“Good-by, Mr. Eden—God bless you, aunt. I want to be gone; I shall bring him if I have to carry him in my arms.” And with these words Susan was gone.
“Now, good Mrs. Davies, give me the Bible. Often has that book soothed the torn nerves as well as the bleeding heart—and let no one come here to grieve or vex me for twenty-four hours—and fling that man's draught away, I want to live.”
Mrs. Davies had heard Hodges and Fry aright. Mr. Eden by her clew had interpreted the visit aright, with this exception, that he overrated his own importance in Mr. Hawes's eyes. For Hawes mocked at the chaplain's appeal to the Home Office ever since the office had made his tools the virtual referees.
Still a shade of uneasiness remained. During the progress of this long duel Eden had let fall two disagreeable hints. One was that he would spend a thousand pounds in setting such prisoners as survived Hawes's discipline to indict him, and the other that he would appeal to the public press.
This last threat had touched our man of brass; for if there is one thing upon earth that another thing does not like, your moral malefactor, who happens to be out of the law's reach, hates and shivers at the New Bailey in Printing-house Yard. So, upon the whole, Mr. Hawes thought that the best thing Mr. Eden could do would be to go to heaven without any more fuss.
“Yes, that will be the best for all parties.”
He often questioned the doctor in his blunt way how soon the desired event might be expected to come off, if at all. The doctor still answered per ambages, ut mos oraculis.
“I see I must go myself—No, I won't, I'll send Fry. Ah, here is Hodges. Go and see the parson, and come back and tell me whether he is like to live or like to die. Mr. Sawyer here can't speak English about a patient; he would do it to oblige me if he could, but—him, he can't.”
“Don't much like the job,” demurred Hodges sulkily.
“What matters what you like? You must all do things you don't like in a prison, or get into trouble.”