MR. MEADOWS went to the bank—into the parlor—and said he must draw seven thousand pounds of cash and securities. The partners look blank.
“I know,” said Meadows, “I should cripple you. Well, I am not going to, nor let any one else—it would not suit my book. Just hand me the securities and let me make over that sum to George Fielding and Thomas Robinson. There! now for some months to come those two men are not to know how rich they are, in fact not till I tell them.” A very ready consent to this was given by both partners; I am afraid I might say an eager consent.
“There! now I feel another man, that is off me anyway,” and Meadows strode home double the man. Soon his new top-boots were on, and his new dark blue coat with flat double-gilt buttons, and his hat broadish in the brim, and he looked the model of a British yeoman; he reached Grassmere before eleven o'clock. It was to be a very quiet wedding, but the bridesmaids, etc., were there, and Susan all in white, pale but very lovely. Father-in-law cracking jokes, Susan writhing under them.
“Now, then, is it to be a wedding without bells, for I hear none?”
“That it shall not,” cried one of the young men; and off they ran to the church.
Meantime Meadows was the life and soul of the mirthful scene. He was in a violent excitement that passed with the rustics for gayety natural to the occasion. They did not notice his anxious glances up the hill that led to Newborough; his eager and repeated looks at his watch, the sigh of relief when the church-bells pealed out, the tremors of impatience, the struggle to appear cool as he sent one to hurry the clerk, another to tell the clergyman the bride was ready; the stamp of the foot when one of the bridesmaids took ten minutes to tie on a bonnet. He walked arm in arm, with Susan waiting for this girl; at last she was ready. Then came one running to say that the parson was not come home yet. What it cost him not to swear at the parson with Susan on his arm and the church in sight!
While he was thus fuming inwardly, a handsome, dark-eyed youth came up and inquired which was the bride. She was pointed out to him. “A letter for you, Miss Merton.”
“For me? Who from?”
She glanced at the handwriting, and Meadows looked keenly in the boy's face. “A Jew,” said he to himself. “Susan, you have got your gloves on.” And in a moment he took the letter from her, but quietly, and opened it as if to return it to her to read. He glanced down it, saw “Jefferies, postmaster,” and at the bottom “Isaac Levi.” With wonderful presence of mind he tore it in pieces. “An insult, Susan,” he cried. “A mean, malignant insult to set you against me—a wife against her husband.”
Ere the words were out of his mouth he seized the young Jew and whirled him like a feather into the hands of his friends. “Duck him!” cried he. And in a moment, spite of his remonstrances and attempts at explanation, Nathan was flung into the horse-pond. He struggled out on the other side, and stood on the bank in a stupor of rage and terror, while the bridegroom menaced him with another dose, should he venture to return. “I will tell you all about it to-morrow, Susan.”
“Calm yourself,” replied Susan. “I know you have enemies, but why punish a messenger for the letter he only carries?”
“You are an angel, Susan. Boys, let him alone, do you hear?” N. B. He had been ducked.
And now a loud hurrah was heard from behind the church. “The parson, at last,” cried Meadows, exultingly. Susan lowered her eyes, and hated herself for the shiver that passed through her. To her the parson was the executioner.
It was not the parson. The next moment two figures came round in sight. Meadows turned away with a groan. “George Fielding!” said he. The words dropped, as it were, out of his mouth.
Susan misunderstood this. She thought he read her heart, and ascribed her repugnance to her lingering attachment to George. She was angry with herself for letting this worthy man see her want of pride. “Why do you mention that name to me? What do I care for him who has deceived me? I wish he stood at the church door, that he might see how I would look at him and pass him leaning on your faithful arm.”
“Susan!” cried a well-known voice behind her. She trembled and almost crouched ere she turned; but the moment she turned round she gave a scream that brought all the company running, and the bride forgot everything at the sight of George's handsome, honest face beaming truth and love, and threw herself into his arms. George kissed the bride.
“Oh!” cried the bridesmaids, awaking from their stupor, and remembering this was her old lover. “Oh!” “Oh!!” “Oh!!!” on an ascending scale.
These exclamations brought Susan to her senses. She sprang from George as though an adder had stung her; and, red as fire, her eyes like basilisks', she turned on him at a safe distance. “How dare you embrace me? How dare you come where I am? Father, ask this man why he comes here now to make me expose myself, and insult the honest man who honors me with his respect. Oh, father, come to me, and take me away from here.”
“Susan, what on earth is this? what have I done?”
“What have you done? You are false to me! you never wrote me a letter for twelve months, and you are married to a lady in Bathurst! Oh, George!”
“If he is,” cried Robinson, “he must be slyer than I give him credit for, for I have never left his side night nor day, and I never saw him say three civil words to a woman.”
“Mr. Robinson!”
“Yes, Mr. Robinson. Somebody has been making a fool of you, Miss Merton. Why, all his cry night and day has been, 'Susan! Susan!' When we found the great nugget he kisses it, and says he, 'There, that is not because you are gold, but because you take me to Susan.'”
“Hold your tongue, Tom,” said George, sternly. “Who puts me on my defense? Is there any man here who has been telling her I have ever had a thought of any girl but her? If there is, let him stand out now and say it to my face if he dares.” There was a dead silence. “There is a lie without a backer, it seems;” and he looked round on all the company with his calm superior eye. “And now, Susan, what were you doing on that man's arm?”
“Oh!”
“Miss Merton and I are to be married to-day,” said Meadows, “that is why I gave her my arm.”
George gasped for breath, but he controlled himself by a mighty effort. “She thought me false, and now she knows I am true. Susan,” faltered he, “I say nothing about the promises that have passed between us two, and the ring you gave. Here it is.”
“He has kept my ring!”
“I was there before you, Mr. Meadows—but I won't stand upon that; I don't believe there is a man in the world loves a woman in the world better than I love Susan; but still I would not give a snap of the finger to have her if her will was toward another. So please yourself, my lass, and don't cry like that; only this must end. I won't live in doubt a moment, no, nor half a moment. Speak your pleasure and nothing else; choose between John Meadows and George Fielding.”
“That is fair,” cried one of the bridegrooms. The women secretly admired George. This is a man, thought they—won't stand our nonsense.
Susan looked up in mute astonishment. “What choice can there be? The moment I saw your face, and truth still shining in it, I forgot there was a John Meadows in the world!”
With these words Susan cast a terrified look all round, and, losing every other feeling in a paroxysm of shame, hid her burning face in her hands, and made a sudden bolt into the house and upstairs to her room, where she was followed and discovered by one of her bridesmaids tearing off her wedding-clothes, and laughing and crying all in a breath.
1st Bridegroom. “Well, Josh, what d'ye think?”
2d Bridegroom. “Why, I think there won't be a wedding to-day.”
1st Bridegroom. “No, nor to-morrow neither. Sal, put on your bonnet and let's you and I go home. I came to Meadows' wedding; mustn't stay to anybody's else's.”
These remarks were delivered openly, pro bono, and dissolved the wedding party. Four principal parties remained—Meadows, old Merton, and the two friends.
“Well, uncle, Susan has spoken her mind, now you speak yours.”
“George, I have been an imprudent fool, I am on the brink of ruin. I owe more than two thousand pounds. We heard you had changed your mind, and Meadows came forward like a man, and said he would—”
“Your word, uncle, your promise. I crossed the seas on the faith of it.” An upper window was gently opened, and a blushing face listened, and the hand that they were all discussing and disposing of drew back a little curtain, and clutched it convulsively.
“You did, George,” said the old farmer.
“Says you, 'Bring back a thousand pounds to show me you are not a fool, and you shall have my daughter,' and she was to have your blessing. Am I right, Mr. Meadows? you were present.”
“Those were the words,” replied Meadows.
“Well! and have you brought back the thousand pounds?”
“I have.”
“John, I must stand to my word; and I will—it is justice. Take the girl, and be as happy as you can with her, and her father in the work-house.”
“I take her, and that is as much as to say that neither her father nor any one she respects shall go to the workhouse. How much is my share, Tom?”
“Four thousand pounds.”
“No, not so much.”
“Yes, it is. Jacky gave you his share of the great nugget, and you gave him sheep in return. Here they are, lads and lasses, seventy of them varying from one five six naught to one six two nine, and all as crimp as a muslin gown new starched. Why? I never put this,” and he took pieces of newspaper out of his pocketbook, and looked stupidly at each as it came out.
“Why, Tom?”
“Robbed!”
“Robbed, Tom?”
“Robbed! oh! I put the book under my pillow, and there I found it this morning. Robbed! robbed! Kill me, George, I have ruined you.”
“I can't speak,” gasped George. “Oh, what is the meaning of this?”
“But I can speak! Don't tell me of a London thief being robbed!!! George Fielding, if you are a man at all, go and leave me and my daughter in peace. If you had come home with money to keep her, I was ready to give you Susan to my own ruin. Now it is your turn to show yourself the right stuff. My daughter has given her hand to a man who can make a lady of her, and set me on my legs again. You can only beggar us. Don't stand in the poor girl's light; for pity's sake, George, leave us in peace.”
“You are right, old man; my head is confused;” and George put his hand feebly to his brow. “But I seem to see it is my duty to go, and I'll go.” George staggered. Robinson made toward him to support him. “There, don't make a fuss with me. There is nothing the matter with me—only my heart is dead. Let me sit on this bench and draw my breath a minute—and then—I'll go. Give me your hand, Tom. Never heed their jibes. I'd trust you with more gold than the best of them was ever worth.”
Robinson began to blubber the moment George took his hand, spite of the money lost. “We worked hard for it, too, good folks, and risked our lives as well as our toil;” and George and Robinson sat hand in hand upon the bench, and turned their heads away—that it was pitiful to see.
But still the pair held one another by the hand, and George said, faltering: “I have got this left me still. Ay, I have heard say that friendship was better than love, and I dare say so it is.”
As if to plead against this verdict, Susan came timidly to her lover in his sorrow, and sat on his other side, and laid her head gently on his shoulder. “What signifies money to us two?” she murmured. “Oh, I have been robbed of what was dearer than life this bitter year, and now you are down-hearted at loss of money. How foolish to grieve for such nonsense when I am so hap—hap—happy!” and again the lovely face rested light as down on George's shoulder, weeping deliciously.
“It is hard, Tom,” gasped George; “it is bitter hard; but I shall find a little bit of manhood by and by to do my duty. Give me breath! only give me breath! We will go back again where we came from, Tom; only I shall have nothing to work for now. Where is William, if you please? Has he forgotten me, too?”
“William is in prison for debt,” said old Merton, gravely.
“No, he is not,” put in Meadows, “for I sent the money to let him out an hour ago.”
“You sent the money to let my brother out of jail? That sounds queer to me. I suppose I ought to thank you, but I can't.”
“I don't ask your thanks, young man.”
“You see, George,” said old Merton, “ours is a poor family, and it will be a great thing for us all to have such a man as Mr. Meadows in it, if you will only let us.”
“Oh, father, you make me blush,” cried Susan, beginning to get her first glimpse of his character.
“He doesn't make me blush,” cried George; “but he makes me sick. This old man would make me walk out of heaven if he was in it. Come, let us go back to Australia.”
“Ay, that is the best thing you can do,” cried old Merton.
“If he does, I shall go with him,” said Susan, with sudden calmness. She added, dropping her voice, “If he thinks me worthy to go anywhere with him.”
“You are worthy of better than that, and better shall be your luck;” and George sat down on the bench with one bitter sob that seemed to tear his manly heart in two.
There was a time Meadows would have melted at this sad sight, but now it enraged him. He whispered fiercely to old Merton: “Touch him on his pride; get rid of him, and your debts shall be all paid that hour; if not—” He then turned to that heart-stricken trio, touched his hat, “Good-day, all the company,” said he, and strode away with rage in his heart to set the law in motion against old Merton, and so drive matters to a point.
But before he had taken a dozen steps he was met by two men who planted themselves right before him. “You can't pass, sir.”
Meadows looked at them with humorous surprise. They had hooked noses. He did not like that so well.
“Why not?” said he, quietly, but with a wicked look.
One of the men whistled, a man popped out of the churchyard and joined the two; he had a hooked nose. Another came through the gate from the lane; another from behind the house. The scene kept quietly filling with hooked noses till it seemed as if the ten tribes were reassembling from the four winds.
“Are they going to pitch into me?” thought Meadows; and he felt in his pocket to see if his pistol was there.
Meantime, George and Susan and Tom rose to their feet in some astonishment.
“There is a chentleman coming to put a question or two,” said the first speaker. And, in fact, an old acquaintance of ours, Mr. Williams, came riding up, and, hooking his horse to the gate, came in, saying, “Oh, here you are, Mr. Meadows. There is a ridiculous charge brought against you, but I am obliged to hear it before dismissing it. Give me a seat. Oh, here is a bench. It is very hot. I am informed that two men belonging to this place have been robbed of seven thousand pounds at the 'King's Head'—the 'King's Heads in Newborough.”
“It is true, sir,” cried Robinson, “but how did you know?”
“I am here to ask questions,” was the sharp answer. “Who are you?”
“Thomas Robinson.”
“Which is George Fielding?”
“I am George Fielding, sir.
“Have you been robbed?”
“We have, sir.”
“Of how much?”
“Seven thousand pounds.”
“Come, that tallies with the old gentleman's account. Hum! where did you sleep last night, Mr. Meadows?”
“At the 'King's Head' in Newborough, sir,” replied Meadows, without any visible hesitation.
“Well, that is curious, but I need not say I don't believe it is more than coincidence. Where is the old gentleman? Oh! give way there, and let him come here.”
Now all this was inexplicable to Meadows, but still it brought a deadly chill of vague apprehension over him. He felt as if a huge gossamer net was closing round him. Another moment the only spider capable of spinning it stood in front of him. “I thought so,” dropped from his lips as Isaac Levi and he stood once more face to face.
“I accuse that man of the theft. Nathan and I heard him tell Crawley that he had drugged the young man's liquor and stolen the notes. Then we heard Crawley beg for the notes, and after much entreaty he gave them him.”
“It is true!” cried Robinson, in violent agitation; “it must be true. You know what a light sleeper I am, and how often you had to shake me this morning. I was hocussed and no mistake!”
“Silence!”
“Yes, your worship.”
“Where were you, Mr. Levi, to hear all this?”
“In the east room of my house.”
“And where was he?”
“In the west room of his house.”
“It is impossible.”
“Say not so, sir. I will show you it is true. Meantime I will explain it.”
He explained his contrivance at full. Meadows hung his head; he saw how terribly the subtle Oriental had outwitted him; yet his presence of mind never for a moment deserted him.
“Sir,” said he, “I have had the misfortune to offend Mr. Levi, and he is my sworn enemy. If you really mean to go into this ridiculous affair, allow me to bring witnesses, and I will prove to you he has been threatening vengeance against me these two years—and you know a lie is not much to a Jew. Does this appear likely? I am worth sixty thousand pounds—why should I steal?”
“Why, indeed?” said Mr. Williams. “I stole these notes to give them away—that is your story, is it?”
“Nay, you stole them to beggar your rival, whose letters to the maiden he loved you had intercepted by fraud at the post-office in Farnborough.” Susan and George uttered an exclamation at the same moment. “But, having stole them, you gave them to Crawley.”
“How generous!” sneered Meadows. “Well, when you find Crawley with seven thousand pounds, and he says I gave them him, Mr. Williams will take your word against mine, and not till then, I think.”
“Certainly not—the most respectable man for miles round!”
“So be it,” retorted Isaac, coolly; “Nathan, bring Crawley.” At that unexpected word, Meadows looked round for a way to escape. The hooked-nosed ones hemmed him in. Crawley was brought out of the fly, quaking with fear.
“Sir,” said Levi, “if in that man's bosom, on the left-hand side, the missing notes are not found, let me suffer scorn; but, if they be found, give us justice on the evil-doer.”
The constable searched Crawley amid the intense anxiety of all present. He found a bundle of notes. There was a universal cry.
“Stop, sir!” said Robinson, “to make sure I will describe our property—seventy notes of one hundred pounds each. Numbers one five six naught to one six two nine.”
Mr. Williams examined the bundle, and at once handed them over to Robinson, who shoved them hastily into George's hands and danced for joy.
Mr. Williams looked ruefully at Meadows, then he hesitated; then, turning sharply to Crawley, he said, “Where did you get these?”
Meadows tried to catch his eye and prevail on him to say nothing; but Crawley, who had not heard Levi's evidence, made sure of saving himself by means of Meadows' reputation.
“I had them from Mr. Meadows,” he cried; “and what about it? it is not the first time he has trusted me with much larger sums than that.”
“Oh! you had them from Mr. Meadows?”
“Yes, I had!”
“Mr. Meadows, I am sorry to say I must commit you; but I still hope you will clear yourself elsewhere.”
“I have not the least uneasiness about that, sir, thank you. You will admit me to bail, of course?”
“Impossible! Wood, here is a warrant, I will sign it.”
While the magistrate was signing the warrant, Meadows' head fell upon his breast; he seemed to collapse standing.
Isaac Levi eyed him scornfully. “You had no mercy on the old Jew. You took his house from him, not for your need but for hate. So he made that house a trap and caught you in your villainy.”
“Yes! you have caught me,” cried Meadows, “but you will never cage me!” and in a moment his pistol was at his own temple and he pulled the trigger—the cap failed; he pulled the other trigger, the other cap failed. He gave a yell like a wounded tiger, and stood at bay gnashing his teeth with rage and despair. Half a dozen men threw themselves upon him, and a struggle ensued that almost baffles description. He dragged those six men about up and down, some clinging to his legs, some to his body. He whirled nearly every one of them to the ground in turn; and, when by pulling at his legs they got him down, he fought like a badger on his back, seized two by the throat, and putting his feet under another drove him into the air doubled up like a ball, and he fell on Levi and sent the old man into Mr. Williams' arms, who sat down with a Jew in his lap, to the derangement of his magisterial dignity.
At last he was mastered, and his hands tied behind him with two handkerchiefs.
“Take the rascal to jail!” cried Williams, in a passion. Meadows groaned. “Ay! take me,” said he, “you can't make me live there. I've lived respected all these years, and now I shall be called a felon. Take me where I may hide my head and die!” and the wretched man moved away with feeble steps, his strength and spirit crushed now his hands were tied.
Then Crawley followed him, abusing and reviling him. “So this is the end of all your maneuvering! Oh, what a fool I was to side with such a bungler as you against Mr. Levi. Here am I, an innocent man, ruined through knowing a thief—ah! you don't like that word, but what else are you but a thief?” and so he followed his late idol and heaped reproaches and insults on him, till at last Meadows turned round and cast a vague look of mute despair, as much as to say, “How am I fallen, when this can trample me!”
One of the company saw this look and understood it. Yielding to an impulse he took three steps, and laid his hand on Crawley. “Ye little snake,” said he, “let the man alone!” and he sent Crawley spinning like a teetotum; then turned on his own heel and came away, looking a little red and ashamed of what he had done. My reader shall guess which of the company this was.
Half way to the county jail Meadows and Crawley met William Fielding coming back.
It took hours and hours to realize all the happiness that had fallen on two loving hearts. First had to pass away many a spasm of terror at the wrongs they had suffered, the danger they had escaped, the long misery they had grazed. They remained rooted to the narrow spot of ground where such great and strange events had passed in a few minutes, and their destinies had fluctuated so violently, and all ended in joy unspeakable. And everybody put questions to everybody, and all compared notes, and the hours fled while they unraveled their own strange story. And Susan and George almost worshipped Isaac Levi; and Susan kissed him and called him her father, and hung upon his neck all gratitude. And he passed his hand over her chestnut hair, and said, “Go to, foolish child,” but his deep rich voice trembled a little, and wonderful tenderness and benevolence glistened in that fiery eye.
He would now have left them, but nobody there would part with him; behooved him to stay and eat fish and pudding with them—the meat they would excuse him if he would be good and not talk about going again. And after dinner George and Tom must tell their whole story; and, as they told their eventful lives, it was observed that the hearers were far more agitated than the narrators. The latter had been in a gold mine; had supped so full of adventures and crimes and horrors that nothing astonished them, and they were made sensible of the tremendous scenes they had been through by the loud ejaculations, the pallor, the excitement of their hearers. As for Susan, again and again during the men's narratives the tears streamed down her face, and once she was taken faint at George's peril, and the story had to be interrupted and water sprinkled on her, and the men in their innocence were for not going on with their part, but she peremptorily insisted, and sneered at them for being so foolish as to take any notice of her foolishness—she would have every word. After all was he not there alive and well, sent back to her safe after so many perils, never, never to leave England again!
“Oh, giorno felice!” A day to be imagined; or described by a pen a thousand times greater and subtler than mine, but of this be sure—it was a day such as, neither to Susan nor George, nor to you nor me, nor to any man or woman upon earth, has ever come twice between the cradle and the grave.
A MONTH of Elysium. And then one day George asked Susan, plump, when it would be agreeable to her to marry him.
“Marry you, George?” replied Susan, opening her eyes; “why, never! I shall never marry any one after—you must be well aware of that.” Susan proceeded to inform George, that, though foolishness was a part of her character, selfishness was not; recent events had destroyed an agreeable delusion under which she had imagined herself worthy to be Mrs. George Fielding; she therefore, though with some reluctance, intended to resign that situation to some wiser and better woman than she had turned out. In this agreeable resolution she persisted, varying it occasionally with little showers of tears unaccompanied by the slightest convulsion of the muscles of the face. But, as I am not, like George Fielding, in love with Susan Merton, or with self-deception (another's), I spare the reader all the pretty things this young lady said and believed and did, to postpone her inevitable happiness. Yes, inevitable, for this sort of thing never yet kept lovers long apart since the world was, except in a novel worse than common. I will but relate how that fine fellow, George, dried “these foolish drops” on one occasion.
“Susan,” said he, “if I had found you going to be married to another man with the roses on your cheek, I should have turned on my heel and back to Australia. But a look in your face was enough; you were miserable, and any old fool could see your heart was dead against it; look at you now blooming like a rose, so what is the use of us two fighting against human nature? we can't be happy apart—let us come together.”
“Ah! George, if I thought your happiness depended on having—a foolish wife—”
“Why, you know it does,” replied the inadvertent Agricola.
“That alters the case; sooner than you should be unhappy—I think—I—”
“Name the day, then.”
In short the bells rang a merry peal, and to reconcile Susan to her unavoidable happiness, Mr. Eden came down and gave an additional weight (in her way of viewing things) to the marriage ceremony by officiating. It must be owned that this favorable circumstance cost her a few tears, too.
How so, Mr. Reade?
Marry, sir, thus: Mr. Eden was what they call eccentric; among his other deviations from usage he delivered the meaning of sentences in church along with the words.
This was a thunder-clap to poor Susan. She had often heard a chanting machine utter the marriage service all on one note, and heard it with a certain smile of unintelligent complacency her sex wear out of politeness; but when the man Eden told her at the altar with simple earnestness what a high and deep and solemn contract she was making then and there with God and man, she began to cry, and wept like April through the ceremony.
I have not quite done with this pair, but leave them a few minutes, for some words are due to other characters, and to none, I think, more than to this very Mr. Eden, whose zeal and wisdom brought our hero and unheroine happily together through the subtle sequence of causes I have related, the prime thread a converted thief.
Mr. Eden's strength broke down under the prodigious effort to defeat the effect of separate confinement on the bodies and souls of his prisoners. Dr. Gulson ordered him abroad. Having now since the removal of Hawes given the separate and silent system a long and impartial trial, his last public act was to write at the foot of his report a solemn protest against it, as an impious and mad attempt to defy God's will as written on the face of man's nature—to crush too those very instincts from which rise communities, cities, laws, prisons, churches, civilization—and to wreck souls and bodies under pretense of curing souls, not by knowledge, wisdom, patience, Christian love, or any great moral effort, but by the easy and physical expedient of turning one key on each prisoner instead of on a score.
“These,” said Mr. Eden, “are the dreams of selfish, lazy, heartless dunces and reckless bigots, dwarf Robespierres, with self-deceiving hearts that dream philanthropy, fluent lips that cant philanthropy and hands swift to shed blood—which is not blood to them—because they are mere sensual brutes, so low in intelligence that, although men are murdered and die before their eyes, they cannot see it was murder, because there was no knocking on the head or cutting of throats.”
The reverend gentleman then formally washed his hands of the bloodshed and reason-shed of the separate system, and resigned his office, earnestly requesting at the same time that, as soon as the government should come round to his opinion, they would permit him to co-operate in any enlightened experiment where God should no longer be defied by a knot of worms as in —— Jail.
Then he went abroad, but though professedly hunting health he visited and inspected half the principal prisons in Europe. After many months events justified his prediction. The government started a large prison on common sense and humanity, and Mr. Lacy's interest procured Mr. Eden the place of its chaplain.
This prison was what every prison in the English provinces will be in five years' time—a well-ordered community, an epitome of the world at large, for which a prison is to prepare men, not unfit them as frenzied dunces would do; it was also a self-sustaining community, like the world. The prisoners ate prisoner-grown corn and meat, wore prisoner-made clothes and bedding, wire lighted by gas made in the prison, etc., etc., etc., etc. The agricultural laborers had out-door work suited to their future destiny, and mechanical trades were zealously ransacked for the city rogues. Anti-theft reigned triumphant. No idleness, no wicked waste of sweat.
The members of this community sleep in separate cells, as men do in other well-ordered communities, but they do not pine and wither and die in cells for offenses committee outside the prison walls. Here, if you see a man caged like a wild beast all day, you may be sure he is there, not so much for his own good as for that of the little community in which he has proved himself unworthy to mix pro tem. Foul language and contamination are checkmated here, not by the lazy, selfish, cruel expedient of universal solitude, but by Argus-like surveillance. Officers, sufficient in number, listen with sharp ears, and look with keen eyes. The contaminator is sure to be seized and confined till prudence, if not virtue, ties his tongue. Thus he is disarmed, and the better-disposed encourage one another. Compare this legitimate and necessary use of that most terrible of tortures, the cell, with the tigro-asinine use of it in seven English prisons out of nine at the present date. It is just the difference between arsenic as used by a good physician and by a poisoner. It is the difference between a razor-bladed, needle-pointed knife in the hands of a Christian, a philosopher, a skilled surgeon, and the same knife in the hands of a savage, a brute, a scoundrel, or a fanatical idiot.
Mr. Eden had returned from abroad but a fortnight when he was called on to unite George and Susan.
I have little more to add than that he was very hard worked and supremely happy in his new situation, and that I have failed to do him justice in these pages. But he shall have justice one day, when pitiless asses will find themselves more foul in the eyes of the All-pure than the thieves they crushed under four walls, and “The just shall shine forth as the sun, and they that turn* many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever.”
Thomas Robinson did not stay long at Grassmere. Things were said in the village that wounded him. Ill-repute will not stop directly ill-conduct does. He went to see Mr. Eden, sent his name in as Mr. Sinclair, was received with open arms, and gave the good man a glow of happiness such as most of us, I fear, go to the grave without feeling—or earning. He presented him a massive gold ring he had hammered out of a nugget. Mr. Eden had never worn a ring in his life, but he wore this with an innocent pride, and showed it people, and valued it more than he would the Pitt diamond, which a French king bought of an English subject, and the price was so heavy he paid for it by installments spread over many years.
Robinson very wisely went back to Australia, and, more wisely still, married Jenny, with whom he had corresponded ever since he left her.
I have no fear he will ever break the Eighth Commandment again. His heart was touched long ago, and ever since then his understanding had received conviction upon conviction; for, oh, the blaze of light that enters our souls when our fate puts us in his place—in her place—in their place—whom we used to strike, never realizing how it hurt them! He is respected for his intelligence and good-nature; he is sober, industrious, pushing and punctilious in business. One trait of the Bohemian remains. About every four months a restlessness comes over him; then the wise Jenny of her own accord proposes a trip. Poor Tom's eyes sparkle directly; off they go together. A foolish wife would have made him go alone. They come back, and my lord goes to his duties with fresh zest till the periodical fit comes again. No harm ever comes of it.
Servants are at a great premium, masters at a discount, in the colony; hence a domestic phenomenon, which my English readers can hardly conceive, but I am told my American friends have a faint glimpse of it in the occasional deportment of their “helps” in out-of-the-way places.
Now Tom, and especially Jenny, had looked forward to reigning in their own house, and it was therefore a disappointment when they found themselves snubbed and treated with hauteur, and Jenny revolted against servant after servant, who straightway abdicated and left her forlorn. At last their advertisement was answered by a male candidate for menial authority, who proved to be Mr. Miles, their late master. Tom and Jenny colored up, and both agreed it was out of the question—they should feel too ashamed. Mr. Miles answered by offering to bet a crown he should make them the best servant in the street; and, strange to say, the bargain was struck and he did turn out a model servant. He was civil and respectful, especially in public, and never abused his situation. Comparing his conduct with his predecessors', it really appeared that a gentleman can beat snobs in various relations of life. As Tom's master and Jenny's, he had never descended to servility, nor was he betrayed into arrogance now that he had risen to be their servant.
A word about Jacky. After the meal off the scented rabbit in the bush, Robinson said slyly to George: “I thought you promised Jacky a hiding—well, here he is.”
“Now, Tom,” replied the other, coloring up, “is it reasonable, and he has just saved our two lives? but if you think that I won't take him to task, you are much mistaken.”
George then remonstrated with the chief for spoiling Abner with his tomahawk. Jacky opened his eyes with astonishment and admiration. Here was another instance of the white fellow's wonderful power of seeing things a good way behind him. He half closed his eyes, and tried in humble imitation to peer back into the past. Yes! he could just manage to see himself very indistinctly giving Abner a crack; but stop! let him see, it was impossible to be positive, but was not there also some small trifle of insolence, ingratitude, and above all bungality, on the part of this Abner? When the distance had become too great to see the whole of a transaction, why strain the eyes looking at a part? Finally Jacky submitted that these microscopic researches cost a good deal of trouble, and on the whole his tribe were wiser than the white fellows in this, that they reveled in the present, and looked on the past as a period that never had been, and the future as one that never would be. On this George resigned the moral culture of his friend. “Soil is not altogether bad,” said Agricola, “but, bless your heart, it isn't a quarter of an inch deep.”
On George's departure, Jacky, being under the temporary impression of his words, collected together a mixed company of blacks, and marched them to his possessions. Arrived, he harangued them on the cleverness of the white fellows, and invited them to play at Europeans.
“Behold this ingenious structure,” said he, in Australian; “this is called a house; its use is to protect us from the weather at night; all you have to do is to notice which way the wind blows, and go and lie down on the opposite side of the house and there you are. Then again, when you are cold, you will find a number of wooden articles in the house. You go in, you bring them out and burn them and are warm.” He then produced what he had always considered the chef d'oeuvre of the white races, a box of lucifer matches; this, too, was a present from George. “See what clever fellows they are,” said he, “they carry about fire, which is fire or not fire at the fortunate possessor's will;” and he let off a lucifer. These the tribe admired, but doubted whether all those little sticks had the same marvelous property and would become fire in the hour of need; Jacky sneered at their incredulity, and let them all off one by one in a series of preliminary experiments; this impaired their future usefulness. In short, they settled there; one or two's heads had to be broken for killing the breeders for dinner, and that practice stopped; but the pot-bellied youngsters generally celebrated the birth of a lamb by spearing it. They slept on the lee side of the house, warmed at night by the chairs and tables, etc., which they lighted. They got on very nicely, only one fine morning, without the slightest warning, whir-r-r-r they all went off to the woods, Jacky and all, and never returned. The remaining bullocks strayed devious, and the douce McLaughlan blandly absorbed the sheep.
Hasty and imperfect as my sketch of this Jacky is, give it a place in your notebook of sketches, for in a few years the Australian savage will breathe only in these pages, and the Saxon plow will erase his very grave, his milmeridien.
brutus lived; but the form and strength he had abused were gone—he is the shape of a note of interrogation, and by a coincidence is now an “asker,” i.e., he begs, receives alms, and sets on a gang of burglars, with whom he is in league, to rob the good Christians that show him pity.
mephistopheles came suddenly to grief; when gold was found in Victoria he crossed over to that port and robbed. One day he robbed the tent of an old man, a native of the colony, who was digging there with his son, a lad of fifteen. Now these currency lads are very sharp and determined. The youngster caught a glimpse of the retiring thief and followed him and saw him enter a tent. He watched at the entrance, and when mephistopheles came out again, he put a pistol to the man's breast and shot him dead without a word of remonstrance, accusation or explanation.
A few diggers ran out of their claims. “If our gold is not on him,” says the youngster, “I have made a mistake.”
The gold was found on the carcass, and the diggers went coolly back to their work.
The youngster went directly to the commissioner and told him what he had done. “I don't see that I am called on to interfere,” replied that functionary; “he was taken in the act; you have buried him, of course.”
“Not I. I let him lie for whoever chose to own him.”
“You let him lie? What, when there is a printed order from the government stuck over the whole mine that nobody is to leave carrion about! You go off directly and bury your carrion or you will get into trouble, young man.” And the official's manner became harsh and threatening.
If ever a man was “shot like a dog,” surely the assassin of Carlo was.
Mr. Meadows in the prison refused his food, and fell into a deep depression; but the third day he revived, and fell to scheming again. He sent to Mr. Levi and offered to give him a long lease of his old house if he would but be absent from the trial. This was a sore temptation to the old man. But meantime stronger measures were taken in his defense and without consulting him.
One evening that Susan and George were in the garden at Grassmere, suddenly an old woman came toward them with slow and hesitating steps. Susan fled at the sight of her—she hated the very name this old woman bore. George stood his ground, looking sheepish; the old woman stood before him trembling violently and fighting against her tears. She could not speak, but held out a letter to him. He took it, the ink was rusty, it was written twenty years ago; it was from his mother to her neighbor, Mrs. Meadows, then on a visit at Newborough, telling her how young John had fought for and protected her against a band of drunken ruffians, and how grateful she was.
“And I do hope, dame, he will be as good friends with my lads when they are men as you and I have been this many a day.”
George did not speak for a long time. He held the letter, and it trembled a little in his hand. He looked at the old woman, standing a piteous, silent supplicant. “Mrs. Meadows,” said he, scarce above a whisper, “give me this letter, if you will be so good. I have not got her handwriting, except our names in the Bible.”
She gave him the letter half reluctantly, and looked fearfully and inquiringly in his face. He smiled kindly, and a sort of proud curl came for a moment to his lip, and the woman read the man. This royal rustic would not have taken the letter if he had not granted the mother's unspoken prayer.
“God bless you both!” said she, and went on her way.
The assizes came, and Meadows' two plaintiffs both were absent: Robinson gone to Australia, and George forfeited his recognizances and had, to pay a hundred pound for it. The defendants were freed. Then Isaac Levi said to himself, “He will not keep faith with me.” But he did not know his man. Meadows had a conscience, though an oblique one. A promise from him was sacred in his own eyes. A man came to Grassmere and left a hundred pound in a letter for George Fielding. Then he went on to Levi, and gave him a parcel and a note. The parcel contained the title-deeds of the house; and the note said: “Take the house and the furniture and pay me what you consider they are worth. And, old man, I think you might take your curse off me, for I have never known a heart at rest since you laid it on me, and you see now our case is altered—you have a home now and John Meadows has none.”
Then the old man was softened, and he wrote a line in reply, and said: “Three just men shall value the house and furniture, and I will pay, etc., etc. Put now adversity to profit—repent and prosper. Isaac Levi wishes you no ill from this day, but rather good.” Thus died, as mortal feelings are apt to die, an enmity its owners thought immortal.
A steam-vessel glided down the Thames bound for Port Phillip. On the deck were to be seen a little girl crying bitterly—this was Hannah—a stalwart, yeoman-like figure, who stood unmoved as the shores glided by,