And yet--was it so peaceful? Look to the left. As elsewhere it fell away, so here the harvest field swelled up in a lint-white line, firm and pure, the edge of the visible world. In the pale turquoise above that line hung a cloud, a discoloration, spreading like an ink-drop in clear water. Where that cloud now hung, yesterday the village of Rochehaut had stood. Contented, squalid little place with its steaming middens, its perambulating pigs, its church squatting like a little white-and-gray cat beside its miry _place_! Or look across at the opposite hill. Above the firs another drift of smoke was diffusing in the radiant air. That was the direction of the Bellevue, the big new hotel which Madame Hasquin of the farm supplied with milk and eggs. Or look at the farm itself. The fowls were clucking and scratching in the yard, the cows were lowing at the gate, but Monsieur Hasquin did not come to drive them in to the milking, nor did little Denise bring her sieve full of golden peas for her pet fantails. The place was still and peaceful; but it was the stillness and the peace of death.
There are no daily papers in a prison, and no news from the outside world is supposed to reach the inmates. It filters in, nevertheless. Gardiner first heard of the falling of the great shadow from a laborer who had got six weeks at the Summer Assizes for beating his wife to a jelly. Out of his cups he was an amiable soul, ready to make friends with anybody; and Gardiner, who put on no airs, was ready to respond.
On leaving hospital, B14 had been put to work in the garden. His hand had still to be dressed every day, but by the doctor's orders he was sent into the open air to do such jobs as he could. One summer afternoon he was weeding the paths, and West, the wife-beater, was digging potatoes in the adjoining plot. Gardiner divined by his important looks that he had something to say, and contrived to linger long enough for West to catch him up.
"I say, matey," the wife-beater began, in that lip-whisper by which prisoners communicate under the very noses of their guards, "'ave you heard there's a war on?"
"No! you don't say so! Who with? Mrs. Pankhurst?"
"Swelp me, they ain't then. I 'eard Old Ikey talkin' about it to Billy Blood."