Evans was dreadfully out of spirits. His ally lay dying and his enemy triumphed. He looked to be turned out of the jail at the next meeting of magistrates. But when he had given the idiot his watch to drink out of an unwonted warmth and courage seemed to come into his heart.
This touch of humanity coming suddenly among the most hellish of all fiends—men of system—was like the little candle in a window that throws its beams so far when we are bewildered in a murky night. For the place was now a moral coal-hole. The dungeons at Rome that lie under the wing of Roderick Borgia's successors are not a more awful remnant of antiquity or a fouler blot on the age, on the law, on the land, and on human nature.
A thick, dark pall of silence and woe hung over its huge walls. If a voice was heard above a whisper it was sure to be either a cry of anguish or a fierce command to inflict anguish. Two or three were crucified every day; the rest expected crucifixion from morning till night. No man felt safe an hour; no man had the means of averting punishment; all were at the mercy of a tyrant. Threats frightful, fierce and mysterious hung like weights over every soul and body. Whenever a prisoner met an officer he cowered and hurried crouching by like a dog passing a man with a whip in his hand; and as he passed he trembled at the thunder of his own footsteps, and wished to Heaven they would not draw so much attention to him by ringing so clear through that huge silent tomb. When an officer met the governor he tried to slip by with a hurried salute lest he should be stopped, abused and sworn at.
The earnest man fell hardest upon the young; boys and children were favorite victims; but his favorites of all were poor Robinson and little Josephs. These were at the head of the long list he crucified, he parched, he famished, he robbed of prayer, of light, of rest and hope. He disciplined the sick; he closed the infirmary again. That large room, furnished with comforts, nurses and air, was an inconsistency.
“A new prison is a collection of cells,” said Hawes. The infirmary was a spot in the sun. The exercise yard in this prison was a twelve-box stable for creatures concluded to be wild beasts. The labor-yard was a fifteen-stall stable for ditto. The house of God an eighty-stalled stable, into which the wild beasts were dispersed for public worship made private. Here, in early days, before Hawes was ripe, they assembled apart and repeated prayers, and sang hymns on Sunday. But Hawes found out that though the men were stabled apart their voices were refractory and mingled in the air, and with their voices their hearts might, who knows? He pointed this out to the justices, who shook their skulls and stopped the men's responses and hymns. These animals cut the choruses out of the English liturgy with as little ceremony and as good effect as they would have cut the choruses out of Handel's “Messiah,” if the theory they were working had been a musical instead of a moral one.
So far so good; but the infirmary had escaped Justice Shallow and Justice Woodcock. Hawes abolished that.
Discipline before all. Not because a fellow is sick is he to break discipline.
So the sick lay in their narrow cells gasping in vain for fresh air, gasping in vain for some cooling drink, or some little simple delicacy to incite their enfeebled appetite.
The dying were locked up at the fixed hour for locking up, and found dead at the fixed hour for opening. How they had died—no one knew. At what hour they had died—no one knew. Whether in some choking struggle a human hand might have saved them by changing a suffocating position or the like—no one knew.
But this all knew—that these our sinful brethren had died, not like men, but like vultures in the great desert. They were separated from their kith and kin, who however brutal would have said a kind word and done a tender thing or two for them at that awful hour; and nothing allowed them in exchange, not even the routine attentions of a prison nurse; they were in darkness and alone when the king of terrors came to them and wrestled with them. All men had turned their backs on them, no creature near to wipe the dews of death, to put a cool hand to the brow, or soften the intensity of the last sad sigh that carried their souls from earth. Thus they passed away, punished lawlessly by the law till they succumbed, and then, since they were no longer food for torture, ignored by the law and abandoned by the human race.
They locked up one dying man at eight o'clock. At midnight the thirst of death came on him. He prayed for a drop of water, but there was none to hear him. Parched and gasping the miserable man got out of bed and groped for his tin mug, but before he could drink the death agony seized him. When they unlocked him in the morning they found him a corpse on the floor with the mug in his hand and the water spilled on the floor. They wrenched the prison property out of its dead hand, and flung the carcass itself upon the bed as if it had been the clay cast of a dog, not the remains of a man.
All was of a piece. The living tortured; the dying abandoned; the dead kicked out of the way. Of these three the living were the most unfortunate, and among the living Robinson and Josephs. Never since the days of Cain was existence made more bitter to two hapless creatures than to these—above all to Josephs.
His day began thus: Between breakfast and dinner he was set five thousand revolutions of a heavy crank; when he could not do it his dinner was taken away and a few crumbs of bread and a can of water given him instead. Between his bread and water time and six o'clock if the famished, worn-out lad could not do five thousand more revolutions and make up the previous deficiency he was punished ad libitum. As the whole thing from first to last was beyond his powers, he never succeeded in performing these preposterous tasks. He was threatened, vilified and tortured every day and every hour of it.
Human beings can bear great sufferings if you give them periods of ease between; and beneficent nature allows for this, and when she means us to suffer short of death she lashes us at intervals; were it otherwise we should succumb under a tithe of what we suffer intermittently.
But Hawes, besides his cruelty, was a noodle. He belonged to a knot of theorists into whose hands the English jails are fast falling; a set of shallow dreamers, who being greater dunces and greater asses than four men out of every six that pass you in Fleet Street or Broadway at any hour, think themselves wiser than Nature and her Author. Josephs suffered body and spirit without intermission. The result was that his flesh withered on his bones; his eyes were dim and seemed to lie at the bottom of two caverns; he crawled stiffly and slowly instead of walking. He was not sixteen years of age, yet Hawes had extinguished his youth and blotted out all its signs but one. Had you met this figure in the street you would have said:
“What, an old man and no beard?”
One day as Robinson happened to be washing the corridor with his beaver up, what he took for a small but aged man passed him, shambling stiffly, with joints stiffened by perpetual crucifixion and rheumatism, that had ensued from perpetually being wetted through. This figure had his beaver down. At sight of Robinson he started and instantly went down on his knee and untied both shoe strings; then while tying them again slowly he whispered:
“Robinson, I am Josephs; don't look toward me.”
Robinson, scrubbing the wall with more vigor than before, whispered, “How are they using you now, boy?”
“Hush! don't speak so loud. Robinson—they are killing me.
“The ruffians! They are trying all they know to kill me, too.”
“Fry coming.”
“Hist!” said Robinson as Josephs crept away; and having scraped off a grain of whitewash with his nail he made a little white mark on his trouser just above his calf, for Josephs to know him by, should they meet next time with visors both down. Josephs gave a slight and rapid signal of intelligence as he disappeared. Two days after this they met on the staircase. The boy, who now looked at every prisoner's trowsers for the white mark, recognized Robinson at some distance and began to speak before they met.
“I can't go on much longer like this.”
“No more can I.”
“I shall go to father.”
“Why where is he?”
“He is dead.”
“I don't care how soon I go there either, but not till I have sent Hawes on before—not for all the world. Pass me, and then come back.”
They met again.
“Keep up your heart, boy, till his reverence gets well, or goes to heaven. If he lives he will save us somehow. If he dies—I'll tell you a secret. I know where there is a brick I think I can loosen. I mean to smash that beast's skull with it, and then you will be all right, and my heart will feel like a prince.”
“Oh! don't do that,” said Josephs piteously. “Better far us he should murder us than we him.”
“Murder!” cried Robinson contemptuously. And there was no time to say any more.
After this many days passed before these two could get a syllable together. But one day after chapel as the men were being told off to their several tasks Robinson recognized the boy by his figure, and jogging his elbow withdrew a little apart; Josephs followed him, and this time Robinson was the first speaker.
“We shall never see Mr. Eden alive again, boy,” said he in a faltering voice. Then in a low gloomy tone he muttered, “I have loosened the brick. The day I lose all hope that day I send Hawes home.” And the thief pointed toward the cellar.
“The day you have no more hope, Robinson; that day has come to me this fortnight and more. He tells me every day he will make my life hell to me, and I am sure it has been nothing else ever since I came here.”
“Keep up your heart, boy; he hasn't long to live.”
“He will live too long for me. I can't stay here any longer. You and I shan't often chat together again; perhaps never.”
“Don't talk so, laddie. Keep up your heart—for my sake.”
One bitter tearing sob was all the reply. And so these two parted.
This was just after breakfast. At dinner-time Josephs, not having performed an impossible task, was robbed of his dinner. A little bread and water was served out to him in the yard, and he was set on the crank again with fearful menaces. In particular Mr. Hawes repeated his favorite threat—“I'll make your life hell to you.” Josephs groaned; but what could a boy of fifteen do, overtasked and famished for a month past and fitter now for a hospital than for hard labor of any sort? At three o'clock his progress on the crank was so slow that Mr. Hawes ordered him to be crucified on the spot.
His obedient myrmidons for the fiftieth time seized the lad and crushed him in the jacket, throttled him in the collar, and pinned him to the wall, and this time, the first time for a long while, the prisoner remonstrated loudly.
“Why not kill me at once and put me out of my misery!”
“Hold your tongue.”
“You know I can't do the task you set me. You know it as well as I do.”
“Hold your tongue, you insolent young villain. Strap him tighter, Fry.”
“Oh no! no! no! don't go to strap me tighter or you will cut me in half—don't, Mr. Fry. I will hold my tongue, sir.” Then he turned his hollow, mournful eyes on Hawes and said gently, “It can't last much longer, you know.”
“It shall last till I break you, you obstinate, whining dog. You are hardly used, are you? Wait till to-morrow. I'll show you that I have only been playing with you as yet. But I have got a punishment in store for you that will make you wish you were in hell.”
Hawes stood over the martyr fiercely threatening him. The martyr shut his eyes. It seemed as though the enraged Hawes would end by striking him. He winced with his eyes. He could not wince with any other part of his body, so tight was it jammed together and jammed against the wall.
Hawes however did but repeat his threat of some new torture on the morrow that should far eclipse all he had yet endured; and shaking his fist at his helpless body left him with his torture.
One hour of bitter, racking, unremitting anguish had hardly rolled over this young head ere his frame, weakened by famine and perpetual violence, began to give the usual signs that he would soon sham—swoon we call it when it occurs to any but a prisoner. As my readers have never been in Mr. Hawes's man-press, and as attempts have been made to impose on the inexperience of the public and represent the man-press as restriction not torture, I will shortly explain why sooner or later all the men that were crucified in it ended by shamming.
Were you ever seized at night with a violent cramp? Then you have instantly with a sort of wild and alarmed rapidity changed the posture which had cramped you; ay though the night was ever so cold you have sprung out of bed sooner than lie cramped. If the cramp would not go in less than half a minute that half-minute was long and bitter. As for existing cramped half an hour, that you never thought possible. Imagine now the severest cramp you ever felt artificially prolonged for hours and hours. Imagine yourself cramped in a vise, no part of you movable a hair's breadth, except your hair and your eyelids. Imagine the fierce cramp growing and growing, and rising like a tide of agony higher and higher above nature's endurance, and you will cease to wonder that a man always sunk under Hawes's man-press. Now, then, add to the cramp a high circular saw raking the throat, jacket straps cutting and burning the flesh of the back—add to this the freezing of the blood in the body deprived so long of all motion whatever (for motion of some sort or degree is a condition of vitality), and a new and far more rational wonder arises, that any man could be half an hour cut, sawed, crushed, cramped, Mazeppa'd thus, without shamming—still less be four, six, eight hours in it, and come out a living man.
The young martyr's lips were turning blue, his face was twitching convulsively, when a word was unexpectedly put in for him by a bystander.
The turnkey Evans had been half sullenly half sorrowfully watching him for some minutes past.
A month or two ago the lips of a prisoner turning blue and his skin twitching told Evans nothing. He saw these things without seeing them. He was cruel from stupidity—from blockhead to butcher there is but a step. Like the English public he realized nothing where prisoners were concerned. But Mr. Eden had awakened his intelligence, and his heart waked with it naturally.
Now when he saw lips turning blue and eyes rolling in sad despair, and skin twitching convulsively, it occurred to him—“this creature must be suffering very badly,” and the next step was “let me see what is hurting him so.”
Evans now stood over Josephs and examined him. “Mr. Fry,” said he doggedly, “is not this overdoing it?”
“What d'ye mean, we are to obey orders, I suppose?”
“Of course, but there was no need to draw the jacket straps so tight as all this. Boy's bellows can't hardly work for 'em.”
He now passed his hand round the hollow of the lad's back.
“I thought so,” cried he; “I can't get my finger between the straps and the poor fellow's flesh, and, good heavens I can feel the skin rising like a ridge on each side of the straps; it is a black, burning shame to use any Christian like this.”
These words were hardly out of the turnkey's mouth when a startling cry came suddenly from poor Josephs; a sudden, wild, piercing scream of misery. In that bitter, despairing cry burst out the pent-up anguish of weeks, and the sense of injustice and cruelty more than human. The poor thing gave this one terrible cry. Heaven forbid that you should hear such a one in life, as I hear his in my heart, and then he fell to sobbing as if his whole frame would burst.
They were not much, these rough words of sympathy, but they were the first—the first words, too, of humanity and reason a turnkey had spoken in his favor since he came into this hell. Above all, the first in which it had ever been hinted or implied that his flesh was human flesh. The next moment he began to cry, but that was not so easy. He soon lost his breath and couldn't cry though his very life depended on it. Tears gave relief. Dame Nature said, “Cry, my suffering son, cry now, and relieve that heart swelling with cruelty and wrong.”
But Hawes's infernal machine said, “No, you shall not cry. I give you no room to cry in.” The cruel straps jammed him so close his swelling heart could but half heave. The jagged collar bit his throat so hard he could but give three or four sobs and then the next choked him. The struggle between Nature panting and writhing for relief, and the infernal man-press, was so bitter strong that the boy choked and blackened and gasped as one in the last agony.
“Undo him,” cried Evans hastily, “or we shall kill him among us.”
“Bucket,” said the experienced Fry quite coolly.
The bucket was at hand—its contents were instantly discharged over Josephs' head.
A cry like a dying hare—two or three violent gasps—and he was quiet, all but a strong shiver that passed from head to foot; only with the water that now trickled from his hair down his face scalding tears from his young eyes fell to the ground undistinguished from the water by any eye but God's.
At six o'clock Hawes came into the yard and ordered Fry to take him down. Fry took this opportunity of informing against Evans for his mild interference.
“He will pay for that along with the rest,” said Hawes with an oath.
Then he turned on Josephs, who halted stiffly by him on his way to his cell.
“I'll make your life hell to you, you young vagabond—you are hardly used, are you? all you have ever known isn't a stroke with a feather to what I'll make you know by-and-by. Wait till to-morrow comes, you shall see what I can do when I am put to it.”
Josephs sobbed, but answered nothing, and crawled sore, stiff, dripping, shivering to his cell. In that miserable hole he would at least be at peace.
He found the gas lighted. He was glad, for he was drenched through and bitterly cold. He crept up to the little gaslight and put his dead white hands over it and got a little warmth into them; he blessed this spark of light and warmth; he looked lovingly down on it, it was his only friend in the jail, his companion in the desolate cell. He wished he could gather it into his bosom; then it would warm his heart and his blighted flesh and aching, shivering bones.
While he hung shivering over his spark of light and warmth and comfort, a key was put into his door. “Ah! here's supper,” thought he, “and I am so hungry.” It was not supper, it was Fry who came in empty-handed, leaving the door open. Fry went to his gaslight and put his finger and thumb on the screw.
“Oh! it burns all right, Mr. Fry,” said Josephs, “it won't go any higher, thank you.”
“No, it won't,” said Fry dryly, and turned it out, leaving the cell in utter darkness.
“There, I told you so,” said Josephs pettishly, “now you have been and turned it out.”
“Yes, I have been and turned it out,” replied Fry with a brutal laugh, “and it won't be turned on again for fourteen days, so the governor says, however, and I suppose he knows,” and Fry went out chuckling.
Josephs burst out sobbing and almost screaming at this last stroke; it seemed to hurt him more than his fiercer tortures. He sobbed so wildly and so loud that Mr. Jones, passing on the opposite corridor, heard him and beckoned to Evans to open the cell.
They found the boy standing in the middle of his dungeon shaking with cold in his drenched clothes and sobbing with his whole body. It was frightful to see and hear the agony and despair of one so young in years, so old in misery.
Mr. Jones gave him words of commonplace consolation. Mr. Jones tried to persuade him that patience was the best cure.
“Be patient, and do not irritate the governor any more—the storm will pass.”
He seemed to Josephs as one that mocketh. Jones's were such little words to fling in the face of a great despair; to chatter unreasonable consolation was to mock his unutterable misery of soul and body.
Mr. Jones was one of those who sprinkle a burning mountain with a teaspoonful of milk and water, and then go away and make sure they have put it out. When he was gone with this impression, Evans took down the boy's bed and said:
“Don't ye cry now like that; it makes me ill to hear any Christian cry like that.”
“Oh, Mr. Evans! oh! oh! oh! oh! What have I done? Oh, my mother! my mother! my mother!”
Evans winced. What! had he a mother, too? If she could see him now! and perhaps he was her darling though he was a prisoner. He shook the bed-clothes out and took hold of the shivering boy and with kind force made him lie down; then he twisted the clothes tight round him.
“You will get warm, if you will but lie quiet and not think about it.”
Josephs did what he was bid. He could not still his sobs, but he turned his mournful eyes on Evans with a look of wonder at meeting with kindness from a human being, and half doubtingly put out his hand. So then Evans, to comfort him, took his hand and shook it several times in his hard palm, and said:
“Good-night. You'll soon get warm, and don't think of it—that is the best way;” and Evans ran away in the middle of a sentence, for the look of astonishment the boy wore at his humanity went through the man's penitent heart like an arrow.
Josephs lay quiet and his sobs began gradually to go down, and, as Evans had predicted, some little warmth began to steal over his frame; but he could not comply with all Evans's instructions; he could not help thinking of it. For all that, as soon as he got a little warm, Nature, who knew how much her tortured son needed repose, began to weigh down his eyelids, and he dozed. He often started, he often murmured a prayer for pity as his mind acted over again the scenes of his miserable existence; but still he dozed, and sleep was stealing over him. Sleep! life's nurse sent from heaven to create us anew day by day!—sleep! that has blunted and gradually cured a hundred thousand sorrows for one that has yielded to any moral remedy—sleep! that has blunted and so cured by degrees a million fleshly ills for one that drugs or draughts have ever reached—sleep had her arm round this poor child and was drawing him gently, gently, slowly, slowly to her bosom—when suddenly his cell seemed to him to be all in a blaze, and a rough hand shook him, and a harsh voice sounded in his ear.
“Come, get up out of that, youngster,” it said, and the hand almost jerked him off the floor.
“What is the matter?” inquired Josephs yawning.
“Matter is, I want your bed.”
Josephs rose half stupid, and Hodges rolled up his bed and blanket.
“Are you really going to rob me of my bed?” inquired Josephs slowly and firmly.
“Rob you, you young dog? Here is the governor's order. No bed and gas for fourteen days.”
“No bed nor gas for fourteen days! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!”
“Oh, you laugh at that, do you?”
“I laugh at Mr. Hawes thinking to keep me out of bed for fourteen days, a poor wornout boy like me. You tell Hawes I'll find a bed in spite of him long before fourteen days.”
Hodges looked about the cell for this other bed. “Come,” said he, “you must not chaff the officers. The governor will serve you out enough without your giving us any of your sauce.”
Hodges was going with the bed. Josephs stopped him. The boy took this last blow quite differently from the gas; no impatience or burst of sorrow now.
“Won't you bid me good-by, Mr. Hodges?” asked he.
“Why not? Good-night.”
“That isn't what I mean. Mr. Evans gave me his hand.”
“Did he? what for?”
“And so must you. Oh, you may as well, Mr. Hodges. I never came to you and took away your little bit of light and your little bit of sleep. So you can take my hand if I can give it you. You will be sorry afterward if you say no.”
“There it is—what the better are you for that, you young fool? I'll tell you what it is, you are turning soft. I don't know what to make of you. I shall come to your cell the first thing in the morning.”
“Ay, do, Mr. Hodges,” said Josephs, “and then you won't be sorry you shook hands at night.”
At this moment the boy's supper was thrust through the trap-door; it was not the supper by law appointed, but six ounces of bread and a can of water.
Hodges, now that he had touched the prisoner's hand, felt his first spark of something bordering on sympathy. He looked at the grub half ashamed and made a wry face. Josephs caught his look and answered it.
“It is as much as I shall want,” said he very calmly, and he smiled at Hodges as he spoke, a sweet and tender but dogged smile; a smile to live in a man's memory for years.
The door was closed with a loud snap, and Josephs was left to face the long night (it was now seven o'clock) in his wet clothes, which smoked with the warmth his late bed had begun to cherish; but they soon ceased to smoke as the boy froze.
Night advanced. Josephs walked about his little cell, his teeth chattering, then flung himself like a dead log on the floor, and finding Hawes's spirit in the cold, hard stone, rose and crawled shivering to and fro again.
Meantime we were all in our nice soft beds; such as found three blankets too little added a dressing-gown of flannel, or print lined with wadding or fleecy hosiery, and so made shift. In particular all those who had the care of Josephs took care to lie warm and soft. Hawes, Jones, Hodges, Fry, Justices Shallow and Woodcock, all took the care of their own carcasses they did not take of Josephs' youthful frame.
“Be cold at night? Not if we know it; why you can't sleep if you are not thoroughly warm!!”
CHAPTER XIX.
MIDNIGHT!
Josephs was crouched shivering under the door of his cell, listening.
“All right now. I think they are all asleep; now is the time.”
Hawes, Hodges, Jones, Fry, were snoring without a thought of him they had left to pass the live-long night, clothed in a sponge, cradled on a stone.
DORMEZ, MESSIEURS! TOUT EST TRANQUILLE; DORMEZ!
CHAPTER XX.
PAST one o'clock!
The moon was up, but often obscured; clouds drifted swiftly across her face; it was a cold morning—past one o'clock. Josephs was at his window standing tiptoe on his stool. Thoughts coursed one another across his broken heart as fast as the clouds flew past the moon's face. But whatever their nature, the sting was now out of them. The bitter sense of wrong and cruelty was there, but blunted. Fear was nearly extinct, for hope was dead.
There was no tumult in his mind now; he had gone through all that, and had got a step beyond grief or pain.
Thus ran his thoughts: “I wonder what Hawes was going to do with me to-morrow. Something worse than all I have gone through, he said. That seems hard to believe. But I don't know. Best not give him the chance. He does know how to torture one. Well, he must keep it for some other poor fellow. I hope it won't be Robinson. I'll have a look at out-a-doors first. Ah! there is the moon. I wonder does she see what is done here. And there is the sky; it is a beautiful place. Who would stay here under Hawes if they could get up there? God lives up there! I am almost afraid He won't let a poor wicked boy like me come where He is. And they say this is a sin, too. He will be angry with me—but I couldn't help it. I shall tell Him what I went through first, and perhaps He will forgive me. His reverence told me He takes the part of those that are ill-used. It will be a good job for me if 'tis so. Perhaps He will serve Hawes out for this instead of me. I think I should if I was Him. I know He can't be so cruel as Hawes; that is my only chance, and I'm going to take it.
“Some folk live to eighty; I am only fifteen; that is a long odds, I dare say it is five times as long as fifteen. It is hard—but I can't help it. Hawes wouldn't let me live to be a man; he is stronger than I am. Will it be a long job, I wonder. Some say it hurts a good deal; some think not. I shall soon know—but I shall never tell. That doesn't trouble me, it is only throttling when all is done; and ain't I throttled every day of my life. Shouldn't I be throttled to-morrow if I was such a spoon as to see to-morrow. I mustn't waste much more time or my hands will be crippled with cold and then I shan't be able to.
“Mr. Evans will be sorry. I can't help it. Bless him for being so good to me; and bless Mr. Eden. I hope he will get better, I do. My handkerchief is old, I hope it won't break; oh, no! there is no fear of that. I don't weigh half what I did when I came here.
“My mother will fret—but I can't help it. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! I hope some one will tell her what I went through first; and then she will say, 'Better so than for my body to be abused worse than a dog every day of my life.' I can't help it! and I should be dead any way before the fourteen days were out.
“Now is as good a time as any other; no one is stirring, no. Please forgive me, mother. I couldn't help it. Please forgive me, God Almighty, if you care what a poor boy like me does or is done to—I couldn't help it.”
IL EST DEUX HEURES; TOUT EST TRANQUILLE; DORMEZ, MAITRES, DORMEZ!
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.