The visitor goes out towards the prison gate; and, meeting him, come three convicts marching in—the tallest in the centre, an old man with active step and grey bristles on his weather-darkened face. Light darts into his eyes fixed on the visitor; he bares his yellow teeth and smiles. His lips move, and out of them come words. So, when skies have been dark all day, the sun gleams through, to prove the beauty of the Earthly Scheme. These words—the precious evidence of purifying solitude, the only words that have been spoken in the House of Silence, come faintly on the prison air: “Ye —— ——!”
ORDER
XIV
Order
Coming from where they cooked their food, we passed down a passage. The old warder in the dark blue uniform and a cap whose peak hung over his level iron-grey eyebrows, stopped.
“This,” he said, “is the jewel room;” and, taking a key that hung below his belt, he opened an iron door. A convict with a yellow face, in yellow clothing marked with arrows, and in his yellow hand a piece of yellow leather, darted a look at us, dropped his glance, and with a dreadful, silent, swift obsequiousness passed us and went out. We stood alone amongst the jewels, that he had evidently been polishing.
“We call it the jewel room for fun,” the old warder said, and a smile, the first of the morning, visited his face, but quickly left his eyes again to that strange mournful look, which some eyes have in the depths of them—a look, as if in strict attention to the outer things of life, their owner had parted with his soul. He took one of the jewels from the wall, and held it out. It was a light steel bangle joined by a light steel chain to another light steel bangle.
“That’s what they wear now when it’s necessary to put them on.”
One may see in harness rooms, bits, and chains, and stirrups glisten, but never was harness room so garnished as this little chamber. The four walls were bright as diamonds to the very ceiling with jewels of every kind; light and heavy bangles, long chains, short chains, thin chains, and very thick iron chains.
“Those are old-fashioned,” said the warder; “we don’t use them now.”