"Why, that must have killed him?" observed Yorke.
"So Jeffreys concluded," returned Mr. Rolfe, coolly; "and indeed that was his defense when his trial came on. He pleaded that Molony was dead already. 'I did not put the file down his throat, though I did deprive him of it afterward. I was obliged to do it.' He made an anatomy of him with the nail, in fact, just as the surgeons do with their dissecting-knives, though not so neat, in order to get at the file. An ugly job, I call it; but it was a very pretty case, the lawyers said, as to whether murder had been done or not."
"But did this Jeffreys get off?"
"Upon the trial—yes; but not from the prison. He got into the yard all right, and climbed the wall by making steps of the file and the nail; but, in dropping on the other side, he broke his leg, and so they nabbed him. It's a very hard nut to crack, is Lingmoor, I can tell you."
With these and similar incidents of prison-life, Mr. Rolfe regaled his companion's ears. The sound of this man's voice, muffled as it was, notwithstanding the nature of his talk, was pleasant to Richard after so many months of enforced silence. After long starvation the stomach is thankful for even garbage; and so it is with the mind. Moreover, any thing would have seemed better than to sit and think during that hateful journey. The railway part of it was by far the worst. To be made a show of at the various stations—every one curious to see how convicts looked in their full regimentals, chained and ironed; to behold the other passengers who were free; to see the happy meetings of lovers and friends, of parents and children; and the partings that were scarcely partings at all compared with his own length of exile from all mankind: these were things the bitterness of which Richard felt to the uttermost; his very blood ran gall. His friend Balfour was among his fellow-travelers, but they did not journey in the same van nor railway carriage. Had it been otherwise Richard might have felt some sense of companionship; whereas the contact of this man Rolfe seemed to degrade him to his level, and isolate him from humanity itself. At the same time, he shrank with sensitiveness from the gaze of the gaping crowd. It is so difficult, even with the strongest will to do so, to become callous and hardened to shame except by slow degrees: every finger seemed to point at him in recognition, every tongue to be telling of his disgrace and doom; whereas, in simple fact, his own mother would scarcely have known him in such a garb, and with those iron ornaments about his limbs; his fine hair cropped to the roots; his delicate features worn and sharpened with spare diet and want of sleep; above all, with those haggard eyes, always watching and waiting for something a long way off—almost, indeed, out of sight at present, but coming up, as a ship comes spar by spar above the horizon, taking shape and distinctness as it nears. There were nineteen years and three months still, however, between him and it.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
OUT OF THE WORLD.
This tedious, shameful travel came to an end at nightfall. Their way had lain all day through landscapes of great beauty, though about to lose the last remnants of their autumn splendor; but when they left the rail, the woods, and glens, and rivers were seen no more. All was dreary moorland, where winter had already begun to reign. A village or two were passed, among whose scanty population their appearance created little excitement: such sights were common in that locality. They were on the high-road that leads to Lingmoor, and to nowhere else. The way seemed as typical of their outcast life-path as a page out of the Pilgrim's Progress. Vanity Fair, where they would fain have tarried if they could, was left far behind them, while to some of them the road was doomed to be the veritable Valley of the Shadow. They were never to see the world, nor partake of its coarse and brutal pleasures—the only ones they cared for, or perhaps had experienced—any more. How bare, and desolate, and wretched was the prospect! There was no living thing in sight; only the wild moorland streams hurried by, as if themselves desirous to escape from the barren solitude. Not a tree was to be seen save Bergen Wood, which Richard's companion indicated to him, as they neared it, by a movement of the eyelid. It had been the tomb of many a convict, who had striven for freedom, and found death. As they emerged from it, Lingmoor prison presented itself, solid, immense, and gloomy, as though it were built of steel—"Castle of Giant Despair." Its guarded gate was swung back, and all were marched into a paved courtyard, where their names were called over, and their irons removed. Then each was stripped and searched, and another uniform substituted for that they had worn at Cross Key. The old hands seemed to take a pride in knowing what was about to be done beforehand; in being recognized by the warders, though their greeting was but a contemptuous shrug; and in threading the windings of the stone labyrinths with an accustomed step. Richard was ushered into a cell the exact counterpart of that he had lately inhabited; and yet he regarded it with the interest which one can not fail to feel in what is to be one's home for years.
Home! Frightful misnomer for that place, warm and well-ventilated as it was, and supplied with the latest products of civilization. The gas was burning brightly; fresh cool water flowed at his will; at his touch a bell rang, and instantly, outside his door, an iron plate sprang out, and indicated to the warder in what cell his presence was required. "How clean and comfortable!" says the introduced-by-special-order visitor, to his obsequious acquaintance the governor, on observing these admirable arrangements. "How much better are these scoundrels cared for," cries the unthinking public, "than are our honest poor!" It is not, however, that the convict is pampered; but for this unkindly care he would not be able to endure the punishment which justice has decreed for him. Science has meted out to him each drop of gruel, each ounce of bread, each article of clothing, and each degree of warmth. Not one of all the recipients of this cruel benevolence but would gladly have exchanged places with the shivering tramp or the work-house pauper. To cower under the leafless branches of Bergen Wood, while the November night-blasts made them grind and clang, would have seemed paradise compared with that snug lodging; nay, the grave itself, with its dim dread Hereafter, has been preferred before it.
Life at Lingmoor was existence by machinery—monotony that sometimes maddened as well as slew. To read of it is to understand nothing of this. The bald annals of the place reveal nothing of this terrible secret.