CHAPTER XXXV.
During the time which had elapsed since the night on which Eve Pascal and Reuben May renewed their bond of friendship many an anxious incident had occurred to test its value and cement its strength.
Jerrem and Adam were familiar names to Reuben now, and the men who bore them were often before his eyes and constantly in his thoughts. Prepared as Reuben had been for undergoing much awkwardness in delivering himself of the tale he had to tell, he found he had greatly underrated the pain and humiliation he actually felt when, through the interest of his friend, he found himself within the walls of Newgate and in the presence of Adam. Reuben was no coward, yet it needed all the strength of his strictly-disciplined mind to open up and lay bare before a rival's eyes those wounds which love had made and time had had no space to heal. He shrank from placing in front of Adam the picture of himself and Eve as they had stood in the days when, Adam all unknown, the balance of a happy future seemed trembling still within the hand of Fate; and he paused from time to time as he spoke, hoping some word or sign would make his task more easy; but Adam never spoke or turned aside his eyes, and under that fixed gaze Reuben was forced to tell his tale out to the end, constraining his pride to give out word for word what Eve had said in Adam's praise, and searing the green memory of his love by making his lips repeat those vows which she had told him bound her to another.
At length the task was ended, the jealous rage, the mad revenge, was all confessed; and satisfied that, whatever guilt it might please Adam to lay to his charge, he had at least shown that Eve was free from any shadow of stain, Reuben paused, and the two so strangely linked stood looking at each other with envy, jealousy, distrust clouding their minds, while a chord of sympathy drew them together as they recognized a similitude in their actions which made each self-abasement uttered find an echo in its listener's breast. Proud, stern, unyielding to emotion as both these men had lived, it was not in them to take comfort in the shifts and excuses weaker natures find: the hearts that had refused pity for their neighbors would not entreat it because they themselves now stood in need. As they had judged their fellows so they arraigned themselves, and thus unwittingly rendered the first atonement man is called upon to make.
The sight of Adam's strong, powerful form shaken and bowed down by the remorse he strove in vain to control moved Reuben strangely. The haggard pallor of his striking face, the sunken eyes, the untasted food, the unslept-in bed,—each told its tale of misery and woe, and opened out to Reuben a depth of despair his own experience hitherto had furnished him with no gauge to measure. What if with no further warning he fetched up Eve to Adam's aid? The thought would bear no hesitation: a thousand jealous "Noes" battled with the suggestion, but Reuben's better self resolved to have its way, and, seizing the opportunity of Adam's head being bent down in his arms, Reuben went swiftly out and along down to the keeper's room, where Eve had been left impatiently awaiting his return.
Although the grating of the hinge roused Adam, he neither stirred nor moved until, satisfied by the unbroken silence that Reuben had left him to himself, he ventured to raise his head. Where could he go? where hide himself from human gaze? And as the thought of all his shame came crowding to his mind he started up and wildly stared around, and then around again, seeing each time the walls, which looked so near, draw nearer still. No hope! no hope! Here he must live until the hour when those who brought him here would drag him forth to swear away his comrade's life. O God! how helpless he felt! and as he let himself drop down each limb gave way and nerveless fell, as if Dejection claimed him for her own. The time had been when Adam's mind was racked by thoughts of what lay in the hearts of those he had left behind: their pictured hatred and contempt stung him to madness; the words they would say, the curses they were uttering, seemed ever ringing in his ears. But Reuben's tale had for the time swept this away and filled its place with dark remorse for what he had done to Jerrem. True, Reuben had shown that Jerrem's hand had wrought his own and their destruction, but what of that? Adam through him had wreaked his vengeance on them all—had, Judas-like, delivered them to death: henceforth, branded and disgraced, he must be an outcast or a wanderer. As this fallen spectre of himself rose up and flitted in his sight a cry of wild despair burst forth, wrenched from the depths of his proud heart—a cry which some one near sent echoing back; and as it came his hands were caught, and Pity seemed to stretch her arms and fold him to her breast.
Was it a nightmare he was waking from—some hideous dream in which our bodies slumber while our fancies live a lifetime? Would this vision of Eve (for Eve it was who knelt close by his side, her arms around his neck) melt away and fade as many a one of her had done before? She calls him love—her love, the husband of her heart. What! he, this guilty outcast—can he be this to any one, and most of all to Eve?
A finger's touch seemed laid upon the veil which hitherto had shut out hope from Adam's view, and as it shrivelled up and rolled away the light revealed that Mercy still sat throned on high, and bowing down his head on Eve's neck he let his stricken soul take comfort in the thought.
But while Adam was thus cast down under suffering, sorrow had taken but a slight hold on Jerrem, who, after the first shock produced by the horrors of a place then branded as "the darkest seat of woe this side of hell," gradually regained his old elasticity, and was soon ready to treat, laugh and drink with all who came near him. His merry jokes, his quaint sea-songs, the free handling he gave to his plentiful supply of money,—all served to ensure his popularity, so that, instead of the man sunk under misery and despair whom Reuben, after leaving Adam, had girded himself up to encounter, he came upon Jerrem rollicking and gay, a prime favorite with all the authorities, and a choice spirit amid the crew of tried and untried prisoners who in those days crowded together in the foul wards of Newgate.
Fresh from the sight of Adam's dark remorse, filled with compunction at the thought of all the ills their joint passions had hurled on Jerrem's head, Reuben had invested Jerrem with a sense of wrong, to make reparation for which he had come prepared to offer whatever sacrifice he should demand. To find the man for whom all this feeling had been conjured up reckless and unconcerned, casting oaths against his ill-luck one moment and cutting jokes at his possible fate the next, jarred upon Reuben terribly, and made him at once decide that it would be worse than useless to urge upon him any necessity for taking thought for his soul when he was so utterly reckless as to what would become of his body. The story Reuben had to tell of himself and Eve, the betrayal, and the suspicions it had aroused against Eve in Adam, merely affected Jerrem as a matter for surprise and curiosity. He seemed pleased to hear that Eve was close at hand, but still expressed no wish to see her. He talked about Adam, and with a painful absence of all malice told Reuben to say to him that he'd best lay it thick on his back, so that the judge and jury would let the other chaps go free. The circumstance of being brought to London to be tried seemed to afford him immense satisfaction—a thing, he said, that hadn't happened for sixty years and more, since old —— swung for it; and then he fell to wondering how soon that might be his fate, and if so how many from Polperro would make the stretch to come so far. He'd promise them it shouldn't be for nothing: he'd show the Cornishmen that he could cut his capers game. Only one subject seemed able to sober or subdue his reckless spirit, and this was any mention of Joan or Uncle Zebedee: to them the poor soul seemed to cling with all the love his nature could command. And when Reuben, instructed by Eve, told him how stricken down the old man lay, and farther on promised to write for him all the messages he wished to send to Joan, a heart of wax seemed given to his keeping, in which it now must be his care to mould the little good there yet was time to teach. And so it happened that in all his future visits—and every hour that Reuben had to spare was given up to Jerrem—Joan was the theme that threaded all their discourse, and by her power Jerrem's soft heart and softer nature became to Reuben as an open page, wherein he read of actions in which good and bad were so mixed up and jumbled that in the very midst of his reproof and condemnation Reuben was often forced to stand abashed before some act of generous pity which found no echo in his former life. And out of this humility, which grew in strength, there sprang forth greater merits than from all the weary efforts he made at working out his own atonement; for Reuben, like Adam, had been over-satisfied about his own rectitude, and took pride in the knowledge that if ever he had committed a wrong he had acknowledged it freely and expiated it to the uttermost farthing; while Jerrem, for the first time in his life brought to see guilt in what he had counted pleasure, scarce dared to listen to a hope of mercy for himself, but rather craved Reuben to beg it for the many who had been thoughtless sharers in his folly. His ruling desire was to see Joan once more, and no sooner was he told that the admiralty session had begun and that his day of trial, although not fixed, was near at hand, than he begged Reuben to write and ask Joan to delay her promised visit no longer; and this Reuben did, adding on his own account that, from what the lawyer said, it would be best she came at once by the coach which would reach London on the following Thursday week, on which day Reuben would be waiting to receive her.
Now, at the onset of this disaster had such a letter reached Polperro not a man in the place but, short of knowing it would cost his life, would have risked all else to go to London, and if Jerrem was to die give him courage by mustering round their comrade at the last. But the downpour of disaster had cowed these daring spirits, and the men who had not known what fear meant so long as success was secure now trembled and gave way under the superstitious certainty that Ill-luck was following them and Misfortune had marked them for her own. Their energies paralyzed, they succumbed to what they looked upon as Fate, and in most cases were seized without a struggle and led off to the nearest prisons without an effort on their own part toward resistance.
The money over which, from the small scope for spending it, they had seemed so lavish and reckless, when needed for lawyers and counsel and bribes went but a small way; and though they made a common purse of all their hoards, not a day passed without some house being stripped of the substance which adorned it, so that money might be got for the husband, the son, the brothers who had brought these treasures home. The women, on their knees, pressed on the farmers' wives their chintzes, their lace, their gaudy stock of jewelry, and when this market failed toiled along to Liskeard, Plymouth and Launceston, carrying their china, silver plate and bowls in the hope of finding somebody to buy them.
With a revenue cutter—often two—always in sight, landing parties of king's men, who, recalling ugly thoughts of the hated press-gang, roamed hither and thither, ready to seize any one who happened to show his face; with half the husbands, sons and brothers in Plymouth clink or Bodmin jail, and the rest skulking in farm-houses or lying hidden in the secret places; with plenty vanishing and poverty drawing nigh,—the past circumstances which had led to this desolation were swallowed up in the present misery it had entailed upon them; and though every one now knew the whole story as it stood—how that through Jerrem writing to Eve she had had it in her power to tell Reuben May, her former lover, who, led on by jealousy, had betrayed them to the revenue-men—so familiar had Reuben's good services to Jerrem become known that it was taken as only one more of his many friendly actions that he should write to Joan, urging her to come to London without delay, and promising to meet her and see that she was taken care of. If any among them thought that Joan would go probably to Eve's home, they made no mention of it, for Eve's name was by a tacit understanding banished from their mouths, and the memory of her lay as a seal to that dark sepulchre wherein, with bitter scorn and hate, Adam lay buried.
There was no question now of Uncle Zebedee going, for the confinement, the excitement and the degradation had been too much for the old man, whose free and happy life had never known trouble or restraint, and his mind had gradually weakened under the burden imposed upon it; so that now, except when some unexpected incident roused the flickering flame of memory, the past few months were blotted from his mind, and in company with Jonathan—who, broken down by ill-usage and turned out of prison to die, had managed to crawl back to the friends he knew he should find shelter with—he roamed about harmless and contented, always watching for the Lottery's return, and promising, when she did come back, that he would give them all a fling such as Polperro had not seen for many a day.
It was an easy matter to cheat him now, and when, her journey all arranged, Joan stepped into the boat which was to take her round to Plymouth and left old Zebedee standing on the shore, raising his thin cracked voice to fetch her ear with cheery messages for Jerrem and for Adam, whom she was going to meet, her cup of bitterness seemed to overflow.
The Author of "Dorothy Fox."
[TO BE CONTINUED.]