Bred in the Bone; Or, Like Father, Like Son: A Novel

by James Payn

CHAPTER XXXII.

BROODING.

Not a syllable of the judge's exhortation was lost upon the prisoner at the bar. He listened to it as attentively as one who is waiting for the thunder listens to the muffled menace that precedes it, and the fall of each big drop of rain. When the words of doom smote upon his ear a solemn hush succeeded them; and then one piteous, agonized shriek, and a dull fall in the gallery above.

"This way," said a warder, sharply; and Richard was seized by the arm, and hurried through the trap-door, and down the stairs, by the way he had come. It seemed to him like descending into hell itself.

Twenty years' penal servitude! It was almost an eternity of torment! worse than death! and yet not so. He already beheld himself, at the end of his term of punishment, setting about the great work which alone was left him to do on earth—the accomplishment of his revenge. He had recognized his mother's voice in that agonized wail, and knew that her iron will had given way; that the weight of this unexpected calamity had deprived even her elastic and vigorous mind of consciousness—had crushed out of her, perhaps, even life itself. Better so, thought he, in his bitterness, if it had; there would then be not a single human creature left to soften, by her attachment, his heart toward his fellows—none to counsel moderation, mercy, prudence.

If the view taken by the judge had even been a correct one, as to "motive," Richard had been hardly dealt with, most severely sentenced; but in his own eyes he was an almost innocent man—the victim of an infamous conspiracy, in which she who, was his nearest and dearest had treacherously joined. After flattering him with false hopes, she had deserted him at the eleventh hour, and in a manner even more atrocious than the desertion itself. He knew, of course, that it was mainly owing to her evidence, to which he had looked for his preservation, that his ruin had been so complete and overwhelming; but what he hated her worst for was for that smile she had bestowed upon him as she entered the witness-box, and which had bade him hope where no hope was. He could not be mistaken as to that. She had known that she was about to doom him by her silence to years of misery, and yet she had had the devilish cruelty to smile upon him, as she had often smiled, when they had sat, cheek to cheek, together! Since they had done so, he could never lift his hand against her (he felt that even now)—never strike her, slay her, nor even poison her; but he would have revenge upon her for all that. He would smite her, as she had smitten him, no matter how long the blow might be in falling: if her affections should be entwined in any human creatures, against them should his rage be directed; he would make her desolate, as she had rendered him; he would turn their love for her to hate, if it were possible, and, if not, he would destroy them. As for her father—as for that stone devil Trevethick—it choked him to think that nature herself might preserve him from his wrath, that the old man might die before his hour of expiation could arrive. But Solomon Coe would live to feel his vengeance. His hatred was at white heat now; what would it be after twenty years of unmerited torture? To think that this terrible punishment had befallen him through such contemptible agencies—through such dull brains and vulgar hands—was maddening; and yet he must needs feed upon that thought for twenty years, and keep his senses too, that at the end they might work out his purpose to the uttermost. There was plenty of time to plan and scheme and plot before him, and henceforth that should be his occupation. Revenge should be his latest thought and his earliest, and all night long he would dream of nothing else. His wrath against judge and jury, and the rest of them—though if he could have slain them all with a word he would have uttered it—was slight compared with the vehemence of his fury against those three at Gethin. Rage possessed him wholly, and, though without numbing him to the painful sense of his miserable doom, rendered him almost unconscious of what was going on about him.

When he found himself in his cell again he had no recollection of how he had got there; and the warder had to repeat his sharp command, "Put on these clothes," before he could get him to understand that he was to exchange his garments for the prison suit that lay before him. It was a small matter, but it brought home to him the reality of his situation more than any thing that had yet occurred. With the deprivation of his clothes he seemed to be deprived of his individuality, and, in adopting that shameful dress, to become an atom in a congeries of outcasts. From henceforth he was not even to bear a name, but must become a number—a unit of that great sum of scoundrels which the world was so willing to forget. That he was to suffer under a system which had authority and right for its basis made his case no less intolerable to him; he felt like one suddenly seized and sold into slavery. That his master and tyrant was called the Law was no mitigation of his calamity; nay, it was an aggravation, since he could not cut its throat.

"It is no use, young fellow," said the warder, coolly, as Richard looked at him like some hunted beast at bay. "If you was to kill me and a dozen more it would do you not a morsel of good; the law has got you tight, and it's better to be quiet."

Richard uttered a low moan, more woeful than any cry of physical anguish. It touched his jailer, used as he was to the contemplation of human misery. "Look here," said he; "you keep up a good heart, and get as many V G's as you can. Then you'll get out on ticket-of-leave in fifteen years: it ain't as if you were a lifer."

He meant it for consolation; but this unvarnished statement of the very best that could by possibility befall poor Richard seemed only to deepen his despondency.