“Oh,” said Mr. North, eyeing him with a curious air of expectation that had something pitying in it. “This is the man, is it? I thought he was to go to the Coal Mines.”
“So he is,” said Troke, “but we hain't a goin' to send there for a fortnit, and in the meantime I'm to work him on the chain.”
“Oh!” said Mr. North again. “Lend me your knife, Troke.”
And then, before them all, this curious parson took a piece of tobacco out of his ragged pocket, and cut off a “chaw” with Mr. Troke's knife. Rufus Dawes felt what he had not felt for three days—an interest in something. He stared at the parson in unaffected astonishment. Mr. North perhaps mistook the meaning of his fixed stare, for he held out the remnant of tobacco to him.
The chain line vibrated at this, and bent forward to enjoy the vicarious delight of seeing another man chew tobacco. Troke grinned with a silent mirth that betokened retribution for the favoured convict. “Here,” said Mr. North, holding out the dainty morsel upon which so many eyes were fixed. Rufus Dawes took the tobacco; looked at it hungrily for an instant, and then—to the astonishment of everybody—flung it away with a curse.
“I don't want your tobacco,” he said; “keep it.”
From convict mouths went out a respectful roar of amazement, and Mr. Troke's eyes snapped with pride of outraged janitorship. “You ungrateful dog!” he cried, raising his stick.
Mr. North put up a hand. “That will do, Troke,” he said; “I know your respect for the cloth. Move the men on again.”
“Get on!” said Troke, rumbling oaths beneath his breath, and Dawes felt his newly-riveted chain tug. It was some time since he had been in a chain-gang, and the sudden jerk nearly overbalanced him. He caught at his neighbour, and looking up, met a pair of black eyes which gleamed recognition. His neighbour was John Rex. Mr. North, watching them, was struck by the resemblance the two men bore to each other. Their height, eyes, hair, and complexion were similar. Despite the difference in name they might be related. “They might be brothers,” thought he. “Poor devils! I never knew a prisoner refuse tobacco before.” And he looked on the ground for the despised portion. But in vain. John Rex, oppressed by no foolish sentiment, had picked it up and put it in his mouth.
So Rufus Dawes was relegated to his old life again, and came back to his prison with the hatred of his kind, that his prison had bred in him, increased a hundred-fold. It seemed to him that the sudden awakening had dazed him, that the flood of light so suddenly let in upon his slumbering soul had blinded his eyes, used so long to the sweetly-cheating twilight. He was at first unable to apprehend the details of his misery. He knew only that his dream-child was alive and shuddered at him, that the only thing he loved and trusted had betrayed him, that all hope of justice and mercy had gone from him for ever, that the beauty had gone from earth, the brightness from Heaven, and that he was doomed still to live. He went about his work, unheedful of the jests of Troke, ungalled by his irons, unmindful of the groans and laughter about him. His magnificent muscles saved him from the lash; for the amiable Troke tried to break him down in vain. He did not complain, he did not laugh, he did not weep. His “mate” Rex tried to converse with him, but did not succeed. In the midst of one of Rex's excellent tales of London dissipation, Rufus Dawes would sigh wearily. “There's something on that fellow's mind,” thought Rex, prone to watch the signs by which the soul is read. “He has some secret which weighs upon him.”