The Devils Garden | Page 4

glass
partition-work, instead of placing it all at the back, out of everybody's
way. "I told them it was wrong from the first--when they were refitting
the office, at the time of the extensions. My experience at Portsmouth
had taught me the danger."
It seemed that one evening, about three weeks ago, a certain soldier on

leave had been lounging against the counter, close to the glass screen.
On the other side of the screen the apparatus was clicking merrily while
Miss Yorke, the telegraph clerk, despatched a message. And all at once
the soldier, who was well versed in the code, began to recite the
message aloud. The postmaster peremptorily ordered him to stand away
from the counter. An altercation ensued, and the soldier became so
impudent that the postmaster threatened to put him outside the door.
"Oh," said the soldier, "it'd take a many such as you to put me out."
"Did he say so? Really now!" And Mr. Ridgett looked at Dale critically.
"I take it he was a heavyweight, eh?"
"He gave me my work," said Dale; "and I was all three minutes at it.
But out he went."
"Really now!" and Mr. Ridgett smiled.
"I had stopped Miss Yorke from operating. And I started her again
within four minutes. That was the time, and no more, the message was
delayed. That was the time it took me to renew the service with the
confidence and secrecy provided by Her Majesty's Regulations. And I
ask you, how else could I have acted? Was I to allow a telegram
consigned to my care to be blabbed out word for word to all the
world?"
"Were there many people in the office just then?"
"Two. But that makes no difference. If it had been only one--or half a
one--it couldn't be permitted."
"And was the message itself of a particularly private or important
nature?"
"Not as it happens. But the principle was the same."
"Just so."
As it appeared from Dale's narration, the soldier was at first willing to
accept his licking in a sportsmanlike spirit, was indeed quite ready to
admit that he had been the offending party; but injudicious
friends--secret enemies of Dale perhaps--had egged him on to take out
a summons for assault. When, however, Dale appeared before the
magistrates, the soldier had changed his mind again--he did not appear,
he allowed the charge to fall to the ground. And there the matter might
have ended, ought to have ended, but for the fact that the local Member
of Parliament suddenly made a ridiculous fuss--said it was a monstrous
and intolerable state of affairs that soldiers of the Queen should be

knocked about by her civil servants--wrote letters to other Members of
Parliament, to Government secretaries, to newspapers. Then the
excitement that had been smoldering burst forth with explosive force,
shaking the village, the county, the universe.
Dale, at handy grips with his superior officers, stood firm, declined to
budge an inch from his position; he was right, and nothing would ever
make him say he was wrong.
"Ah, well," said Mr. Ridgett, "if that's the way you looked at it. But I
don't quite follow how it got lifted out of their hands at Rodhaven, and
brought before us."
"I demanded it," said Dale proudly. "I wasn't going to be messed about
any further by a pack of funking old women--for that's what they are, at
Rodhaven. And I wasn't going to have it hushed over--nor write any
such letter as they asked."
"Oh, they suggested--"
"They suggested," said Dale, swelling with indignation, "that I should
write regret that I had perhaps acted indiscreet but only through
over-zeal."
"Oh! And you didn't see your way to--"
"Not me. Take a black mark, and let my record go. No, thank you. I
sent up my formal request to be heard at headquarters. I appealed to
Cæsar."
Mr. Ridgett smiled good-naturedly. "Why, you're quite a classical
scholar, Mr. Dale. You have your Latin quotations all pat."
"I'm a self-educated man," said Dale. "I begun at the bottom, and I've
been trying to improve myself all the way to where I've risen to."
Once or twice he sought tentatively to obtain from Mr. Ridgett the
moral support that even the strongest people derive from being assured
that they are entirely in the right. But Mr. Ridgett, who had been
sympathetic from the moment of his arrival, and who throughout the
hours had been becoming more and more friendly, did not entirely
respond to these hinted invitations.
"If you tell me to speak frankly," he said at last, "I should have a doubt
that you've made this one false step. You haven't kept everything in
proportion."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, I mean it strikes me--quite unbiased, you know--that you've