Jack winked with the one eye left.
"Gammon! It ain't for that that I don't do it," he said. "Your Master lets you go to gaol too, don't He? you ain't a bit better off for Him. No, it ain't for that, nor for the sake of the stuff you talk. I've heard all that before. But you had a fine chance to pay me out for the game I started in the yard; and you didn't take it—quite contrariwise; and that sticks in my throat, for I tell you I felt pretty sick when the doctor, d——n him, called you in."
"Why, man, what did you suppose I'd do?" said Barnabas. "Ye needn't be grateful to me for not behaving like a devil."
In his most unregenerate days he could never have revenged himself in cold blood on a defenceless and suffering creature. The idea was so utterly abhorrent to him that he felt disgusted at the suggestion, and even at the gratitude that took for granted that he might have been tempted in such wise.
Hopping Jack laughed hoarsely, and said he knew what he'd have done if he'd got a cove who'd broken his ribs under his thumb. But, apparently, from that hour he looked upon the preacher as belonging to a different species, and placed in him an implicit trust that was not without pathos.
When the time of the sessions drew near he became alternately wildly flighty and deeply despondent,—the former being his ordinary condition, the latter only occasional.
He was superstitious, and had a deep-seated belief in luck, which had failed him of late; when the despondent phase was on, he became rather dangerous both to himself and to others.
Physical pain added largely to his depression, for he still suffered from the injury to his eye. Barnabas felt the responsibility, that always drove him to do his utmost, doubly great, because this waggish scamp, who was the approved "funny man" of Newgate, evinced at times a strong, almost dog-like affection for him. But Jack was not the only one among all that miserable crew who appealed strongly to Barnabas Thorpe's ruling passion to "save".
After all, the reckless licence, the apparently brutal callousness, and shameful blasphemy that reigned in the wards were heightened and partially excused by the fact that half these men felt the shadow of the gallows on them; with such a spectre in the corner they drank deep and laughed loudly, lest it should grow too plain. "Oh, it ain't come to that yet," one of them said, shuddering, in answer to an entreaty of the preacher to pause and think. "I ain't got to the thinkin' time."
Yet, on the whole, Barnabas influenced them. The prison chaplain had given up the press yard as a bad job; but then the chaplain had a good many interests which were quite as important to him as the "converting" of sinners. Barnabas was a man of one idea: even where the woman he loved was concerned, he would have deliberately advised her to lay down her bodily life, as she had laid down her position and worldly wealth, if that could, by any possibility, have seemed necessary for the furtherance of Christ's kingdom; and his extreme singleness of aim told, as it always must, whether the aim is high or low. It is possible indeed that his very limitations made him the more effective. The men who see many sides of a question are chary of spilling their blood. The liberal-minded philosophers have their place in the world, but they can't rescue those who are sinking; they can only explain why they sink—which, no doubt, is equally useful.