The Way Out

The prisoner in accordance with his counsel's advice pleaded Guilty. It was only a question of the length of the sentence, therefore, and the judge before whom William Day appeared did not err on the side of mercy. The heaviest sentence that it was in his power to allot to a malefactor of that class he passed upon William Day.

None of his own were present, but the Court was filled with people to whom the prisoner was a familiar figure of everyday life.

It was all but impossible to look upon this big, important-looking man in the well-cut clothes, holding till the last few weeks among them the position of gentleman, and believe that it was a criminal standing before their eyes. The attraction of gazing at, of gloating upon, such a phenomenon was great. He had been a hectoring kind of man, walking very noisily among his fellows, taking to himself a great deal of room. Such an one gives offence frequently if unconsciously. There was none who saw William Day standing up for his sentence in the dock that day who bore a grudge, or remembered.

With some there he had assumed an insolent superiority, with other few, whose position entitled them to choose their acquaintance, he had been unwarrantably familiar. For the minute he held his place after sentence was pronounced his eyes travelled slowly but with a dreadful look of appeal over the familiar faces. Over faces of tradespeople, with whom he had dealt; of clients for whom he had done business; of people with whom he had dined and whom he had entertained in return; of men who had driven him in cabs, blacked his boots, carried his portmanteaux. The slowly travelling gaze had in it something of a sick despair, something of a wild appeal. The men over whom it passed, bore it in absolute, breathless silence, but they never forgot it.

The great cheeks that had seemed ready to burst with good-living, hung loose and flabby now, the hands that had been prompt with the grasp of friendship, that had waved greetings from window or pavement, that had ever been generous in giving, clung to the rail of the dock, the knuckles whitened with the tension. The tongue that had been so loud in dispute, so rough in anger, so boisterous in welcome, lay dry and silent in the mouth which had lopped open.

There was a feeling upon many of those who momentarily encountered the dreadful gaze that they were responsible; they longed to exonerate themselves, to say to him, "I, at least, had nothing to do with it. I am sorry, William Day. Indeed I am sorry." It was a relief when he turned, at the warder's touch on his arm, and went below.

In the room where he was allowed to sit for a time before being driven to prison his lawyer came to speak to him; the confidential clerk from his own office; his friend, George Boult.

"It is very severe," George Boult kept saying with nervous reiteration.
"Very severe."

The prisoner did not speak. He was wearing, arranged across his heavy paunch, a handsome chain of gold. With fingers stiff from their hold upon the dock-rail he began, bunglingly, to detach this chain from his waistcoat. His watch came out with it—a big watch, with a double gold case. He opened the outer case in an aimless way, mechanically, and for no object, it seemed, for he did not look at the time. Then, without a word he held out the watch and chain to his friend, and lifted the fingers which had fumbled with the watch-case to his lead-coloured lips.

Within a quarter of an hour from the time that William Day had listened to his heavy sentence of penal servitude he lay on his back, dead.