The Broad Arrow. Being passages from the history of Maida Gwynnham, a lifer

Chapter I. The Initiation

WITHIN. To Emmeline it was nothing new to expect a strange face. It was not that expectation, there fore, which prevented her from sleeping, but an undefined sense of painful interest in the person who was to appear. She lay awake tbe greater part of the night, waiting for seven o'clock of the morning ; no wonder, then, that when that hour arrived it found her asleep. Having been warned to do so, Maida entered Miss Evelyn's room with out knocking at the door. Perceiving that her young mistress slept, she hesitated to advance : • but the lovely countenance reposing before her attracted her to a nearer contemplation of the peaceful features whose transitory shudder (induced by suffering) but showed to more advantage the calm into which they speedily relapsed. Resolving that should scorn await her there, it should be repaid with scorn, severity with coldness, VOL. II.

B indignity with defiance, Maida had prepared to commence her life of public disgrace, and had entered the chamber full of proud and determined thoughts. When, therefore, her eye fell upon the bed, and beheld there a face so sweet that it appeared in capable of scorn, so gentle that it could not assume severity, she felt as if she had done it grievous wrong by her previous supposition, while a keen pang of sorroAV darted through her heart as she observed that death had laid unmistakeable claim to the fair young creature lying before her. Emmeline moved her lips, and Maida, thinking she was about to awake, turned quickly away ; but her OAvn name, murmured softly and dreamily, reached her ear, and again she looked towards the bed. ' Poor Maida — would God — poor — poor — Maida !' Emmeline opened her eyes with the last word, and slightly started as she saw a woman of graceful carriage, bearing a faggot on her arm, and all the necessaries for fire-lighting and grate-cleaning in her hand, swiftly but stealthily cross the room, and kneel before the hearth.

It needed not a second look to tell her this woman was the object of her dream •, nor a second look to attest Lucy's state ment, that Maida was no common prisoner. It was with curious though mournful interest that THE INITIATION. WITHIN. Miss Evelyn watched her in this her first act of servitude, and yet she half doubted whether it could be her first, so adroitly and unhesitatingly did she begin and pursue her task. There was no token of helplessness and inability, by show of which, with pardonable vanity, superior convicts often intend their employers to discover that they have not been brought up to menial labour. As though she had been trained to it from her earliest years, Maida leant over the bars and plied the brush with unremitting energy, until the grate shone more brightly than it had done for a long time ; and then, having lighted the fire, swept up the dust and ashes, she gathered her apparatus together, and arose so quietly and unconcernedly, as would any housemaid who had done her duty, and nothing beyond.

Miss Evelyn hastily closed her eyes, hoping Maida would not know she had been awake ; but the movement was not so rapid as to escape Maida : though she did not turn towards Emmeline, she perceived it, and appre ciated the delicate kindness. But proud and determined as she had entered, she could not leave the room without expressing her altered mood in a voluntary offer of her service. She stopped at the door, and asked, in a voice so gentle that no one would suppose it was a murderess who spoke — ' Can I do anything for you before I go down stairs ?' Miss Evelyn wanted nothing, but bearing m Maida's voice a desire to help her, she said she should like to be raised a little higher, and have her pillows beaten up. The request was a proof of confidence that touched the prisoner to the quick ; it told her that whatever indignities might else where be heaped upon her, she would have none to fear from the gentle being whose head, now resting on her shoulder, dreaded no contamination from convict garments.

She was again preparing to leave the room, when Emmeline, unable to refrain, stretched her long thin hand to her, and ex claimed — ' Maida, this hand will, perhaps, ere long, be stiff in death ; take it now, as a pledge of proffered friendship. Yes ; do not start ; distinctions made in life are useless on a bed of sickness. I repeat, take it as a pledge of friendship, which I offer from my very heart.' Maida did not approach, and the hand dropped heavily upon the bed ; emaciated as it was, it was too heavy for self-support. It rested a moment, and then again presented itself, accompanied by a look that overcame Maida's unwillingness to yield. Those who know Maida, will not be surprised that, having once taken the proffered pledge, she clasped it with a fervency that satisfied Emmeline's most sanguine anticipation, but still she did not speak. ' You started at that word, friendship, Maida ; *^- THE INITIATION. — WITHIN. 5 perhaps you thought I used it on the impulse of feeling : but no ; I have lived in this country nearly all my life, and have found that one of the grand miseries of the convicts is having no friend to speak to, no friend to confide in ; therefore, when I see one of my own sex newly arrived, I feel deeply for her, knowing what she will have to go through, even in a family wherevprisoners are kindly treated, and I long to become her friend, so that when her heart is overwhelmed within, she may feel she has some one to whom to speak her grief; I must be your friend, Maida, something tells me I must be—' Emmeline raised herself on one side, and, looking earnestly at Maida, continued — ' Tell me, do you disbelieve me still ?' ' No, Miss Evelyn ; neither did I disbelieve you.

If I started, it was in hatred of that word, which has been profaned until it has lost for me all its hallowed meaning : it has been sounded in my ears till I loathe it; it has been abused until I forget its proper signification ; and, when you used it, the word reached my mind not so much associated with your generous proposal, as with objects of vice, which I choose to call my inferiors. On ship board, and on the "Anson," I was daily either charged with, cautioned against, or punished for, intimacy with creatures I shudder even to think of. Friendship it was called — but that relationship cannot exist between fiends ! For all that I so loathed them, if I only spoke to, or was spoken to, by one of them, an officer would reprimand me for endeavouring to strike a friendship which could only be for injurious purposes or mutiny.

If by chance two of us got together, either she was cau tioned against making friends with a mate of such known bad character as Martha Grylls, or I was warned not to seek too familiar a friendship with her — pah !' And as if the subject was one too disgusting to dwell upon, Maida stopped. ' That is past now ; let its remembrance make you value more — ' But Maida interrupted. ' It is not past ! Last night, in this house, the same caution was repeated.' 'For the last time, though. Mr. Evelyn will not mention those painful subjects again : nor will any one in this family, except your mistress ; and when you have become accustomed to her you will find that habit only, and' not a desire to annoy, makes her speak as she does. Ah, Maida, you will have many, many things to try you ; 'tis just for that I want you to consider me a friend.' She laid her other hand over Maida's (which still held hers in a warm though tremulous grasp), and fixed an eye so tender, so beseeching on her that Maida had much ado to hide the emotion — WITHIN. which struggled in her bosom.

But she did hide it ; and that so well that Emmeline heard no trace of it in the calm voice that answered — ' Should I need a confidential adviser or friend, Miss Evelyn, I shall, with gratitude, avail myself of your kindness ; but I am averse to promises, they have painful consideration with me, forcing me against my inclination. Were I to give the promise, I should fulfil it with as much reluctance as I should with unwillingness break it. It is not in my nature to confide in any one.' Oh, say not so, Maida Gwynnham ! thou art womanlike to thine inmost soul ; but in the wreck wherewith adversity hath desolated thee, thy nature hath been so convulsed, that thou canst not discover thyself amid the ruins. ' As I said before, you will find every one in this house kind to you, and disposed to assist your views for the future ; but when your thoughts revert to home, and the chair by the chimney corner, — when your heart is rent by misgivings, or wounded by reproach, — you will want something more than that ; it is that something I desire to be.

I do not wish to draw a promise from you : what is your sentence ?' ' Life.' ' A lifer ! O, Maida ! then you have not even the small hope that buoys up other hearts; you need a better friend than I.' ' Amount of sentence is nothing to me ; from the absence of all endearing ties or pleasant memories, locality is a matter of indifference. I have no one in England to wish me back ; no one for whom I would wish to return ; a despised creature I was sent thence, and a despised creature I remain here ; ignominy is stamped upon me, and would be the same in any place. If I might fix on one spot beyond another, the one in which my heart would become the most hardened, and my mind the most forgetful of the past, should be the object of my choice.' ' Have you no parents ? — no relatives, Maida ?' ' I do not know — I fear to know.' An expression of anguish here compressed Maida's features, and pain was visible in the shudder that caused her to clasp her hand upon her bosom. ' Oh, my father !

Poor old man ! was that letter his death ?' burst from her lips ere she could control her words, and bid the grief hide unuttered in her heart. Though ignorant of Maida's history, Ernmeline read the tale of sorrow concealed in that bitter cry. She knew that the broad world over, heart answers to heart, and that the parent of the prisoner stand ing by her bed, had passed through all the tortures that had stricken other parents to their graves; and if not sunk already, his life must be a pro- — WITHIN. 9 longed dying, to which the article of death itself would be a state most blissful. A broken-hearted parent is one of the many untold calamities follow ing the prisoner's career. During the brief silence which ensued, Emmeline opened her little Scripture portion-book, and when Maida appeared calm, she read the text for the morning. ' " I will be a father to you," is God's message to you this morning, Maida.' ' Oh do not, I pray you, Miss Evelyn, speak to me on that subject.

I hate it ; not from disrespect, but because the evil of it alone can belong to me. I have had it presented to me as something in which I have a fearful interest, having sinned against it, and awakened all its wrath. You, lying there with heaven's own peace on your very coun tenance, with relationship to God apparent in your likeness to Him, may revel in the sweets of religion. How should you not ? What can you know of the dark side which makes it so terrible to me ?' ' Is there anything very terrible in the promise of a Father to supply the want of an earthly one, Maida ? Is there anything to alarm you in those tender words I have just read ?' ' Everything is terrible to those beyond the reach of hope. The very joys of heaven beheld from afar will be a torment to the damned; so those parts of Scripture comforting to you, are to me so many messengers sent to torment me before the time ; they tell me all I have lost !' ' They are none of them lost to you yet.' ' Our Religious Instructor thought differently ; he seemed to see hell-fire already burning within me ; happily safe himself, he cared not who else he consigned to the flames.

I hated religion before I met with him, now I hate it tenfold, as an un necessary addition to the miseries of a miserable existence. What an abhorred thing must religion be to Government, since it deems it a fitting aggra vation to prison discipline, and since such agents are chosen to administer it ! I never met with but one who did not dispense it as a deadly drug — never but one who did not bid me drink and die. Were there more of such men as that one clergy man appointed, there might be less hypocrisy amongst us convicts.' ' That is very like papa ; he will talk to you. Stay, Maida, stay ; I am not satisfied. If you will not accept my offer, remember that it is not with drawn : my stay on earth may not be long. Whilst I am here, consider you have one to whom to speak as to a sister.' 1 Miss Evelyn, I had a father ; in the days of my childhood he did not love me, but I made him.

I could not exist without love. In after years I sinned away that love purchased by childish tears, WITHIN. 11 and that with which I sought to replace it turned to wormwood in my heart, and embittered the principle of love within me. Since then I have lived on unloving and unloved, and will do so to the end. I am no longer a child. I can now exist without love, and I do not need a friend.' ' Maida, you cannot exist without love unless its absence be supplied by hatred, and the need of a friend by the presence of an enemy. In our natural state we all require a friend or a foe — something to love or hate ; either passion may fill the heart, but one must ; who would take the latter that might choose the former ?' ' There is no might for me now, it is all must.' ' There is no must ! the irrevocable decree of death alone can fix into certainty the possibilities of life.

You do not know the condition of your heart, Maida. I am sure you do not; and am as sure that you never will, whilst you trust only to your self to fathom its feelings, to analyse its motives, and to satisfy its longings. We are none of us capable of an unaided search into our own hearts. Such search must always be deceptive in its results. To know ourselves, we need assistance from a power superior to our own.' ' I would rather shun that assistance ! It could only show me myself more vile than at present ; to fathom my feelings would be to shock me with depths of depravity ; to analyse my motives to discover pollution in them all. No, no, Miss Evelyn, the knowledge I have of myself is sufficiently frightful; spare me closer investigation for pity's sake.' There was again a silence ; it was broken by Maida, who with a slight sneer in her tone, said — ' Supposing that I desired such assistance, could your experience afford it me ?

You cannot know to what a character you speak in me. You can know nothing of Martha Grylls, if you think there is aught in her experience that can bear comparison with yours ; or that the dark meanings of her soul may be deciphered by the pure characters of your heart. What can she have in common with you ?' ' God fashioneth all hearts alike. Maida, we have more in common than you suppose ; were we to exchange the secrets of our hearts, we should start to see how many thoughts we deemed exclu sively our own belonged to the other. There is nothing in me to prevent my being all that you are ; there is no impediment to your being all / am. We see each other and ourselves in the light of cir cumstance, and therefore never correctly see the true actings of the heart ; but God — ' The door pushed open, and Lucy, unbidden, ad vanced.

Not heeding Miss Evelyn, she exclaimed, with a frightened air — ' Oh, Maida, I'm in such a way; 'tis nigh to eight, and there's a sight to do yet ; if the master — WITHIN. 13 comes down, and finds it ain't done, he'll be after you, and then there'll be a row, and p'raps trouble, if he finds I've been and doned them door steps for you.' (Dropping a curtsey to Emmeline.) ' I beg pardons, mem. I forgot you was here ; you see, mem, I feels in a fritter like, 'cause it's her first day out, and the master '11 be sharp on her.' ' And you feel responsible ?' asked Emmeline, smiling. Lucy glanced at Maida to see how she took this ; to her delight there was no expression of annoyance on the latter's face. ' Why you see, mem, I told the master of she, and natural like I feels anxious. I wouldn't have them fall out for no amount.' ' Come then, Lucy, I will try to do you credit,' said Maida.

Emmeline gazed at her in surprise ; she could not believe that the almost playful tone belonged to the person who a few minutes since had spoken so bitterly. ' Miss Evelyn, I thank you sincerely for your noble intentions, and regret that mine should dis appoint them ; you will not judge harshly of one who from long disuse has forgotten how to apply confidence or value a friend.' ' Lor, mem, don't she curtsey beautiful !' Ad miration was in every line of Lucy's face as she turned to Emmeline for co-appreciation of Maida's exit. ' Lor, mem, you should have seen her 'mong our women on the " Anson ;" she was as grand as Mrs. Bowden any day, and she was grand enough to frighten the wits out of the best of us,' lowering her voice. ' Lor, mem, now she's come, I'm half afeard how she'll get on with the master.

She ain't like one of us to take it all natural, and the master won't put up with nothing from no one. Says he last night — "If Maida's a wise woman, she'll bear what she's got to bear, and if she don't, she must be made to ;" and that's what she '11 never do. I always says she likes bearing of things, but if she don't choose, nobody can make her to ; not even Mrs. Bowden.' Mr. Evelyn's voice on the stairs sent Lucy skit tering away in search of Maida, who to her delight stood in the dining-room enveloped in a cloud of dust sufficient to smother all dread of the master's anger. Order speedily followed Maida's steps, and the breakfast was duly laid before Mr. Evelyn appeared. ' I say, have you seen the new prisoner ?' shouted Charlie, pulling Lucy towards the parlour whence he had just espied Maida; wouldn't she catch it if mamma was at home, for sweeping the carpet without covering the pretty things !' ' Ought I to cover them, master Charles ?' asked Maida. ' Be sure !

Bridget isn't half a missus ; wait till — WITHIN. 15 mamma comes home, then you'll see. Our pris'ner women is all afraid of her 'cept when they's drunk — ah ! ah ! ah ! it's such fun — do you like being drunk ? this is the way ;' and with a sleepy grimace, the child stumbled about the room. ' Poor little boy ! If that is what you've been taught, no wonder we have become a byword.' 1 You don't laugh, stupid woman !' then checked by the serious look with which Maida regarded him, he said, sheepishly — ' All the others does laugh at it. You mustn't look like that at me. Lucy said you were such a beauty ; but you are an ugly old fright, and I hope you'll get into lots of trouble, and be sent to cage ; then we shan't have you back.' Lucy flew indignantly at the child. ' Naughty boy ! I'll tell your aunts ;' but the little fellow was too sharp, he darted to the door, where, pointing his finger at Maida, he cried — ' Crop-py ! crop-py !' and then ran off.

Maida turned in silence to her work. The finger of childish scorn touched neither her temper nor mind, but it entered her very heart, and chilled her into a sense of utter desolation. She who had stood the taunts of vice, the sneers of virtue, — she who had received in unflinching disdain the un merited rebukes of inflated vanity, and had borne uncomplainingly the sentence of the law, — now bowed her head in shamed sorrow over the reproaches of a little child. No wrathful thought against the youthful Shimei stirred in her bosom, but every thought and every feeling turned, poignant, on herself, revealing a mark of infamy so revolting and deep-branded as to arrest even child hood's careless eye. She leaned upon her broom, and groaned ' O God ! my punishment is greater than I can bear.' She heard a pattering footstep behind her, and, turning, beheld an infant toddling into the room.

It stopped as she turned, and baby's two large bright eyes fixed intently on her, so intently that they did not move, though the little creature plumped flat down on the floor into a sitting posture. After scanning Maida steadily, the child thrust out a crushed flower, and said — ' No kye, no kye — pitty fow-fow — missie's pitty fow-fow — no more kve.' Maida sprang to the child ; and as the small, fat hand smoothed her face, and as the low, sym pathising voice hummed — ' Poor, poor— poor, poor — no more kye,' she strained the baby to her heart, and forgot all she had been, and was likely to be, in the delicious respite of the moment. Baby toddled off, and Maida descended to the kitchen. No one had witnessed the interview. The babe's innocence was not sullied by the embrace of crime ; but crime, as personified in Maida Gwynn- WITHIN. 17 ham, received a softening influence from the embrace of purity ; and as she entered the kitchen, there was an expression on her lips that Lucy would have called a smile if she had dared. 1 That's Bob,' said Lucy, as Maida glanced at a man washing at the pump-trough. ' Welcome, missus,' answered Sanders, turning with towel in hand and dripping face. ' I guess we sha'n't always be kept waiting after this fashion — a fellow wants his breakfast when he's been out with his hosses — howsomever, glad to see you clear of gover'ment for a while; I'm hsarty glad it's you come instead of a free woman.

The mistress vowed she'd get a migrate next time ; 'taint many things I'm not willing' for, but them free folks is one that I can't 'bide. I likes to have my equals about me ; them as won't take airs because they've never been gover'ment ; they'm always getting trouble on a feller, them others be.' ' What is this trouble I am always hearing of, Lucy ?' asked Maida, anxious to turn the subject. ' Oh, everything is trouble out here that happins to prisoners.' ' Hang trouble ! when a feller wants his break fast and can't get it, that's trouble enough, an't it, Madda ?' said Bob ; ' all I hopes is that you won't know it no more than that, for when trouble begins on a feller, the devil if it don't stick to him like mud. Come now, don't feel shy, Madda, or what's VOL. II. c you called, we shall be fine together soon; we don't look to what our mates have done worse than we.

Gover'ment mark 's the same on all on us whether it's for murder or lifting ; and hang the gover'ment clothes, a hansom lass is an hansom lass whether she've got on brown or blue ; and the 'air an't a consideration, seeing he grows in no time.' And Bob, by way of illustration, drew his fingers through his long, greasy hair. So the three sat down together, and the meal passed. Bob thought he had never devoured a better, for he had not only ' ate his wittels in peace,' but had been able to hear the sound of his voice in enlightening his new mate on a few points of penal etiquette. ' An't he handsome, Maida ?' exclaimed Lucy, as he walked off. Lucy arose, deceived into a hope that Maida had enjoyed not only her breakfast, but her intro duction to Bob; the affectionate little being had forgotten to enjoy hers in the full occupation of watching the effect made by the two on each other.

Now she listened to Bob with Maida's ears, but with none of her feelings ; then gazed at Maida with Bob's eyes. The mutual impression would have been very startling could she have stamped it. Bob was a great person in her sight. He had nearly won his ticket, and his significant hints of — WITHIN. 19 what he meant to do, when he really possessed it, had not been lost upon her. 'He didn't know that he shouldn't give the master warning for all that he'd two such hosses to look after ; may be he'd sote up for himself ;' with various other large talkings, so worked upon her that the talker became an embryo hero. She ad mired the amount of courage that could, even in prospect, give the master notice ; and as his long, grease-heavy locks flopped about in a manner most contrary to government notions of convict pro priety, it seemed to her that the spirit of liberty, antedating Bob's partial freedom, had gotten into each individual lock, and she began to doubt that government had ever taken the same liberty with his head that it had with other prisoner heads.

How Maida felt when she arose from that her first morning's meal, we gather neither from her countenance nor from what she says to Lucy ; our previous knowledge of her character and case alone informs us of the torture, slow and subtle, which preys on her inner life. When we see her, calm and dignified, move to her menial duties — now sifting cinders, then scouring out the pantry — now following Miss D'Urban to market, then washing Bob's clothes — we discover by no out ward sign that she is wrapped about with burning thoughts that wither up her soul into a hatred of existence. Day after day we see her move to those duties, clad still in her prison garments ; and, per ceiving not that pain is in each step she takes, we wonder how she can bear to do so. She goes abroad, and though under the protection of one of her master's family, the men in the chaingang wink to her as she passes, recognising her relationship to them by the brown of the guilty sisterhood.

We see it, and wonder she does not sink beneath that badge which, maliciously cruel, proclaims her shame in the public streets ; but her power is greater than its malice, and though, unreconciled by habit, its cling to her is the cling of a serpent, it cannot cripple her dauntless tread, nor bow her erect form. She enters a shop, and it is known to all there for what she comes or will shortly come ; a young man leans over the counter, and enumerates the articles which he knows the probationer will first require. He tries to conciliate her with — ' A stays, my dear? must have it, you'll look a different figure when you've got a pair ; get the master to advance for a pair, then.' We hear it, and, forgetting that feeling is deep est in its silence, and emotion, firelike, strongest in its pallor, we wonder how blushes do not scorch out her cheek.

A month drags wearily by, and Bridget uses the announcement of her Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Her bert's return as a plea for begging Uncle Ev to WITHIN. relax his rule for only just once, and let Maida put off at any rate her convict gown and cap : but Uncle Ev is inexorable ; he abides to the letter of his declared intentions ; he abates not his strict discipline one whit for all his niece's rhetoric. Emmeline knows him of old, and expects no concession. Bridget gets warm, and charges the executors of the law with partiality ; and on an explanation being demanded, she says that they pretend to have no respect of persons in dealing punishments, whereas they do very exceedingly favour the person of the poor above that of the rich, in awarding him only pain for the same crime of which torture is the award to his more wealthy brother.