Chapter Twenty One.
My Patient the Prison Warder.
“To tell you the truth, doctor,” said a grey old patient of mine, “I don’t think I was ever fit to be a prison warder: I’m too soft. All the same, though, I’ve been at it for twenty-five years; and I’m head warder now, and could retire when I like upon a pension. I don’t know how I drifted into it, but I did. A dozen times over I’ve wanted to get into something else, but it has always seemed as if I was forced to stay on for the rest of my days. It’s been worse for me because I’ve always lived in the prison. It’s a dull life, perhaps; not that I feel it, for, according to my way of thinking, it is not the occupation, but the man’s heart which makes him dull. Depend upon it, hands and a thoughtful mind were not given us for nothing, and the more I think, the nearer I come to the conclusion that the busy life is the happy one after all. Now here I am, with plenty to take up my time in my duties, and plenty of studies of character within reach shut up all ready for me in the different cells.
“Gloomy place this, you’ll say, barred and bolted to keep any friends from getting in unasked; but I’m contented enough, and too busy generally to find fault.
“Yes, you may depend upon it your busy man is the happiest, for I’ve seen it again and again. The greatest punishment you can inflict upon a man is to shut him up with nothing to do, nothing to employ his time with, nothing to hinder the constant drag, drag of his thoughts, pulling him towards the past.
“Not always borrow and contrition, but recollections of drinking-bouts and successful robberies and their profits, debaucheries, and then longings for liberty once more. Of course, now and then we do get a really repentant fellow—not one of your cringing, fawning rascals, who turn up their eyes and feel so much better for the chaplain’s words, and so carefully learn all his texts; but honest rogues—men who have been sent here for their term of imprisonment, and who feel the bitterness and shame of their position—men who shudder as the barber’s scissors crop their hair, and who soon show in their appearance how their punishment is telling upon them. They don’t get fat and sleek, and jump up to make bows when you enter their cell, but hide all their troubles in their hearts, and go about their duties silently and doggedly.
“We had such a man here not long back now—Amos Ridding, in for poaching—and how that poor fellow beat against his cage bars! Poor fellow! I believe he was not a bad one at heart, but he had got himself mixed up with a poaching gang, and a keeper having been half killed, Amos was taken, and rightly or wrongly sent here for two years.
“We can soon pick out what I call the canters, and act accordingly; while where we see a poor fellow taking his confinement to heart, why, knowing how it tells on his mind, I do all I can for him to brighten him up—setting him at odd jobs about the place, gardening, and so on; while if he knows a trade, one that can be worked at in here, speaking to the governor, we set him to do something in that way, never letting him stand still for tools or material.
“But this poor fellow was unmanageable; he would work as hard as I liked, and as long as I liked, but the moment he was by himself he was pining again, fretting for his wife and children, and wearing himself away to skin and bone. I did not know what to do with him, and grew quite troubled at last, for I began to be afraid of having a summons from one of the under-warders, telling me that in a fit of that weary, despairing madness which comes upon men, poor Ridding had made away with himself.
“The summons came at last, but in a different form; for one morning I was roused at five o’clock to be told that the bird had beaten down the wires, and had escaped, and I had to go and tell the governor.