CHAPTER XV.
GOVERNOR HAWES had qualities good in themselves, but ill-directed, and therefore not good in their results—determination for one. He was not a man to yield a step to opposition. He was a much greater man than Jones. He was like a torrent, to whose progress if you oppose a great stone it brawls and struggles past it and round it and over it with more vigor than before.
“I will be master in this jail!” was the creed of Hawes. He docked Robinson's supper one half, ditto his breakfast next day, and set him a tremendous task of crank. Now in jail a day's food and a day's crank are too nicely balanced to admit of the weights being tampered with. So Robinson's demi-starvation paved the way for further punishment. At one o'clock he was five hundred revolutions short, and instead of going to his dinner he was tied up in the infernal machine. Now the new chaplain came three times into the yard that day, and the third time, about four o'clock, he found Robinson pinned to the wall, jammed in the waistcoat and griped in the collar. His blood ran cold at sight of him, for the man had been hours in the pillory and nature was giving way.
“What has he done?”
“Refractory at crank.”
“I saw him working at the crank when I came here last.”
“Hasn't made his number good, though.”
“Humph! You have the governor's own orders?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long is he to be so?”
“Till fresh orders.”
“I will see the effect of this punishment on the prisoner and note it down for my report.” And he took out his note-book and leaned his back against the wall.
The simple action of taking out a notebook gave the operators a certain qualm of doubt. Fry whispered Hodges to go and tell the governor. On his return Hodges found the parties as he had left them, except Robinson—he was paler and his lips turning bluer.
“Your victim is fainting,” said the chaplain sternly.
“Only shamming, sir,” said Fry. “Bucket, Hodges.”
The bucket was brought and the contents were flung over Robinson.
The chaplain gave a cry of dismay. The turnkeys both laughed at this.
“You see he was only shamming, sir,” said Hodges. “He is come to the moment the water touched him.”
“A plain proof he was not shamming. A bucket of water thrown over any one about to faint would always bring them to; but if a man had made up his mind to sham, he could do it in spite of water. Of course you will take him down now?”
“Not till fresh orders.”
“On your peril be it if any harm befalls this prisoner—you are warned.”
At this juncture Hawes came into the yard. His cheek was flushed and his eye glittered. He expected and rather hoped a collision with his reverence.
“Well, what is the matter?”
“Nothing, sir; only his reverence is threatening us.”
“What is he threatening you for?”
“Mr. Hawes, I told these men that I should hold them responsible if any harm came to the prisoner for their cruelty. I now tell you that he has just fainted from bodily distress caused by this infernal engine, and I hold you, Mr. Hawes, responsible for this man's life and well-being, which are here attacked contrary to the custom of all her majesty's prisons, and contrary to the intention of all punishment, which is for the culprit's good, not for his injury either in soul or body.
“And what will you do?” said Hawes, glaring contemptuously at the turnkeys, who wore rather a blank look.
“Mr. Hawes,” replied the other gravely, “I have spoken to warn you, not to threaten you.”
“What I do is done with the consent of the visiting justices. They are my masters, and no one else.”
“They have not seen a prisoner crucified.”
“Crucified! What d'ye mean by crucified?”
“Don't you see that the torture before our eyes is crucifixion?”
“No! I don't. No nails!”
“Nails were not always used in crucifixion; sometimes cords. Don't deceive yourself with a name; nothing misleads like a false name. This punishment is falsely called the jacket—it is jacket, collar, straps, applied with cruelty. It is crucifixion minus nails but plus a collar.”
“Whatever it is, the justices have seen and approved it. Haven't they, Fry?”
“That they have, sir; scores of times.”
“Then may Heaven forgive them and direct me.” And the chaplain entered the cell despondently, and bent his pitying eye steadily on the thief, who seemed to him at the moment a better companion than the three honest but cruel men.
He waited there very, very sorrowful and thoughtful for more than half an hour. Then Hawes, who left the yard as soon as he had conquered his opponent, sent in Evans with an order to take Robinson to his dormitory.
The chaplain saw the man taken down from the wall, and that done went hastily to his own house; there, the contest being over, he was seized with a violent sickness and trembling. To see a fellow-creature suffer and not be able to relieve him was death to this man. He was game to the last drop of his blood so long as there was any good to be done, but action ended, a reaction came, in which he was all pity and sorrow and distress because of a fellow-creature's distress. No one that saw his firmness in the torture-cell would have guessed how weak he was within, and how stoutly his great heart had to battle against a sensitive nature and nerves tuned too high.
He gave half an hour to the weakness of nature, and then he was all duty once more.
He went first into Robinson's cell. He found him worse than ever: despair as well as hatred gleamed in his eye.
“My poor fellow, is there no way for you to avoid these dreadful punishments?”
No answer.
It is to be observed, though, that Robinson had no idea how far the chaplain had carried his remonstrance against his torture; that remonstrance had been uttered privately to the turnkeys and the governor. Besides, the man was half stupefied when the chaplain first came there. And now he was in such pain and despair. He was like the genii confined in the chest and thrown into the water by Soliman. Had this good friend come to him at first starting, he would have thrown himself into his arms; but it came too late now. He hated all mankind. He had lost all belief in genuine kindness. Like Orlando,
He thought that all things had been savage here.
The chaplain, on the other hand, began to think that Robinson was a downright brute, and one on whom kindness was and would be wasted. Still, true to his nature, he admitted no small pique. He reasoned gently and kindly with him—very kindly.
“My poor soul,” said he, “have you so many friends in this hard place that you can afford to repulse one who desires to be your friend and to do you good?” No answer. “Well, then, if you will not let me comfort you, at least you cannot prevent my praying for you, for you are on the road to despair and will take no help.”
So, then, this good creature did actually kneel upon the hard stones of the cell and offer a prayer—a very short but earnest one.
“Oh God, to whom all hearts are open, enlighten me that I may understand this my afflicted brother's heart, and learn how to do him good, and comfort him out of Thy word—Thy grace assisting me.”
Robinson looked down at him with wild, staring but lack-luster eyes and open mouth. He rose from the floor, and casting a look of great benignity on the sullen brute, he was about to go, when he observed that Robinson was trembling in a very peculiar way.
“You are ill,” said he hastily, and took a step toward him.
At this Robinson, with a wild and furious gesture, waved him to the door and turned his face to the wall; then this refined gentleman bowed his head, as much as to say you shall be master of this apartment and dismiss any one you do not like, and went gently away with a little sigh. And the last that he saw was Robinson trembling with averted face and eyes bent down.
Outside he met Evans, who said to him half bluntly half respectfully, “I don't like to see you going into that cell, sir; the man is not to be trusted. He is very strange.”
“What do you mean? do you fear for his reason?”
“Why not, sir? We have sent a pretty many to the lunatic asylum since I was a warder here.”
“Ah!”
“And some have broke prison a shorter way than that,” said the man very gloomily.
The chaplain groaned—and looked at the speaker with an expression of terror. Evans noticed it and said gravely:
“You should not have come to such place as this, sir; you are not fit for it.”
“Why am I not fit for it?”
“Too good for it, sir.”
“You talk foolishly, Mr. Evans. In the first place, 'too good' is a ludicrous combination of language, in the next the worse a place is the more need of somebody being good in it to make it better. But I suppose you are one of those who think that evil is naturally stronger than good. Delusion springs from this, that the wicked are in earnest and the good are lukewarm. Good is stronger than evil. A single really good man in an ill place is like a little yeast in a gallon of dough; it can leaven the mass. If St. Paul or even George Whitfield had been in Lot's place all those years there would have been more than fifty good men in Sodom; but this is out of place. I want you to give me the benefit of your experience, Evans. When I went to Robinson and spoke kindly to him he trembled all over. What on earth does that mean?”
“Trembled, did he, and never spoke?”
“Yes!—Well?”
“I'm thinking, sir! I'm thinking. You didn't touch him?”
“Touch him, no; what should I touch him for?”
“Well, don't do it, sir. And don't go near him. You have had an escape, you have. He was in two minds about pitching into you.”
“You think it was rage! Humph! it did not give me that impression.”
“Sir, did you ever go to pat a strange dog?”
“I have done myself that honor.”
“Well, if he wags his tail you know it is all right; but say he puts his tail between his legs, what will he do if you pat him?”
“Bite me. Experto crede.”
“No! if you are ever so expert he will bite you or try. Now putting of his tail between his legs, that passes for a sign of fear in a dog, all one as trembling does in a man. Do you see what I am driving at?”
“Yes.”
“Then you had better leave the spiteful brute to himself?”
“No! that would be to condemn him to the worst companion he can have.”
“But if he should pitch into you, sir?”
“Then he will pitch into a man twice as strong as himself, and a pupil of Bendigo. Don't be silly, Evans.”
SUNDAY.
Hodges. Pity you wasn't in chapel, Mr. Fry.
Fry. Why?
Hodges. The new chaplain!
Fry. Well, what did he do?
Hodges. He waked 'em all up, I can tell you. Governor couldn't get a wink all the sermon.
Fry. What did he tell you?
Hodges. Told us he loved us.
Fry. Loved who?
Hodges. All of us. Governor, turnkeys, and especially the prisoners, because they were in trouble. “My Master loves you, though He hates your sins,” says he; and “I love every mother's son of you.” What d'ye think of that? He loves the whole biling! Told 'em so, however.
Fry. Loves 'em, does he? Well, that's a new lay! After all, there's no accounting for tastes, you know. Haw! haw!
Hodges. Haw! haw! ho!
This same Sunday afternoon, soon after service, the chaplain came to Robinson's cell. Evans unlocked it, looking rather uneasy, and would have come in with the reverend gentleman; but he forbade him and walked quickly into the cell, as Van Amburgh goes among his leopards and panthers. He had in his hand a little box.
“I have brought you some ointment—some nice cooling ointment,” said he, “to rub on your neck. I saw it was frayed by that collar.”
(Pause.) No answer.
“Will you let me see you use it?”
No answer.
“Come!”
No answer.
The chaplain took the box off the table, opened it and went up to Robinson and began quietly to apply some of the grateful soothing ointment to his frayed throat. The man trembled all over. The chaplain kept his eye calm but firm upon him, as on a dog of doubtful temper. Robinson put up his hand in a feeble sort of way to prevent the other from doing him good. His reverence took the said hand in a quiet but powerful grasp, and applied the ointment all the same. Robinson said nothing, but he was seized with this extraordinary trembling.
“Good-by,” said his reverence kindly. “I leave you the box; and see, here are some tracts I have selected for you. They are not dull; there are stories in them, and the dialogue is pretty good. It is nearer nature than you will find it in works of greater pretension. Here a carpenter talks something like a carpenter, and a footman something like a footman, and a factory-girl something like a girl employed in a factory. They don't all talk book—you will be able to read them. Begin with this one, 'The Wages of Sin are Death.' Good-by!” And with these words and a kind smile he left the cell.
“From the chaplain, sir,” said Evans to the governor, touching his hat.
“DEAR SIR—Will you be good enough to send me by the bearer a copy of the prison rules, especially those that treat of the punishments to be inflicted on prisoners?
“I am,
“Yours, etc.”
Hawes had no sooner read this innocent-looking missive, than he burst out into a tide of execrations; he concluded by saying, “Tell him I have not got a spare copy; Mr. Jones will give him his.”
This answer disappointed the chaplain sadly; for Mr. Jones had left the town, and was not expected to return for some days. The hostile spirit of the governor was evident in this reply. The chaplain felt he was at war, and his was an energetic but peace-loving nature. He paced the corridor, looking both thoughtful and sad. The rough Evans eyed him with interest, and he also fell into meditation and scratched his head, invariable concomitant of thought with Evans.
It was toward evening, and his reverence still paced the corridor, downhearted at opposition and wickedness, but not without hope, and full of lovely and charitable wishes for all his flock, when the melancholy Fry suddenly came out of a prisoner's cell radiant with joy.
“What is amiss?” asked the chaplain.
“This is the matter,” said Fry, and he showed him a deuce of clubs, a five of hearts and an ace of diamonds, and so on; two or three cards of each suit. “A prisoner has been making these out of his tracts!”
“How could he do that?”
“Look here, sir. He has kept a little of his gruel till it turned to paste, and then he has pasted three or four leaves of the tracts together and dried them, and then cut them into cards.”
“But the colors—how could he get them?”
“That is what beats me altogether; but some of these prisoners know more than the bench of bishops.”
“More evil, I conclude you mean?”
“More of all sorts, sir. However, I am taking them to the governor, and he will fathom it, if any one can.”
“Leave one red card and one black with me.”
While Fry was gong the chaplain examined the cards with curiosity and that admiration of inventive resource which a superior mind cannot help feeling. There they were, a fine red deuce of hearts and a fine black four of spades—cards made without pasteboard and painted without paint. But how? that was the question. The chaplain entered upon this question with his usual zeal; but happening to reverse one of the cards, it was his fate to see on the back of it:
“THE WAGES OF SIN ARE DEATH.”
A Tract.
He reddened at the sight. Here was an affront! “The sulky brute could amuse himself cutting up my tracts!”
Presently the governor came up with his satellites.
“Take No. 19 out of his cell for punishment.”
At this word the chaplain's short-lived anger began to cool. They brought Robinson out.
“So you have been at it again,” cried the governor in threatening terms. “Now you will tell me where you got the paint to make these beauties with?”
No answer.
“Do you hear, ye sulky brute?”
No answer, but a glittering eye bent on Hawes.
“Put him in the jacket,” cried Hawes with an oath.
Hodges and Fry laid each a hand upon the man's shoulder and walked him off.
“Stop!” cried Hawes suddenly; “his reverence is here, and he is not partial to the jacket.”
The chaplain was innocent enough to make a graceful grateful bow to Hawes.
“Give him the dark cell for twenty-four hours,” continued Hawes with a malicious grin.
The thief gave a cry of dismay and shook himself clear of the turnkeys.
“Anything but that,” cried he with trembling voice.
“Oh! you have found your tongue, have you?”
“Any punishment but that,” almost shrieked the despairing man. “Leave me my reason. You have robbed me of everything else. For pity's sake leave me my reason!”
The governor made a signal to the turnkeys; they stepped toward the thief. The thief sprung out of their way, his eye rolling wildly as if in search of escape. Seeing this the two turnkeys darted at him like bulldogs, one on each side. This time, instead of flying, the thief was observed to move his body in a springy way to meet them; with two motions rapid as light and almost contemporaneous, he caught Hodges between the eyes with his fist and drove his head like a battering-ram into Fry's belly. Smack! ooff! and the two powerful men went down like ninepins.
In a moment all the warders within sight or hearing came buzzing round, and Hodges and Fry got up, the latter bleeding; both staring confusedly. Seeing himself hemmed in, Robinson offered no further resistance. He plumped himself down on the ground and there sat, and they had to take him up and carry him to the dark cells. But as they were dragging him along by the shoulders he caught sight of the governor and chaplain looking down at him over the rails of Corridor B. At sight of the latter the thief wrenched himself free from his attendants, and screamed to him:
“Do you see this, you in the black coat? You that told us the other day you loved us, and now stand coolly there and see me taken to the black hole to be got ready for the mad-house? D'ye hear?”
“I hear you,” replied the chaplain gravely and gently.
“You called us your brothers, you.”
“I did, and do.”
“Well, then, here is one of your brothers being taken to hell before your eyes. I go there a man, but I shall come out a beast, and that cowardly murderer by your side knows it, and you have not a word to say. That is all a poor fellow gets by being your brother. My curse on you all! butchers and hypocrites!”
“Give him twelve hours more for that,” roared Hawes. “—— his eyes, I'll break him, —— him.”
“Ah,” yelled the thief, “you curse me, do you? d'ye hear that? The son of a —— appeals to Heaven against me! What? does this lump of dirt believe there is a God? Then there must be one.” Then suddenly flinging himself on his knees, he cried, “If there is a God who pities them that suffer, I cry to Him on my knees to torture you as you torture us. May your name be shame, may your life be pain, and your death loathsome! May your skin rot from your flesh, your flesh from your bones, your bones from your body, and your soul split forever on the rock of damnation!”
“Take him away,” yelled Hawes, white as a sheet.
They tore him away by force, still threatening his persecutor with outstretched hand and raging voice and blazing eyes, and flung him into the dark dungeon.
“Cool yourself there, ye varmint,” said Fry spitefully. Even his flesh crept at the man's blasphemies.
Meantime, the chaplain had buried his face in his hands, and trembled like a woman at the frightful blasphemies and passions of these two sinners.
“I'll make this place hell to him. He shan't need to go elsewhere,” muttered Hawes aloud between his clinched teeth.
The chaplain groaned.
The governor heard him and turned on him: “Well, parson, you see he doesn't thank you for interfering between him and me. He would rather have had an hour or two of the jacket and have done with it.”
The chaplain sighed. He felt weighed down in spirit by the wickedness both of Hawes and of Robinson. He saw it was in vain at that moment to try to soften the former in favor of the latter. He moved slowly away. Hawes eyed him sneeringly.
“He is down upon his luck,” thought Hawes; “his own fault for interfering with me. I liked the man well enough, and showed it, if he hadn't been a fool and put his nose into my business.”
Half an hour had scarce elapsed when the chaplain came back.
“Mr. Hawes, I come to you as a petitioner.”
“Indeed!” said Hawes, with a supercilious sneer very hard to bear.
The other would not notice it. “Pray, do not think I side with a refractory prisoner if I beg you, not to countermand, but to modify Robinson's punishment.”
“What for?”
“Because he cannot bear so many hours of the dark cell.”
“Nonsense, sir.”
“Is it too much to ask that you will give him six hours a day for four days instead of twenty-four at a stretch?”
“I don't know whether it is too much for you to ask. I should say by what I see of you that nothing is; but it is too much for me to grant. The man has earned punishment; he has got it, and you have nothing to do with it at all.”
“Yes, I have the care of his soul, and how can I do his soul good if he loses his reason?”
“Stuff! his reason's safe enough, what little he has.”
“Do not say stuff! Do not be rash where the stake is so great, or confident where you have no knowledge. You have never been in the dark cell, Mr. Hawes; I have, and I assure you it tried my nerves to the uttermost. I had many advantages over this poor man. I went in of my own accord, animated by a desire of knowledge, supported by the consciousness of right, my memory enriched by the reading of five-and-twenty years, on which I could draw in the absence of external objects; yet so dreadful was the place that, had I not been fortified by communion with my omnipresent God, I do think my reason would have suffered in that thick darkness and solitude. I repeated thousands of lines of Homer, Virgil and the Greek dramatists; then I came to Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo; then I tried to think of a text and compose a sermon; but the minutes seemed hours, leaden hours, and they weighed my head down and my heart down, and so did the Egyptian darkness, till I sought refuge in prayer, and there I found it.”
“You pulled through it and so will he; and now I think of it, it is too slight a punishment to give a refractory, blaspheming villain no worse than a pious gentleman took on him for sport,” sneered Hawes. “You heard his language to me, the blaspheming dog?”
“I did! I did! and therefore pray you to pity his sinful soul, exasperated by the severities he has already undergone. Oh, sir! the wicked are more to be pitied than the good; and the good can endure trials that wreck the wicked. I would rather see a righteous man thrown into that dismal dungeon than this poor blaspheming sinner.”
“The deuce you would!”
“For the righteous man has a strong tower that the sinner lacks. He is fit to battle with solitude and fearful darkness; an unseen light shines upon his soul, an unseen hand sustains him. The darkness is no darkness to him, for the Sun of righteousness is nigh. In the deep solitude he is not alone, for good angels whisper by his side. 'Yea, though he walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet shall he fear no evil, for God is with him; his rod and his staff they comfort him.' The wicked have not this comfort. To them darkness and solitude must be too horrible. Satan—not God—is their companion. The ghosts of their past crimes rise and swell the present horror. Remorse and despair are added to the double gloom of solitude and darkness. You don't know what you are doing when you shut up a poor lost sinner of excitable temperament in that dreadful hole. It is a wild experiment on a human frame. Pray be advised, pray be warned, pray let your heart be softened and punish the man as he deserves—but do not destroy him! oh, do not! do not destroy him!”
Up to this moment Hawes had worn a quiet, malicious grin. At last his rage broke through this veil. He turned round black as night upon the chaplain, who was bending toward him in earnest gasping yet sweet and gentle supplication.
“The vagabond insulted me before all my servants, and that is why you take his part. He would send me to hell if he had the upper hand. I've got the upper hand, and so he shall taste it instead of me, till he goes down on his marrowbones to me with my foot on his viper's tongue. —— him!”
“Oh! do not curse him, above all now that he is in trouble and defenseless.”
“Let me alone, sir, and I'll let you,” retorted Hawes savagely. “If I curse him you can pray for him. I don't hinder you. Good-night;” and Mr. Hawes turned his back very rudely.
“I will pray for him—and for you!”
“Ugh!”
So then the chaplain retired sorrowfully to his private room, and here, sustained no longer by action, his high-tuned nature gave way. A cold languor came over him. He locked the door that no one might see his weakness, and then, succumbing to nature, he fell first into a sickness and then into a trembling, and more than once hysterical tears gushed from his eyes in the temporary prostration of his spirit and his powers.
Such are the great. Men know their feats but not their struggles!
Meantime Robinson lay in the dark cell with a morsel of bread and water, and no bed or chair, that hunger and unrest might co-operate with darkness and solitude to his hurt. To this horrid abode it is now our fate to follow a thief and a blasphemer. We must pass his gloomy portal, over which might have been inscribed what Dante has written over the gates of hell: