Chapter XXI
IT was a bright morning. The world awoke. The working Englishman, dead drunk at the public-house overnight, had got rid of two-thirds of his burning poison by the help of man's chief nurse, sleep; and now he must work off the rest, grumbling at this the kind severity of his lot. Warm men, respectable men, among whom justices of the peace and other voluptuous disciplinarians, were tempted out of delicious beds by the fragrant berry, the balmy leaf, snowy damask, fire glowing behind polished bars--in short, by multifarious comfort set in a frame of gold. They came down.
“How did you sleep, dear sir?”
“Pretty well,” said one with a doubtful air. “Scarce closed my eyes all night,” snarled another.
Another had been awakened by the barking of a dog, and it was full half an hour before he could lose the sense of luxurious ease in unconsciousness again. He made an incident of this, and looked round the table for sympathy, and obtained it, especially from such as were toadies.
Now all these had slept as much as nature required. No. 1, ar hyd y nos--like a top. No. 2, eight hours out of the nine. The ninth his sufferings had been moderate; they had been confined to this--a bitter sense of two things; first, that he was lying floating in a sea of comforts; secondly, that the moment he should really need sleep, sleep was at his service.
In ---- Jail, governor, turnkeys, chaplain, having had something to do the day before, slept among Class 1, and now turned out of their warm beds as they had turned into them, without a shade of anxiety or even recollection of him whom they had left last evening at eight to pass the livelong night in a sponge--upon a stone.
Up rose refreshed with sleep that zealous officer, Hawes. He was in the prison at daybreak, and circulated with inspecting eye all through it. Went into the kitchen--saw the gruel making--docked Josephs and three more of half their allowance; then into the corridors, where on one of the snowy walls he found a speck; swore; had it instantly removed. Thence into the labor-yard, and prepared a crank for an athletic prisoner by secretly introducing a weight, and so making the poor crank a story-teller, and the prologue to punishment. Returning to the body of the prison, he called out, “Prisoners on the list for hard labor to be taken to the yard.”
He was not answered with the usual alacrity, and looked up to repeat his summons, when he observed a cell open and two turnkeys standing in earnest conversation at the door. He mounted the stairs in great heat.
“What are you all humbugging there for, and why does not that young rascal turn out to work? I'll physic him, ---- him!”
The turnkeys looked in their chief's face with a strange expression of stupid wonder. Hawes caught this--his wrath rose higher.
“What d'ye stand staring at me like stuck pigs for? Come out, No. 15, ---- you all! why don't you bring him out to the crank?”
Hodges answered gloomily from the cell, “Come and bring him yourself, if you can.”
At such an address from a turnkey, Hawes, who had now mounted the last stair, gave a snort of surprise and wrath--then darted into the cell, threatening the most horrible vengeance on the bones and body of poor Josephs, threats which he confirmed with a tremendous oath. But to that oath succeeded a sudden dead stupid staring silence; for running fiercely into the cell with rage in his face, threats and curses on his tongue, he had almost stumbled over a corpse.
It lay in the middle of the cell--stark and cold, but peaceful. Hawes stood over it. If he had not stopped short his foot would have been upon it. His mouth opened but no sound came. He stood paralyzed. A greater than he was in that cell, and he was dumb. He looked up--Hodges and Fry were standing silent, looking down on the body. Fry was grave; Hodges trembled. Part of a handkerchief fluttered from the bar of the window. A knife had severed it. The other fragment lay on the floor near the body, where Hodges had dropped it. Hawes took this in at a glance and comprehended it all. This was not the first or second prisoner that had escaped him by a similar road. For a moment his blood froze in him. He wished to Heaven he had not been so severe upon the poor boy.
It was but for a moment. The next he steeled himself in the tremendous egotism that belongs to and makes the deliberate manslayer.
“The young viper has done this to spite me,” said he. And he actually cast a look of petulant anger down.
At this precise point the minds that had borne his company so long began to part from it. Fry looked in his face with an expression bordering on open contempt, and Hodges shoved rudely by him and left the cell.
Hodges leaned over the corridor in silence. One of the inferior turnkeys asked him a question dictated by curiosity about the situation in which he had found the body. “Don't speak to me!” was the fierce, wild answer. And he looked with a stupid wild stare over the railings.
So wild and white and stricken was this man's face that Evans, who was exchanging some words with a gentleman on the basement floor, happening to catch sight of it, interrupted himself and hallooed from below, “What, is there anything the matter, Hodges?” Hodges made no reply. The man seemed to have lost his speech for some time past.
“Let us go and see,” said the gentleman; and he ascended the steps somewhat feebly, accompanied by Evans.
“What is it, Hodges?”
“What is it?” answered the man impatiently. “Go in there and you'll see what it is!”
“I don't like this, sir,” said Evans. “Oh! I am fearful there is something unfortunate has happened. You mustn't come in, sir. You stay here, and I'll go in and see.” He entered the cell.
Meantime a short conference had passed between Hawes and Fry.
“This is a bad business, Fry.”
“And no mistake.”
“Had you any idea of this?”
“No! can't say I had.”
“If the parson ever gets well he will make this a handle to ruin you and me.”
“Me, sir! I only obey orders.”
“That won't save you. If they get the better of me you will suffer along with me.”
“I shouldn't wonder. I told you you were carrying it too far, but you wouldn't listen to me.”
“I was wrong, Fry. I ought to have listened to you, for you are the only one that is faithful to me in the jail.”
“I know my duty, sir, and I try to do it.”
“What are we to do with him, Fry?”
“Well, I don't think he ought to lie on the floor. I'd let him have his bed now, I think.”
“You are right. I'll send for it. Ah! here is Evans. Go for No. 15's bed.”
Evans, standing at the door, had caught but a glimpse of the object that lay on the floor, but that glimpse was enough. He went out and said to Hodges, “Wasn't it you that took Josephs' bed away last night?” The man cowered under the question. “Well, you are to go and fetch it back, the governor says.” Hodges went away for it without a word. Evans returned to the cell. He came and kneeled down by Josephs and laid his hand upon him. “I feared it! I feared it!” said he. “Why he has been dead a long time. Ah! your reverence, why did you come in when I told you not? Poor Josephs is no more, Sir.”
Mr. Eden, who had already saluted Mr. Hawes with grave politeness, though without any affectation of good-will, came slowly up, and sinking his voice to a whisper in presence of death said in pitiful accents, “Poor child! he was always sickly. Six weeks ago I feared we should lose him, but he seemed to get better.” He was now kneeling beside him. “Was he long ill, sir?” asked he of Hawes. “Probably he was, for he is much wasted. I can feel all his bones.” Hardened as they were, Hawes and Fry looked at one another in some confusion. Presently Mr. Eden started back. “Why, what is this? he is wet. He is wet from head to foot. What is the cause of this? Can you tell me, Mr. Hawes?”
Mr. Hawes did not answer, but Evans did.
“I am afraid it is the bucket, your reverence. They soused him in the yard late last night.”
“Did they?” said Mr. Eden, looking the men full in the face. “Then they have the more to repent of this morning. But stay. Why then he was not under the doctor's hands, Evans?”
“La! bless you, no. He was harder worked and worse fed than any man in the jail.”
“At work last night! Then at what hour did he die? He is stiff and cold. This is a very sudden death. Did any one see this boy die?”
The men gave no answer, but the last words--“Did any one see this boy die?”--seemed to give Evans a new light.
“No!” he cried. “No one saw him die. Look here, sir. See what is dangling from the window--his handkerchief.”
“And this mark round his throat, Evans. He has destroyed himself.” And Mr. Eden recoiled from the corpse.
“Oh! you may forgive him, sir,” said Evans. “We should all have done the same. No human creature could live the life they led him. Who could live upon bread and water and punishment? It is a sorrowful sight, but it is a happy release for him. Eh! poor lad,” said Evans, laying his hand upon the body; “I liked thee well, but I am glad thou art gone. Thou hast escaped away from worse trouble.”
“Come, it is no use sniveling, Evans,” put in Hawes. “I am as sorry for this job as you are. But who would have thought he was so determined? He gave us no warning.”
“Don't you believe that, sir,” cried Evans to Mr. Eden. “He gave them plenty of warning. I heard him with my own ears tell you you were killing him; not a day for the last fortnight he did not tell you so, Mr. Hawes.”
“Well, I didn't believe him, you see.”
“You mean you didn't care.”
“Hold your tongue, Evans! You are disrespectful. How dare you speak to me, you insolent dog? Hold your tongue!”
“No, sir, I won't hold my tongue over this dead body.”
“Be silent, Evans,” said Mr. Eden. “This is no place for disputes. Evans, my heart is broken. While there is life there is hope; but here, what hope is there? Many in this place live in crime, but this one has died in crime; he of whom I had such good hopes has died in crime--died by his own hand; he has murdered his own soul; my heart is broken!--my heart is broken!” The good man's anguish was terrible.
Evans consoled him. “Don't go on so, sir! pray don't. Josephs is where none of us but you shall ever get to; he is in heaven as sure as we are upon earth. He was the best lad in the place; there wasn't a drop of gall in him; who ever heard a bad word from him? and he did not kill himself till he found he was to die whether or no; so then he shortened his own death-struggle, and he was right.”
“I don't understand you.”
“I dare say not, sir; but those two understand me. Oh, it is no use to look black at me now, Mr. Hawes; I shall speak my mind though my head was to be cut off. I have been a coward; I thought too much of my wife and children; but I am a man now. Eh! poor lad, thou shan't be maligned now thou art dead, as well as tormented alive. Sir, he that lies here so pale and calm was not guilty of self-destruction. He was driven to death!--don't speak to me, sir, but look at me, and hear the truth, as it will come out the day all of us in this cell are damned, except you--and him!”
The man fell suddenly on his knees, took the dead boy's hand in his left hand and held his right up, and in this strange attitude, which held all his hearers breathless, he poured out a terrible tale.
His boiling heart and the touch of him, whom now too late he defended like a man, gave him simple but real eloquence, and in few words, that scalded as they fell, he told as powerfully as I have feebly by what road Josephs had been goaded to death.
He brought the dark tale down to where he left the sufferer rolled up in the one comfort left him on earth, his bed; and then turning suddenly and leaving Josephs he said sternly:
“And now, sir, ask the governor where is the bed I wrapped the wet boy up in, for it isn't here.”
“You know as much as I do!” was Hawes's sulky reply.
But at this moment Hodges came into the cell with the bed in question in his arms.
“There is his bed,” cried he, “and what is the use of it now? If you had left it him last night it would be better for him and for me, too,” and he flung the bed on the floor.
“Oh! it was you took it from him, was it?” said Evans.
“Well, I am here to obey orders, Jack Evans; do you do nothing but what you like in this place?”
“Let there be no disputing in presence of death!”
“No, sir.”
“One thing only is worth knowing or thinking of now; whether there is hope for this our brother in that world to which he has passed all unprepared. Hodges, you saw him last alive!”
Hodges groaned. “I saw him last at night, and first in the morning.”
“I entreat you to remember all that passed at night between you!”
“Then cover up his face--it draws my eyes to it.”
Mr. Eden covered the dead face gently with his handkerchief.
“Mr. Hawes met me in the corridor and sent me to take away his bed. I found him dozing, and I took--I did what I was ordered.”
Mr. Eden sighed.
“Tell me what he said and did.”
“Well, sir! when I showed him the order, 'fourteen days without bed and gas,' he bursts out a laughing--”
“Good heavens!”
“And says he, 'I don't say for gas, but you tell Mr. Hawes I shan't be without bed nothing nigh so long as that.'”
Mr. Eden and Evans exchanged a meaning glance; so did Fry and Hawes.
“Then I said, 'No! I shan't tell Mr. Hawes anything to make him punish you any more, because you are punished too much as it is,' says I--”
“I am glad you said that. But tell me what he said. Did he complain? did he use angry or bitter words?--you make me drag it out of you.”
“No! he didn't! He wasn't one of that sort! The next thing was, he asked me to give him my hand. Well, I was surprised like at his asking for my hand, and I doing him such an ill-turn. So then he said, 'Mr. Hodges,' says he, 'why not? I never took away your bed from under you, so you can give me your hand, if I can give you mine.'”
“Oh! what a beautiful nature! Ah! these are golden words. I hope for the credit of human nature you gave him your hand?”
“Why, of course I did, sir. I had no malice; it was ignorance, and owing to being so used to obey the governor.”
Here Mr. Hawes, who had remained quiet all this time, now absorbed in his own reflections, now listening sullenly to these strange scenes in which the dead boy seemed for a time to have eclipsed his importance, burst angrily in.
“I have listened patiently to you, Mr. Eden, to see how far you would go; but I see if I wait till you leave off undermining me with my servants, I may wait a long while.”
Mr. Eden turned round impatiently.
“You! who thinks of you or such as you in presence of such a question as lies here. I am trying to learn the fate of this immortal soul, and I did not see you--or think of you--or notice you were here.”
“That is polite! Well, sir, the governor is somebody in most jails, but it seems he is to be nobody here so long as you are in it, and that won't be long. Come, Fry, we have other duties to attend to.” So saying he and his lieutenant went out of the cell.
Hodges went, too, but not with them.
The moment they were gone--“Well, sir,” burst out Evans, “don't you see that the real murderer is not that stupid, ignorant owl, Hodges?”
“Hush! Evans! this is no time or place for unkindly thoughts; thank Heaven that you are free from their guilt, and leave me alone with him.”
He was left alone with the dead.
Evans looked through the peep-hole of the cell an hour later. He was still on his knees fearing, hoping, vowing, and, above all, praying--beside the dead.
Chapter XXII
MR. EDEN, when he reappeared in the prison, was sallow and his limbs feeble, but his fatal disease was baffled, and a few words are due to explain how this happened. The Malvern doctor came back with Susan within twenty hours of her departure. She ushered him into Mr. Eden's room with blushing joy and pride.
The friends shook hands. Mr. Eden thanked him for coming, and the doctor cut him short by demanding an accurate history of his disorder, and the remedies that had been applied. Mr. Eden related the rise and progress of his complaint, and meantime the doctor solved the other query by smelling a battalion of empty phials.
“The old story,” said he with a cheerful grin. “You were weak--therefore they gave you things to weaken you. You could not put so much nourishment as usual into your body--therefore they have been taking strength out. Lastly, the coats of your stomach were irritated by your disorder--so they have raked it like blazes. This is the mill-round of the old medicine; from irritation to inflammation, from inflammation to mortification, and decease of the patient. Now, instead of irritating the irritated spot, suppose we try a little counter-irritation.”
“With all my heart.”
The doctor then wetted a towel with cold water, wrung it half dry, and applied it to Mr. Eden's stomach.
This experiment he repeated four times with a fresh towel at intervals of twenty minutes. He had his bed made in Mr. Eden's room. “Tell me if you feel feverish.”
Toward morning Mr. Eden tossed and turned, and the doctor rising found him dry and hot and feverish. Then he wetted two towels, took the sheets off his own bed, and placed one wet towel on a blanket; then he made his patient strip naked, and lie down on this towel, which reached from the nape of his neck to his loins.
“Ah!” cried Mr. Eden, “horrible!”
Then he put the other towel over him in front.
“Ugh! That is worse; you are a bold man with your remedies. I shiver to the bone.”
“You won't shiver long.”
He laid hold of one edge of the blanket and pulled it over him with a strong, quick pull, and tucked it under him. The same with the other side; and now Mr. Eden was in a blanket prison--a regular strait-waistcoat--his arms pinned to his sides. Two more blankets were placed loosely over him.
“Mighty fine, doctor; but suppose a fly or a gnat should settle on my face?”
“Call me and I'll take him off.”
In about three quarters of an hour Dr. Gulson came to his bedside again.
“How are you now?”
“In Elysium.”
“Are you shivering?”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“Are you hot?”
“Nothing of the sort. I am Elysian. Please retreat. Let no mere mortals approach. Come not near our fairy king,” murmured the sick man. “I am Oberon, slumbering on tepid roses in the garden whence I take my name,” purred our divine, mixing a creed or two.
“Well, you must come out of this paradise for the present.”
“You wouldn't be such a monster as to propose it.”
Spite of his remonstances, he was unpacked, rubbed dry, and returned to his own bed, where he slept placidly till nine o'clock. The next day fresh applications of wet cloths to the stomach, and in the evening one of the doctor's myrmidons arrived from Malvern. The doctor gave him full and particular instructions.
The next morning Mr. Eden was packed again. He delighted in the operation, but remonstrated against the term.
“Packed!” said he to them; “is that the way to speak of a Paradisiacal process under which fever and sorrow fly and calm complacency steals over mind and body?”
A slight diminution of all the unfavorable symptoms, and a great increase of appetite relieved the doctor's anxiety so far that he left him under White's charge. So was the myrmidon called.
“Do not alter your diet--it is simple and mucilaginous--but increase the quantity by degrees.”
He postponed his departure till midnight. Up to the present time he had made rather light of the case, and as for danger he had pooh-poohed it with good-humored contempt. Just before he went he said:
“Well, Frank, I don't mind telling you now that I am very glad you sent for me, and I'll tell you why. Forty-eight hours more of irritating medicines, and no human skill could have saved your life.”
“Ah! my dear friend, you are my good angel--you can have no conception how valuable my life is.”
“Oh, yes, I can!”
“And you have saved that life. Yes! I am weak still, but I feel I shall live. You have cured me.”
“In popular language, I have. But between ourselves nobody ever cures anybody. Nature cures all that are cured. But I patted Nature on the back; the others hit her over the head with bludgeons and brick-bats.”
“And now you are going. I must not keep you or I shall compromise other lives. Well, go and fulfill your mission. But first think--is there anything I can do in part return for such a thing as this, old friend?”
“Only one that I can think of. Outlive me, old friend.”
A warm and tender grasp of the hand on this, and the Malvern doctor jumped into a fly, and the railway soon whirled him into Worcestershire.
His myrmidon remained behind and carried out his chief's orders with inflexible severity, unsoftened by blandishments, unshaken by threats.
In concert with Susan he closed the door upon all harassing communications.
One day Evans came to tell the invalid how the prisoners were maltreated. Susan received him, wormed from him his errand, and told him Mr. Eden was too ill to see him, which was what my French brethren call une sainte mensonge--I a fib.
A slow but steady cure was effected by these means: applications of water in various ways to the skin, simple diet, and quiet. A great appetite soon came; he ate twice as much as he had before the new treatment, and would have eaten twice as much as he did, but the myrmidon would not let him. Whenever he was feverish the myrmidon packed him, and in half an hour the fever was gone. His cheeks began to fill, his eyes to clear and brighten, only his limbs could not immediately recover their strength.
As he recovered, his anxiety to be back among his prisoners increased daily, but neither Susan nor the myrmidon would hear of it. They acted in concert, and stuck at nothing to cure their patient. They assured him all was going on well in the prison. They meant well; but for all that, every lie, great or small, is the brink of a precipice the depth of which nothing but Omniscience can fathom.
He believed them, yet he was uneasy; and this uneasiness increased with his returning strength. At last one morning, happening to awake earlier than usual, he stole a march on his nurses, and taking his stick walked out and tottered into the jail.
He found Josephs dead under the fangs of Hawes, and the whole prison groaning.
Now the very day his symptoms became more favorable it so happened that he had received a few lines from the Home Office that had perhaps aided his recovery by the hopes they inspired.
“The matter of your last communication is forwarded to the 'Inspector of Prisons.' He is instructed to inquire strictly into your statements and report to this office.”
The short note concluded with an intimation that the tone in which Mr. Eden had conveyed his remonstrances was intemperate, out of place, and WITHOUT PRECEDENT.
Mr. Eden was rejoiced.
The “Inspector of Prisons” was a salaried officer of the crown, enlightened by a large comparison of many prisons, and, residing at a distance, was not open to the corrupting influences of association and personal sympathy with the governor, as were the county magistrates.
Day after day Mr. Eden rose in hope that day would not pass without the promised visit from the “Inspector of Prisons.” Day after day no inspector. At last Mr. Eden wrote to him to inquire when he was coming.
The letter traveled about after him, and after a considerable delay came his answer. It was to this effect. That he was instructed to examine into charges made against the governor of ---- Jail; but that he had no instructions to make an irregular visit for that purpose. His progress would bring him this year to ---- Jail in six weeks' time, when he should act on his instructions, but these did not justify him in varying from the routine of his circuit.
Six weeks is not long to wait for help in a matter of life and death, thought the eighty pounders, the clerks who execute England.
Three days of this six weeks had scarce elapsed when two prisoners were driven a step each farther than their wretched fellow sufferers who were to follow them in a week or two. Of these, one, “a mild, quiet, docile boy,” was driven to self-slaughter; and another, one of the best-natured rogues in the place, was driven to manslaughter.
This latter incident Mr. Eden prevented. I will presently relate how; it was not by postponing his interference for six weeks.
When Mr. Eden rose from his knees beside the slaughtered boy he went home at once and wrote to the Home Secretary. On the envelope he wrote “private,” and inside to this effect:
“Two months ago I informed you officially that prisoners are daily assaulted, starved, and maltreated to the danger of their lives by the governor of ---- Jail. I demanded of you an inquiry on the spot. In reply you evaded my demand, and proposed to refer me to the visiting justices.
“In answer I declined these men for referees on two grounds, viz., that I had lodged an appeal with a higher jurisdiction than theirs, and that they were confederates of the criminal; and to enforce the latter objection I included your proposed referees in my charges, and once more demanded of you in the queen's name an examination of her unworthy servants on the instant and on the spot.
“On this occasion I warned you in these words:
“'Here are 180 souls, to whose correction, care and protection the State is pledged. No one of these lives is safe a single day; and for every head that falls from this hour I hold you responsible to God and the State.'
“Surely these were no light words, yet they fell light on you.
“In answer you promised us the 'Inspector of Prisons,' but you gave him no instructions to come to us. You fooled away time when time was human life. Read once more my words of warning, and then read these:
“This morning a boy of fifteen was done to death by Mr. Hawes. Of his death you are not guiltless. You were implored to prevent it, you could have prevented it, and you did not prevent it. The victim of jail cruelty and of the maladministration in government offices lies dead in his cell.
“In three days I shall commit his body to the dust; but his memory never--until he is avenged and those who are in process of being murdered like him receive the protection of the State.
“If in the three days between this boy's murder and his burial your direct representative and agent does not come here and examine this jail and sift the acts of those who govern it, on the fourth day I lay the whole case before her majesty the queen and the British nation, by publishing it in all the journals. Then I shall tell her majesty that, having thrice appealed in vain to her representatives, I am driven to appeal to herself; with this I shall print the evidence I have thrice offered you of this jailer's felonies and their sanguinary results. That lady has a character; one of its strong, unmistakable features is a real, tender, active humanity.
“I read characters; it is a part of my business; and, believe me, this lady once informed of the crimes done in her name will repudiate and abhor alike her hireling's cruelty and her clerks' and secretaries' indifference to suffering and slaughter. Nor will the public hear unmoved the awful tale. Shame will be showered on all connected with these black deeds, even on those who can but be charged with conniving at them.
“To be exposed to national horror on the same column with the greatest felon in England would be a cruel position, a severe punishment for a man of honor, whose only fault perhaps is that he has mistaken an itch for eminence for a capacity for business, and so serves the State without comprehending it. But what else can I do? I, too, serve the State, and I comprehend what I owe it, and the dignity with which it intrusts me, and the deep responsibility it lays on me. I therefore cannot assent to future felonies any more than I have to past and present, but must stop them, and will stop them--how I can.
“So, sir, I offer you the post of honor or a place of shame. Choose! for three whole days you have the choice. Choose! and may God enlighten you and forgive me for waiting these three days.
“I have the honor to be, etc., etc.”
To this letter, whose tone was more eccentric, more flesh and blood, and WITHOUT PRECEDENT, than the last, came an answer in a different hand from the others.
“--acknowledged receipt of the chaplain's letter.
“Since a human life has succumbed under the discipline of ---- Jail, an inquiry follows immediately as a matter of course. The other inducements you have held out are comparatively weak and something more than superfluous. How far they are in good taste will be left to your own cooler consideration. A person connected with the Home Department will visit your jail with large powers soon after you receive this.
“He is instructed to avail himself of your zeal and knowledge.
“Be pleased to follow this course. Select for him the plainer facts of your case. If on the face of the business he sees ground for deeper inquiry, a commission will sit upon the jail, and meanwhile all suspected officers will be suspended. You will consider yourself still in direct correspondence with this office, but it is requested, on account of the mass of matter daily submitted to us, that your communications may be confined to facts, and those stated as concisely as possible.”
On reading this Mr. Eden colored with shame as well as pleasure. “How gentleman-like all this is!” thought he. “How calm and superior to me, who, since I had the jaundice, am always lowering my office by getting into a heat! And I to threaten this noble, dignified creature with the Times. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself. Yet what could I do? I had tried everything short of bullying and failed. But I now suspect ---- never saw my two first letters. Doubtless the rotten system of our public offices is more to blame than this noble fellow.”
Thus accusing himself Mr. Eden returned with somewhat feeble steps to the jail. One of the first prisoners he visited was Thomas Robinson. He found that prisoner in the attitude of which he thought he had cured him, coiled up like a snake, moody and wretched. The man turned round with a very bad expression on his face, which soon gave way to a look of joy. He uttered a loud exclamation, and springing unguardedly up, dropped a brickbat which rolled toward Mr. Eden and nearly hit him.
Robinson looked confused, and his eyes rose and fell from Mr. Eden's face to the brickbat.
“How do you do?”
“Not so well as before you fell ill, sir. It has been hard times with us poor fellows since we lost you.”
“I fear it has.”
“You have just come back in time to save a life or two. There is a boy called Josephs. I hope the day won't go over without your visiting him, for they are killing him by inches.”
“How do you know that?”
“I heard him say so.”
Mr. Eden groaned.
“You look pale, my poor fellow.”
“I shall be better now,” replied the thief, looking at him affectionately.
“What is this?”
“This, sir--what, sir?”
“This brick?”
“Well! why--it is a brick, sir!
“Where did you get it?”
“I found it in the yard.”
“What were you going to do with it?”
“Oh! I wasn't going to do any ill with it.”
“Then why that guilty look when you dropped it. Come, now--I am in no humor to be hard upon you. Were you going to make some more cards?”
“Now, sir, didn't I promise you I never would do that again;” and Robinson wore an aggrieved look. “Would I break a promise I made to you?”
“What was it for then?”
“Am I bound to criminate myself, your reverence?”
“Certainly not to your enemy! but to your friend, and to him who has the care of your soul--yes!”
“Let me ask you a question first, sir. Which is worth most, one life or twenty?”
“Twenty.”
“Then if by taking one life you can save twenty, it is a good action to put that one out of the way?”
“That does not follow.”
“Oh! doesn't it? I thought it did. There's a man in this prison that murders men wholesale. I thought if I could any way put it out of his power to kill any more what a good action it would be!”
“A good action! so then this brick--”
“Was for Hawes's skull, your reverence.”
“This, then, is the fruit of all my teaching. You will break my heart among you.
“Don't say so, sir! pray don't say so! I won't touch a hair of his head now you are alive; but I thought you were dead or dying, so what did it matter then what I did? Besides, I was driven into a corner; I could only kill that scoundrel or let him kill me. But you are alive, and you will find some way of saving my life as well as his.”
“I will try. But first abandon all thoughts of lawless revenge. 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.' Come, promise me.”
“Now, sir, is it likely I would offend you for the pleasure of dirtying my fingers with that rascal's blood? Don't let such a lump of dirt as him make mischief between you and me, sir.”
“I understand! with you any unchristian sentiment is easily driven out--by another. Hatred is to give way to contempt.”
“No, sir, but you are alive, and I don't think of Hawes now one way or other--with such scum as that out of sight is out of mind. When did you begin to get better, sir? and are you better? and shall I see your blessed face in my cell every day as I used?” And the water stood in the thief's eyes.
Mr. Eden smiled and sighed. “Your mind is like an eel--Heaven help the man that tries to get hold of it to do it any lasting good. You and I must have a good pray together some day.”
“Ah! your reverence, that would do me good soul and body,” said Mr. Supple.
“Let me now feel your pulse; it is very low. What is the matter?”
“Starvation, overwork, and solitude. I feel myself sinking.”
“If I could amuse your mind.”
“Even you could hardly do that, sir.”
“Hum! I have brought you a quire of paper and one of Mr. Gillott's swan-quill pens and a penny ink-bottle.”
“What for?”
“You are to write a story.”
“But I never wrote one in my life.”
“Then this will be the first.”
“Oh, I'll try, sir. I've tried a hundred things in my life and they none of them proved so hard as they looked. What kind of story?”
“The only kind of story that is worth a button--a true story--the story of Thomas Robinson, alias Scott, alias Lyon, alias etc.”
“Then you should have brought a ream instead of a quire.”
“No! I want to read it when it is written. Now write the truth--do not dress or cook your facts. I shall devour them raw with twice the relish, and they will do you ten times the good. And intersperse no humbug, no sham penitence. When your own life lies thus spread out before you like a map, you will find you regret many things you have done, and view others with calmer and wiser eyes; for self-review is a healthy process. Write down these honest reflections, but don't overdo it--don't write a word you don't feel. It will amuse you while you are at it.”
“That it will.”
“It will interest me more than the romance of a carpet writer who never saw life, and it may do good to other prisoners.”
“I want to begin.”
“I know you do, creature of impulse! Let me feel your pulse again. Ah! it has gained about ten.”
“Ten, your reverence? Fifty, you mean. It is you for putting life into a poor fellow and keeping him from despair. It is not the first time you have saved me. The devil hates you more than all the other parsons, for you are as ingenious in good as he is in mischief.”
In the midst of this original eulogy Mr. Eden left the cell suddenly with an aching heart, for the man's words reminded him that for all his skill and zeal a boy of fifteen years lay dead of despair hard by. He went, but he left two good things behind him--occupation and hope.
Chapter XXIII
THE inexperienced in jails would take for granted that the death of Josephs gave Mr. Hawes's system a fatal check. No such thing. He was staggered. So was Pharaoh staggered several times, yet he always recovered himself in twenty-four hours. Hawes did not take so long as that. A suicide was no novelty under his system. Six hours after he found his victim dead he had a man and a boy crucified in the yard, swore horribly at Fry, who, for the first time in his life, was behind time, and tore out of his hands “Uncle Tom,” which was the topic that had absorbed Fry and made him two minutes behind him; went home and wrote a note to his friend Williams informing him of the suicide that had taken place, and reflecting severely upon Josephs for his whole conduct, with which this last offense against discipline was in strict accordance. Then he had his grog, and having nothing to do he thought he would see what was that story which had prevailed so far over the stern realities of system as to derange that piece of clock work that went by the name of Fry. He yawned over the first pages, but as the master hand unrolled the great chromatic theory, he became absorbed, and devoured this great human story till his candles burned down in their sockets and sent him to bed four hours later than usual.
The next morning soon after chapel a gentleman's servant rode up to the jail and delivered a letter for Mr. Hawes. It was from Justice Williams. That worthy expressed in polysyllables his sorrow at the death of Josephs after this fashion:
“A circumstance of this kind is always to be deplored, since it gives occasion to the enemies of the system to cast reflections, which, however unphilosophical and malignant, prejudice superficial judgments against our salutary discipline.”
He then went on to say that the visiting justices would be at the jail the next day at one o'clock to make their usual report, in which Mr. Hawes might be sure his zeal and fidelity would not pass unnoticed. He concluded by saying that Mr. Hawes must on that occasion present his charges against the chaplain in a definite form, and proceedings would be taken on the spot.
“Aha! aha! So I shall get rid of him. Confound him! he makes me harder upon the beggars than I should be. Fry, put these numbers on the cranks and bring me your report after dinner.”
With these words Mr. Hawes vanished, and to the infinite surprise of the turnkeys was not seen in the jail for many hours. At two o'clock, as he was still not in the prison, Fry went to his house. He found Mr. Hawes deep in a book.
“Brought the report, sir.”
“Give it to me. Humph! No. 40 and 45 refractory at the crank. No. 65 caught getting up to his window; says he wanted to feel the light. 65--that is one of the boys, isn't it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How old is the young varmint?”
“Eleven, sir.”
“No. 14 heard to speak to a prisoner that was leaving the jail, his term being out. What did he say to him?”
“Said 'Good-by! God bless you!'”
“I'll shut his mouth. Confound the beggars! how fond they are of talking. I think they would rather go without their food than without their jaw.
“No. 19 caught writing a story. It is that fellow Robinson, one of the parson's men. I'll write something on his skin. How did he get the things to write with?”
“Chaplain gave them him.”
“Ah! I am glad of that. You brought them away, of course?”
“Yes, sir; here they are. He made a terrible fuss about parting with them.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Heaven was to judge between me and him.”
“Blaspheming dog! ---- him! I'll break him. What else?”
“'Get out of my sight,' said he, 'for fear I do you a mischief.' So then down he pops on his knees in a corner and turns his back on me, like an ignorant brute that he is.”
“Never mind, Fry, I'll break him.”
“I suppose we shall see you in the prison soon, shan't we, sir? The place looks strange to me without you.”
“By-and-by--by-and-by. This confounded book sticks to me like a leech. How far had you got when you lent it me?”
“Got just to the most interesting part,” said Fry dolefully, “where he comes under a chap called Legree; and then you took it away.”
“Well, you'll have it again as soon as I have done with it. I say, what do you think of this book? is it true do you think?”
“Oh! it is true--I'd take my oath of that.”
“Why how do you know?”
“Because it reads like true.”
“That is no rule, ye fool.”
“Well, sir, what do you think?”
This question staggered Hawes for a moment. However he assumed an oracular look, and replied, “I think some of it is true and some isn't.”
“Do you think it is true about their knocking down blackee in one lot, and his wife in another, and sending 'em a thousand miles apart?”
“Oh, that is true enough! I daresay.”
“And running them down with bloodhounds?”
“Why not; they look upon the poor devils as beasts. If you tell a Yankee a nigger is a man he thinks you are poking fun at him.”
“It is a cursed shame!”
“Of course it is! but I'll tell you what I can't swallow in this book. Hem! did you ever fall in with any Yankees?”
“One or two, sir.”
“Were they green at all?”
“That they weren't. They were rather foxy, I should say.”
“Rather. Why one of them would weather upon any three Englishmen that ever were born. Now here is a book that as good as tells me it is a Yankee custom to disable their beasts of burden. Gammon! they can't afford to do it. I believe,” continued this candid personage (who had never been in any of the States), “they are the cruelest set on the face of the earth, but then they are the 'cutest (that is their own word), and they are a precious sight too 'cute to disable the beast that carries the grist to the mill.”
“Doesn't seem likely--now you put it to me.”
“Have a glass of grog, Fry.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And there is the paper. Run your eye over it and don't speak to me for ten minutes, for I must see how Tom gets on under this bloody-minded heathen.”
Fry read the paper; but although he moistened it with a glass of grog, he could not help casting envious glances from his folio at Mr. Hawes's duodecimo.
Fibs mixed with truth charm us more than truth mixed with fibs.
Presently an oath escaped from Mr. Hawes.
“Sir!”
“Nothing, it is only this infernal--humph!”
Presently another expletive. “I'll tell you what it is, Fry, if somebody doesn't knock this thundering Legree on the head, I'll put the book on the fire.”
“Well, but if it isn't true, sir?”
“But it is true, every word of it, while you are reading it, ye fool. What heathens there are in the world! First they sell a child out of his mother's arms. She cuts sooner than be parted. They hunt her and come up with her; but she knows what they are, and trusts her life and the child to one of their great thundering frozen rivers as broad as the British Channel sooner than fall into their hands. That is like a woman, Fry. A fig for me being drowned if the kid is drowned with me; and I don't even care so much for the kid being drowned if I go down with him--and the cowardly vermin dogs and men stood barking on the bank and dursn't follow a woman; but your cruel ones are always cowards. And now the rips have got hold of this Tom. A chap with no great harm in him that I see, except that he is a ---- sniveler and psalm-singer, and makes you sick at times, but he isn't lazy; and now they are mauling him because he couldn't do the work of two. A man can but do his best, black or white, and it is infernal stupidity as well as cruelty to torment a fellow because he can't do more than he can do. And all this because over the same flesh and blood there is the sixteenth of an inch of skin a different color. Wonder whether a white bear takes a black one for a hog, or a red fox takes a blue one for a badger. Well, Fry, thank your stars that you were born in Britain. There are no slaves here, and no buying and selling of human flesh; and one law for high and low, rich and poor, and justice for the weak as well as the strong.”
“Yes, sir,” said Fry deferentially--“are you coming into the jail, sir?”
“No,” replied Hawes sturdily, “I won't move till I see what becomes of the negro, and what is done to this eternal ruffian.”
“But about the prisoners in my report, sir,” remonstrated Fry.
“Oh, you can see to that without my coming,” replied Hawes with nonchalance. “Put 40 and 45 in the jacket four hours apiece. Mind there's somebody by with the bucket against they sham.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put the boy on bread and water--and to-morrow I'll ask the justices to let me flog him. No. 14--humph! stop his supper--and his bed--and gas.”
“And Robinson?”
“Oh, give him no supper at all--and no breakfast--not even bread and water, d'ye hear. And at noon I'll put him with his empty belly in the black-hole--that will cow him down to the ground--there, be off!”
Next morning Mr. Hawes sat down to breakfast in high spirits. This very day he was sure to humiliate his adversary, most likely get rid of him altogether.
Mr. Eden, on the contrary, wore a somber air. Hawes noticed it, mistook it, and pointed it out to Fry. “He is down upon his luck; he knows he is coming to an end.”
After breakfast Mr. Eden went into Robinson's cell. He found him haggard. “Oh, I am glad you are come, sir; they are starving me! No supper last night, no breakfast this morning, and all for--hum.”
“For what?”
“Well, sir, then--having paper in my cell, and for writing--doing what you bade me--writing my life.”
Mr. Eden colored and winced. The cruelty and the personal insult combined almost took away his breath for a moment. “Heaven grant me patience a little longer,” said he aloud. Then he ran out of the cell, and returned in less than a minute with a great hunch of bread and a slice of ham. “Eat this,” said he, all fluttering with pity.
The famished man ate like a wolf; but in the middle he did stop to say, “Did one man ever save another so often as you have me! Now my belly is full I shall have strength to stand the jacket, or whatever is to come next.”
“But you are not to be tormented further than this, I hope?”
“Ah, sir!” replied Robinson, “you don't know the scoundrel yet. He is not starving me for nothing. This is to weaken me till he puts the weight on that is to crush me.”
“I hope you exaggerate his personal dislike to you and your own importance--we all do that.”
“Well,” sighed Robinson, “I hope I do. Any way now my belly is full I have got a chance with him.”
The visiting justices met in the jail. The first to arrive was Mr. Woodcock. In fact he came at eleven o'clock, an hour before the others. Had Mr. Hawes expected him so soon, he would have taken Carter down, who was the pilloried one this morning; but he was equal to the emergency. He met Mr. Woodcock with a depressed manner, as of a tender but wise father, who in punishing his offspring had punished himself, and said in a low, regretful voice, “I am sorry to say I have been compelled to punish a prisoner very severely.”
“What is his offense?”
“Being refractory and breaking his crank. You will find him in the labor-yard. He was so violent we were obliged to put him in the jacket.”
“I shall see him. The labor-yard is the first place I go to.”
Mr. Hawes knew that, Mr. Woodcock.
The justice found Carter in that state of pitiable torture, the sight of which made Mr. Eden very ill. He went up to him and said, “My poor fellow, I am very sorry for you; but discipline must be maintained, and you are now suffering for fighting against it. Make your submission to the governor, and then I dare say he will shorten your punishment as far as he thinks consistent with his duty.”
Carter, it may well be imagined, made no answer. It is doubtful whether the worthy magistrate expected or required one. An occasion for misjudging a self-evident case of cruelty had arrived. This worthy seized the opportunity, received an ex-parte statement for Gospel, and misjudged, spite of his senses.
Item. An occasion for twaddling had come, and this good soul seized it and twaddled into a man's ear who was fainting on the rack.
At this moment the more observant Hawes saw the signs of shamming coming on. So he said hastily, “Oh, he will come to soon, and then he will be taken down;” and moved away. Mr. Woodcock followed him without one grain of suspicion or misgiving.
The English State has had many opportunities of gauging the average intellects of its unpaid jurists. By these it has profited so well that it intrusts blindly to this gentleman and his brethren the following commission:--
They are to come into a place of darkness and mystery, a place locked up; a place which, by the folly of the nation and the shallow egotists who are its placemen and are called its statesmen, is not subject to the only safeguard of law and morals--daily inspection by the great unprejudiced public. They are to come into this, the one pitch-dark hole that is now left in the land. They are to come here once in two months, and at this visit to see all that has been done there in the dark since their last visit. Their eagle eye is not to be hoodwinked by appearances got up to meet their visit. They are to come and comprehend with one piercing glance the past months as well as the present hour. Good. Only for this task is required, not the gullibility that characterizes the many, but the sagacity that distinguishes the few.
Mr. Woodcock undertook not to be deceived as to what had been done in the jail while he was forty miles distant--and Hawes gulled him under his own eyes.
What different men there are in the world, and how differently are the same things seen by them! The first crucifixion Eden saw he turned as sick as a dog--the first crucifixion Woodcock saw he twaddled in the crucified's ear, left him on the cross, and went on his way well pleased.
Hawes, finding what sort of a man he had to deal with, thought within himself, “Why should I compromise discipline in any point?” He said to Mr. Woodcock, “There is another prisoner whom I am afraid I must give an hour in the dark cell.”
“What has he been doing?”
“Scribbling a lot of lies upon some paper he got from the chaplain.”
Mr. Hawes's brief and unkind definition of autobiography did Robinson's business. Mr. Woodcock simply observed that the proposed punishment was by no means a severe one for the offense.
They visited several cells. Woodcock addressed the prisoners in certain words, accompanied with certain tones and looks, that were at least as significant as his words, and struck the prisoners as more sincere.
The words.
“If you have anything to complain of here, now is the time to say so, and your complaint shall be sifted.”
The tones and looks.
“I know you are better off here than such scum as you deserve, but you have a right to contradict me if you like; only mind, if you don't prove it to my satisfaction, who am not the man to believe anything you say, you had better have held your tongue.”
Meantime Mr. Hawes said nothing, but fixed his eye on the rogue, and that eye said, “One word of discontent and the moment he is gone I massacre you.” Then followed in every case the old theatrical business according to each rogue's measure of ability. They were in the Elysian fields; one thing alone saddened them; some day or other they must return to the world.
Fathers, sent by your apprehensive wives to see whether Dicky is well used at that school or not, don't draw Dicky into a corner of the playground, and with tender kisses and promises of inviolable secrecy coax him to open his little heart to you, and tell you whether he is really happy; leave such folly to women--it is a weakness to wriggle into the truth as they do.
No! you go like a man into the parlor with the schoolmaster--then have Dicky in--let him see the two authorities together on good terms--then ask him whether he is happy and comfortable and well used. He will tell you he is. Go home rejoicing--but before you go into the drawing-room do pray spend twenty minutes by the kitchen fire, and then go upstairs to the boy's mother--and let her eat you, for you belong to the family of the Woodcocks.
“We are passing one cell.”
“Oh! that one is empty,” replied Hawes.
Not quite empty; there was a beech coffin standing in that cell, and the corpse of a murdered thief lay waiting for it.
At twelve o'clock the justices were all assembled in their room. “We will send you a message in half an hour, Mr. Hawes.”
Mr. Hawes bowed and retired, and bade Fry to take Robinson to the dark cell. The poor fellow knew resistance was useless. He came out at the word of command, despair written on his face. Of all the horrors of this hell the dark cell was the one he most dreaded. He looked up to Hawes to see if anything he could say would soften him. No! that hardened face showed neither pity nor intelligence; as well appeal to a stone statue of a mule.
At this moment Mr. Eden came into the jail. Robinson met him on the ground-floor, and cried out to him, “Sir, they are sending me to the black hole for it. I am a doomed man; the black hole for six hours.”
“No!” roared Hawes from above, “for twelve hours; the odd six is for speaking in prison.” Robinson groaned.
“I will take you out in three,” said Mr. Eden calmly. Hawes heard and laughed aloud.
“Give me your hand on that, sir, for pity's sake,” cried Robinson. Mr. Eden gave him his hand and said, firmly, “I will take you out in two hours, please God.”
Hawes chuckled. “Parson is putting his foot in it more and more. The justices shall know this.”
This momentary contact with his good angel gave Robinson one little ray of hope for a companion in the cave of darkness, madness, and death.
Chapter XXIV
THE justices went through their business in the usual routine. They had Mr. Hawes's book up--examined the entries--received them with implicit confidence looked for no other source of information to compare them with. Examined one witness and did not cross-examine him.
This done, one of them proposed to concoct their report at once. Another suggested that the materials were not complete; that there was a charge against the chaplain. This should be looked into, and should it prove grave, embodied in their report.
Mr. Williams overruled this. “We can reprimand, or if need be the bench can dismiss a chaplain without troubling the Secretaries of State. Let us make our report and then look into the chaplain's conduct, who is, after all, a newcomer, and they say a little cracked; he is a man of learning.”
So they wrote their report, and in it expressed their conviction that the system on the whole worked admirably. They noticed the incident of Josephs' suicide, but attached no significance and little importance to it. Out of a hundred and eighty prisoners there would be a few succumb in one way or another under the system, but on the whole the system worked well.
Jugger system's wheels were well greased, and so long as they were well greased it did not matter their crushing one or two. Besides the crushed were only prisoners--the refuse of society. They reported the governor, Mr. Hawes, as a painstaking, active, zealous officer; and now Mr. Hawes was called in--the report was read to him--and he bowed, laid his hand upon his aorta, and presented a histrionic picture of modest merit surprised by unexpected praise from a high quarter.
Next, Mr. Hawes was requested to see the report sent off to the post.
“I will, gentlemen;” and in five minutes he was at the post-office in person, and his praises on the way to his sovereign or her representative.
“How long will the parson take us?”
“Oh! not ten minutes.”
“I hope not, for I want to look at a horse.”
“We had better send for him at once, then.”
The bell was rung and the chaplain sent for. The chaplain was praying the prayers for the sick by the side of a dying prisoner. He sent back word how he was employed, and that he would come as soon as he had done.
This message was not well received. Keep a living justice waiting for a dying dog!
“These puppies want taking down,” said Mr. Woodcock.
“Oh, leave him to me,” replied Mr. Williams.
Soon after this the following puppy came into the room. A gentleman of commanding figure, erect but easy, with a head of remarkable symmetry and an eye like a stag's. He entered the room quietly but rather quickly, and with an air of business; bowed rapidly to the three gentlemen in turn, and waited in silence their commands.
Then Mr. Williams drew himself up in his chair, and wore the solemn and dignified appearance that becomes a judge trying a prisoner, with this difference, that his manner was not harsh or intentionally offensive, but just such as to reveal his vast superiority and irresistible weight.
In a solemn tone, with a touch of pity, he began thus:
“I am sorry to say, Mr. Eden, that grave charges are laid against you in the prison.”
“Give yourself no uneasiness on my account, sir,” replied Mr. Eden politely, “they are perhaps false.”
“Yet they come from one who has means of knowing--from the governor, Mr. Hawes.”
“Ah! then they are sure to be false.”
“We shall see. Four Sundays ago you preached a sermon.”
“Two.”
“Ay, but one was against cruelty.”
“It was; the other handled theft.”
“Mr. Hawes conceives himself to have been singled out and exposed by that sermon.”
“Why so? there are more than thirty cruel men in this jail besides him.”
“Then this sermon was not aimed at him?” put Mr. Williams with a pinning air.
“It was and it was not. It was aimed at that class of my parishioners to which he belongs; a large class, including all the turnkeys but one, between twenty and thirty of the greater criminals among the prisoners--and Mr. Hawes.”
Mr. Williams bit his lip. “Gentlemen, this classification shows the animus;” then turning to Mr. Eden he said, with a half-incredulous sneer, “How comes it that Mr. Hawes took this sermon all to himself?”
Mr. Eden smiled. “How does it happen that two prisoners, 82 and 87, took it all to themselves? These two men sent for me after the sermon; they were wife-beaters. I found them both in great agitation. One terrified, the other softened to tears of penitence. These did not apply my words to Mr. Hawes. The truth is when a searching sermon is preached each sinner takes it to himself. I am glad Mr. Hawes fitted the cap on. I am glad the prisoners fitted the cap on. I am sorry Mr. Hawes was irritated instead of reformed. I am glad those two less hardened sinners were reformed instead of irritated.”
“And I must tell you, sir, that we disapprove of your style of preaching altogether, and we shall do more, we shall make a change in this respect the condition of your remaining in office.”
“And the bishop of the diocese?” asked Mr. Eden.
“What about him?”
“Do you think he will allow you, an ignorant, inexperienced layman, to usurp the episcopal function in his diocese.”
“The episcopal function? Mr. Eden.”
Mr. Eden smiled. “He does not even see that he has been trying to usurp sacred functions and of the highest order. But it is all of a piece--a profound ignorance of all law, civil or ecclesiastical, characterizes all your acts in this jail. My good soul, just ask yourself for what purpose does a bishop exist? Why is one priest raised above other priests, and consecrated bishop, but to enable the Church to govern its servants. I laugh--but I ought rather to rebuke you. What you have attempted is something worse than childish arrogance. Be warned! and touch not the sacred vessels so rashly--it is profanation.”
The flashing eye and the deepening voice, and the old awful ecclesiastical superiority suddenly thundering upon them quite cowed the two smaller magistrates. Williams, whose pomposity the priest had so rudely shaken, gasped for breath with rage. Magisterial arrogance was not prepared for ecclesiastical arrogance, and the blow was stunning.
“Gentlemen, I wish to consult you. Be pleased to retire for a minute, sir.”
A discussion took place in the chaplain's absence. Williams was for dismissing him on the spot, but the others who were cooler would not hear of it. “We have made a false move,” said they, “and he saw our mistake and made the most of it. Never mind! we shall catch him on other ground.”
During this discussion Mr. Eden had not been idle; he went into Robinson's empty cell and coolly placed there another inkstand, pen and quire in the place of those Hawes had removed. Then glancing at his watch he ran hastily out of the jail. Opposite the gate he found four men waiting; they were there by appointment.
“Giles,” said he to one, “I think a gentleman will come down by the next train. Go to the station and hire Jenkyns's fly with the gray horse. Let no one have it who is not coming on to the jail. You two stay by the printing-press and loom till further orders. Jackson, you keep in the way, too. My servant will bring you your dinner at two o'clock.” He then ran back to the justices. They were waiting for him.
Mr. Williams began with a cutting coldness. “We did not wish to go to the length of laying a complaint against you before the bishop, but if you really prefer this to a friendly remonstrance--”
“I prefer the right thing to the wrong thing,” was the prompt and calm rejoinder.
“The complaint shall be made.”
Mr. Eden bowed and his eyes twinkled. He pictured to himself this pompous personage writing to the Bishop of ---- to tell him that he objected to Mr. Eden's preaching; not that he had ever heard it; but that in attacking a great human vice it had hit a jailer.
“The next I think we can deal with. Mr. Hawes complains that you constantly interfere between him and the prisoners, and undermine his authority.”
“I support him in all his legal acts, but I do oppose his illegal ones.”
“Your whole aim is to subvert the discipline of the jail.”
“On the contrary, I assure you I am the only officer of the jail who maintains the discipline as by law established.”
“Am I to understand that you give Mr. Hawes the lie?”
“You shall phrase my contradiction according to your own taste, sir.”
“And which do you think is likeliest to be believed?”
“Mr. Hawes by you gentlemen; Mr. Eden by the rest of the nation.”
Here Mr. Palmer put in his word. “I don't think we ought to pay less respect to one man's bare assertion than to another's. It is a case for proof.”
“Well, but, Palmer,” replied Woodcock, “how can the jail go on with these two at daggers drawn?”
“It cannot,” said Mr. Eden.
“Ah, you can see that.”
“A house divided against itself!” suggested Mr. Eden.
“Well, then,” said Mr. Woodcock, “let us try and give a more friendly tone to this discussion.”
“Why not?--our weapons would bear polishing.”
“Yes; you have a high reputation, Mr. Eden, both for learning and Christian feeling; in fact, the general consideration in which you are held has made us more lenient in this case than we should have been with another man in your office.”
“There you are all wrong.”
“You can't mean that; make us some return for this feeling. You know and feel the value of peace and unity?”
“I do.”
“Then be the man to restore them to this place.”
“I will try.”
“The governor and you cannot pull together--one must go.”
“Clearly.”
“Well, then, no stigma shall rest on you--you will be allowed to offer us your voluntary resignation.”
“Excuse me, I propose to arrive at peace and unity by another route.”
“But I see no other.”
“If I turn Mr. Hawes out it will come to the same thing, will it not?”
“Mr. Hawes?”
“Mr. Hawes.”
“But you can't turn him out, sir,” sneered Williams.
“I think I can.”
“He has our confidence and our respect, and shall have our protection.”
“Still I will turn him out with God's help.”
“This is a defiance, Mr. Eden.”
“You cannot really think me capable of defying three justices of the peace!” said Mr. Eden in a solemn tone, his eyes twinkling.
“Defiance! no,” said Mr. Palmer innocently.
“Well, but, Palmer, his opposition to Mr. Hawes is opposition to us, and is so bitter that it leaves us no alternative. We must propose to the bench to remove you from your office.”
Mr. Eden bowed.
“And meantime,” put in Mr. Williams, “we shall probably suspend you this very day by our authority.” Mr. Eden bowed.
“We will not detain you any longer, sir,” said Williams, rather insolently.
“I will but stay to say one word to this gentleman, who has conducted himself with courtesy toward me. Sir, for your own sake do not enter on this contest with me; it is an unequal one. A boy has just been murdered in this prison. I am about to drag his murderer into the light; why hang upon his skirts and compel me to expose you to public horror as his abettor? There is yet time to disown the fell practices of--hell!” He looked at his watch. “There is half an hour. Do not waste it in acts which our superiors will undo. See here are the prison rules; a child could understand them. A child could see that what you call 'the discipline' is a pure invention of the present jailer, and contradicts the discipline as by law established, and consequently that Josephs and others have been murdered by this lawless man. These are the prison rules, are they not? and here are the jailer's proceedings in the month of January--compare the two, and separate your honorable name from the contact of this caitiff, whose crimes will gibbet him in the nation's eyes, and you with him, unless you seize this chance and withdraw your countenance from him.”
The three injustices rose by one impulse. “Make your preparations to leave the jail,” said Mr. Woodcock.
“Half an hour is quite enough under the circumstances,” said Williams.
Palmer stood aghast--his mind was not fast enough to keep up.
Mr. Eden bowed and retired. He was scarcely out of the room when the justices drew up an order for his suspension from his office.
Mr. Hawes was next sent for.
“We have found the chaplain all you described him. Discipline is impossible with such a man; here is an order for his suspension.” Hawes's eyes sparkled. “We will enter it into the book, meantime you are to see it executed.” Hawes went out, but presently returned.
“He won't go, gentlemen.”
“What do you mean by he won't go?” said Williams.
“I told him your orders; and he said, 'Tell their worships they are exceeding their authority, and I won't go.' Then I said, 'They give you half an hour to pack up and then you must pack off.'”
“He! he! he! and what did he say?”
“'Oh, they give me half an hour, do they?' says he--'you take them this'--and he wrote this on a slip of paper--here it is.”
The slip contained these words--
[Greek letters]
While the justices were puzzling over this, Hawes added, “Gentlemen, he said in his polite way, 'If it is like the prison rules and beats their comprehension, you may tell them it means--
“'There is many a slip 'Twixt the cup and the lip.'”
“Well, Mr. Hawes--what next?”
“'I am victualed for a siege,' says he, and he goes into his own room, and I heard him shoot the bolt.”
“What does that mean?” inquired Mr. Palmer.
“It means, sir, that you won't get him out except by kicking him out.” Hawes had been irritating their wounded vanity in order to get them up to this mark.
“Then turn him out by force,” said Williams. But the other two were wiser. “No, we must not do that--we can keep him out if once he crosses the door.”
“I will manage it for you, gentlemen,” said Mr. Hawes.
“Do.”
Mr. Hawes went out and primed Fry with a message to Mr. Eden that a gentleman had ridden over from Oxford to see him, and was at his house.
Mr. Eden was in his room busy collecting and arranging several papers. He had just tied them up in a little portfolio when he heard Fry's voice at the door. When that worthy delivered his message his lip curled with scorn. But he said, “Very well.” I will disappoint the sly boobies, thought he. But the next moment, looking out of his window, he saw a fly with a gray horse coming along the road. “At last,” he cried, and instantly unbolted his door, and issued forth with his little portfolio under his arm. He had scarce taken ten steps when a turnkey popped out from a corner and stood sentinel over his room-door, barring all return.
Mr. Eden smiled and passed on along the corridor. He descended from the first floor to the basement. Here he found Hawes affecting business, but not skillfully enough to hide that he was watching Mr. Eden out.
In the yard leading to the great door he found the injustices. Aha! thought he--waiting to see me out. He raised his hat politely. Williams took no notice. The others slight.
“There is many a slip 'Twixt the cup and the lip,”
said he to them, looking them calmly over, then sauntered toward the gate.
Mr. Hawes came creeping after and joined the injustices; every eye furtively watched the parson whom they had outwitted. Fry himself had gone to the lodge to let him out and keep him out. He was but a few steps from the door. Hawes chuckled; his heart beat with exultation. A nether moment and that huge barrier would be interposed forever between him and his enemy, the prisoners' friend.
“Open the door, Mr. Fry,” said the chaplain. Fry pulled it quickly open. “And let that gentleman in!”
A middle-aged gentleman was paying off his fly. The door being thus thrown open he walked quickly into the jail as if it belonged to him.
“Who is this?” inquired Mr. Williams sharply. The newcomer inquired as sharply, “The governor of this jail?”
Mr. Hawes stepped forward: “I am the governor.” The newcomer handed him his card and a note.
“Mr. Lacy from the Home Office,” said Mr. Hawes to the injustices. “These, sir, are the visiting justices.”
Mr. Lacy bowed, but addressed himself to Mr. Hawes only. “Grave charges have been made against you, sir. I am here to see whether matters are such as to call for a closer investigation.”
“May I ask, sir, who makes the charges against me?”
“The chaplain of your own jail.”
“But he is my enemy, sir, my personal enemy.”
“Don't distress yourself. No public man is safe from detraction. We hear an excellent account of you from every quarter but this one. My visit will probably turn to your advantage.”
Hawes brightened.
“Is there any room in which I could conduct this inquiry?”
“Will you be pleased to come to the justices' room?”
“Yes. Let us go there at once. Gentlemen, you shall be present if you choose.”
“It is right you should know the chaplain is cracked,” said Mr. Williams.
“I should not wonder. Pray,” inquired Mr. Lacy, “who was that bilious-looking character near the gate when I came in?”
“Why, that was the chaplain.”
“I thought so! I dare say we shall find he has taken a jaundiced view of things. Send for him, if you please, and let us get through the business as quickly as we can.”
When Mr. Eden came he found Mr. Lacy chatting pleasantly with his four adversaries. On his entrance the gentleman's countenance fell a little, and Mr. Eden had the pleasure of seeing that this man, too, was prejudiced against him.
“Mr.--Mr.--?”
“Eden.”
“Mr. Eden, be seated, if you please. You appear to be ill, sir?”
“I am recovering from a mortal sickness.”
“The jaundice, eh?”
“Something of that nature.”
“A horrible complaint.”
Mr. Eden bowed.
“I have had some experience of it. Are you aware of its effect on the mind?”
“I feel its effect on the temper and the nerves.”
“Deeper than that, sir--it colors the judgment. Makes us look at everything on the dark side.”
Mr. Eden sighed: “I see what you are driving at; but you confound effect with cause.”
Mr. Lacy shrugged his shoulders, opened his portfolio, and examined a paper or two.
“Mr. Hawes, you served her majesty in another way before you came here?”
“Five and twenty years, sir, man and boy.”
“And I think with credit?”
“My will has been good to do my duty, whatever my abilities may be.”
“I believe you distinguished yourself at sea in a storm in the West Indies?”
Mr. Williams put in warmly, “He went out to a vessel in distress in a hurricane at Jamaica.”
“It was off the Mauritius,” observed Mr. Eden with a gleam of satisfaction.
“Well,” said Mr. Lacy, “he saved other lives at the risk of his own, no matter where. Pray, Mr. Eden, does your reading and experience lead you to believe that a brave man is ever a cruel one?”
“Yes.”
“There is a proverb that the cruel are always cowards.”
“Cant! seven out of twelve are cowards and five brave.”
“I don't agree with you. The presumption is all on Mr. Hawes's side.”
“And only the facts on mine.”
Mr. Lacy smiled superciliously. “To the facts let us go, then. You received a note from the Home Office this morning. In compliance with that note have you prepared your case?”
“Yes.”
“Will you begin by giving me an idea what the nature of your evidence will be?”
“A page or two of print--twenty of manuscript--three or four living witnesses, and--one dead body.”
“Hum! he seems in earnest, gentlemen. How long do you require to state your case? Can it be done to-day?” Mr. Lacy looked at his watch half peevishly.
“Half an hour,” was the reply.
“Only half an hour?”
“Ay, but half an hour neat.”
“What do you mean by neat?”
“The minutes not to be counted that are wasted in idle interruptions or in arguments drawn from vague probabilities where direct evidence lies under our senses. For instance, that because I have been twenty-five years a servant of Christ with good repute, therefore it is not to be credited I could bring a false accusation; or that because Mr. Hawes was brave twenty years ago in one set of circumstances, therefore he cannot be cruel now in another set of circumstances.”
Mr. Lacy colored a little, but he took a pinch of snuff, and then coolly drew out of his pocket a long paper sealed.
“Have you any idea what this is?”
Mr. Eden caught sight of the direction; it was to himself.
“Probably my dismissal from my post?”
“It is.”
Hawes quivered with exultation.
“And I have authority to present you with it if you do not justify the charges you have made against a brother officer.”
“Good!” said Mr. Eden. “This is intelligent and it is just. The first gleam of either that has come into this dark hole since I have known it. I augur well from this.”
“This is a character, gentlemen.”
“To business, sir?” inquired Mr. Eden, undoing his portfolio.
“Sir,” put in Mr. Hawes, “I object to an ex-parte statement from a personal enemy. You are here to conduct a candid inquiry, not to see the chaplain conduct a hostile one. I feel that justice is safe in your hands but not in his.”
“Stop a bit,” said Mr. Eden; “I am to be dismissed unless I prove certain facts. See! the Secretary of State has put me on my defense. I will intrust that defense to no man but myself.”
“You are keen, sir, but--you are in the right; and you, Mr. Hawes, will be here to correct his errors and to make your own statement after he has done in half an hour.”
“Ah! well,” thought Hawes, “he can't do me much harm in half an hour.”
“Begin, sir!” and he looked at his watch.
“Mr. Hawes, I want your book; the log-book of the prison.”
“Get it, Mr. Hawes, if you please.”
Mr. Hawes went out.
“Mr. Williams, are these the Prison Rules by Act of Parliament?” and he showed him the paper.
“They are, sir.”
“Examine them closely, Mr. Lacy; they contain the whole discipline of this prison as by law established. Keep them before you. It is with these you will have to compare the jailer's acts. And now, how many times is the jailer empowered to punish any given prisoner?”
“Once--on a second offense the prisoner, I see, is referred for punishment to the visiting justices.”
“If, therefore, this jailer has taken upon himself to punish the same prisoner twice he has broken the law.”
“At all events he has gone beyond the letter of this particular set of rules.”
“But these rules were drawn up by lawyers, and are based on the law of the land. A jailer, in the eye of the law, is merely a head turnkey set to guard the prisoners. For hundreds of years he had no lawful right to punish a prisoner at all; that right was first bestowed on him with clear limitations by an act passed in George the Fourth's reign, which I must show you, because that act is a jailer's sole authority for punishing a prisoner at all. Here is the passage, sir; will you be kind enough to read it out?”
“Hum! 'The keeper of every prison shall have power to hear all complaints touching any of the following offenses: Disobedience of the prison rules, assaults by one prisoner on another where no dangerous wound is given, profane cursing or swearing, any indecent behavior at chapel, idleness or negligence in work. The said keeper may punish all such offenses by ordering any offender to close confinement in the refractory or solitary cells, and by keeping such offenders upon bread and water only for any term not exceeding three days.'”
“Observe,” put in Mr. Eden, “he can only punish once, and then not select the punishment according to his own fancy; he is restricted to separate confinement, and bread and water, and three days.”
Mr. Lacy continued: “'In case any criminal prisoner shall be guilty of any repeated offense against the rules of the prison, or of any greater offense than the jailer is by this act empowered to punish, the said jailer shall forthwith report the same to the visiting justices, who can punish for one month, or felons or those sentenced to hard labor by personal correction.'”
“Such, sir,” said Mr. Eden, “is the law of England, and the men who laid down our prison rules were not so ignorant or unscrupulous as to run their head against the statute law of the land. Nowhere in our prison rules will you find any power given to our jailer to punish any but minor offenses, or to punish any prisoner more than once, or to inflict any variety of punishments. Such are this jailer's powers--now for his acts and their consequences--follow me.”
“Evans, open this cell. Jenkyns, what are you in prison for?”
“For running away from sarvice, your reverence.”
“How often have you been punished since you came?”
“A good many times, your reverence.”
“By the visiting justices?”
“No, sir! I was never punished by them, only by the governor.”
“What have been your offenses?”
“I don't know, sir. I never meant to offend at all, but I am not very strong, and the governor he puts me on a heavy crank and then I can't always do the work, and I suppose he thinks it is for want of the will, and so he gives it me.”
“How has he punished you?”
“Oh! sometimes it is clamming; nothing but a twopenny roll all day, and kept to hard work all the same; sometimes my bed taken away, you know, sir, but mostly the punishment jacket.”
Mr. Lacy. “The punishment jacket; what is that?”
Mr. Eden. “Look in the prison rules and see if you can find a punishment jacket; meantime come with me. Two gross violations of the law--repetition of punishment and variety of punishments. Evans, open this cell. What are you in for?”
Prisoner (taking off his cap politely). “Burglary, gentlemen.”
“Have you been often refractory since you came here?”
“Once or twice, sir. But--”
“But what?”
“These gentlemen are the visiting justices?”
“Yes!”
“They would be offended if I told the truth.”
Mr. Lacy. “I am here from the Secretary of State, and I bid you tell the truth.”
Prisoner. “Oh! are you, sir; well, then, the truth is, I never was refractory but once.”
Mr. Lacy. “Oh! you were refractory once?”
Prisoner. “Yes, sir!”
Mr. Lacy. “How came that?”
Prisoner. “Well, sir! it was the first week. I had never been in a separate cell before, and it drove me mad; no one came near me or spoke a word to me, and I turned savage; I didn't know myself, and I broke everything in the cell.”
Mr. Eden. “And the other times?”
Prisoner. “The other times, sir, I was called refractory but I was not.”
Mr. Eden. “What punishments have been inflicted on you by the governor?”
Prisoner. “Well, sir! the black-cell, bread and water, and none of that; took away my gas once or twice, but generally it was the punishment jacket.”
Mr. Lacy. “Hum! the punishment jacket.”
Mr. Eden. “How long since you had the punishment jacket?”
Prisoner. “No longer than yesterday.”
Mr. Eden. “Strip, my man, and let us look at your back.”
The prisoner stripped and showed his back, striped livid and red by the cutting straps.
Mr. Lacy gave a start, but the next moment he resumed his official composure, and at this juncture Mr. Hawes bustled into the cell and fixed his eye on the prisoner.
“What are you doing?” said he, eying the man.
“The gentleman made me strip, sir,” said the prisoner with an ill-used air.
“Have you any complaint to make against me?”
“No, sir!”
“Then what have you been humbugging us for all this time,” cried Mr. Williams contemptuously.
“For instance,” cried Mr. Eden in the same tone, glancing slyly at Mr. Lacy, “how dare you show us frightful wales upon your back when you know they only exist in your imagination--and mine.”
Mr. Lacy laughed. “That is true, he can't retract his wales, and I shall be glad to know how they came there.” Here he made a note.
“I will show you by and by,” said Mr. Eden.
The next two cells they went to, the prisoners assured Mr. Lacy that they were treated like Mr. Hawes's children.
“Well, sir!” said Lacy, with evident satisfaction, “what do you say to that?”
“I say--use your eyes.” And he wheeled the last prisoner to the light. “Look at this hollow eye and faded cheek; look at this trembling frame and feel this halting pulse. Here is a poor wretch crushed and quelled by cruelty till scarce a vestige of man is left. Look at him! here is an object to pretend to you that he has been kindly used. Poor wretch, his face gives the lie to his tongue, and my life on it his body confirms his face. Strip, my lad.”
Mr. Hawes interposed, and said it was cruel to make a prisoner strip to gratify curiosity. Mr. Eden laughed. “Come, strip,” said he; “the gentleman is waiting.” The prisoner reluctantly took off his coat, waistcoat and shirt, and displayed an emaciated person and several large livid stripes on his back. Mr. Lacy looked grave.
“Now, Mr. Lacy, you see the real reason why this humane gentleman did not like the prisoner to strip. Come to another. Before we go in to this one let me ask you one question: Do you think they will ever tell you the truth while Mr. Hawes's eye is on them?”
“Hum! they certainly seem to stand in awe of Mr. Hawes.”
Hawes. “But, sir! you see how bitter the chaplain is against me. Where he is I ought to be if I am to have fair play.”
“Certainly, Mr. Hawes, certainly! that is but fair.”
Mr. Eden. “What are you in for?”
Prisoner. “Taking a gentleman's wipe, gentlemen.”
Mr. Eden. “Have you been often punished?”
Prisoner. “Yes, your reverence! Why you know I have; now didn't you save my life when they were starving me to death two months ago?”
Mr. Lacy. “How did he save your life?”
Prisoner. “Made 'em put me on the sick list, and put something into my poor belly.”
Mr. Lacy. “What state was the man in, Mr. Eden?”
Mr. Eden. “He was like a skeleton, and so weak that he could only speak two or three words at a time, and then had to stop a long while and recover strength to say two or three more. I did not think a human creature could be so near death and not die.”
Mr. Lacy. “And did you know the cause?”
Mr. Eden. “Frankly, I did not. I had not at that time fathomed all the horrors of this place.”
Mr. Lacy. “Did you tell the chaplain at the time you were starving?”
Prisoner. “No!”
Mr. Eden. “And why not?”
Mr. Hawes. “Simply because he never was starving.”
Prisoner. “Well! I'll tell you, gentlemen. His reverence said to me, 'My poor fellow, you are very ill--I must have you on the sick list directly,' and then he went for the doctor. Now I knew if I got on the sick list they would fill my belly; so I said to myself, best let well alone. If I had told him it was only starvation he would not interfere, I thought.”
Mr. Lacy opened his eyes. Mr. Eden sighed.
Mr. Lacy. “You seem to have a poor opinion of her majesty's officers.”
Prisoner. “Didn't know him, you see--didn't know his character; the humbug that was here before him would have let a poor fellow be kicked into his grave before his eyes, and not hold out a hand to save him.”
Mr. Lacy. “Let me understand you--were you kept without food?”
Prisoner. “I was a day and a half without any food at all.”
Mr. Lacy. “By whose orders?”
Prisoner. “By the governor's there, and I was a week on a twopenny loaf once a day, and kept at hard work on that till I dropped. Ah, your reverence, I shall never forget your face. I should be under the sod now if it was not for you!”
Williams. “You rascal, the last time I was here you told me you never were so happy and comfortable.”
Prisoner. “Ha! ha! ha! ha! he! he! haw! haw! ho! I ask your pardon for laughing, sir; but you are so precious green. Why, if I had told you the truth then I shouldn't be alive to talk to you now.”
“What, I should have murdered you, should I!” said Mr. Hawes, with a lofty sneer.
“Why you know you would, sir,” replied the prisoner firmly and respectfully, looking him full in the face before them all.
Mr. Lacy. “You don't think so, or you would not take these liberties with him now.”
The prisoner cast a look of pity on Mr. Lacy.
“Well, you are green--what, can't you see that I am going out to-day? Do you think I'd be such a cully as to tell a pack of greenhorns like you the truth before a sharp hand like our governor, if I was in his power; no, my term of imprisonment expired at twelve o'clock to-day.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I'll tell you, sir. Our governor always detains a prisoner for hours after the law sets him free. So then the poor fellow has not time to get back to his friends, so then he sleeps in the town, ten to one at a public-house; gets a glass, gets into bad company, and in a month or two comes back here. That is the move, sir. Bless you, they are so fond of us they don't like to part with us for good and all.”
Mr. Lacy. “I do not for a moment believe, Mr. Hawes, that you have foreseen these consequences, but the detention of this man after twelve o'clock is clearly illegal, and you must liberate him on the instant.”
Mr. Hawes. “That I will, and I wish this had been pointed out to me before, but it was a custom of the prison before my time.”
Mr. Eden. “Evans, come this way, come in. How long have you been a turnkey here?”
Evans. “Four years, sir.”
Mr. Eden. “Do you happen to remember the practice of the late governor with respect to prisoners whose sentence had expired?”
Evans. “Yes, sir! They were kept in their cells all the morning; then at eleven their own clothes were brought in clean and dry, and they had half an hour given them to take off the prison dress and put on their own. Then a little before twelve they were taken into the governor's own room for a word of friendly advice on leaving, or a good book, or a tract, or what not. Then at sharp twelve the gate was opened for them, and--”
Prisoner. “Good-by!--till we see you again.”
Evans (sternly). “Come, my man, it is not for you to speak till you are spoken to.”
Mr. Eden. “You must not take that tone with the gentleman, Evans--this is not a queen's prisoner, it is a private guest of Mr. Hawes. But time flies. If after what we have heard and seen, you still doubt whether this jailer has broken the law by punishing the same prisoner more than once and in more ways than one, fresh evidence will meet you at every step; but I would now direct your principal attention to other points. Look at Rule 37. By this rule each prisoner must be visited and conversed with by four officers every day, and they are to stay with him upon the aggregate half an hour in the day. Now the object of this rule is to save the prisoners from dying under the natural and inevitable operation of solitude and enforced silence, two things that are fatal to life and reason.”
“But solitary confinement is legal.”
Mr. Eden sighed heavily. “No it is not. Separate confinement, i.e., separation of prisoner from prisoner, is legal, but separation of a prisoner from the human race is as illegal as any other mode of homicide. It never was legal in England; it was legal for a short time in the United States, and do you know why it has been made illegal there?”
“No, I do not.”
“Because they found that life and reason went out under it like the snuff of a candle. Men went mad and died, as men have gone mad and died here through the habitual breach of Rule 37, a rule the aim of which is to guard separate confinement from being shuffled into solitary confinement or homicide. Take twenty cells at random, and ask the prisoners how many officers come and say good words to them as bound by law; ask them whether they get their half hour per diem of improving conversation. There is a row of shambles, go into them by yourself, take neither the head butcher nor me.”
Mr. Lacy bit his lip, bowed stiffly, and beckoned Evans to accompany him into the cells. Mr. Hawes went in search of Fry, to concert what was best to be done. Mr. Eden paced the corridor. As for Mr. Lacy, he took the cells at random, skipping here and there. At last he returned and sent for Mr. Hawes.
“I am sorry to say that the 37th Rule has been habitually violated; the prisoners are unanimous; they tell me that so far from half an hour's conversation, they never have three minutes, except with the chaplain. And during his late illness they were often in perfect solitude. They tell me, too, that when you do look in it is only to terrify them with angry words and threats. Solitude broken only by harsh language is a very sad condition for a human creature to lie in--the law, it seems, does not sanction it--and our own imperfections should plead against such terrible severity applied indiscriminately to great and small offenders.”
“Oh, that is well said, that is nobly said,” cried Mr. Eden with enthusiasm.
“Sir! I was put in here to carry out the discipline which had been relaxed by the late governor, and I have but obeyed orders as it was my duty.”
“Nonsense,” retorted Mr. Eden. “The discipline of this jail is comprised in these rules, of which eight out of ten are habitually broken by you.”
“He is right there so far, Mr. Hawes. You are here to maintain, not an imaginary discipline, but an existing discipline strictly defined by printed rules, and it seems clear you have committed (through ignorance) serious breaches of these rules. But let us hope, Mr. Eden, that no irreparable consequences have followed this unlucky breach of Rule 37.”
“Irreparable? No!” replied Mr. Eden bitterly. “The Home Office can call men back from the grave, can't it? Here is a list of five men all extinguished in this prison by breach of Rule 37. You start. Understand me, this is but a small portion of those who have been done to death here in various ways; but these five dropped silently like autumn leaves by breach of Rule 37. Rule 37 is one of the safety valves which the law, more humane than the blockheads who execute it, has attached to that terrible engine separate confinement.”
“I cannot accept this without evidence.”
“I have a book here that contains ample evidence; you shall see it. Meantime I will just ask that turnkey about Hatchett, the first name on your list of victims. Evans, what did you find in Hatchett's cell when he was first discovered to be dying?”
“Eighteen loaves of bread, sir, on the floor in one corner.”
“Eighteen loaves; I really don't understand.”
“Don't you?--how could eighteen loaves have accumulated but by the man rejecting his food for several days? How could they have accumulated unobserved if Rule 37 had not been habitually broken? Alas! sir, Hatchett's story, which I see is still dark to you, is as plain as my hand to all of us who know the fatal effects of solitary or homicidal confinement. Thus, sir, it was: Unsustained by rational employment, uncheered by the sound of a human voice, torn out by the roots from all healthy contact with the human race, the prisoner Hatchett's heart and brain gave way together; being now melancholy mad he shunned the food that was jerked blindly into his cell, like a bone to a wolf, by this scientific contrivance to make brute fling food to brute, instead of man handing it with a smile to grateful man; and so his body sunk (his spirits and reason had succumbed before) and he died. His offense was refusing to share his wages with a woman from whom he would have been divorced, but that he was too poor to buy justice at so dear a shop as the House of Lords. The law condemned him to a short imprisonment. The jailer, on his own authority, substituted capital punishment.”
“Is it your pleasure, sir, that I should be vilified and insulted thus to my very face, and by my inferior officer?” asked Hawes, changing color.
“You have nothing to apprehend except from facts,” was the somewhat cold reply. “You are aware I do not share this gentleman's prejudices.”
“Would you like to see a man in the act of perishing through the habitual breach of Rule 37 in ---- Jail?”
“Can you show me such a case?”
“Come with me.”
They entered Strutt's cell. They found the old man in a state bordering on stupor. When the door was opened he gave a start, but speedily relapsed into stupor.
“Now, Mr. Lacy, here is a lesson for you. Would to God I could show this sight to all the pedants of science who spend their useless lives in studying the limbs of the crustaceonidunculae, and are content to know so little about man's glorious body; and to all the State dunces who give sordid blockheads the power to wreck the brains and bodies of wicked men in these the clandestine shambles of the nation. Would I could show these and all other numskulls in the land this dying man, that they might write this one great truth in blood on their cold hearts and muddy understandings. Alas! all great truths have to be written in blood ere man will receive them.”
“But what is your great truth?” asked Mr. Lacy impatiently.
“This, sir,” replied Mr. Eden, putting his finger on the stupefied prisoner's shoulder and keeping it there; “that the human body, besides its grosser wants of food and covering, has its more delicate needs, robbed of which it perishes more slowly and subtly but as surely as when frozen or starved. One of these subtle but absolute conditions of health is light. Without light the body of a blind man pines as pines a tree without light. Tell that to the impostor physical science deep in the crustaceonidunculae and ignorant of the A B C of man. Without light man's body perishes, with insufficient light it droops; and here in all these separate shambles is insufficient light, a defect in our system which co-operates with this individual jailer's abuse of it. Another of the body's absolute needs is work. Another is conversation with human beings. If by isolating a vulgar mind that has collected no healthy food to feed on in time of dearth you starve it to a stand-still, the body runs down like a watch that has not been wound up. Against this law of Nature it is not only impious but idiotic to struggle. Almighty God has made man so, and so he will remain while the world lasts. A little destructive blockhead like this can knock God's work to pieces--ecce signum--but he can no more alter it while it stands than he can mend it when he has let it down and smashed it. Feel this man's pulse and look at his eye. Life is ebbing from him by a law of Nature as uniform as that which governs the tides.”
“His pulse is certainly very low, and when I first felt it he was trembling all over.”
“Oh, that was the agitation of his nerves--we opened the door suddenly.”
“And did that make a man tremble?”
“Certainly; that is a well-known symptom of solitary confinement; it is by shattering a man's nerves all to pieces that it prepares the way for his death, which death comes sometimes in raging lunacy, of which eight men have died under Mr. Hawes's reign. Here is the list of deaths by lunacy from breach of Rule 37, eight. You will have the particulars by and by.”
“I really don't see my way through this,” said Mr. Lacy. “Let us come to something tangible. What is this punishment jacket that leaves marks of personal violence on so many prisoners?”
Now Hawes had been looking for this machine to hide it, but to his surprise neither he nor Fry could find it.
“Evans, fetch the infernal machine.”
“Yes, your reverence.” Evans brought the jacket, straps and collar from a cell where he had hidden them by Mr. Eden's orders. “You play the game pretty close, parson,” said Mr. Hawes, with an attempt at a sneer.
“I play to win. I am playing for human lives. This, sir, is the torture, marks of which you have seen on the prisoners; but your inexperience will not detect at a glance all the diabolical ingenuity and cruelty that lurks in this piece of linen and these straps of leather. However, it works thus: The man being in the jacket its back straps are drawn so tight that the sufferer's breath is impeded, and his heart, lungs and liver are forced into unnatural contact. You stare. I must inform you that Nature is a wonderfully close packer. Did you ever unpack a human trunk of its stomach, liver, lungs and heart, and then try to replace them? I have; and, believe me, as no gentleman can pack like a shopman, so no shopman can pack like Nature. The victim's body and organs being crushed these two long straps fasten him so tight to the wall that he cannot move to ease the frightful cramps that soon attack him. Then steps in by way of climax this collar, three inches and a half high. See, it is as stiff as iron, and the miscreants have left the edges unbound that it may do the work of a man-saw as well as a garotte. In this iron three-handed gripe the victim writhes and sobs and moans with anguish, and, worse than all, loses his belief in God.”
“This is a stern picture,” said Mr. Lacy, hanging his head.
“Until what with the freezing of the blood in a body jammed together and flattened against a wall--what with the crushed respiration and the cowed heart a deadly faintness creeps over the victim and he swoons away!”
“Oh!”
“It is a lie--a base, malignant lie!” shouted Hawes.
“I am glad to hear it, Mr. Hawes.”
Here the justices with great beat joined in and told Mr. Lacy he would be much to blame if he accepted any statement made against so respectable a man as Mr. Hawes. Then they all turned indignantly on Mr. Eden. That gentleman's eyes sparkled with triumph.
“I have been trying a long time to make him speak, but he was too cunning. It is a lie, is it?”
“Yes, it is a lie.”
“What is a lie?”
“The whole thing.”
“Give me your book, Mr. Hawes. What do you mean by 'the punishment-jacket,' an entry that appears so constantly here in your handwriting?”
“I never denied the jacket.”
“Then what is the lie of which you have accused me? Show me--that I may ask your pardon and His I serve for so great a sin as a lie.”
“It is a lie to say that the jacket tortures the prisoners and makes them faint away; it only confines them. You want to make me out a villain, but it is your own bad heart that makes you think so or say so without thinking it.”
“Now, Mr. Lacy, I think we have caught our eel. This, then, is the ground you take; if it were true that this engine, instead of merely confining men, tortured them to fainting, then you say you would be a villain. You hesitate, sir; can't you afford to admit that, after all?”
“Yes, I can.”
“But on the other hand you say it is untrue that this engine tortures?”
“I do.”
“Prove that by going into it for one hour. I have seen you put a man in it for six.”
“Now, do you really think I am going to make myself a laughing-stock to the whole prison?”
“Well, but consider what a triumph you are denying yourself to prove me a liar and yourself a true man. It would be the greatest feat of dialects the world ever saw; and you need not stand on your dignity--better men than you have been in it, and there goes one of them. Here, Evans, come this way. We want you to go into the punishment-jacket.” The man recoiled with a ludicrous face of disgust and dismay. Mr. Lacy smiled.
“Now, your reverence, don't think of it. I don't want to earn no more guineas that way.”
“What does he mean?” asked Mr. Lacy.
“I gave him a guinea to go into it for half an hour, and he calls it a hard bargain.”
“Oh, you have been in it, then? Tell me, is it torture or is it only confinement?”
“Con-finement! con-found such confinement, I say. Yes, it is torture and the worst of torture. Ask his reverence, he has been in the oven as well as me.”
Mr. Lacy opened his eyes wide.
“What!” said he, with a half grin, “have you been in it?”
“That he has, sir,” said Evans, grinning out in return. “Bless you, his reverence is not the one to ask a poor man to stand any pain he daren't face himself.”
“There, there, we don't want to hear about his reverence,” said his reverence very sharply. “Mr. Hawes says it is not torture, and therefore he won't face it. 'It is too laughable and painless for me,' says slippery Mr. Hawes. 'It is torture, and therefore I won't face it,' says the more logical Mr. Evans. But we can cut this knot for you, Mr. Lacy. There are in this dungeon a large body of men so steeped in misery, so used to torture for their daily food, that they will not be so nice as Messrs. Hawes and Evans. 'Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.' Follow me, sir; and as we go pray cast your eyes over the prison rules, and see whether you can find 'a punishment-jacket.' No, sir, you will not find even a Spanish collar, or a pillory, or a cross, far less a punishment-jacket which combines those several horrors.”
Mr. Hawes hung back and begged a word with the justices. “Gentlemen, you have always been good friends to me--give me a word of advice, or at least let me know your pleasure. Shall I resign--shall I fling my commission in this man's face who comes here to usurp your office and authority?”
“Resign! Nonsense!” said Mr. Williams. “Stand firm. We will stand by you, and who can hurt you then?”
“You are very good, sirs. Without you I couldn't put up with any more of this--to be baited and badgered in my own prison, after serving my queen so many years by sea and land.”
“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Woodcock.
“And how can I make head against such a man as Eden--a lawyer in a parson's skin, an orator too that has a hundred words to say to my one?”
“Let him talk till he is hoarse, we will not let him hurt you.”
“Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Your wishes have always been my law. You bid me endure all this insolence; honored by your good opinion, and supported by your promise to stand by me, I will endure it.” And Mr. Hawes was seen to throw off the uneasiness he had put on to bind the magistrates to his defense.
“They are coming back again.”
“Who is this with them?”
Mr. Hawes muttered an oath. “It is a refractory prisoner I had sent to the dark cell. I suppose they will examine him next, and take his word against mine.”
(Chorus of Visiting Justices.) “Shame!”
Chapter XXV
MR. EDEN had taken Mr. Lacy to the dark cells. Evans, who had no key of them, was sent to fetch Fry to open them. “We will kill two birds with one stone--disinter a patient for our leathern gallows, and a fresh incident of the ---- Inquisition. Open this door, Mr. Fry.”
The door was opened. A feeble voice uttered a quavering cry of joy that sounded like wailing, and a figure emerged so suddenly and distinctly from the blackness that Mr. Lacy started. It was Thomas Robinson, who crept out white and shaking, with a wild, haggard look. He ran to Mr. Eden like a great girl. “Don't let me go back--don't let me go back, sir!” And the cowed one could hardly help whimpering.
“Come, courage, my lad,” rang out Mr. Eden, “your troubles are nearly over. Feel this man's hand, sir.”
“How he trembles! Why, he must be chicken-hearted.”
“No! only he is one of your men of action, not of passive fortitude. He is imaginative, too, and suffers remorse for his crimes without the soothing comfort of penitence. Twenty-four hours of that black hole would deprive him or any such nature of the light of reason.”
“Is this a mere opinion or do you propose to offer me proof?”
“Six men driven by this means alone to the lunatic asylum, of whom two died there soon after.”
“Hum! of what nature is your proof? I cannot receive assertion.”
“Entries made at the time by a man of unimpeachable honesty.”
“Indeed!”
“Who hates me and adores Mr. Hawes.”
“Very well, Mr. Eden,” replied the other keenly, “whatever you support by such evidence as that I will accept as fact and act upon it.”
“Done!”
“Done!” and Mr. Lacy smiled good-humoredly, but, it must be owned, incredulously. “Is that proof at hand?” he added.
“It is. But one thing at a time--the leathern gallows is the iniquity we are unearthing at present. Ah! here are Mr. Hawes and his subordinates.”
“Subordinates?”
“You will see why I call them so.”
Mr. Williams. “I trust you will not accept the evidence of a refractory prisoner against an honest, well-tried officer, whose conduct for two years past we have watched and approved.”
Mr. Lacy replied with dignity: “Your good opinion of Mr. Hawes shall weigh in his favor at every part of the evidence, but you must not dictate to me the means by which I am to arrive at the truth.”
Mr. Williams bit his lip and was red and silent.
“But, your reverence,” cried Robinson, “don't let me be called a refractory prisoner when you know I am not.”
“Then what were you in the black-hole for?”
“For obeying orders.”
“Nonsense! hum! Explain.”
“His reverence said to me, 'You are a good writer; write your own life down. See how you like it when you look at it with reason's eye instead of passion's, all spread out before you in its true colors. Tell the real facts--no false coin, nor don't put any sentiments down you don't feel to please me--I shall only despise you,' said his reverence. Well, sir, I am not a fool, and so of course I could see how wise his reverence was, and how much good might come to my poor sinful soul by doing his bidding; and I said a little prayer he had taught me against a self-deceiving heart--his reverence is always letting fly at self-deception--and then I sat down and I said, 'Now I won't tell a single lie or make myself a pin better or worse than I really am. Well, gentlemen, I hadn't written two pages when Mr. Fry found me out and told the governor, and the governor had me shoved into the black-hole where you found me.”
“This is Mr. Fry, I think?”
“My name is Fry”
“Was this prisoner sent to the black-hole merely for writing his life by the chaplain's orders?”
“You must ask the governor, sir. My business is to report offenses and to execute orders; I don't give 'em.”
“Mr. Hawes, was he sent to the black-hole for doing what the chaplain had set him to do by way of a moral lesson?”
“He was sent for scribbling a pack of lies without my leave.”
“What! when he had the permission of your superior officer.”
“Of my superior officer?”
“Your superior in the department of instruction, I mean. Can you doubt that he is so with these rules before you? Let me read you one of them: 'Rule 18. All prisoners, including those sentenced to hard labor, are to have such time allowed them for instruction as the chaplain may think proper, whether such instruction withdraw them from their labor for a time or not.' And again, by 'Rule 80. Each prisoner is to have every means of moral and religious instruction the chaplain shall select for each as suitable.' So that you have passed out of your own department into a higher department, which was a breach of discipline, and you have affronted the head of that department and strained your authority to undermine his, and this in the face of Rule 18, which establishes this principle: that should the severities of the prison claim a prisoner by your mouth, and religious or moral instruction claim him by the chaplain's, your department must give way to the higher department.”
“This is very new to me, sir; but if it is the law--”
“Why, you see it is the law, printed for your guidance. I undo your act, Mr. Hawes; the prisoner Robinson will obey the chaplain in all things that relate to religious or moral instruction, and he will write his life as ordered, and he is not to be put to hard labor for twenty-four hours. By this means he will recover his spirits and the time and moral improvement you have made him lose. You hear, sir?” added he very sharply.
“I hear,” said Hawes sulkily.
“Go on with your evidence, Mr. Eden.”
“Robinson, my man, you see that machine?”
“Ugh! yes, I see it.”
“For two months I have been trying to convince Mr. Hawes that engine is illegal. I failed; but I have been more fortunate with this gentleman who comes from the Home Office. He has not taken as many minutes to see it is unlawful.”
“Stop a bit, Mr. Eden. It is clearly illegal, but the torture is not proved.”
“Nor ever will be,” put in Mr. Hawes.
“So then, Robinson, no man on earth has the right to put you into that machine.”
“Hurrah!”
“It is therefore as a favor that I ask you to go into it to show its operation.”
“A favor, your reverence, to you? I am ready in a minute.” Robinson was jammed, throttled, and nailed in the man-press. Mr. Lacy stood in front of him and eyed him keenly and gravely. “They seem very fond of you, these fellows.”
“Can you give your eyes to that sight and your ears to me?” asked Mr. Eden.
“I can.”
“Then I introduce to you a new character--Mr. Fry. Mr. Fry is a real character, unlike those of romance and melodrama, which are apt to be either a streak of black paint or else a streak of white paint. Mr. Fry is variegated. He is a moral magpie; he is, if possible, as devoid of humanity as his chief; but to balance this defect, he possesses, all to himself, a quality, a very high quality, called Honesty.”
“Well, that is a high quality and none too common.”
“He is one of those men to whom veracity is natural. He would hardly know how to tell a falsehood. They fly about him in this place like hailstones, but I never saw one come from him.”
“Stay! does he side with you or with Mr. Hawes in this unfortunate difference?”
“With me!” cried Mr. Hawes eagerly. Mr. Eden bowed assent. “Hum!”
“This honest Nero is zealous according to his light; he has kept a strict record of the acts and events of the jail for four years past; i.e., rather more than two years of Captain O'Connor's jailership, and somewhat less than two years of the present jailer. Such a journal, rigorously kept out of pure love of truth by such a man is invaluable. There no facts are likely to be suppressed or colored, since the record was never intended for any eye but his own. I am sure Mr. Fry will gratify you with a sight of this journal. Oblige me, Mr. Fry!”
“Certainly, sir! certainly!” replied Fry, swelling with importance and gratified surprise.
“Bring it me at once, if you please.” Fry went with alacrity for his journal.
“Mr. Lacy,” said Mr. Eden, with a slight touch of reproach, “you can read not faces only but complexions. You read in my yellow face and sunken eye--prejudice; what do you read here?” and he wheeled like lightning and pointed to Mr. Hawes, whose face and very lips were then seen to be the color of ashes. The poor wretch tried to recover composure, and retort defiance; but the effort came too late. His face had been seen, and once seen that look of terror, anguish and hatred was never to be forgotten.
“What is the matter, Mr. Hawes?”
“W--W--When I think of my long services, and the satisfaction I have given to my superiors--and now my turnkey's journal to be taken and believed against mine.”
(Chorus of Justices.) “It is a shame!”
Mr. Eden (very sharply). “Against yours? what makes him think it will be against his? The man is his admirer, and an honest man. What injustice has he to dread from such a source?”
Mr. Lacy. “I really cannot understand your objection to a man's evidence whose bias lies your way; and I must say, it speaks well for Mr. Eden that he has proposed this man in evidence.”
At this juncture the magistrates, after a short consultation, informed Mr. Lacy that they had business of more importance to transact, and could give no more time to what appeared to them an idle and useless inquiry.
“At all events, gentlemen,” replied Mr. Lacy, “I trust you will not leave the jail. I am not here to judge Mr. Hawes, but to see whether Mr. Eden's demand for a formal inquiry into his acts ought to be granted or refused. Now unless the evidence takes some new turn I incline to think I must favor the inquiry; that is to say, should the chaplain persist in demanding it.”
“Which I shall.”
“Should a royal commission be appointed to sit here, I should naturally wish to consult you as to the component members of the commission; and it is my wish to pay you the compliment usual in such cases of selecting one of the three commissioners from your body. But one question, gentlemen, before you go. Have you complied with No. 1 of these your rules? Have you visited every prisoner in his or her cell once a month?”
“Certainly not!”
“I am sorry to hear it. Of course, at each visit, you have closely examined this the jailer's book, a record of his acts and the events of the jail?”
“Portions of it are read to us; this is a form which I believe is never omitted--is it, Mr. Hawes?”
“Never, gentlemen!”
“'Portions!' and 'a form!' what, then, are your acts of supervision? Do you examine the turnkeys, and compare their opinions with the jailer's?”
“We would not be guilty of such ungentlemanly behavior!” replied Mr. Williams, who had been longing for some time to give Mr. Lacy a slap.
“Do you examine the prisoners apart, so that there can be no intimidation of them?”
“We always take Mr. Hawes into the cells with us.”
“Why do you do that, pray?”
“We conceive that nothing would be gained by encouraging the refuse of mankind to make frivolous complaints against their best friend.” Here the speaker and his mates wore a marked air of self-satisfaction.
“Well, sir! has the present examination in no degree shaken your confidence in Mr. Hawes's discretion?”
“Not in the least.”
“Nor in your own mode of scrutinizing his acts?”
“Not in the least.”
“That is enough! Gentlemen, I need detain you no longer from the business you have described as more important than this!”
Mr. Lacy shrugged his shoulders. Mr. Eden smiled to him, and said quietly:
“As they were in the days of Shakespeare so they were in the days of Fielding; as they were in the days of Fielding so they are in the days of light; and as they are now so will they remain until they are swept away from the face of the soil. (Keep your eye on Mr. Hawes, edging away there so adroitly.) It is not their fault, it is their nature; their constitution is rotten; in building them the State ignored Nature, as Hawes ignores her in his self-invented discipline.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“That no body of men ever gave for nothing anything worth anything, nor ever will. Now knowledge of law is worth something; zeal, independent judgment, honesty, humanity, diligence are worth something (are you watching Mr. Hawes, sir?); yet the State, greedy goose, hopes to get them out of a body of men for nothing!”
“Hum! Why has Mr. Hawes retired?”
“You know as well as I do.”
“Oh! do I?”
“Yes, sir! the man's terror when Fry's journal was proposed in evidence, and his manner of edging away obliquely to the direction Fry took, were not lost on a man of your intelligence.”
“If you think that, why did you not stop him till Fry came back with the book?”
“I had my reasons; meantime we are not at a stand-still. Here is an attested copy of the journal in question; and here is Mr. Hawes's log-book. Fry's book intended for no mortal eye but his own; Hawes's concocted for inspection.”
“I see a number of projecting marks pasted into Fry's journal!”
“Yes, sir; on some of these marks are written the names of remarkable victims, recurring at intervals; on others are inscribed the heads of villainy--'the black-hole,' 'starvation,' 'thirst,' 'privation of exercise,' 'of bed,' 'of gas,' 'of chapel,' 'of human converse,' 'inhuman threats,' and the infernal torture called the 'punishment-jacket.' Somewhat on the plan of 'Watt's Bibliotheca Britannica.' So that you can at will trace any one of Mr. Hawes's illegal punishments, and see it running like a river of blood through many hapless names; or you can, if you like it better, track a fellow-creature dripping blood from punishment to punishment, from one dark page to another, till release, lunacy, or death closes the list of his recorded sufferings.”
Aided by Mr. Eden, who whirled over the leaves of Mr. Hawes's log-book for him, Mr. Lacy compared several pages of the two books. The following is merely a selected specimen of the entries that met his eye:
MR. FRY. MR. HAWES.
Joram.Writing on his can--bread and Joram.Refractory--bread and water. water.
Joram.Bread and water.
Joram.Bread and water. Joram.Refractory--crank; bread and water.
Joram.Crank not performed--bread and water.
Joram.Punishment-jacket.
Joram.Refractory--crank--bread and Joram. Refractory--bread and water. water.
Joram.Attempted suicide; Joram. Feigned suicide; cause insensible when found. Had religious despondency--put on cut off pieces of his hair to sick-list. send to his friends--sick-list.
Josephs. Crank not performed; says Josephs. Refractory; said he could not turn the crank No. 9; he would not work on crank 9; punishment-jacket. punishment-jacket.
Tomson. Communicating in chapel-- Tomson.Communicating--dark cells. dark cell 12 hours.
Tomson. Bread and water.
Tomson. Crank not performed; Tomson. Refractory--jacket. punishment-jacket.
Tomson. Dark cells.
Tomson. No chapel.
Tomson. Dark cells.
Tomson. Melancholy. Tomson. Afflicted with remorse for past crimes--surgeon.
Tomson. Very strange.
Tomson. Removed to lunatic asylum. Tomson. Removed to asylum.
Tanner (nine years old). Caught Tanner. Caught up at window; up at window; asked what he did answered insolently--jacket. there; said he wanted to feel the light--jacket, and bread and water three days.
Tanner. For repining--chapel Tanner. Refractory language-- and gas stopped until content. forbidden chapel until reformation.
“Can I see such a thing as a prisoner who has attempted suicide?” inquired he, with lingering incredulity.
“Yes! there are three on this landing. Come first to Joram, of whom Mr. Hawes writes that he made a sham attempt on his life in a fit of religious despondency--Mr. Fry, that having been jacketed and put on bread and water for several days, he became depressed in spirits and made a real attempt on his life. Ah! here is Mr. Fry, he is coming this way to tell you his first falsehood. Hawes has been all this while persuading him to it.”
“Where is your journal, Mr. Fry?”
“Well, sir,” replied Fry, hanging his head, “I can't show it you. I lent it to a friend, now I remember, and he has taken it out of the jail; but,” added he with a sense of relief, “you can ask me any questions you like and I'll answer them all one as my book.”
“Well, then, was Joram's attempt at suicide a real or a feigned one?”
“Well, I should say it was a real one. I found him insensible and he did not come to for best part of a quarter of an hour.”
“Open his cell.”
“Joram, I am here from the Secretary of State to ask you some questions. Answer them truly and without fear. Some months ago you made an attempt on your life.”
The prisoner shuddered and hung his head.
“Don't be discouraged, Joram,” put in Mr. Eden kindly, “this gentleman is not a harsh judge, he will make allowances.”
“Thank you, gentlemen.”
“What made you attempt your life?” persisted Mr. Lacy. “Was it from religious despondency?”
“That it was not. What did I know about religion before his reverence here came to the jail? No, sir, I was clammed to death.”
“Clammed?”
“Yes, sir, clammed and no mistake.”
“North-country word for starved,” explained Mr. Eden.
“No, sir, I was starved as well. It was very cold weather, and they gave me nothing but a roll of bread no bigger than my fist once a day for the best part of a week. So being starved with cold and clammed with hunger I knew I couldn't live many hours more, and then the pain in my vitals was so dreadful, sir, I was obliged to cut it short. Ay! ay! your reverence, I know it was very wicked--but what was I to do? If I hadn't attempted my life I shouldn't be alive now. A poor fellow doesn't know what to do in such a place as this.”
“Well,” said Mr. Lacy, “I promise you your food shall never be tampered with again.”
“Thank you, sir. Oh! I have nothing to complain of now, sir; they have never clammed me since I attempted my life.”
Mr. Eden. “Suicide is at a premium here.”
“What was your first offense?” asked Mr. Lacy.
“Writing on my can.”
“What did you write on the can?”
“I wrote, 'I want to speak to the governor.'”
“Couldn't you ring and ask to see him?”
“Ring and ask? I had rung half a dozen times and asked to see him and could not get to see him. My hand was blistered, and I wanted to ask him to put me on a different sort of work till such time as it could get leave to heal.”
“Now, sir,” said Mr. Eden, “observe the sequence of iniquity. A refractory jailer defies the discipline of the prison. He breaks Rule 37 and other rules by which he is ordered to be always accessible to a prisoner. The prisoner being in a strait, through which the jailer alone can guide him, begs for an interview; unable to obtain this in his despair he writes one innocent line on his can imploring the jailer to see him. None of the beasts say, 'What has he written?' they say only, 'Here be scratches,' and they put him on bread and water for an illegal period; and Mr. Hawes's new and illegal interpretation of 'bread and water' is aimed at his life. I mean that instead of receiving three times per diem a weight of bread equal to the weight of his ordinary diets (which is clearly the intention of the bread and water statute), he has once a day four ounces of bread. So because a refractory jailer breaks the discipline, a prisoner with whom no breach of the discipline originated is feloniously put to death unless he cuts it short by that which in every spot of the earth but ---- Jail is a deadly crime in Heaven's eyes--self-murder.”
“What an eye your reverence ha' got for things! Well now it doesn't sound quite fair, does it? but stealing is a dog's trick, and if a man behaves like a dog he must look to be treated like one; and he will be, too.”
“That is right, Joram; you look at it from that point of view, and we will look at it from another.”
“Open Naylor's cell. Naylor, what drove you to attempt suicide?”
“Oh! you know, sir.”
“But this gentleman does not.”
“Well, gents, they had been at me a pretty while one way and another; they put me in the jacket till I fainted away.”
“Stop a minute; is the jacket very painful?”
“There is nothing in the world like it, sir.”
“What is its effect? What sort of pain?”
“Why, all sorts! it crushes your very heart. Then it makes you ache from your hair to your heel, till you would thank and bless any man to knock you on the head. Then it takes you by the throat and pinches you and rasps you all at one time. However, I don't think but what I could have stood up against that, if I had had food enough; but how can a chap face trouble and pain and hard labor on a crumb a day? However, what finally screwed up my stocking altogether, gents, was their taking away my gas. It was the dark winter nights, and there was me set with an empty belly and the cell like a grave. So then I turned a little queer in the head by all accounts, and I saw things that--hem!--didn't suit my complaint at all, you know.”
“What things?”
“Well, gents, it is all over now, but it makes me shiver still, so I don't care to be reminded; let us drop it if it is all the same to you.”
“But, Naylor, for the sake of other poor fellows and to oblige me.”
“Oh! your reverence, if I can oblige you that alters the case entirely. Well, then, sir, if you must know, I saw 'Child of Hell' wrote in great letters of fire all over that side of the cell. Always every evening this was all my society, as the saying is; 'Child of Hell' wrote ten times brighter than gas.
“Couldn't you shut your eyes and go to sleep?” said Mr. Lacy.
“How could I sleep? and I did shut my eyes, and then the letters they came through my eyelids. So when this fell on the head of all my troubles I turned wild, and I said to myself one afternoon, 'Now here is my belly empty and nothing coming to it, and there is the sun a-setting, and by-and-by my cell will be brimful of hell-fire--let me end my troubles and get one night's rest if I never see another.' So I hung myself up to the bar by my hammock-strap, and that is all I remember except finding myself on my back, with Mr. Fry and a lot round me, some coaxing and some cursing; and when I saw where I was I fell a-crying and blubbering, to think that I had so nearly broke prison and there they had got me still. I dare say Mr. Fry remembers how I took on.”
“Ay, my man, I remember we got no thanks for bringing you to.”
“I was a poor unconverted sinner then,” replied Mr. Naylor demurely, “and didn't know my fault and the consequences; but I thank you now with all my heart, Mr. Fry, sir.”
“I am to understand then that you accuse the jailer of driving you to suicide by unlawful severities?”
“No, sir, I don't. I only tell you how it happened, and you should not have asked me if you didn't care to know; and as for blaming folk, the man I blame the most is John Naylor. His reverence there has taught me to look at home. If I hadn't robbed honest folk I shouldn't have robbed myself of character and liberty and health, and Mr. Hawes wouldn't have robbed me of food and light and life wellnigh. Certainly there is a deal of ignorance and stupidity in this here jail. The governor has no head-piece; can't understand that a prisoner is made out of the same stuff as he is--skin and belly, heart, soul, bones an' all. I should say he wasn't fit to be trusted with the lives of a litter of pigs, let alone a couple of hundred men and women. But all is one for that; if he was born without any gumption, as the saying is, I wasn't, and I didn't ought to be in a fool's power; that is my fault entirely, not the fool's; ain't it now? If I hadn't come to the mill the miller would never have grinded me! I sticks to that!”
“Well said, Naylor. Come, sir, One higher than the State takes precedence here. We must on no account shake a Christian frame of mind or rekindle a sufferer's wrongs. Yes, Naylor, forgive and you shall be forgiven. I am pleased with you, greatly pleased with you, my poor fellow. There is my hand!” Naylor took his reverence's hand and his very forehead reddened with pride and pleasure at so warm a word of praise from the revered mouth. They went out of the cell. Being now in the corridor, Mr. Eden addressed the Government official thus:
“My proofs draw to a close. I could multiply instances ad infinitum--but what is the use? If these do not convince you you would not believe though one rose from the dead. What do I say? Have not Naylor and Joram and many others come back from the dead to tell you by what roads they were driven there? One example remains to be shown. To a philosophical mind it is no stronger than the rest; but there are many men who can receive no very strong impression except through their senses. You may be one of these; and it is my duty to give your judgment every aid. Where is Mr. Fry? He has left us.”
“I am coming to attend you, sir,” cried Evans from above. “Mr. Fry is gone to the governor.”
“Where are we going?” asked Mr. Lacy.
“To examine a prisoner whom the jailer tortured with the jacket, and starved, and ended by robbing him of his gas and his bed contrary to law. Evans, since you are here, relate all that happened to Edward Josephs on the fourth of this month--and mind you don't exaggerate.”
“Well, sir, they had been at him for near a month, overtasking him and then giving him the jacket, and starving him and overtasking him again on his empty stomach till the poor lad was a living skeleton. On the fourth the governor put him in the jacket, and there he was kept till he swooned.”
“Ah!”
“Then they flung two buckets of water over him and that brought him to. Then they sent him to his cell and there he was in his wet clothes. Then him being there shaking with cold, the governor ordered his gas to be taken away--his hands were shaking over it for a little warmth when they robbed him of that bit o' comfort.”
“Hum!”
“Contrary to law!” put in Mr. Eden.
“Well, sir, he was a quiet lad not given to murmur, but at losing his gas he began to cry out so loud you might hear him all over the prison.”
“What did he cry?”
“Sir, he cried MURDER!”
“Go on.”
“Then I came to him and found him shivering and dripping, and crying fit to break his poor heart.”
“And did you do nothing for him?”
“I did what I could, sir. I took him and twisted his bedclothes so tight round him the air could not get in, and before I left him his sobs went down and he looked like warm and sleeping after all his troubles. Well, sir, they can tell you better that did the job, but it seems the governor sent another turnkey called Hodges to take away his bed from under him.”
“Oh!”
“Well, sir! oh dear me! I hope, your reverence, I shall never have to tell this story again, for it chokes me every time.” And the man was unable to go on for a while. “Well, sir, the poor thing it seems didn't cry out as he had about the gas, he took it quite quiet--that might have let them know, but some folk can see nothing till it is too late--and he gave Hodges his hand to show he bore him no malice. Eh dear! eh dear! Would to Heaven I had never seen this wicked place!”
“Wicked place, indeed!” said Mr. Lacy solemnly. “You make me almost dread to ask the result.”
“You shall see the result. Evans!”
Evans opened cell 15, and he and Mr. Eden stood sorrowful aside while Mr. Lacy entered the cell. The first thing he saw was a rude coffin standing upright by the window, the next a dead body lying stark upon a mattress on the floor. The official uttered a cry like the scream of a woman! “What is this? How dare you bring me to such a place as this?”
“This is that Edward Josephs whose sufferings you have heard and pitied.”
“Poor wretch! Heaven forgive us! What, did he--did he--?”
“He took one step to meet inevitable death--he hanged himself that same night by his handkerchief to this bar. Turn his poor body, Evans. See, sir, here is Mr. Hawes's mark upon his back. These livid stripes are from the infernal jacket and helped to lash him into his grave. You are ill. Here! some wine from my flask! You will faint else!”
“Thank you! Yes, I was rather faint. It is passed. Mr. Eden, I find my life has been spent among words--things of such terrible significance are new to me. God forgive us! how came this to pass in England in the nineteenth century? The ---- scoundrel!”
“Kick him out of the jail, but do not swear; it is a sin. By removing him from this his great temptation we may save even his blood-stained soul. But the souls of his victims? Oh, sir, when a good man is hurried to his grave our lamentations are natural but unwise; but think what he commits who hurries thieves and burglars and homicides unprepared before their eternal Judge. In this poor boy lay the materials of a saint--mild, docile, grateful, believing. I was winning him to all that is good when I fell sick. The sufferings I saw and could not stop--they made me sick. You did not know that when you let my discolored cheeks prejudice you against my truth. Oh! I forgive you, dear sir! Yes, Heaven is inscrutable; for had I not fallen ill--yes, I was leading you up to Heaven, was I not? Oh, my lost sheep! my poor lost sheep!” And the faithful shepherd, at the bottom of whose wit and learning lay a heart simpler than beats in any dunce, forgot Hawes and everything else and began to mourn by the dead body of his wandering sheep.
Then in that gloomy abode of blood and tears Heaven wrought a miracle. One who for twenty years past had been an official became a man for full five minutes. Light burst on him--Nature rushed back upon her truant son and seized her long-forgotten empire. The frost and reserve of office melted like snow in summer before the sun of religion and humanity. How unreal and idle appeared now the twenty years gone in tape and circumlocution! Away went his life of shadows--his career of watery polysyllables meandering through the great desert into the Dead Sea. He awoke from his desk and saw the corpse of an Englishman murdered by routine, and the tears of a man of God dripping upon it.
Then his soul burst its desk and his heart broke its polysyllables and its tapen bonds, and the man of office came quickly to the man of God and seized his hand with both his which shook very much, and pressed it again and again, and his eyes glistened and his voice faltered. “This shall never be again. How these tears honor you! but they cut me to the heart. There! there! I believe every word you have told me now. Be comforted! you are not to blame! there were always villains in the world and fools like us that could not understand or believe in an apostle like you. We are all in fault, but not you! Be comforted! Law and order shall be restored this very day and none of these poor creatures shall suffer violence again or wrong of any sort--by God!”
So these two grasped hands and pledged faith and for a while at least joined hearts. Mr. Eden thanked him with a grace and dignity all his own. Then he said with a winning sweetness, “Go now, my dear sir, and do your duty. Act for once upon an impulse. At this moment you see things as you will see them when you come to die. A light from Heaven shines on your path at this moment. Walk by it ere the world dims it. Go and leave me to repent the many unchristian tempers I have shown you in one short hour--my heat and bitterness and arrogance--in this solemn place.”
“His unchristian temper! poor soul! There, take me to the justices, Mr. Evans, and you follow me as soon as you like. Yes, my worthy friend, I will act upon an impulse for once--Ugh!”
Wheeling rapidly out of the cell, as unlike his past self as a pin-wheel in a shop-drawer and ditto ignited, he met at the very door Mr. Hawes!
“You have been witnessing a sad sight, sir, and one that nobody, I assure you, deplores more than I do,” said Mr. Hawes, in a gentle and feeling tone.
Mr. Lacy answered Mr. Hawes by looking him all over from head to foot and back, then looking sternly into his eyes he turned his back on him sharp and left him standing there without a word.
Chapter XXVI
THE jailer had been outwitted by the priest. Hawes had sneaked after Fry to beg him for Heaven's sake--that was the phrase he used--not to produce his journal. Fry thought this very hard, and it took Hawes ten minutes to coax him over. Mr. Eden had calculated on this, and worked with the attested copy, while Hawes was wasting his time suppressing the original. Hawes was too cunning to accompany Fry back to Mr. Lacy. He allowed five minutes more to elapse--all which time his antagonist was pumping truth into the judge a gallon a stroke. At last up came Mr. Hawes to protect himself and baffle the parson. He came, he met Mr. Lacy at the dead prisoner's door, and read his defeat.
Mr. Lacy joined the justices in their room. “I have one question to ask you, gentlemen, before I go: How many attempts at suicide were made in this jail under Captain O'Connor while sole jailer?”
“I don't remember,” replied Mr. Williams.
“It would be odd if you did, for no one such attempt took place under him. Are you aware how many attempts at suicide took place during the two years that this Hawes governed a part of the jail, being kept in some little check by O'Connor, but not much, as unfortunately you encouraged the inferior officer to defy his superior? Five attempts at suicide during this period, gentlemen. And now do you know how many such attempts have occurred since Mr. Hawes has been sole jailer?”
“I really don't know. Prisoners are always shamming,” replied Mr. Woodcock.
“I do not allude to feigned attempts, of which there have been several, but to desperate attempts; some of which have left the prisoner insensible, some have resulted in his death--how many of these?”
“Four or five, I believe.”
“Ah, you have not thought it worth while to inquire!! Hum!--well, fourteen, at least. Come in, Mr. Eden. Gentlemen, you have neglected your duty. Making every allowance for your inexperience, it still is clear that you have undertaken the supervision of a jail and yet have exercised no actual supervision; even now the life or death of the prisoners seems to you a matter of indifference. If you are reckless on such a point as this, what chance have the minor circumstances of their welfare of being watched by you? and frankly I am puzzled to conceive what you proposed to yourselves when you undertook an office so important and requiring so great vigilance. I say this, gentlemen, merely to explain why I cannot have the pleasure I did promise myself of putting one of your names into the royal commission which will sit upon this prison in compliance with the chaplain's petition.”
Mr. Eden bowed gratefully, and his point being formally gained, he hurried away to make up for lost time and visit his longing prisoners. While he passed like sunshine from cell to cell, Mr. Lacy took a note or two in solemn silence, and the injustices conferred. Mr. Palmer whispered, “We had better have taken Mr. Eden's advice.” The other two snorted ill-assured defiance. Mr. Lacy looked up. “You will hold yourselves in readiness to be examined before the commission.” At this moment Mr. Hawes walked into the room without his mask, and in his own brutal voice--the voice he spoke to prisoners with--addressed himself, with great insolence of manner, to Mr. Lacy. “Don't trouble yourself to hold commissions over me. I think myself worth a great deal more to the government than they have ever been to me. What they give me is little enough for what I have given them, and when insults are added to a man of honor and an old servant of the queen, he flings his commission in your face;” and the unveiled ruffian raised his voice, to a roar, and with his hand flung an imaginary commission into Mr. Lacy's face, who drew back astounded; then resuming his honeyed manner Hawes turned to the justices. “I return into your hands, gentlemen, the office I received from you. I thank you for the support you have afforded me in my endeavors to substitute discipline for the miserable laxity and slovenliness and dirt we found here; and your good opinion will always console me for the insults I have received from a crack-brained parson and his tools in the jail and out of it.”
“Your resignation is accepted,” said Mr. Lacy coldly, “and as your connection with ---- Jail is now ended, in virtue of my powers from the Secretary of State, which I here produce, I give you the use of the jailer's house for a week, that you may have time to move your effects; but for many reasons it is advisable that you should not remain in the jail a single hour. Be so good, therefore, as to quit the jail as soon as you conveniently can. One of the turnkeys shall assist you to convey to your house whatever you have in this building.”
“I have nothing to take out of the jail, man,” replied Hawes rudely, “except”--and here he did a bit of pathos and dignity--“my zeal for her majesty's service and my integrity.”
“Ah,” replied Mr. Lacy quietly, “you won't want any help to carry them.”
Mr. Hawes left the room, bowing to the justices and ostentatiously ignoring the government official. Mr. Williams shouted after him. “He carries our respect wherever he goes,” said this magistrate with a fidelity worthy a better cause. The other two hung their heads and did not echo their chief. The tide was turned against Jailer Hawes, and these two were not the articles to swim against a stream even though that stream was truth.
Mr. Hawes took his time. He shook hands with Fry, who bade him farewell with regret. Who is there that somebody does not contrive to like? And rejecting even this mastiff's company he made a gloomy, solitary progress through the prison for the last time. “How clean and beautiful it all is; it wasn't like that when I came to it, and it never will again.” Some gleams of remorse began to flit about that thick skull and self-deceiving heart, for punishment suggests remorse to sordid natures. But his strong and abiding feeling was a sincere and profound sense of ill usage--long service--couldn't overlook a single error--ungrateful government, etc. “Prison go to the devil now--and serve them right.” At last he drew near the outer court, and there he met a sight that raised all the fiend within him. There was Mr. Eden ushering Strutt into the garden, and telling Evans the old man was to pass his whole days there till he was better. “So that is the way you keep the rules now you have undermined me! No cell at all. I thought what you would come to. You haven't been long getting there.”
“Mr. Hawes,” replied the other with perfect good temper, “Rule 34 of this prison enjoins that every prisoner shall take daily as much exercise in the open air as is necessary for his health. You have violated this rule so long that now Strutt's health requires him to pass many more hours in the air than he otherwise would; he is dying for air and amusement, and he shall have both sooner than die for the want of them, or of anything I can give him.”
“And what is it to him?” retorted Evans with rude triumph; “he is no longer an officer of this jail; he has got the sack and orders to quit into the bargain.”
Fear is entertained that Mr. Evans had listened more or less at the door of the justices' room.
“Is this so, sir?” asked Mr. Eden gravely, politely, and without a shadow of visible exultation.
“You know it is, you sneaking, undermining villain; you have weathered on me, you have out-maneuvered me. When was an honest soldier a match for a parson?”
“Ah!” cried Mr. Eden. “Then run to the gate, Evans, and let the men into the jail with the printing-press and the looms. They have been waiting four hours for this.”
Hawes turned black with rage. “Oh, I know you made sure of winning; a blackguard that loads the dice can always do that. Your triumph won't be long. I was in this jail honored and respected for four years till you came. You won't be four months before you are kicked out, and no one to say a good word for you. A pretty Christian! to suborn my own servants and rob me of my place and make me a beggar in my old age, a man you are not worthy to serve under, a man that served his country by sea and land before you were whelped, ye black hypocrite. You a Christian! you? If I thought that I'd turn Atheist or anything, you poor, backbiting, tale-telling, sneaking, undermining, false witness bearing--”
“Unhappy man,” cried Mr. Eden; “turn those perverse eyes from the faults of others to your own danger. The temptations under which you fell end here; then let their veil fall from your eyes, and you may yet bless those who came between your soul and its everlasting ruin. Your victims are dead; their eternal fate is fixed by you. Heaven is more merciful--it has not struck you dead by your victim's side; it gives you, the greatest sinner of all, a chance to escape. Seize that chance. Waste no time in passion and petulance--think only of your forfeited soul. Madman, to your knees! What! dare you die as you have lived these three years past? dare you die abhorred of Heaven? Fool! see yourself as every eye on earth and in heaven sees you. The land contains no criminal so black as you. Other homicides have struck hastily on provocation or stung by injury, or thrust or drawn by some great passion--but you have deliberately gnawed away men's lives. Others have seen their one victim die, but you have looked on your many victims dying yet not spared them. Other homicides' hands are stained, but yours are steeped in blood. To your knees, MAN-slayer! I dare not promise you that a life given to penitence and charity will save so foul a soul, but it may, for Heaven's mercy is infinite. Seize on that small chance. Seize it like one who feels Satan clutching him and dragging him down to eternal flames. Life is short, eternity is close, judgment is sure. A few short years and you must meet Edward Josephs again before the eternal Judge. What a tribunal to face, your victims opposite you! There the long-standing prejudices that save you from a felon's death here will avail you nothing. There the quibbles that pass current on earth will be blasted with the lips that dare to utter and the hearts that coin them. Before Him, who has neither body nor parts, yet created all the forms of matter, vainly will you pretend that you did not slay, because forsooth the weapons with which you struck at life were invisible and not to be comprehended by a vulgar, shallow, sensual, earthly judge. There, too, the imperfection of human language will yield no leaf of shelter.
“Hope not to shift the weight of guilt upon poor Josephs there. On earth muddle-heads will call his death and the self-murderer's by one name of 'suicide,' and so dream the two acts were one; but you cannot gull Omniscience with a word--the wise man's counter and the money of a fool. Be not deceived! As Rosamond took poison in her hand, and drank it with her own lips, and died by her own act, yet died assassinated by her rival--so died Josephs. As men taken by pirates at sea, and pricked with cold steel till in despair and pain they fling themselves into the sea--so died Josephs and his fellows murdered by you. Be not deceived! I, a minister of the gospel of mercy--I, whose character leans toward charity, tell you that if you die impenitent, so surely as the sun shines and the Bible is true, the murder of Edward Josephs and his brothers will damn your soul to the flames of hell forever--and forever--and forever!
“Begone, then, poor miserable creature! Do not look behind you. Fly from this scene where crime and its delusions still cling round your brain and your self-deceiving heart. Waste no more time with me. A minute lost may be a soul lost. The avenger of blood is behind you. Run quickly to your own home--go up to your secret chamber--and there fall down upon your knees before your God and cry loud and long to him for pardon. Cry mightily for help--cry humbly and groaning for the power to repent. Away! away! Wash those red hands and that black soul in years and years of charity, in tears and tears of penitence, and in our Redeemer's blood. Begone, and darken and trouble us here no more.”
The cowed jailer shrank and cowered before the thunder and lightning of the priest, who, mild by nature, was awful when he rebuked an impenitent sinner out of holy writ. He slunk away, his knees trembling under him, and the first fiery seeds of remorse sown in his dry heart. He met the printing-press coming in, and the loom following it (naturally); he scowled at them and groaned. Evans held the door open for him with a look of joy that stirred all his bile again. He turned on the very threshold and spat a volley of oaths upon Evans. Evans at this put down his head like a bull, and running fiercely with the huge door, slammed it close on his heel with such ferocity that the report rang like a thunder-clap through the entire building, and the ex-jailer was in the street.
Five minutes more, the printing-press and loom were reinstalled, and the punishment-jacket packed up and sent to London to the Home Office. Ten minutes more, the cranks were examined by the artists in iron Mr. Eden had sent for, and all condemned, it being proved that the value of their resistance stated on their lying faces was scarce one-third of their actual resistance. So much for unerring* science!
* The effect of this little bit of science may be thus stated--Men for two years had been punished as refractory for not making all day two thousand revolutions per hour of a 15 lb. crank, when all the while it was a 45 lb. crank they had been vainly struggling against all day. The proportions of this gory lie never varied. Each crank tasked the Sisyphus three times what it professed to do. It was calculated that four prisoners, on an average crank marked 10 lb., had to exert an aggregate of force equal to one horse; and this exertion was prolonged, day after day, far beyond a horse's power of endurance, and in many cases on a modicum of food so scanty that no horse ever foaled, so fed, could have drawn an armchair a mile.
Five minutes more Mr. Eden had placed in Mr. Lacy's hands a list of prisoners to whom a free pardon ought now to be extended, some having suffered a somewhat shorter period but a greater weight of misery than the judges had contemplated in their several sentences; and others being so shaken and depressed by separate confinement pushed to excess that their life and reason now stood in peril for want of open air, abundant light, and free intercourse with their species. At the head of these was poor Strutt, an old man crushed to clay by separate confinement recklessly applied. So alarming was this man's torpor to Mr. Eden that after trying in vain to interest him in the garden, that observer ventured on a very strong measure. He had learned from Strutt that he could play the fiddle; what does he do but runs and fetches his own violin into the garden, tunes it, and plays some most inspiriting, rollicking old English tunes to him! A spark came into the fishy eye of Strutt. At the third tune the old fellow's fingers began to work impatiently. Mr. Eden broke off directly, put fiddle and bow into Strutt's hand, and ran off to the prison again to arrest melancholy, despair, lunacy, stagnation, mortification, putrefaction, by every art that philosophy and mother-wit could suggest to Christianity.
This determined man had collected his teaching mechanics again, and he had them all into the prison the moment Hawes was out. He could not get the cranks condemned as monsters--the day was not yet come for that; so he got them condemned as liars, and in their place tasks of rational and productive labor were set to most of the prisoners, and London written to for six more trades and arts.
A copy of the prison-rules was cut into eight portions and eight female prisoners set to compose each her portion. Copies to be printed on the morrow and put up in every cell, according to the wise provision of Rule 10, defied by the late jailer for an obvious reason. Thus in an hour after the body of Hawes had passed through that gate a firm and adroit hand was wiping his gloomy soul out of the cells as we wipe a blotch of ink off a written page.
Care, too, was taken every prisoner should know the late jailer was gone forever. This was done to give the wretches a happy night. Ejaculations of thanksgiving burst from the cells every now and then; by some mysterious means the immured seemed to share the joyful tidings with their fellows, and one pulse of hope and triumph to beat and thrill through all the life that wasted and withered there encased in stone; and until sunset the faint notes of a fiddle struggled from the garden into the temple of silence and gloom, and astounded every ear.
The merry tunes as Strutt played them sounded like dirges, but they enlivened him as they sighed forth. They stirred his senses, and through his senses his mind, and through his mind his body, and so the anthropologist made a fiddle help save a life, which fact no mortal man will believe whose habit it is to chatter blindfold about man and investigate the “crustaceonidunculae.”
The cranks being condemned, rational industry restored, and the law reseated on the throne a manslaughtering dunce had usurped, the champion of human nature went home to drink his tea and write the plot of his sermon.
He had won a great battle and felt his victory. He showed it, too, in his own way. On the evening of this great day his voice was remarkably gentle and winning, and a celestial light seemed to dwell in his eyes; no word of exultation, nor even of self-congratulation; and he made no direct mention of the prison all the evening. His talk was about Susan's affairs, and he paid his warm thanks to her and her aunt for all they had done for him. “You have been true friends, true allies,” said he; “what do I not owe you! you have supported me in a bitter struggle, and now that the day is won I can find no words to thank you as I ought.”
Both these honest women colored and glistened with pleasure, but they were too modest to be ready with praise or to bandy compliments.
“As for you, Susan, it was a masterstroke your venturing into my den.”
“Oh! we turn bold when a body is ill, don't we, aunt?”
“I am not shy for one at the best of times,” remarked the latter.
“Under Heaven you saved my life, at least I think so, Susan, for the medicinal power of soothing influences is immense, I am sure it is apt to be underrated; and then it was you who flew to Malvern and dragged Gulson to me at the crisis of my fate; dear little true-hearted friend, I am sorry to think I can never repay you.”
“You forget, Mr. Eden,” said Susan, almost in a whisper, “I was paid beforehand.”
I wish I could convey the native grace and gentle dignity of gratitude with which the farmer's daughter murmured these four words, like a duchess acknowledging a kindness.
“Eh?” inquired Mr. Eden, “oh! ah! I forgot,” said he naively. “No! that is nonsense, Susan. You have still an immense Cr. against my name; but I know a way--Mrs. Davies, for as simple as I sit here you see in me the ecclesiastic that shall unite this young lady to an honest man, who, report says, loves her very dearly; so I mean to square our little account.”
“That is fair, Susan; what do you say?”
“La, aunt! why I shouldn't look upon it as a marriage at all if any clergyman but Mr. Eden said the words.”
“That is right,” laughed Mr. Eden, “always set some little man above some great thing, and then you will always be--a woman. I must write the plot of my sermon, ladies, but you can talk to me all the same.”
He wrote and purred every now and then to the women, who purred to each other and now and then to him. Neither Hawes nor any other irritation rankled in his heart, or even stuck fast in his memory. He had two sermons to prepare for Sunday next, and he threw his mind into them as he had into the battle he had just won. “Hoc agebat.”
Chapter XXVII
His reverence in the late battle showed himself a strategist, and won without bringing up his reserves; if he had failed with Mr. Lacy he had another arrow behind in his quiver. He had been twice to the mayor and claimed a coroner's jury to sit on a suicide. The mayor had consented and the preliminary steps had been taken.
The morning after the jailer's dismissal the inquest was held. Mr. Eden, Evans, Fry and others were examined, and the case came out as clear as the day and black as the night.
When twelve honest Englishmen, men of plain sense, not men of system, men taken from the public not from public offices, sat in a circle with the corpse of a countryman at their knees, fiebat lux; 'twas as though twelve suns had burst into a dust-hole.
“Manslaughter!” cried they, and they sent their spokesman to the mayor and said yet more light must be let into this dusthole, and the mayor said, “Ay and it shall, too. I will write to London and demand more light.” And the men of the public went to their own homes and told their wives and children and neighbors what cruelties and villainies they had unearthed, and their hearers, being men and women of that people, which is a god in intellect and in heart compared with the criticasters that try to misguide it with their shallow guesses and cant and with the clerks that execute it in other men's names, cried out, “See now! What is the use our building courts of law or prisons unless they are to be open unto us. Shut us out--keep walls and closed gate between us and our servants--and what comes of our courts of law and our prisons? Why they turn nests of villainy in less than no time.”
The twelve honest Englishmen had hardly left the jail an hour, crying “manslaughter!” and crying “shame!” when all in a moment “TOMB!” fell a single heavy stroke of the great prison bell. The heart of the prison leaped, and then grew cold--a long chill pause, then “TOMB!” again. The jurymen had told most of his fellow-sufferers how Josephs was driven into his grave--and now--
“TOMB!” the remorseless iron tongue crashed out one by one the last sad, stern monosyllables of this sorrowfulest of human tales.
They put him in his coffin (“TOMB!”) a boy of sixteen, who would be alive now but that caitiffs, whom God confound on earth, made life an impossibility to him (“TOMB!”), and that Shallows and Woodcocks, whom God confound on earth, and unconscientious non-inspecting inspectors, flunkeys, humbugs, hirelings, whom God confound on earth (“TOMB!”), left these scoundrels month after month and year after year unwatched, though largely paid by the queen and the people to watch them (“TOMB!”). Look on your work, hirelings, and listen to that bell, which would not be tolling now if you had been men of brains and scruples instead of sordid hirelings. The priest was on his knees, praying for help from heaven to go through the last sad office with composure, for he feared his own heart when he should come to say “ashes to ashes” and “dust to dust” over this hapless boy, that ought to be in life still. And still the great bell tolled, and many of the prisoners were invited kindly in a whisper to come into the chapel; but Fry could not be spared and Hodges fiercely refused. And now the bell stopped, and as it stopped, the voice of the priest arose, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
A deep and sad gloom was upon all as the last sad offices were done for this poor young creature cut short by foul play in the midst of them. And for all he could do the priest's voice trembled often, and a heavy sigh mingled more than once with the holy words.
What is that? “THIS OUR BROTHER!”--a thief our brother?--ay! the priest made no mistake, those were the words; pause on them. Two great characters contradicted each other to the face over dead Josephs. Unholy State said, “Here is the carcass of a thief whom I and society honestly believe to be of no more importance than a dog--so it has unfortunately got killed between us, no matter how; take this carcass and bury it,” said unholy State. Holy Church took the poor abused remains with reverence, prayed over them as she prays over the just, and laid them in the earth, calling them “this our brother.” Judge now which is all in the wrong, unholy State or holy Church--for both cannot be right.
Now while the grave is being filled in, judge, women of England and America, between these two--unholy State and holy Church. The earth contains no better judges of this doubt than you. Judge and I will bow to your verdict with a reverence I know male cliques too well to feel for them in a case where the great capacious heart alone can enlighten the clever, little, narrow, shallow brain.
Thus in the nineteenth century--in a kind-hearted nation--under the most humane sovereign the world has ever witnessed on an earthly throne--holy Church in vain denouncing the miserable sinners that slay the thief their brother--Edward Josephs has been done to death in the queen's name--in the name of England--and in the name of the law.
But each of these great insulted names has its sworn defenders, its honored and paid defenders. It is not for us to suppose that men so high in honor will lay aside themselves and turn curs.
Ere I close this long story, let us hope I shall be able to relate with what zeal and honor statesmen disowned and punished wholesale manslaughter done in the name of the State; and with what zeal and horror judges disowned and punished wholesale manslaughter done in their name; and so, in all good men's eyes, washed off the blood with which a hireling had bespattered the state ermine and the snow-white robe of law.
For the present, the account between Josephs and the law stands thus:--Josephs has committed the smallest theft imaginable. He has stolen food. For this the law, professing to punish him with certain months' imprisonment, has inflicted capital punishment; has overtasked, crucified, starved--overtasked, starved, crucified--robbed him of light, of sleep, of hope, of life; has destroyed his body, and perhaps his soul. Sum total--1st page of account--
Josephs a larcenist and a corpse. The law a liar and a felon.
Chapter XXVIII
JOSEPHS has dropped out of our story. Mr. Hawes has got himself kicked out of our story. The other prisoners, of whom casual mention has been made, were never in our story, any more than the boy Xury in “Robinson Crusoe.” There remains to us in the prison Mr. Eden and Robinson, a saint and a thief.
My readers have seen how the saint has saved the thief's life. They shall guess awhile how on earth Susan Merton can be affected by that circumstance. They have seen a set of bipeds acting on the notion that all prisoners are incurable: they have seen a thief, thus despaired of, driven toward despair, and almost made incurable through being thought so. Then they have seen this supposed incurable fall into the hands of a Christian that held “it is never too late to mend;” and generally I think that, feebly as my pen has drawn so great a character, they can calculate, by what Mr. Eden has already done, what he will do while I am with Susan and George; what love, what eloquence, what ingenuity he will move to save this wandering sheep, to turn this thief honest and teach him how to be honest yet not starve.
I will ask my reader to bear in mind, that the good and wise priest has no longer his hands tied by a jailer in the interest of the foul fiend. But then, against all this, is to be set the slippery heart of a thief, a thief almost from his cradle. Here are great antagonist forces and they will be in daily almost hourly collision for months to come. In life nothing stands still; all this will work goodward or badward. I must leave it to work.
Chapter XXIX
MR. EDEN'S health improved so visibly that Susan Merton announced her immediate return to her father. It was a fixed idea in this young lady's mind that she and Mrs. Davies had no business in the house of a saint upon earth, as she called Mr. Eden, except as nurses.
The parting of attached friends has always a touch of sadness needless to dwell on at this time. Enough that these two parted as brother and young sister, and a spiritual adviser and advised, with warm expressions of Christian amity, and an agreement on Susan's part to write for advice and sympathy whenever needed.
On her arrival at Grassmere Farm there was Mr. Meadows to greet her. “Well, that is attentive!” cried Susan. There was also a stranger to her, a Mr. Clinton.
As nothing remarkable occurred this evening, we may as well explain this Mr. Clinton. He was a speculator, and above all a setter on foot of rotten speculations, and a keeper on foot a little while of lame ones. No man exceeded him in the art of rose-tinting bad paper or parchment. He was sanguine and fluent. His mind had two eyes, an eagle's and a bat's; with the first he looked at the “pros,” and with the second at the “cons” of a spec.
He was an old acquaintance of Meadows, and had come thirty miles out of the way to show him how to make 100 per cent without the shadow of a risk. Meadows declined to violate the laws of Nature, but, said he, “If you like to stay a day or two I will introduce you to one or two who have money to fling away.” And he introduced him to Mr. Merton. Now that worthy had a fair stock of latent cupidity, and Mr. Clinton was the man to tempt it.
In a very few conversations he convinced the farmer that there were a hundred ways of making money, all of them quicker than the slow process of farming and the unpleasant process of denying one's self superfluities and growing saved pennies into pounds.
“What do you think, John,” said Merton one day to Meadows, “I have got a few hundreds loose. I'm half minded to try and turn them into thousands for my girl's sake. Mr. Clinton makes it clear, don't you think?”
“Well, I don't know,” was the reply. “I have no experience in that sort of thing, but it certainly looks well the way he puts it.”
In short, Meadows did not discourage his friend from co-operating with Mr. Clinton; for his own part he spoke him fair, and expressed openly a favorable opinion of his talent and his various projects, and always found some excuse or other for not risking a halfpenny with him.
Chapter XXX
ONE day Mr. Meadows walked into the post-office of Farnborough and said to Jefferies, the postmaster, “A word with you in private, Mr. Jefferies.”
“Certainly, Mr. Meadows--come to my back parlor, sir; a fine day, Mr. Meadows, but I think we shall have a shower or two.”
“Shouldn't wonder. Do you know this five-pound note?”
“Can't say I do.”
“Why it has passed through your hands?”
“Has it? well a good many of them pass through my hands in the course of the year. I wish a few of 'em would stop on the road.”
“This one did. It stuck to your fingers, as the phrase goes.”
“I don't know what you mean, sir,” said Jefferies haughtily.
“You stole it,” explained Meadows quietly.
“Take care,” cried Jefferies in a loud quaver--“Take care what you say! I'll have my action of defamation against you double quick if you dare to say such a thing of me.”
“So be it. You will want witnesses. Defamation is no defamation you know till the scandal is published. Call in your lodger.”
“Ugh!”
“And call your wife!” cried Meadows, raising his voice in turn.
“Heaven forbid! Don't speak so loud, for goodness' sake!”
“Hold your tongue then and don't waste my time with your gammon,” said Meadows sternly. Then resuming his former manner he went on in the tone of calm explanation. “One or two in this neighborhood lost money coming through the post. I said to myself, 'Jefferies is a man that often talks of his conscience--he will be the thief'--so I baited six traps for you, and you took five. This note came over from Ireland; you remember it now?”
“I am ruined! I am ruined!”
“You changed it at Evans' the grocer's; you had four sovereigns and silver for it. The other baits were a note and two sovereigns and two half sovereigns. You spared one sovereign, the rest you nailed. They were all marked by Lawyer Crawley. They have been traced from your hand, and lie locked up ready for next assizes. Good-morning, Mr. Jefferies.”
Jefferies turned a cold jelly where he sat--and Meadows walked out, primed Crawley, and sent him to stroll in sight of the post-office.
Soon a quavering voice called Crawley into the post-office. “Come into my back parlor, sir. Oh! Mr. Crawley, can nothing be done? No one knows my misfortune but you and Mr. Meadows. It is not for my own sake, sir, but my wife's. If she knew I had been tempted so far astray, she would never hold up her head again. Sir, if you and Mr. Meadows will let me off this once, I will take an oath on my bended knees never to offend again.”
“What good will that do me?” asked Crawley contemptuously.
“Ah!” cried Jefferies, a light breaking in, “will money make it right? I'll sell the coat off my back.”
“Humph! If it was only me--but Mr. Meadows has such a sense of public duty, and yet--hum!--I know a way to influence him just now.”
“Oh, sir! do pray use your influence with him.”
“What will you do for me if I succeed?”
“Do for you?--cut myself in pieces to serve you.”
“Well, Jefferies, I'm undertaking a difficult task--to turn such a man as Meadows, but I will try it and I think I shall succeed; but I must have terms. Every letter that comes here from Australia you must bring to me with your own hands directly.”
“I will, sir, I will.”
“I shall keep it an hour or two perhaps, not more; and I shall take no money out of it.”
“I will do it, sir, and with pleasure. It is the least I can do for you.”
“And you must find me 10 pounds.” The little rogue must do a bit on his own account.
“I must pinch to get it,” said Jefferies ruefully.
“Pinch then,” replied Crawley coolly; “and let me have it directly.”
“You shall--you shall--before the day is out.”
“And you must never let Meadows know I took this money of you.”
“No, sir, I won't! is that all?”
“That is all.”
“Then I am very grateful, sir, and I won't fail, you may depend.”
Thus the two battledores played with this poor little undetected one, whom his respectability no less than his roguery placed at their mercy.
Chapter XXXI
WHENEVER Mr. Meadows could do Mr. Levi an ill turn he did; and vice versa. They hated one another like men who differ about baptism. Susan sprinkled dewdrops of charity on each in turn.
Levi listened to her with infinite pleasure. “Your voice,” said he, “is low and melodious like the voice of my own people in the East.” And then she secretly quoted the New Testament to him, having first ascertained that he had never read it; and he wondered where on earth this simple girl had picked up so deep a wisdom and so lofty and self-denying a morality.
Meadows listened to her with respect from another cause; but the ill offices that kept passing between the two men counteracted her transitory influence and fed fat the ancient grudge.
Chapter XXXII
“WILL FIELDING is in the town; I'm to arrest him as agreed last night?”
“Hum! no!”
“Why I have got the judgment in my pocket and the constable at the public hard by.”
“Never mind! he was saucy to me in the market yesterday--I was angry and--but anger is a snare. What shall I gain by locking him up just now? let him go.”
“Well, sir, your will is law,” said Crawley obsequiously but sadly.
“Now to business of more importance.”
“At your service, sir.”
But the business of more importance was interrupted by a sudden knock at the outside door of Mr. Meadows' study.
“Well!”
A young lady to see you.
“A young lady?” inquired Meadows with no very amiable air, “I am engaged--do you know who it is?”
“It is Farmer Merton's daughter, David says.”
“Miss Merton!” cried Meadows, with a marvelous change of manner. “Show her up directly. Crawley, run into the passage, quick, man--and wait for signals.” He bundled Crawley out, shut the secret door, threw open both the others, and welcomed Susan warmly at the threshold. “Well, this is good of you, Miss Merton, to come and shine in upon me in my own house.”
“I have brought your book back!” replied Susan, coloring a little; “that was my errand, that is,” said she, “that was partly my errand.” She hesitated a moment--“I am going to Mr. Levi.” Meadows' countenance fell. “And I wouldn't go to him without coming to you; because what I have to say to him I must say to you as well. Mr. Meadows, do let me persuade you out of this bitter feeling against the poor old man. Oh! I know you will say he is worse than you are; so he is, a little; but then consider he has more excuse than you; he has never been taught how wicked it is not to forgive. You know it--but don't practice it.”
Meadows looked at the simple-minded enthusiast, and his cold eye deepened in color as it dwelt on her, and his voice dropped into the low and modulated tone which no other human creature but this ever heard from him. “Human nature is very revengeful. Few of us are like you. It is my misfortune that I have not oftener a lesson from you; perhaps you might charm away this unchristian spirit that makes me unworthy to be your--your friend.”
“Oh no! no!” cried Susan, “if I thought so should I be here?”
“Your voice and your face do make me at peace with all the world, Susan--I beg your pardon--Miss Merton.”
“And why not Susan?” said the young lady kindly.
“Well! Susan is a very inviting name.”
“La! Mr. Meadows,” cried Susan, arching her brows, “why, it is a frightful name--it is so old-fashioned; nobody is christened Susan nowadays.”
“It is a name for everything that is good and gentle and lovely--” A moment more and passion would have melted all the icy barriers prudence and craft had reared round this deep heart. His voice was trembling, his cheek flushing; but he was saved by--an enemy. “Susan!” cried a threatening voice at the door, and there stood William Fielding with a look to match.
Rage burned in Meadows' heart. He said bruskly, “Come in,” and seizing a slip of paper he wrote five words on it, and taking out a book flung it into the passage to Crawley. He then turned toward W. Fielding, who by this time had walked up to Susan. Was on the other side of the screen.
“Was told you had gone in here,” said William quietly, “so I came after you.”
“Now that was very attentive of you,” replied Susan ironically. “It is so nice to have a sensible young man like you following forever at one's heels--like a dog.”
A world of quiet scorn embellished this little remark.
William's reply was happier than usual. “The sheep find the dog often in their way, but they are all the safer for him.”
“Well, I'm sure,” cried Susan, her scorn giving way to anger.
Mr. Meadows put in: “I must trouble you to treat Miss Merton with proper respect when you speak to her in my house.”
“Who respects her more than I?” retorted William; “but you see, Mr. Meadows, sheep are no match for wolves when the dog is away--so the dog is here.”
“I see the dog is here and by his own invitation; all I say is that if the dog is to stay here he must behave like a man.”
William gasped at this hit; he didn't trust himself to answer Meadows; in fact, a blow of his fist seemed to him the only sufficient answer--he turned to Susan. “Susan, do you remember poor George's last words to me? with a tear in his eye and his hand in mine. Well, I keep my promise to him--I keep my eye upon such as I think capable of undermining my brother. This man is a schemer, Susan, and you are too simple to fathom him.”
The look of surprise crafty Meadows put on here, and William Fielding's implied compliment to his own superior sagacity struck Susan as infinitely ludicrous, and she looked at Meadows and laughed like a peal of bells. Of course he looked at her and laughed with her. At this all young Fielding's self-restraint went to the winds, and he went on--“But sooner than that, I'll twist as good a man's neck as ever schemed in Jack Meadows' shoes!”
At this defiance Meadows wheeled round on William Fielding and confronted him with his stalwart person and eyes glowing with gloomy wrath. Susan screamed with terror at William's insulting words and at the attitude of the two men, and she made a step to throw herself between them if necessary; but before words could end in blows a tap at the study door caused a diversion, and a cringing sort of voice said “May I come in?”
“Of course you may,” shouted Meadows; “the place is public. Anybody walks into my room to-day, friend or foe. Don't ask my leave--come in, man, whoever you are--Mr. Crawley; well, I didn't expect a call from you any more than from this one.”
“Now don't you be angry, sir. I had a good reason for intruding on you this once. Jackson!” Jackson stepped forward and touched William Fielding on the shoulder.
“You must come along with me,” said he.
“What for?” inquired Fielding.
“You are arrested on this judgment,” explained Crawley, letting the document peep a moment from his waistcoat pocket. William threw himself into an attitude of defense. His first impulse was to knock the officer down and run into another county, but the next moment he saw the folly and injustice of this and another sentiment overpowered the honest simple fellow--shame. He covered his face with both his hands and groaned aloud with the sense of humiliation.
“Oh! my poor William!” cried Susan. “Oh! Mr. Meadows, can nothing be done?”
“Why, Miss Merton,” said Meadows, looking down, “you can't expect me to do anything for him. If it was his brother now, Lawyer Crawley shouldn't ever take him out of my house.”
Susan flushed all over. “That I am sure you would, Mr. Meadows,” cried she (for feeling obscured grammar). “Now see, dear William, how your temper and unworthy suspicions alienate our friends; but father shan't let you lie in prison. Mr. Meadows, will you lend me a sheet of paper?”
She sat down, pen in hand, in generous excitement. While she wrote Mr. Meadows addressed Crawley. “And now a word with you, Mr. Crawley. You and I meet on business now and then, but we are not on visiting terms that I know of. How come you to walk into my house with a constable at your back?”
“Well, sir, I did it for the best,” said Crawley apologetically. “Our man came in here, and the street door was open, and I said, 'He is a friend of Mr. Meadows, perhaps it would be more delicate to all parties to take him indoors than in the open street.'”
“Oh, yes!” cried William, “it is bitter enough as it is, but that would have been worse--thank you for arresting me here--and now take me away and let me hide from all the world.”
“Fools!” said a firm voice behind the screen.
“Fools!” At this word and a new voice Susan started up from the table and William turned his face from the wall. Meadows did more. “Another!” cried he in utter amazement; “why my house is an inn. Ah!”
While speaking he had run round the screen and come plump upon Isaac Levi seated in a chair and looking up in his face with stern composure. His exclamation brought the others round after him and a group of excited faces encircled this old man seated sternly composed.
“Fools!” repeated he, “these tricks were stale before England was a nation. Which of you two has the judgment?”
“I, sir,” said Crawley, at a look from Meadows.
“The amount?”
“A hundred and six thirteen four.”
“Here is the money. Give me the document.”
“Here, sir.” Levi read it. “This action was taken on a bill of exchange. I must have that too.”
“Here it is, sir. Would you like an acknowledgment, Mr. Levi,” said Crawley obsequiously.
“No! foolish man. Are not these sufficient vouchers? You are free, sir,” said Crawley to William with an air of cheerful congratulation.
“Am I? Then I advise you to get out of my way, for my fingers do itch to fling you headforemost down the stairs.”
On this hint out wriggled Mr. Crawley with a semicircle of bows to the company. Constable touched his frontlock and went straight away as if he was going through the opposite wall of the house. Meadows pointed after him with his finger and said to Levi, “You see the road--get out of my house.”
The old man never moved from his chair, to which he had returned after paying William's debts. “It is not your house,” said he coolly.
The other stared. “No matter,” replied Meadows sharply, “it is mine till my mortgage is paid off.”
“I am here to pay it.”
“Ah!”
“Principal and interest calculated up to twelve o'clock this eleventh day of March. It wants five minutes to twelve. I offer you principal and interest--eight hundred and twenty-two pounds fourteen shillings and fivepence three farthings before these witnesses--and demand the title deeds.”
Meadows hung his head, but he was not a man to waste words in mere scolding. He took the blow with forced calmness as who should say, “This is your turn--the next is mine.”
“Miss Merton,” said he, almost in a whisper, “I never had the honor to receive you here before and I never shall again. How long do you give me to move my things?”
“Can you not guess?” inquired the other with a shade of curiosity.
“Why, of course you will put me to all the inconvenience you can. Come, now, am I to move all my furniture and effects out of this great house in twenty-four hours?”
“I give you more than that.”
“How kind! What, you give me a week perhaps?” asked Meadows incredulously.
“More than that, you fool! Don't you see that it is on next Lady-day you will be turned into the street. Aha! woman-worshiper, on Lady-day! A tooth for a tooth!” And the old man ground his teeth, which were white as ivory, and his fist clinched itself, while his eye glittered, and he swelled out from the chair, and literally bristled with hate--“A tooth for a tooth!”
“Oh, Mr. Levi,” said Susan sorrowfully, “how soon you have forgotten my last lesson!”
Meadows for a moment felt a chill of fear at the punctiliousness of revenge in this Oriental whom he had made his enemy. To this succeeded the old hate multiplied by ten; but he made a monstrous effort and drove it from his face down into the recesses of his heart. “Well,” said he, “may you enjoy this house as I have done this last twelvemonth!”
“That does you credit, good Mr. Meadows,” cried simple Susan, missing his meaning. Meadows continued in the same tone, “And I must make shift with the one you vacate on Lady-day.”
“Solomon teach me to outwit this dog.”
“Come, Mr. Levi, I have visited Mr. Meadows and now I am going to your house.”
“You shall be welcome, kindly welcome,” said the old man with large and flowing courtesy.
“And will you show me,” said Susan very tenderly, “where Leah used to sit?”
“Ah!”
“And where Rachel and Sarah loved to play?”
“Ah me! Ah me! Ah me! Yes! I could not show another these holy places, but I will show you.”
“And will you forget awhile this unhappy quarrel and listen to my words?”
“Surely I shall listen to you; for even now your voice is to my ear like the wind sighing among the cedars of Lebanon, and the wave that plays at night upon the sands of Galilee.”
“'Tis but the frail voice of a foolish woman, who loves and respects you, and yet,” said Susan, her color mantling with enthusiasm, “with it I can speak you words more beautiful than Lebanon's cedars or Galilee's shore. Ay, old man, words that make the stars brighter and the sons of the morning rejoice. I will not tell you whence I had them, but you shall say surely they never came from earth, selfish, cruel, revengeful earth, these words that drop on our hot passions like the dew, and speak of trespasses forgiven, and peace and goodwill among men.”
Oh! magic of a lovely voice speaking the truths of Heaven! How still the room was as these goodly words rang in it from a pure heart. Three men there had all been raging with anger and hate; now a calming music fell like oil upon these human waves, and stilled them.
The men drooped their heads, and held their breath to make sure the balmy sounds had ceased. Then Levi answered in a tone gentle, firm, and low (very different from his last), “Susanna, bitterness fades from my heart as you speak; but experience remains.” He turned to Meadows, “When I wander forth at Lady-day she shall still be watched over though I be far away. My eye shall be here, and my hand shall still be so over you all,” and raising his thin hand, he held it high up, the nails pointing downward. It looked just like a hawk hovering over its prey. “I will say no bitterer word than that to-day;” and in fact he delivered this without apparent heat or malice.
“Come, then, with me, Susanna--a goodly name, it comes to you from the despised people. Come like peace to my dwelling, Susanna--you know not this world's wiles as I do, but you can teach me the higher wisdom that controls the folly of passion and purifies the soul.”
The pair were gone, and William and Meadows were left alone. The latter looked sadly and gloomily at the door by which Susan had gone out. He was in a sort of torpor. He was not conscious of William's presence.
Now the said William had a misgiving; in the country a man's roof is sacred; he had affronted Meadows under his own roof, and then Mr. Levi had come and affronted him there, too. William began to doubt whether this was not a little hard, moreover he thought he had seen Meadows brush his eye hastily with the back of his hand as Susan retired. He came toward Meadows with his old sulky, honest, hang-the-head manner, and said, “Mr. Meadows, seems to me we have been a little hard upon you in your own house, and I am not quite easy about my share on't.” Meadows shrugged his shoulders imperceptibly.
“Well, sir--I am not the Almighty to read folk's hearts--least of all such a one as yours--but if I have done you wrong I ask your pardon. Come, sir, if you don't mean to undermine my brother with the girl you can give me your hand, and I can give you mine--and there 'tis.”
Meadows wished this young man away, and seeing that the best way to get rid of him was to give him his hand, he turned round, and, scarcely looking toward him, gave him his hand. William shook it and went away with something that sounded like a sigh. Meadows saw him out, and locked the door impatiently; then he flung himself into a chair and laid his beating temples on the cold table; then he started up and walked wildly to and fro the room. The man was torn this way and that with rage, love and remorse.
“What shall I do?” thus ran his thoughts. “That angel is my only refuge, and yet to win her I shall have to walk through dirt and shame and every sin that is. I see crimes ahead; such a heap of crimes, my flesh creeps at the number of them. Why not be like her, why not be the greatest saint that ever lived, instead of one more villain added to so many? Let me tear this terrible love out of my heart and die. Oh! if some one would but take me by the scurf of the neck and drag me to some other country a million miles away, where I might never see my tempter again till this madness is out of me. Susan, you are an angel, but you will plunge me to hell.”
Now it happened while he was thus raving and suffering the preliminary pangs of wrong-doing that his old servant knocked at the outside of the door and thrust a letter through the trap; the letter was from a country gentleman, one Mr. Chester, for whom he had done business. Mr. Chester wrote from Lancashire. He informed Meadows he had succeeded to a very large property in that county--it had been shockingly mismanaged by his predecessor; he wanted a capable man's advice, and moreover all the estates thereabouts were compelled to be surveyed and valued this year, which he deplored, but since so it was he would be surveyed and valued by none but John Meadows.
“Come by return of post,” added this hasty squire, “and I'll introduce you to half the landed proprietors in this county.”
Meadows read this and seizing a pen wrote thus:
“DEAR SIR--Yours received this day at 1 p.m., and will start for your house at 6 P.M.”
He threw himself on his horse and rode to his mother's house. “Mother, I am turned out of my house.”
“Why, John, you don't say so?”
“I must go into the new house I have built outside the town.”
“What, the one you thought to let to Mr. James?”
“The same. I have got only a fortnight to move all my things. Will you do me a kindness now, will you see them put into the new house?”
“Me, John! why I should be afraid something would go wrong.”
“Well, it isn't fair of me to put this trouble on you at your age; but read this letter--there is fifteen hundred pounds waiting for me in the North.”
The old woman put on her spectacles and read the letter slowly. “Go, John! go by all means! I will see all your things moved into the new house--don't let them be a hindrance; you go. Your old mother will take care your things are not hurt moving, nor you wronged in the way of expense.”
“Thank you, mother! thank you! they say there is no friend like a mother, and I dare say they are not far wrong.”
“No such friend but God--none such but God!” said the old woman with great emphasis and looking Meadows in the face with a searching eye.
“Well, then, here are the keys of the new house, and here are my keys. I am off tonight, so good-by, mother. God bless you!”
He had just turned to go, when by an unusual impulse he turned, took the old woman in his hands, almost lifted her off the ground, for she weighed light, and gave her a hasty kiss on the cheek; then he set her down and strode out of the house about his business.
When curious Hannah ran in the next moment she found the old lady in silent agitation. “Oh, dear! What is the matter, Dame Meadows?”
“Nothing at all, silly girl.”
“Nothing! And look at you all of a tremble.”
“He took me up all in a moment and kissed me. I dare say it is five-and-twenty years since he kissed me last. He was a curly-headed lad then.”
So this had set the poor old thing trembling. She soon recovered her firmness and that very evening Hannah and she slept in John's house, and the next day set to and began to move his furniture and prepare his new house for him.
Chapter XXXIII
PETER CRAWLEY received a regular allowance during his chief's absence and remained in constant communication with him, and was as heretofore his money-bag, his tool, his invisible hand. But if anybody had had a microscope and lots of time they might have discovered a gloomy hue spreading itself over Crawley's soul. A pleasant illusion had been rudely shaken.
All men have something they admire.
Crawley admired cunning. It is not a sublime quality, but Crawley thought it was, and revered it with pious, affectionate awe. He had always thought Mr. Meadows No. 1 in cunning, but now came a doleful suspicion that he was No. 2.
Losing a portion of his veneration for the chief he had seen outmaneuvered, he took the liberty of getting drunk contrary to his severe command, and being drunk and maudlin he unbosomed himself on this head to a low woman who was his confidante whenever drink loosened his tongue.
“I'm out spirits, Sal. I'm tebbly out spirits. Where shall we all go to? I dinn't think there was great a man on earth z Mizza Meadows. But the worlz wide. Mizza Levi z greada man--a mudge greada man (hic). He was down upon us like a amma (hic). His Jew's eye went through our lill sgeme like a gimlet. 'Fools!' says he--that's me and Meadows, 'these dodges were used up in our family before Lunnun was built. Fools!' Mizza Levi despises me and Meadows; and I respect him accordingly. I'm tebbly out spirits (hic).”
Chapter XXXIV
FARMER MERTON received a line from Meadows telling him he had gone into Lancashire on important business, and did not expect to be back for three months, except perhaps for a day at a time. Merton handed the letter to Susan.
“We shall miss him,” was her remark.
“That we shall. He is capital company.”
“And a worthy man into the bargain,” said Susan warmly, “spite of what little-minded folk say and think. What do you think that Will Fielding did only yesterday?”
“I don't know.”
“Well, he followed me into--there, it is not worth while having an open quarrel, but I shall hate the sight of his very face. I can't think how such a fool can be George's brother. No wonder George and he could not agree. Poor Mr. Meadows--to be affronted in his own house, just for treating me with respect and civility. So that is a crime now.”
“What are you saying, girl? That young pauper affront my friend Meadows, the warmest man for fifty miles round. If he has, he shall never come on my premises again. You may take your oath of that.”
Susan looked aghast. This was more than she had bargained for. She was the last in the world to set two people by the ears.
“Now don't you be so peppery, father,” said she. “There is nothing to make a quarrel about.”
“Yes there is, though, if that ignorant beggar insulted my friend.”
“No! no! no!”
“Why, what did you say?”
“I say--that here is Mr. Clinton coming to the door.”
“Let him in, girl, let him in. And you needn't stay. We are going to talk business.”
Chapter XXXV
MRS. MEADOWS, preparing her son's new home and defeating the little cheating tradesmen and workmen that fasten like leeches on such as carry their furniture to a new house; Hannah, working round and round her in a state of glorious excitement; Crawley, smelling of Betts' British brandy, and slightly regretting he was not No. 1's tool (Levi's) instead of No. 2's, as he now bitterly called him, and writing obsequious letters to, and doing the dirty work of, the said No. 2; old Merton speculating, sometimes losing, sometimes winning; Meadows gone to Lancashire with a fixed idea that Susan would be his ruin if he could not cure himself of his love for her; Susan rather regretting his absence, and wishing for his return, that she might show him how little she sympathized with Will Fielding's suspicions, injustice and brutality.
Leaving all this to work, our story follows an honest fellow to the other side of the globe.