Richard did not want that; but at times his temper was like a devil unchained, and it got the better of him, and even of his treasured purpose; he sometimes returned a sharp answer. This weakness was almost the only feeling within him that reminded him that he was human. He was put on bread and water within the first fortnight; then cursed his folly for thus postponing the one object of his life, and amended. His case was quoted to the visiting justices as an exemplification of the efficacy of cutting short a prisoner's supplies.
While exercising one day he recognized Balfour, who happened to be on the opposite side of the ever-moving circle: the old jail-bird, without glancing toward him, threw his open hands out twice. By this he conveyed to him that his own sentence was also twenty years. During the nine months that Richard remained at Cross Key, this was all that happened to him which could be called an incident. At the end of three months his mother essayed to visit him, but he would not see her. She had been ill, it seemed, ever since that dreadful day of the trial, and was only just convalescent; she had had lodgings in the town, within a hundred yards of him, ever since: it was something, poor soul, to know that she was near him, however inexorably separated. "It would please him," she wrote, "to learn that, through Mr. Whymper's intercession, Carew had continued her pension. She had money enough, therefore, and to spare, but intended to go on with her business of lodging-house keeping in a new quarter of London, and under another name (that of Basil), that she might save, and her Richard find himself a rich man when he regained his liberty. In fifteen years—she had discovered that his time could be remitted to that extent—there would be quite a little fortune for him. In the mean time, she thought of him night and day." But there was something else in the letter. "She confessed that in her agony at his dreadful doom, she had written to his prosecutor to adjure him to appeal for mercy to the crown, and he had refused to do so." This news had driven Richard almost to frenzy. He had written her such a letter as the prison authorities had refused to send, and now he would not see her.
He wrote again; more moderately, however, to bid her never mention Trevethick's name again, nor Coe's, nor Harry's, if she wished him to think of her as his mother: they were dead to him, he said, for the present. To be brief, Richard never saw his mother after his conviction. He wished to harden his heart, and not to have it melted within him; and perhaps his fury at her having appealed to Trevethick was purposely exaggerated with this object. His recollection of "the cage," it must be remembered, was also not such as to make the idea of an interview attractive; moreover, that his mother should see him in his convict dress, kept within iron bars like a wild beast, seemed to him to afford a triumph to his deadly enemies.
In the tenth month, Richard, with the other convicts, was transferred to Lingmoor, one of the great penal settlements. They were "removed," for some portion of the distance, in vans, like furniture, or, we might rather say, in caravans like wild beasts; but for some miles they traveled by railway. They were handcuffed and chained together two and two, as pointers are upon their journeys, except that the connection was at the wrist instead of the neck. Silence was strictly enjoined, but this one opportunity of conversing with their fellow-creatures was not to be let slip. Richard's other half was a notorious burglar called Rolfe; this man had passed a quarter of a century in jail, and was conversant with every plan of trickery and evasion of orders. His countenance was not at all of that bull-dog type with which his class is falsely though generally credited; he had good features, though somewhat hard in their expression, and very intelligent gray eyes. It was their very intelligence, so sharp, so piercing, and yet which avoided your gaze, that showed to those who studied such matters what he was. After one glance at Richard he never looked at him again, but stared straight before him, and talked in muttered tones unceasingly, and with lips as motionless as those of a ventriloquist. He was doing fourteen years for cracking a public-house, and had cracked a good many private ones, concerning the details of which enterprises he was very eloquent. When he had concluded his autobiography he began to evince some interest in the circumstances of his companion. Richard, however, did not care to enlighten him on his own concerns, but confined his conversation to the one topic that was common between them—jails. Rolfe gave him a synopsis of the annals of Lingmoor, to which he was bound not for the first time. It was a place that had a bad reputation among those who became perforce its inmates; tobacco, for which elsewhere convenient warders charged a shilling an ounce, was there not less than eighteenpence: such a tariff was shameful, and almost amounted to a prohibition. A pal of his had hung himself there—it was supposed through deprivation of this necessary. It was "a queer case;" for he had "tucked himself up" to the bars of his cell by his braces, the buckles of which had left livid marks upon his neck. His Prayer-book had been found open at the Burial of the Dead, and it was understood that he had read that service over himself before taking leave of the world. He had also written his will with a point of the said brace-buckles upon the brick of his cell. He himself (Mr. Rolfe) had been called as a witness at the inquest, and had thereby obtained two hours' relaxation from labor; but upon the whole he would rather have been working with his gang—the affair had quite upset him; and, since its occurrence, the inmates of Lingmoor were forbidden to use braces.
"Were there any escapes from Lingmoor by any other means?" inquired
Richard.
"Escapes?" Mr. Rolfe's countenance assumed a more solemn vacuity than ever. It was an indiscretion of his young friend to shape that word with his lips while a warder sat in the same carriage. Yes, there had been such things even at Lingmoor. But it was a difficult job, even for one used to cracking cribs. The outer wall was not to be scaled without a ladder, and ladders were even more difficult to procure than tobacco. Even if you did get over the outer wall, the space around the prison was very bare, and the sentries had orders to shoot you fleeing. If you got to Bergen Wood, two miles away, you might be safe so far, but it was a dangerous business. Nobody had ever done it yet without "putting somebody out."
This was a euphemism for murder, as Richard was by this time "old hand" enough to know.
"Warders?" inquired he indifferently; for he had already learned to value that objectionable class at a low figure.
"Hush! Yes; you must kill 'a dog' or two before you say good-by to Lingmoor, unless you can put them to sleep." (Bribery.) "There was a man once as had to kill his pal to do it."
"How could that help him?" Richard felt no interest whatever in these narratives as stories; but since they referred to escapes they entrancing. The convict who is cast for death thinks of nothing but a reprieve; the "lifer" or the long-termer, thinks of nothing but an escape—and (sometimes) vengeance.