake when he shies at nothing and sweats and
trembles down his sides.
"During those few seconds it seemed to be more than I could stand; I
felt sure that I couldn't do it--that I'd go mad if they tried to
force me. The idea was so terrible--of not being master over your own
legs and arms, to have your flesh and blood and what brains God gave
you buried alive in stone walls as though they were in a safe with a
time-lock on the door set for eight months ahead. There's nothing to
be afraid of in a stone wall really, but it's the idea of the
thing--of not being free to move about, especially to a chap that has
always lived in the open as I have, and has had men under him. It was
no wonder I was in a funk for a minute. I'll bet a fiver the others
were, too, if they'll only own up to it. I don't mean for long, but
just when the idea first laid hold of them. Anyway, it was a good
lesson to me, and if I catch myself thinking of it again I'll whistle,
or talk to myself out loud and think of something cheerful. And I
don't mean to be one of those chaps who spends his time in jail
counting the stones in his cell, or training spiders, or measuring how
many of his steps make a mile, for madness lies that way. I mean to
sit tight and think of all the good times I've had, and go over them
in my mind very slowly, so as to make them last longer and remember
who was there and what we said, and the jokes and all that; I'll go
over house-parties I have been on, and the times I've had in the
Riviera, and scouting-parties Dr. Jim led up country when we were
taking Matabele Land.
"They say that if you're good here they give you things to read after
a month or two, and then I can read up all those instructive books
that a fellow never does read until he's laid up in bed.
"But that's crowding ahead a bit; I must keep to what happened to-day.
We struck York Road at the back of the Great Western Terminus, and I
half hoped we might see some chap we knew coming or going away: I
would like to have waved my hand to him. It would have been fun to
have seen his surprise the next morning when he read in the paper that
he had been bowing to jail-birds, and then I would like to have
cheated the tipstaves out of just one more friendly good-by. I wanted
to say good-by to somebody, but I really couldn't feel sorry to see
the last of any one of those we passed in the streets--they were such
a dirty, unhappy-looking lot, and the railroad wall ran on forever
apparently, and we might have been in a foreign country for all we
knew of it. There were just sooty gray brick tenements and gas-works
on one side, and the railroad cutting on the other, and semaphores and
telegraph wires overhead, and smoke and grime everywhere, it looked
exactly like the sort of street that should lead to a prison, and it
seemed a pity to take a smart hansom and a good cob into it.
"It was just a bit different from our last ride together--when we rode
through the night from Krugers-Dorp with hundreds of horses' hoofs
pounding on the soft veldt behind us, and the carbines clanking
against the stirrups as they swung on the sling belts. We were being
hunted then, harassed on either side, scurrying for our lives like the
Derby Dog in a race-track when every one hoots him and no man steps
out to help--we were sick for sleep, sick for food, lashed by the
rain, and we knew that we were beaten; but we were free still, and
under open skies with the derricks of the Rand rising like gallows on
our left, and Johannesburg only fifteen miles away."
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