Kindling (26 page)

“The next thing is, I’m very much concerned about the Hawside Company. I took all of this risk upon myself to get that shipyard started up, and if it comes to grief I shall have done it all for nothing. My arrest won’t have done them any good. Still, they’ll get over that, I think—so long as it doesn’t drag on for too long.
But the quicker it’s over, and the less dirty linen washed in public, the better chance that Company will have.”

“Is your interest in the Company so valuable as that?”

Warren shook his head. “I haven’t got much in it. About three thousand pounds or so. But I should be very sorry to see it go under now. Given a decent chance, I think it can get through.”

The solicitor gazed at him curiously. “It seems to mean a great deal to you. But surely, a company that has no soul to be damned, nor backside to be kicked, hardly deserves so much consideration.”

“Our time is getting short,” said Warren. “That is my line, and that is what I’m going to do. How long do you think I’ll get?”

The solicitor laughed nervously. “I really don’t know. Eighteen months?”

Warren shook his head. “I think a good bit more than that.”

He appeared next morning in the police court, neatly dressed and listening to the proceedings with detached gravity. The charges were read over in the court:

For good measure, he was also charged with fraudulently converting moneys belonging to the company for his own use.

The police asked for a remand, which was granted. Allardyce asked for bail, which was refused. Warren went to Brixton in the Black Maria, after formalities in court which had lasted barely for ten minutes.

“Let them get on with it,” he said to Allardyce that afternoon. “You can plead not guilty to that second charge, of fraudulent conversion. But there’s nothing in that—they’ll cut it out before the trial.”

“You’re still sure that you want to plead guilty on the first charge?”

“Absolutely. All you’ve got to do is to get it through as quickly and as quietly as possible.”

The solicitor sighed. “If that’s really the line you want to take, I’ll do my best for you.”

“There’s one thing more. Tell Morgan to come down and see me here to-morrow. There’s a good bit of business to be cleared up before I go into retirement.”

“I suppose so. What are you going to do with Warren Sons and Mortimer?”

“That’s what I am wondering myself.”

He settled down in Brixton not uncomfortably. His room was bare, but that worried him very little, nor did the close restraint distress him. He discovered that the first and most important element of comfort is an easy mind; freedom from worry and responsibility, he
found, formed a considerable palliative to his imprisonment. He had no regrets about the issue of his false prospectus, no great sense of guilt. Instead he had a feeling of achievement and of work well done. Within a very few days of his incarceration he found that he could lie contented on his bed for a great part of the day, quietly contemplating what he had done, what lay before him.

“You’d hardly believe it,” said Morgan to his wife one night, “but I believe he’s happier in prison than he was when he was out.”

“That may well be, with the sort of wife he had.”

“That may be something to do with it. But he hasn’t seen her for a year or so. The decree will be made absolute next month.”

“Is he quite right in his head?”

“I think so. But you know how irritable he used to be? Well, you’d think it would be worse than ever now. Not a bit of it. I’ve never known him so good-humoured.”

His wife smiled. “Maybe he’s got another girl,” she said.

“If that’s it, she may have to wait some time,” said Morgan.

In Sharples the news was greeted with dismay. Warren had never taken any public part in the affairs of the town, had never made a speech or attended any sort of public function. Only a few people in the town knew him by sight. In spite of this, perhaps because of this, he had become a legend in the place, a myth, a fairy tale. For the last six months every child in the town had known the story of the stranger, the poor
tramp who had been operated on up in the hospital and who, turning to fairy banker, in gratitude had started up the shipyard for them once again and set them working on three oil tankers, with money coming in regular. Every mother told that story to her children; in the secretive, dumb hearts of the adolescents it burned like a flame. In the pubs towards closing time the men, alcoholically sentimental, would lift their cans to “Mister Bloody Warren”, and turn again to their darts.

And now their Mr. Warren was in clink. It was a shocking thing, incredible. The solid earth beneath their feet seemed to tremble and to slip away; before them loomed the abyss of unemployment once again.

The Almoner heard it first from Mr. Williams. He was working at his ledgers as she came into the office; he stopped, and raised his head.

“Did ye hear the news?” he asked, uncertainly.

She shook her head. “What’s that?”

He hesitated. “They’re saying your Mr. Warren’s in a bit of trouble,” he said diffidently.

She said, “Where?”

“I’m hoping maybe that it’s wrong,” he said gently. “But they’re saying that he’s been arrested, in London, for fraudulent conversion and a charge of falsifying a prospectus.”

She did not speak.

“I think it must be all of a mistake,” he said, after a moment.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think it may be true.”

She turned to him. “Where did you get this from?”

“I was on the telephone down to the Yard, speaking to Jennings. He told me that the news had just come through.”

“He knew that this was coming,” she said in a low tone. “All the time when he was up here last, he must have known of this.”

She raised her head. “Let me know anything else you hear.” She left him, and went up to her room.

She sat for half an hour upon her bed, staring before her, motionless. Then she got up, took out a writing pad, and settled down to put her thoughts into a letter.

I don’t know what the trouble is exactly, yet
, [she wrote].
Probably if I did I shouldn’t understand it, because I suppose it’s all company and business stuff. All I know is what everybody else in Sharples knows; that over two thousand families are now in work and happy, who last year were sinking, down and out, and utterly wretched. I know that that is what you set out to do, and whatever else may happen now, I think you must be very proud and happy to have done so much for us. And as for me, I’m very proud that I’ve had the experience of seeing such a wonderful thing done, even at such a cost. You told me from the first that nothing could be done for us by honest means. I can’t be sorry for the decision that you took, and I don’t suppose you are. But I am most deeply sorry that you didn’t have the luck to get away with it
.

I suppose that you are going to be tried upon these charges. I can’t believe it will go wrong for you; I shall be praying all the luck in the world for you on that day, and everyone up here will be doing the same. But if
things should go badly, then I want you to know that I’m with you one hundred per cent. I’ve lost the sense of difference between the right thing and the wrong thing long ago where Sharples was concerned. I only know one thing for certain; that what you did for us up here was right. My dear, I’m terribly proud of you
.

Warren received this letter in Brixton Prison. He answered it a couple of days later.

My dear
,

I want to thank you for your letter, and I want to tell you myself, rather than you should see it in the papers, that I’m going to prison. In business there isn’t a shadow of excuse for what I did. I am certainly guilty on the first charge, and I should only waste the time and money of the court by pleading otherwise. And so, I am afraid that it may be some time before we meet again
.

My main concern now is to see that the Company gets through. I think it will do so, given reasonable luck in trade revival in the country, and that now seems to be well on the way. I have seen Cheriton and Hogan in that last few days and told them what I think they ought to do, and now it is largely out of my hands. This time in Brixton on remand is valuable to me because I can write letters relatively freely, and I am making what arrangements are in my power so to arrange my own business that it can be called upon to support your company in Sharples with financial help, if needs be, while I am in prison. Later on the letter position will get more difficult—one in three months
seems to be the ration—and so I must do all my business now
.

And lastly, about ourselves. If a few weeks’ time my decree will be made absolute. If I had got away with it in this affair, I should have asked you to marry me as soon as that happened. I believe you know that. Because I’m now in quod, I’m not going to insult your intelligence by pretending that I’m just a very good friend. I’m not. When I get out of this I shall probably ask you to marry me because I think we could be wonderfully happy together—and you’ll probably refuse me for my prison record. That’s all I’m going to say about that, but now you know what’s coming to you
.

Be tranquil. It isn’t coming for some time
.

Warren was tried at the Old Bailey, about a month after his arrest. Because of his plea of guilty to the first charge the proceedings were short, almost a formality. No evidence was offered by the Crown upon the second charge, and acquittal on this charge was ordered by the judge. The first charge was proved upon the plea of guilty.

The judge, magnificent in scarlet and ermine, said:

“You have pleaded guilty to the charge of issuing a prospectus statement of the Hawside Ship and Engineering Company, well knowing that statement to be false in its material particulars, with the intention of defrauding the public. That charge has now been proved against you. It has been suggested upon your behalf that I should treat this as a first offence. I cannot take that course. A heartless and wicked fraud has been practised upon the public, which must bring a great deal
of distress to many people; in my view that offence is aggravated by the position which you have held hitherto. I find that the charge has been proved against you, I find that fraud was committed deliberately for your own ends, and I sentence you to three years’ penal servitude.”

Warren was ushered from the dock, and the judge turned to the next case.

He served his sentence in Parkhurst Prison, in the Isle of Wight. He was taken there by two prison officers three days after the trial, admitted to the prison, and put into a cell.

He was uncomfortable at first, with all the strangeness of a new boy at school. He found Parkhurst to be not unlike his public school in many ways, and very similar indeed to the new boy. There was the same awkward search for information about times of work and exercise and meals, about rights and privileges.

Another similarity that made him feel at home in the first days was to the Army. He had served for the first six months of the War as a private soldier, a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery; rough food and clothing were no novelty to him. He did not like them, but they held no terrors for him; they were not strange, unknown things. And in another way, they brought with them an association that was not unwelcome to him.

This association was a memory of a very restful time. Looking back upon his life since he had left his public school, the five years before the War, the War itself, and the time subsequent, one period stood out in memory as utterly different from the rest. During the time when he had been a private soldier he had held no
responsibility for anything at all. That made that six months totally different from the rest of his working life. It had been a pleasant time, a very restful time, when nothing had been expected of him but that he should keep his body and his equipment clean and in good condition. Beyond that, he was not responsible for anything at all, not even for securing his own food or his own bed. All that was done for him. He held that six months in his memory as a time of great mental rest, a peace that he had never known before or since.

In Parkhurst Prison he found these circumstances to be largely reproduced, but modified in ways that made them appropriate to his age. The immensely strenuous physical labour of the Army was replaced by a working day of five hours in the shoe shop, learning to build army boots, and by an hour’s parade a day in the prison exercise yard. The rest of the twenty-four hours were spent in his cell, with no responsibilities at all.

It lies in the nature of a man to make himself a home, and Warren grew very fond of his cell. It was a small room, but big enough for him, with walls half painted, half whitewashed, and kept at a comfortable temperature by a hot-water radiator. The heavily barred window looked to the east over the Cowes-Newport road and the valley of the Medina to the higher land by Wootton; being upon the top floor of his hall he could see most of the east end of the Island. He soon found that the prison discipline wisely connives at the possession of small, innocent articles, and in the eighth month of his sentence he obtained possession of a small telescope constructed out of cardboard tubes. From that time on
the scrutiny of the wide, varied countryside became an abiding interest to him; for the first time in his life he had leisure to enjoy and savour to the full the simple pleasure of watching other people go about their work.

He was allowed two books a week from the prison library. In the first week of his sentence he read both books through in one day, devouring them with the swift efficiency that he gave to all his business matters. He finished that day with the restless, nervous fatigue that he had come to regard as part of a normal life—and was out of literature for the rest of the week. On the third day he read half of one of the books through again, and was surprised to notice that there was something to be gained by doing so.