CHAPTER XXXIII.
IN COUPLES.
What tender-nurtured boy, newly-arrived at school—that Paradise when looked back upon from afar, that Inferno of the present—has not awakened from sweet dreams of home with a heavy heart? Who has not pictured to himself the weary months that must elapse before he once more regains his freedom and his friends? The burden (one may say) is light, but then the back is also weak that bears it. It is a genuine woe. Something of this, but tenfold in intensity of wretchedness, did Richard feel when he awoke for the first time a convicted felon. He had dreamed that Carew was dead, and left him heir of Crompton; his mother and he were there, and Harry as his wife. The splendor of the house, the beauty of the grand domain about it, were as vividly presented to him as when he saw them with his eyes; and they were all his own. The hope of his youth, the desire of his manhood, were gratified to the uttermost; yet through all ran an undercurrent which mirrored a portion of the present reality. In the marshy pond where he had fought the Squire by moonlight lay two bodies; it was shallow, as it really had been, and he could see their faces as he peered into the water: they were those of Coe and Trevethick. He kept them there, and would not have the pond dragged; but would go thither and gloat upon them for half a summer's day. The mansion was full of gay folks—his old town companions invited to visit him, and behold his greatness (as he had often imagined they should be): Tub Ryll was his jester now, and Parson Whymper his "chaplain." They were all playing pool as usual, and he was just about to make an easy hazard, when somebody jogged his elbow. It was the warder of the jail.
"Come, come—this won't do," said he, gruffly. "You must jump up when the bell rings, or we shall quarrel. Fold up your hammock, and clean your room."
Even the school-boy does not begin on his first morning to reckon on his chimney almanac, "One day gone; twenty-four hours nearer to the holidays;" and how should Richard make that cheerful note, who had twenty years of prison life before him, save one day!
He did as he was ordered, wearily, with a heart that had no hope: it seemed to the warder that his air was sullen.
"If this happens again, young fellow, I report you; and then good-by to your V G's."
He did not mean to be brutal; but Richard could have stabbed him where he stood. There were times to come when the temptation to commit such an act was to be very strong within him; and when no thought of punishment, far less of right, restrained him, but that of his projected vengeance always did. Every rough word, every insult, every wrong, was treasured up in his mind, and added to the long account against those who had doomed him to such a fate. It should be paid in full one day; and in the mean time the debt was out at compound interest.
He took his sordid meals, his cocoa, his bread, his gruel, not because he had ever any appetite for them, but because without them he should lose his strength. He must husband that for the long-expected hour when he might need it; when the moment had arrived to strike the blow for which his hand was clenched ten times a day. His hate grew every hour, and, like a petrifying spring, fell drop by drop about his heart, and made it stone. In the mean time, a fiend in torment could alone imagine what he suffered. He spoke to no one but his warders and the chaplain; for now he was a convict, there was no communication with his fellows; only once a day for an hour and a half he took his monotonous exercise in the high-walled prison-yard. Tramp, tramp, tramp, each half a dozen paces behind the other, with an officer on the watch to see that the limit was preserved.
"Keep your distance, you there, unless you want to be reported."