The Last Ride Together

The Lion and the Unicorn

by Richard Harding Davis

A sketch containing three points of view

What the Poet Laureate wrote.

"There are girls in the Gold Reef City There are
mothers and children too! And they cry 'Hurry up for pity!'
So what can a brave man do? "I suppose we were wrong, were mad
men, Still I think at the Judgment Day, When God sifts
the good from the bad men, There'll be something more to
say." What more the Lord Chief Justice found to say.

"In this case we know the immediate consequence of your crime.
It has been the loss of human life, it has been the disturbance of
public peace, it has been the creation of a certain sense of distrust
of public professions and of public faith. . . . The sentence of
this Court therefore is that, as to you, Leander Starr Jameson, you
be confined for a period of fifteen months without hard labor; that
you, Sir John Willoughby, have ten months' imprisonment; and that
you, etc., etc."

London Times, July
29th.

What the Hon. "Reggie" Blake thought
about it.

"H. M. HOLLOWAY
PRISON,
"July 28th.

"I am going to keep a diary while I am in prison, that is, if
they will let me. I never kept one before because I hadn't the time;
when I was home on leave there was too much going on to bother about
it, and when I was up country I always came back after a day's riding
so tired that I was too sleepy to write anything. And now that I
have the time, I won't have anything to write about. I fancy that
more things happened to me today than are likely to happen again for
the next eight months, so I will make this day take up as much room
in the diary as it can. I am writing this on the back of the paper
the Warder uses for his official reports, while he is hunting up
cells to put us in. We came down on him rather unexpectedly and he
is nervous.

"Of course, I had prepared myself for this after a fashion, but
now I see that somehow I never really did think I would be in here,
and all my friends outside, and everything going on just the same as
though I wasn't alive somewhere. It's like telling yourself that
your horse can't possibly pull off a race, so that you won't mind so
much if he doesn't, but you always feel just as bad when he comes in
a loser. A man can't fool himself into thinking one way when he is
hoping the other.

"But I am glad it is over, and settled. It was a great bore not
knowing your luck and having the thing hanging over your head every
morning when you woke up. Indeed it was quite a relief when the
counsel got all through arguing over those proclamations, and the
Chief Justice summed up, but I nearly went to sleep when I found he
was going all over it again to the jury. I didn't understand about
those proclamations myself and I'll lay a fiver the jury didn't
either. The Colonel said he didn't. I couldn't keep my mind on what
Russell was explaining about, and I got to thinking how much old
Justice Hawkins looked like the counsel in 'Alice in Wonderland' when
they tried the knave of spades for stealing the tarts. He had just
the same sort of a beak and the same sort of a wig, and I wondered
why he had his wig powdered and the others didn't. Pollock's wig had
a hole in the top; you could see it when he bent over to take notes.
He was always taking notes. I don't believe he understood about
those proclamations either; he never seemed to listen, anyway.

"The Chief Justice certainly didn't love us very much, that's
sure; and he wasn't going to let anybody else love us either. I felt
quite the Christian Martyr when Sir Edward was speaking in defence.
He made it sound as though we were all a lot of Adelphi heroes and
ought to be promoted and have medals, but when Lord Russell started
in to read the Riot Act at us I began to believe that hanging was too
good for me. I'm sure I never knew I was disturbing the peace of
nations; it seems like such a large order for a subaltern.

"But the worst was when they made us stand up before all those
people to be sentenced. I must say I felt shaky about the knees
then, not because I was afraid of what was coming, but because it was
the first time I had ever been pointed out before people, and made to
feel ashamed. And having those girls there, too, looking at one.
That wasn't just fair to us. It made me feel about ten years old,
and I remembered how the Head Master used to call me to his desk and
say, 'Blake Senior, two pages of Horace and keep in bounds for a
week.' And then I heard our names and the months, and my name and
'eight months' imprisonment,' and there was a bustle and murmur and
the tipstaves cried, 'Order in the Court,' and the Judges stood up
and shook out their big red skirts as though they were shaking off
the contamination of our presence and rustled away, and I sat down,
wondering how long eight months was, and wishing they'd given me as
much as they gave Jameson.

"They put us in a room together then, and our counsel said how
sorry they were, and shook hands, and went off to dinner and left us.
I thought they might have waited with us and been a little late for
dinner just that once; but no one waited except a lot of costers
outside whom we did not know. It was eight o'clock and still quite
light when we came out, and there was a line of four- wheelers and a
hansom ready for us. I'd been hoping they would take us out by the
Strand entrance, just because I'd like to have seen it again, but
they marched us instead through the main quadrangle--a beastly,
gloomy courtyard that echoed, and out, into Carey Street--such a
dirty, gloomy street. The costers and clerks set up a sort of a
cheer when we came out, and one of them cried, 'God bless you, sir,'
to the doctor, but I was sorry they cheered. It seemed like kicking
against the umpire's decision. The Colonel and I got into a hansom
together and we trotted off into Chancery Lane and turned into
Holborn. Most of the shops were closed, and the streets looked
empty, but there was a lighted clock-face over Mooney's public-house,
and the hands stood at a quarter past eight. I didn't know where
Holloway was, and was hoping they would have to take us through some
decent streets to reach it; but we didn't see a part of the city that
meant anything to me, or that I would choose to travel through
again.

"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, 1s.' 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."