Wormwood Scrubs is a first offenders’ prison and it is a building, grim and cold, of forbidding appearance.
He had never done a criminal, or even a mean thing in his life, but he treated the crime of the prisoners he had to deal with as though it were an illness like his own tuberculosis which was a nuisance you had to put up with, but which it did no good to talk about. He was entirely lacking in class-consciousness, so prisoners, whatever their station in life, felt at ease with him. But Ned Preston satisfied the dour and shrewd official who interviewed him that he was in every way reliable, and from the beginning he got on well with the governor, the warders, and the prisoners. Then he is given a trial, is discreetly watched, and if the impression is unfavourable is politely thanked and told that his services are no longer required. The Home Office people consequently are wary of taking on anyone who does not look as if he would persevere, and they make careful inquiries into the applicant’s antecedents, character and general suitability. The job is unpaid, and though a number of persons are willing to undertake it, either from compassion or curiosity, they are apt to grow tired of it, or find it takes up too much time, and the prisoners whose problems, interests and future they have been concerned with are left somewhat in the lurch. I don’t know how he heard that at Wormwood Scrubs they were in want of prison visitors, but the idea took his fancy so he went to the Home Office and saw the official in charge of prisons to offer his services. He had that febrile vitality that some consumptives have, and was always looking for an occupation to satisfy his desire for activity. If he had been content to live the life of an invalid he might have been alive now, but he wasn’t; and who can blame him? He died at the age of fifty-five of a haemorrhage which he had one night after coming home from some house where, he may well have flattered himself, he was the success of the party. When he was well, he liked to go out, out to lunch, out to dinner, and he liked to sit up late into the night smoking his pipe and drinking a good deal of whisky. I doubt whether he had enough money to live in an expensive sanatorium and he certainly hadn’t the temperament to suit himself to its life. Now and then he would be ill enough to stay in bed for two or three weeks, but then he would get better and be as gay, cheerful, and talkative as ever. He was a bachelor with a small income which sufficed for his modest needs, and in this he was lucky since he suffered from that form of chronic tuberculosis which may last for years without killing you, but which prevents you fromworking for your living.
Ned Preston was a Scot, a good-humoured, merry soul, with a gift for telling a story, sometimes too lengthily, for he was uncommonly loquacious, but with dramatic intensity.
People sometimes accused her of asking husbands more often than wives, but she defended herself by saying that she couldn’t possibly help it because more men were husbands than women were wives. But since her food and her wine were good and the talk almost always entertaining they generally came. Our hostess made it a point never to askwives with their husbands, because she said each cramped the other’s style and if they didn’t like to come separately they needn’t come at all. There were two nice clever women besides our hostess and two men besides myself. I was glad on arriving to find that I knew everyone. It was quite a small party, because our hostess liked general conversation; we never sat down to dinner more than eight, and generally only six, and after dinner when we went up to the drawing-room the chairs were so arranged that it was impossible for two persons to go into a huddle in a corner and so break things up. There was something so attractive in him that she couldn't bring herself to give him a saucy answer.