“Well, I’ve no more to say.  But you just think over it.  And we’ll give you fourteen days.”

* * * * *

Then as Frank went out he saw the three magistrates lean back in conversation.

(III)

I find it very hard to explain, even to myself, the extraordinary depression that fell upon Frank during his fourteen days.  He could hardly bear even to speak of it afterwards, and I find in his diary no more than a line or two, and those as bald as possible.  Apparently it was no kind of satisfaction to him to know that the whole thing was entirely his own doing, or that it was the thought of Gertie that had made him, in the first instance, take the tin from the Major.  Yet it was not that there was any sense of guilt, or even of mistake.  One would have thought that from everybody’s point of view, and particularly Gertie’s, it would be an excellent thing for the Major to go to prison for a bit.  It would certainly do him no harm, and it would be a real opportunity to separate the girl from his company.  As for any wrong in his pleading guilty, he defended it (I must say, with some adroitness) by saying that it was universally acknowledged that the plea of “Not Guilty” is merely formal, and in no way commits one to its intrinsic truth (and he is right there, at least according to Moral Theology as well as common sense) and, therefore, that the alternative plea is also merely formal.

And yet he was depressed by his fourteen days to the verge of melancholia.

There are several contributory causes that may be alleged.

First, there is the extreme ignominy of all the circumstances, beginning with the paternal scolding in court, in the presence of grocers and persons who threw clogs, continuing with the dreary journey by rail, in handcuffs, and the little crowds that gathered to laugh or stare, and culminating with the details of the prison life.  It is not pleasant for a cleanly man to be suspected of dirt, to be bathed and examined all over by a man suffering himself apparently from some species of eczema; it is not pleasant to be ordered about peremptorily by uniformed men, who, three months before, would have touched their hats to you, and to have to do things instantly and promptly for the single reason that one is told to do them.

Secondly, there was the abrupt change of life—­of diet, air and exercise....

Thirdly, there was the consideration, the more terrible because the more completely unverifiable, as to what difference all this would make, not only to the regard of his friends for him, but to his own regard for himself.  Innocence of a fault does not entirely do away with the distress and stigma of its punishment.  He imagined himself telling Jenny; he tried to see her laughing, and somehow he could not.  It was wholly uncharacteristic of all that he knew of her, and yet somehow, night after night, as the hours dragged by, he seemed to see her looking at him a little contemptuously.