Chapter XV (1)

GOVERNOR HAWES had qualities good in themselves, but ill-directed, and therefore not good in their results--determination for one. He was not a man to yield a step to opposition. He was a much greater man than Jones. He was like a torrent, to whose progress if you oppose a great stone it brawls and struggles past it and round it and over it with more vigor than before.

“I will be master in this jail!” was the creed of Hawes. He docked Robinson's supper one half, ditto his breakfast next day, and set him a tremendous task of crank. Now in jail a day's food and a day's crank are too nicely balanced to admit of the weights being tampered with. So Robinson's demi-starvation paved the way for further punishment. At one o'clock he was five hundred revolutions short, and instead of going to his dinner he was tied up in the infernal machine. Now the new chaplain came three times into the yard that day, and the third time, about four o'clock, he found Robinson pinned to the wall, jammed in the waistcoat and griped in the collar. His blood ran cold at sight of him, for the man had been hours in the pillory and nature was giving way.

“What has he done?”

“Refractory at crank.”

“I saw him working at the crank when I came here last.”

“Hasn't made his number good, though.”

“Humph! You have the governor's own orders?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long is he to be so?”

“Till fresh orders.”

“I will see the effect of this punishment on the prisoner and note it down for my report.” And he took out his note-book and leaned his back against the wall.

The simple action of taking out a notebook gave the operators a certain qualm of doubt. Fry whispered Hodges to go and tell the governor. On his return Hodges found the parties as he had left them, except Robinson--he was paler and his lips turning bluer.

“Your victim is fainting,” said the chaplain sternly.

“Only shamming, sir,” said Fry. “Bucket, Hodges.”

The bucket was brought and the contents were flung over Robinson.

The chaplain gave a cry of dismay. The turnkeys both laughed at this.

“You see he was only shamming, sir,” said Hodges. “He is come to the moment the water touched him.”

“A plain proof he was not shamming. A bucket of water thrown over any one about to faint would always bring them to; but if a man had made up his mind to sham, he could do it in spite of water. Of course you will take him down now?”

“Not till fresh orders.”

“On your peril be it if any harm befalls this prisoner--you are warned.”

At this juncture Hawes came into the yard. His cheek was flushed and his eye glittered. He expected and rather hoped a collision with his reverence.

“Well, what is the matter?”

“Nothing, sir; only his reverence is threatening us.”

“What is he threatening you for?”

“Mr. Hawes, I told these men that I should hold them responsible if any harm came to the prisoner for their cruelty. I now tell you that he has just fainted from bodily distress caused by this infernal engine, and I hold you, Mr. Hawes, responsible for this man's life and well-being, which are here attacked contrary to the custom of all her majesty's prisons, and contrary to the intention of all punishment, which is for the culprit's good, not for his injury either in soul or body.

“And what will you do?” said Hawes, glaring contemptuously at the turnkeys, who wore rather a blank look.

“Mr. Hawes,” replied the other gravely, “I have spoken to warn you, not to threaten you.”

“What I do is done with the consent of the visiting justices. They are my masters, and no one else.”

“They have not seen a prisoner crucified.”

“Crucified! What d'ye mean by crucified?”

“Don't you see that the torture before our eyes is crucifixion?”

“No! I don't. No nails!”

“Nails were not always used in crucifixion; sometimes cords. Don't deceive yourself with a name; nothing misleads like a false name. This punishment is falsely called the jacket--it is jacket, collar, straps, applied with cruelty. It is crucifixion minus nails but plus a collar.”

“Whatever it is, the justices have seen and approved it. Haven't they, Fry?”

“That they have, sir; scores of times.”

“Then may Heaven forgive them and direct me.” And the chaplain entered the cell despondently, and bent his pitying eye steadily on the thief, who seemed to him at the moment a better companion than the three honest but cruel men.

He waited there very, very sorrowful and thoughtful for more than half an hour. Then Hawes, who left the yard as soon as he had conquered his opponent, sent in Evans with an order to take Robinson to his dormitory.

The chaplain saw the man taken down from the wall, and that done went hastily to his own house; there, the contest being over, he was seized with a violent sickness and trembling. To see a fellow-creature suffer and not be able to relieve him was death to this man. He was game to the last drop of his blood so long as there was any good to be done, but action ended, a reaction came, in which he was all pity and sorrow and distress because of a fellow-creature's distress. No one that saw his firmness in the torture-cell would have guessed how weak he was within, and how stoutly his great heart had to battle against a sensitive nature and nerves tuned too high.

He gave half an hour to the weakness of nature, and then he was all duty once more.

He went first into Robinson's cell. He found him worse than ever: despair as well as hatred gleamed in his eye.

“My poor fellow, is there no way for you to avoid these dreadful punishments?”

No answer.

It is to be observed, though, that Robinson had no idea how far the chaplain had carried his remonstrance against his torture; that remonstrance had been uttered privately to the turnkeys and the governor. Besides, the man was half stupefied when the chaplain first came there. And now he was in such pain and despair. He was like the genii confined in the chest and thrown into the water by Soliman. Had this good friend come to him at first starting, he would have thrown himself into his arms; but it came too late now. He hated all mankind. He had lost all belief in genuine kindness. Like Orlando,

He thought that all things had been savage here.

The chaplain, on the other hand, began to think that Robinson was a downright brute, and one on whom kindness was and would be wasted. Still, true to his nature, he admitted no small pique. He reasoned gently and kindly with him--very kindly.

“My poor soul,” said he, “have you so many friends in this hard place that you can afford to repulse one who desires to be your friend and to do you good?” No answer. “Well, then, if you will not let me comfort you, at least you cannot prevent my praying for you, for you are on the road to despair and will take no help.”

So, then, this good creature did actually kneel upon the hard stones of the cell and offer a prayer--a very short but earnest one.

“Oh God, to whom all hearts are open, enlighten me that I may understand this my afflicted brother's heart, and learn how to do him good, and comfort him out of Thy word--Thy grace assisting me.”

Robinson looked down at him with wild, staring but lack-luster eyes and open mouth. He rose from the floor, and casting a look of great benignity on the sullen brute, he was about to go, when he observed that Robinson was trembling in a very peculiar way.

“You are ill,” said he hastily, and took a step toward him.

At this Robinson, with a wild and furious gesture, waved him to the door and turned his face to the wall; then this refined gentleman bowed his head, as much as to say you shall be master of this apartment and dismiss any one you do not like, and went gently away with a little sigh. And the last that he saw was Robinson trembling with averted face and eyes bent down.

Outside he met Evans, who said to him half bluntly half respectfully, “I don't like to see you going into that cell, sir; the man is not to be trusted. He is very strange.”

“What do you mean? do you fear for his reason?”

“Why not, sir? We have sent a pretty many to the lunatic asylum since I was a warder here.”

“Ah!”

“And some have broke prison a shorter way than that,” said the man very gloomily.

The chaplain groaned--and looked at the speaker with an expression of terror. Evans noticed it and said gravely:

“You should not have come to such place as this, sir; you are not fit for it.”

“Why am I not fit for it?”

“Too good for it, sir.”

“You talk foolishly, Mr. Evans. In the first place, 'too good' is a ludicrous combination of language, in the next the worse a place is the more need of somebody being good in it to make it better. But I suppose you are one of those who think that evil is naturally stronger than good. Delusion springs from this, that the wicked are in earnest and the good are lukewarm. Good is stronger than evil. A single really good man in an ill place is like a little yeast in a gallon of dough; it can leaven the mass. If St. Paul or even George Whitfield had been in Lot's place all those years there would have been more than fifty good men in Sodom; but this is out of place. I want you to give me the benefit of your experience, Evans. When I went to Robinson and spoke kindly to him he trembled all over. What on earth does that mean?”

“Trembled, did he, and never spoke?”

“Yes!--Well?”

“I'm thinking, sir! I'm thinking. You didn't touch him?”

“Touch him, no; what should I touch him for?”

“Well, don't do it, sir. And don't go near him. You have had an escape, you have. He was in two minds about pitching into you.”

“You think it was rage! Humph! it did not give me that impression.”

“Sir, did you ever go to pat a strange dog?”

“I have done myself that honor.”

“Well, if he wags his tail you know it is all right; but say he puts his tail between his legs, what will he do if you pat him?”

“Bite me. Experto crede.”

“No! if you are ever so expert he will bite you or try. Now putting of his tail between his legs, that passes for a sign of fear in a dog, all one as trembling does in a man. Do you see what I am driving at?”

“Yes.”

“Then you had better leave the spiteful brute to himself?”

“No! that would be to condemn him to the worst companion he can have.”

“But if he should pitch into you, sir?”

“Then he will pitch into a man twice as strong as himself, and a pupil of Bendigo. Don't be silly, Evans.”

SUNDAY.

Hodges. Pity you wasn't in chapel, Mr. Fry.

Fry. Why?

Hodges. The new chaplain!

Fry. Well, what did he do?

Hodges. He waked 'em all up, I can tell you. Governor couldn't get a wink all the sermon.

Fry. What did he tell you?

Hodges. Told us he loved us.

Fry. Loved who?

Hodges. All of us. Governor, turnkeys, and especially the prisoners, because they were in trouble. “My Master loves you, though He hates your sins,” says he; and “I love every mother's son of you.” What d'ye think of that? He loves the whole biling! Told 'em so, however.

Fry. Loves 'em, does he? Well, that's a new lay! After all, there's no accounting for tastes, you know. Haw! haw!

Hodges. Haw! haw! ho!

This same Sunday afternoon, soon after service, the chaplain came to Robinson's cell. Evans unlocked it, looking rather uneasy, and would have come in with the reverend gentleman; but he forbade him and walked quickly into the cell, as Van Amburgh goes among his leopards and panthers. He had in his hand a little box.

“I have brought you some ointment--some nice cooling ointment,” said he, “to rub on your neck. I saw it was frayed by that collar.”

(Pause.) No answer.

“Will you let me see you use it?”

No answer.

“Come!”

No answer.

The chaplain took the box off the table, opened it and went up to Robinson and began quietly to apply some of the grateful soothing ointment to his frayed throat. The man trembled all over. The chaplain kept his eye calm but firm upon him, as on a dog of doubtful temper. Robinson put up his hand in a feeble sort of way to prevent the other from doing him good. His reverence took the said hand in a quiet but powerful grasp, and applied the ointment all the same. Robinson said nothing, but he was seized with this extraordinary trembling.

“Good-by,” said his reverence kindly. “I leave you the box; and see, here are some tracts I have selected for you. They are not dull; there are stories in them, and the dialogue is pretty good. It is nearer nature than you will find it in works of greater pretension. Here a carpenter talks something like a carpenter, and a footman something like a footman, and a factory-girl something like a girl employed in a factory. They don't all talk book--you will be able to read them. Begin with this one, 'The Wages of Sin are Death.' Good-by!” And with these words and a kind smile he left the cell.

“From the chaplain, sir,” said Evans to the governor, touching his hat.

“DEAR SIR--Will you be good enough to send me by the bearer a copy of the prison rules, especially those that treat of the punishments to be inflicted on prisoners?

“I am,

“Yours, etc.”

Hawes had no sooner read this innocent-looking missive, than he burst out into a tide of execrations; he concluded by saying, “Tell him I have not got a spare copy; Mr. Jones will give him his.”

This answer disappointed the chaplain sadly; for Mr. Jones had left the town, and was not expected to return for some days. The hostile spirit of the governor was evident in this reply. The chaplain felt he was at war, and his was an energetic but peace-loving nature. He paced the corridor, looking both thoughtful and sad. The rough Evans eyed him with interest, and he also fell into meditation and scratched his head, invariable concomitant of thought with Evans.

It was toward evening, and his reverence still paced the corridor, downhearted at opposition and wickedness, but not without hope, and full of lovely and charitable wishes for all his flock, when the melancholy Fry suddenly came out of a prisoner's cell radiant with joy.

“What is amiss?” asked the chaplain.

“This is the matter,” said Fry, and he showed him a deuce of clubs, a five of hearts and an ace of diamonds, and so on; two or three cards of each suit. “A prisoner has been making these out of his tracts!”

“How could he do that?”

“Look here, sir. He has kept a little of his gruel till it turned to paste, and then he has pasted three or four leaves of the tracts together and dried them, and then cut them into cards.”

“But the colors--how could he get them?”

“That is what beats me altogether; but some of these prisoners know more than the bench of bishops.”

“More evil, I conclude you mean?”

“More of all sorts, sir. However, I am taking them to the governor, and he will fathom it, if any one can.”

“Leave one red card and one black with me.”

While Fry was gong the chaplain examined the cards with curiosity and that admiration of inventive resource which a superior mind cannot help feeling. There they were, a fine red deuce of hearts and a fine black four of spades--cards made without pasteboard and painted without paint. But how? that was the question. The chaplain entered upon this question with his usual zeal; but happening to reverse one of the cards, it was his fate to see on the back of it:

“THE WAGES OF SIN ARE DEATH.”

A Tract.

He reddened at the sight. Here was an affront! “The sulky brute could amuse himself cutting up my tracts!”

Presently the governor came up with his satellites.

“Take No. 19 out of his cell for punishment.”

At this word the chaplain's short-lived anger began to cool. They brought Robinson out.

“So you have been at it again,” cried the governor in threatening terms. “Now you will tell me where you got the paint to make these beauties with?”

No answer.

“Do you hear, ye sulky brute?”

No answer, but a glittering eye bent on Hawes.

“Put him in the jacket,” cried Hawes with an oath.

Hodges and Fry laid each a hand upon the man's shoulder and walked him off.

“Stop!” cried Hawes suddenly; “his reverence is here, and he is not partial to the jacket.”

The chaplain was innocent enough to make a graceful grateful bow to Hawes.

“Give him the dark cell for twenty-four hours,” continued Hawes with a malicious grin.

The thief gave a cry of dismay and shook himself clear of the turnkeys.

“Anything but that,” cried he with trembling voice.

“Oh! you have found your tongue, have you?”

“Any punishment but that,” almost shrieked the despairing man. “Leave me my reason. You have robbed me of everything else. For pity's sake leave me my reason!”

The governor made a signal to the turnkeys; they stepped toward the thief. The thief sprung out of their way, his eye rolling wildly as if in search of escape. Seeing this the two turnkeys darted at him like bulldogs, one on each side. This time, instead of flying, the thief was observed to move his body in a springy way to meet them; with two motions rapid as light and almost contemporaneous, he caught Hodges between the eyes with his fist and drove his head like a battering-ram into Fry's belly. Smack! ooff! and the two powerful men went down like ninepins.

In a moment all the warders within sight or hearing came buzzing round, and Hodges and Fry got up, the latter bleeding; both staring confusedly. Seeing himself hemmed in, Robinson offered no further resistance. He plumped himself down on the ground and there sat, and they had to take him up and carry him to the dark cells. But as they were dragging him along by the shoulders he caught sight of the governor and chaplain looking down at him over the rails of Corridor B. At sight of the latter the thief wrenched himself free from his attendants, and screamed to him:

“Do you see this, you in the black coat? You that told us the other day you loved us, and now stand coolly there and see me taken to the black hole to be got ready for the mad-house? D'ye hear?”

“I hear you,” replied the chaplain gravely and gently.

“You called us your brothers, you.”

“I did, and do.”

“Well, then, here is one of your brothers being taken to hell before your eyes. I go there a man, but I shall come out a beast, and that cowardly murderer by your side knows it, and you have not a word to say. That is all a poor fellow gets by being your brother. My curse on you all! butchers and hypocrites!”

“Give him twelve hours more for that,” roared Hawes. “---- his eyes, I'll break him, ---- him.”

“Ah,” yelled the thief, “you curse me, do you? d'ye hear that? The son of a ---- appeals to Heaven against me! What? does this lump of dirt believe there is a God? Then there must be one.” Then suddenly flinging himself on his knees, he cried, “If there is a God who pities them that suffer, I cry to Him on my knees to torture you as you torture us. May your name be shame, may your life be pain, and your death loathsome! May your skin rot from your flesh, your flesh from your bones, your bones from your body, and your soul split forever on the rock of damnation!”

“Take him away,” yelled Hawes, white as a sheet.

They tore him away by force, still threatening his persecutor with outstretched hand and raging voice and blazing eyes, and flung him into the dark dungeon.

“Cool yourself there, ye varmint,” said Fry spitefully. Even his flesh crept at the man's blasphemies.

Meantime, the chaplain had buried his face in his hands, and trembled like a woman at the frightful blasphemies and passions of these two sinners.

“I'll make this place hell to him. He shan't need to go elsewhere,” muttered Hawes aloud between his clinched teeth.

The chaplain groaned.

The governor heard him and turned on him: “Well, parson, you see he doesn't thank you for interfering between him and me. He would rather have had an hour or two of the jacket and have done with it.”

The chaplain sighed. He felt weighed down in spirit by the wickedness both of Hawes and of Robinson. He saw it was in vain at that moment to try to soften the former in favor of the latter. He moved slowly away. Hawes eyed him sneeringly.

“He is down upon his luck,” thought Hawes; “his own fault for interfering with me. I liked the man well enough, and showed it, if he hadn't been a fool and put his nose into my business.”

Half an hour had scarce elapsed when the chaplain came back.

“Mr. Hawes, I come to you as a petitioner.”

“Indeed!” said Hawes, with a supercilious sneer very hard to bear.

The other would not notice it. “Pray, do not think I side with a refractory prisoner if I beg you, not to countermand, but to modify Robinson's punishment.”

“What for?”

“Because he cannot bear so many hours of the dark cell.”

“Nonsense, sir.”

“Is it too much to ask that you will give him six hours a day for four days instead of twenty-four at a stretch?”

“I don't know whether it is too much for you to ask. I should say by what I see of you that nothing is; but it is too much for me to grant. The man has earned punishment; he has got it, and you have nothing to do with it at all.”

“Yes, I have the care of his soul, and how can I do his soul good if he loses his reason?”

“Stuff! his reason's safe enough, what little he has.”

“Do not say stuff! Do not be rash where the stake is so great, or confident where you have no knowledge. You have never been in the dark cell, Mr. Hawes; I have, and I assure you it tried my nerves to the uttermost. I had many advantages over this poor man. I went in of my own accord, animated by a desire of knowledge, supported by the consciousness of right, my memory enriched by the reading of five-and-twenty years, on which I could draw in the absence of external objects; yet so dreadful was the place that, had I not been fortified by communion with my omnipresent God, I do think my reason would have suffered in that thick darkness and solitude. I repeated thousands of lines of Homer, Virgil and the Greek dramatists; then I came to Shakespeare, Corneille, Racine and Victor Hugo; then I tried to think of a text and compose a sermon; but the minutes seemed hours, leaden hours, and they weighed my head down and my heart down, and so did the Egyptian darkness, till I sought refuge in prayer, and there I found it.”

“You pulled through it and so will he; and now I think of it, it is too slight a punishment to give a refractory, blaspheming villain no worse than a pious gentleman took on him for sport,” sneered Hawes. “You heard his language to me, the blaspheming dog?”

“I did! I did! and therefore pray you to pity his sinful soul, exasperated by the severities he has already undergone. Oh, sir! the wicked are more to be pitied than the good; and the good can endure trials that wreck the wicked. I would rather see a righteous man thrown into that dismal dungeon than this poor blaspheming sinner.”

“The deuce you would!”

“For the righteous man has a strong tower that the sinner lacks. He is fit to battle with solitude and fearful darkness; an unseen light shines upon his soul, an unseen hand sustains him. The darkness is no darkness to him, for the Sun of righteousness is nigh. In the deep solitude he is not alone, for good angels whisper by his side. 'Yea, though he walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet shall he fear no evil, for God is with him; his rod and his staff they comfort him.' The wicked have not this comfort. To them darkness and solitude must be too horrible. Satan--not God--is their companion. The ghosts of their past crimes rise and swell the present horror. Remorse and despair are added to the double gloom of solitude and darkness. You don't know what you are doing when you shut up a poor lost sinner of excitable temperament in that dreadful hole. It is a wild experiment on a human frame. Pray be advised, pray be warned, pray let your heart be softened and punish the man as he deserves--but do not destroy him! oh, do not! do not destroy him!”

Up to this moment Hawes had worn a quiet, malicious grin. At last his rage broke through this veil. He turned round black as night upon the chaplain, who was bending toward him in earnest gasping yet sweet and gentle supplication.

“The vagabond insulted me before all my servants, and that is why you take his part. He would send me to hell if he had the upper hand. I've got the upper hand, and so he shall taste it instead of me, till he goes down on his marrowbones to me with my foot on his viper's tongue. ---- him!”

“Oh! do not curse him, above all now that he is in trouble and defenseless.”

“Let me alone, sir, and I'll let you,” retorted Hawes savagely. “If I curse him you can pray for him. I don't hinder you. Good-night;” and Mr. Hawes turned his back very rudely.

“I will pray for him--and for you!”

“Ugh!”

So then the chaplain retired sorrowfully to his private room, and here, sustained no longer by action, his high-tuned nature gave way. A cold languor came over him. He locked the door that no one might see his weakness, and then, succumbing to nature, he fell first into a sickness and then into a trembling, and more than once hysterical tears gushed from his eyes in the temporary prostration of his spirit and his powers.

Such are the great. Men know their feats but not their struggles!

Meantime Robinson lay in the dark cell with a morsel of bread and water, and no bed or chair, that hunger and unrest might co-operate with darkness and solitude to his hurt. To this horrid abode it is now our fate to follow a thief and a blasphemer. We must pass his gloomy portal, over which might have been inscribed what Dante has written over the gates of hell:

“ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE--ABANDON HOPE!!”

At six o'clock Robinson was thrust in, and his pittance of bread and water with him; the door, which fitted like mosaic, was closed. The steps retreated carrying away hope and human kind; there was silence, and the man shivered in the thick black air that seemed a fluid, not an atmosphere.

When the door closed his heart was yet beating with rage and wild desire of vengeance. He nursed this rage as long as he could, but the thick darkness soon cooled him and cowed him. He sat down upon the floor, he ate his pittance very slowly, two mouthfuls a minute. “I will be an hour eating it,” said he, “and then an hour will have passed.” He thought he was an hour eating it, but in reality he was scarce twenty minutes. The blackness seemed to smother him. “I will shut it out,” said he. He took out his handkerchief and wrapped his head in it. “What a weak fool I am,” cried he, “when we are asleep it does not matter to us light or dark; I will go to sleep.” He lay down, his head still wrapped up, and tried to sleep. So passed the first hour.

Second hour. He rose from the stone floor after a vain attempt to sleep. “Oh, no!” cried he, “sleep is for those who are well and happy, and who could enjoy themselves as well awake; it won't come to me to save a poor wretch from despair. I must tire myself, and I am too cold to sleep. Here goes for a warm.” He groped to the wall, and keeping his hand on it went round and round like a caged tiger. “Hawes hopes to drive me to Bedlam. I'll do the best I can for myself to spite him. May he lie in a place narrower than this, and almost as dark, with his jaw down and his toes up before the year is out, curse him!” But the poor wretch's curses quavered away into sobs and tears. “Oh, what have I done to be used so as I am here? They drive me to despair, then drive me to hell for despairing. Patience, or I shall go mad. Patience! Patience!” This hour was passed cursing and weeping and groping for warmth and fatigue--in vain.

Third hour. The man sat rocking himself to and fro, trying not to think of anything. For now the past, too, was coming with all its weight upon him; every minute he started up as if an adder had stung him; crawled about his cell seeking refuge in motion and finding none; then he threw himself on the floor and struggled for sleep. Sleep would not come so sought; and now his spirits were quite cowed. He would cringe to Hawes; he would lick the dust at his feet to get out of this horrible place; who could he get to go and tell the governor he was _penitent_. He listened at the door; he rapped; no one came. He put his ear to the ground and listened; no sound--blackness, silence, solitude. “They have left me here to die,” shrieked the despairing man, and he flung himself on the floor and writhed upon the hard stone. “It must be morning, and no one comes near me; this is my tomb!” Fear came upon him, and trembling and a cold sweat bedewed his limbs; and once more the past rushed over him with tenfold force; days of happiness and comparative innocence now forfeited forever. His whole life whirled round before his eyes in a panorama, scene dissolving into scene with inconceivable rapidity; thus passed more than two hours; and now remorse and memory concentrated themselves on one dark spot in this man's history. “She is in the tomb,” cried he, “and all through me, and that is why I am here. This is my grave. Do you see me, Mary?--she is here. The spirits of the dead can go anywhere.” Then he trembled and cried for help. Oh! for a human voice or a human footstep!--none. His nerves and senses were now shaken. He cried aloud most piteously for help. “Mr. Fry, Mr. Hodges, help! help! help! The cell is full of the dead, and devils are buzzing round me waiting to carry me away--they won't wait much longer.” He fancied something supernatural passed him like a wind. He struck wildly at it. He flung himself madly against the door to escape it; he fell back bruised and bleeding and lay a while in stupor.

Sixth hour. Robinson was going mad. The blackness and solitude and silence and remorse and despair were more than his excitable nature could bear any longer. He prayed Hawes to come and abuse him. He prayed Fry to bring the jacket to him. “Let me but see a man, or hear a man!” He screamed, and cursed, and prayed, and dashed himself on the ground and ran round the cell wounding his hands and his face. Suddenly he turned deadly calm. He saw he was going mad--better die than so--“I shall be a beast soon--I will die a man”--he tore down his collar--he had on cotton stockings; he took one off--he tied it in a loose knot round his naked throat--he took a firm hold with each hand.

And now he was quiet and sorrowed calmly. A man to die in the prime of life for want of a little light and a word from a human creature to keep him from madness.

Then as the thought returned, clinching his teeth, he gathered the ends of the stocking and prepared with one fierce pull to save his shaken reason and end his miserable days. Now at this awful moment, While his hands griped convulsively the means of death, a quiet tap on the outside of the cell door suddenly rang through the dead stillness, and a moment after a human word forced its way into the cave of madness and death--

“BROTHER!”

When this strange word pierced the thick door and came into the hell-cave, feeble as though wafted over water from a distance, yet distinct as a bell and bright as a sunbeam, Robinson started, and quaked with fear and doubt. Did it come from the grave, that unearthly tone and word?

Still holding the ends of the stocking, he cried out wildly in a loud but quavering voice:

“Who--o--o calls Thomas Sinclair brother?” The distant voice rang back--

“Francis Eden!”

“Ah!--where are you, Francis Eden?”

“Here! within a hand's-breadth of you;” and Mr. Eden struck the door. “Here!”

“There! are you there?” and Robinson struck the door on his side.

“Yes, here!”

“Ha! don't go away, pray don't go away!”

“I don't mean to. Take courage--calm your fears--a brother is close by you!”

“A brother!--again! now I know who it must be, but there is no telling voices here.”

“What were you doing?”

“What was I doing? Oh! don't ask me--I was going mad--where are you?”

“Here!” (rap).

“And I am here close opposite; you won't go away yet a while?”

“Not till you bid me--compose yourself--do you hear me?--calm yourself, compose yourself.”

“I will try, sir!--thank you, sir--I will try. What o'clock is it?”

“Half-past twelve.”

“Night or day?”

“Night.”

“Friday night, or Saturday?”

“Thursday.”

“How came you to be in the prison at this hour?”

“I was anxious about you.”

“You were what?”

“Fearful about you.”

“What! did you give up your sleep only to see after me?”

“Are you not glad I came?”

“Is a shipwrecked sailor glad when a rope is flung him? I hold on to life and reason by you!”

“Is not this better than sleeping?--Did you speak?”

“No! I am thinking! I am trying to make you out. Were you ever a p----(hum)?”

“Was I ever what? the door is so thick!”

“Oh! nothing, sir; you seem to know what a poor fellow suffers in the dark cell.”

“I have been in it!”

“Whee-ugh-whee!--what a shame! what did they put you in for?”

“They didn't put me in. I went in.”

“The devil you did!” muttered the immured.

“What? Speak out.”

“Nothing, your reverence,” bawled Robinson. “Why did you go into such a cur--into such a hole?”

“It was my duty to know what a fellow-creature suffers there, lest, through inexperience, I might be cruel. Ignorance is the mother of cruelty!”

“I hear you, sir.

“And cruelty is a fearful crime in His eyes, whose servant I am.”

“I am thinking, sir; I am putting two or three things together--I see--”

“Speak more slowly and articulately.”

“I will; I see what you are now--you are a Christian.”

“I hope so!”

“I might have guessed as much, and I did suspect it; but I couldn't know, I had nothing to go by. I never fell in with a Christian before.”

“Where did you go to look for them?” asked Mr. Eden, his mouth twitching.

“I have been in many countries, and my eyes open; and I've heard and read of Christians, and I've met hypocrites; but never met a living Christian till to-night.” Then, after a pause, “Sir, I want to apologize to you!”

“What for!”

“For my ignorant and ungrateful conduct to you in my cell.”

“Let bygones be bygones!”

“Could you forgive me, sir?”

“You punished yourself, not me; I forgive you.”

“Thank you.”

Robinson was silent.

After a pause Mr. Eden tapped.

“What are you doing?”

“I am thinking over your goodness to me.”

“Are you better now?”

“That I am. The place was a tomb; since you came it is only a closet. I can't see your face--I feel it, though; and your voice is music to me. Have you nothing to say to me, sir?”

“I have many things to say to you; but this is not the time. I want you to sleep.”

“Why, sir?”

“Sleep is the balm of mind and body--you need sleep.”

“And you, sir?”

“I shall sit here.”

“You will take your death of cold.”

“No, I have my greatcoat.”

There was a long pause.

Robinson tapped. “Sir, grant me a favor.”

“What is it?”

“Go home to your bed.”

“What, leave you?”

“Yes.”

“Shall you not miss me?”

“Yes, sir, but you must go. The words you have spoken will stay with me while you are gone.”

“I shall stay.”

“No, sir, no! I can't bear it--it isn't fair!”

“What do you mean?”

“It isn't fair that a gentleman like you should be kept shivering at an unfortunate man's door like me. I am not quite good for nothing, sir, and this will disgrace me in my own eyes.”

“I am on the best side of the door; don't trouble your head about me.”

“I shouldn't, sir, if you had not about me--but kindness begets kindness. Go to your comfortable bed.”

Mr. Eden hesitated.

“You will make me more unhappy than I am, if you stay here in the cold.”

Now, at the beginning of this argument Mr. Eden was determined not to go; but on reflection he made up his mind to, for this reason: “This,” said he to himself, “is an act of uncommon virtue and self-denial in this poor fellow. I must not balk it, for it will be good for his soul; it is a step on the right road. This good and, I might say, noble act is a foundation-stone on which I ought to try and build an honest man and a Christian.”

“Well, then, as you are so considerate I will go.”

“Thank you.”

“Can I do nothing for you before I go?”

“No, sir; you have done all a man can; yes, you can do something--you spoke a word to me when you came; it is a word I am not worthy of, but still if you could leave me that word it would be a companion for me.”

“Brother!”

“Thank you.”

When he heard Mr. Eden's steps grow fainter and fainter, and at last inaudible, Robinson groaned; the darkness turned blacker and the solitude more desolate than ever.

Mr. Eden paced the corridors in meditation. “It is never too late to mend!” he said. “This man seemed an unredeemable brute, yet his heart was to be touched by persevering kindness; and once touched, how much of goodness left in his fallen nature--genuine gratitude, and even the embers of self-respect. 'I hate myself for my conduct in the cell; it would disgrace me in my own eyes if I let you shiver at my door.' Poor fellow, my heart yearns toward him for that. 'Go, or you will make me more unhappy.' Why, that was real delicacy. I must not let him suffer for it. In an hour I will go back to him. If he is asleep, well and good; if not, there I stay till morning.”

He went to his room and worked. The hour soon glided by to him; not so to the poor prisoner. At two in the morning Mr. Eden came softly back to the dark cell to see whether Robinson was asleep. He scratched the door with a key. A loud, unsteady voice cried out, “What is that?”

“It is I, brother.”

“Why are you not in your bed?”

“I couldn't sleep for anxiety. Come, chat with me till you feel sleepy. How did you color those cards?”

“I found a coal and a bit of brick in the yard. I pounded them and mixed them with water and laid them on with a brush I had made and hid.”

“Very ingenious! Are you cold?”

“No.”

“Because your voice trembles.”

“Does it?”

“What is the matter?”

“Can't you guess?”

“No! But I remember you used to tremble when I spoke to you in the cell. Why was that? Have your nerves been shaken by ill-usage, my poor fellow?”

“Oh, no! it is not that.”

“Tell me, then!”

“Oh, sir! you know all a poor fellow feels. You can guess what made me tremble, and makes me tremble now, like an aspen I do.”

“No, indeed! pray tell me! Are we not friends?”

“The best ever I had, or ever shall.”

“Then tell me.”

“I'll try; but it is a long story, and the door is so thick.”

“Ah! but I hear you better now. I have got used to your voice.

“Well, sir; but I've no words to speak to you as I ought. Why did I use to tremble when you used to speak kind to me? Sir, when I first came here I hadn't a bad heart. I was a felon, but I was a man. They turned me to a brute by cruelty and wrong. You came too late, sir. It wasn't Tom Robinson you found in that cell. I had got to think all men were devils They poisoned my soul! I hated God and man!

“The very chaplain before you said good, kind words in church, but out of it he was Hawes' tool! Then you came and spoke good, kind words. My heart ran to meet them; then it drew back all shivering and said, this is a hypocrite, too! I was a fool and a villain to think so for a moment, and perhaps I didn't at bottom, but I was turned to gall.

“Oh, sir! you don't know what it is to lose hope, to find out that do what you will you can't be right, can't escape abuse and hatred and torture. Treat a man like a dog and you make him one!

“But you came. Your voice, your face, your eye were all pity and kindness. I hoped, but I was afraid to hope! I had seen but two things--butchers and hypocrites. Then I had sworn in my despair never to speak again, and I wouldn't speak to you. Fool! How kind and patient you were. Sir, once when you left me you sighed as you closed the cell door. I came after you to beg your pardon, when it was too late; indeed I did, upon my honor. And when you would rub the ointment on my throat in spite of my ingratitude, I could have worshipped you; but my pride held me back like an iron hand. Why did I tremble? that was the devil and my better part fighting inside me for the upper hand. And another thing, I did not dare speak to you. I felt that if I did I should give way altogether, like a woman or a child. I feel so now. For, oh! can't you guess what it must be to a poor fellow when all the rest are savage as wolves and one is kind as a woman? Oh! you have been a friend to me. You don't know all you have done. You have saved my life. When you came here a stocking was knotted round my throat; a minute later the man you call your brother--God bless you--would have been no more. There, I never meant you should know that, and now it has slipped out. My benefactor! my kind friend! my angel! for you are an angel and not a man. What can I do to show you what I feel? What can I say? There, I tremble all over now as I did then. I'm choking for words, and the cruel, thick door keeps me from you. I want to put my neck under your foot, for I can't speak. All I say isn't worth a button. Words! words! words! give me words that mean something. They shan't keep me from you, they shan't! they shan't! My stubborn heart was between us once, now there is only a door. Give me your hand! give me your hand before my heart bursts.”

“There! there!”

“Hold it there!”

“Yes! yes!”

“My lips are here close opposite it. I am kissing your dear hand. There! there! there! I bless you! I love you! I adore you! I am kissing your hand, and I am on my knees blessing you and kissing. Oh, my heart! my heart! my heart!”

There was a long silence, disturbed only by sobs that broke upon the night from the black cell. Mr. Eden leaned against the door with his hand in the same place; the prisoner kissed the spot from time to time.

“Your reverence is crying, too!” was the first word spoken, very gently.

“How do you know?”

“You don't speak, and my heart tells me you are shedding a tear for me; there was only that left to do for me.”

Then there was another silence, and true it was that the good man and the bad man mingled some tears through the massy door. These two hearts pierced it, and went to and fro through it, and melted in spite of it, and defied and utterly defeated it.

“Did you speak, dear sir?”

“No! not for the world! Weep on, my poor sinning, suffering brother. Heaven sends you this blessed rain; let it drop quietly on your parched soul, refresh you, and shed peace on your troubled heart. Drop, gentle dew from heaven, upon his spirit; prepare the dry soul for the good seed!”

And so the bad man wept abundantly; to him old long-dried sources of tender feeling were now unlocked by Christian love and pity.

The good man shed a gentle tear or two of sympathy--of sorrow, too, to find so much goodness had been shut up, driven in and wellnigh quenched forever in the poor thief.

To both these holy drops were as the dew of Hermon on their souls.

O lacryrnarum fons tenero sacros
Ducentium ortus ex animo; quater
Felix in imo qui scatentem
Pectore te pia Nynmpha sensit.

Robinson was the first to break silence.

“Go home, sir, now; you have done your work, you have saved me. I feel at peace. I could sleep. You need not fear to leave me now.”

“I shall sit here until you are asleep, and then I will go. Do you hear this?” and he scratched the door with his key.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, when I do so and you do not tap in reply I shall know you are asleep.”

Robinson, whose heart was now so calmed, felt his eyes get heavier and heavier. After a while he spoke to Mr. Eden but received no reply.

“Perhaps he is dozing,” thought Robinson. “I won't disturb him.”

Then he composed himself, lying close to the door to be near his friend.

After a while Mr. Eden scratched the door with his key. There was no answer; then he rose softly and went to his own room.

Robinson slept--slept like an infant after this feverish day. His body lay still in a hole dark and almost as narrow as the grave, but his spirit had broken prison. Tired nature's sweet restorer descended like a dove upon his wet eyelids, and fanned him with her downy wings, and bedewed the hot heart and smarting limbs with her soothing, vivifying balm.

At six o'clock Evans went and opened Robinson's cell door. He was on the ground sleeping, with a placid smile on his face. Evans looked down at him with a puzzled air. While contemplating him he was joined by Fry.

“Ugh!” grunted that worthy, “seems to agree with him.” And he went off and told Hawes.

Directly after chapel, which he was not allowed to attend, came an order to take Robinson out of the dark cell and put him on the crank.

The disciplinarian, defeated in his attempt on Robinson, was compensated by a rare stroke of good fortune--a case of real refractoriness even this was not perfect, but it answered every purpose.

In one of the labor cells they found a prisoner seated with the utmost coolness across the handle of his crank. He welcomed his visitants with a smile, and volunteered a piece of information--“It is all right.”

Now it couldn't be all right, for it was impossible he could have done his work in the time. Hawes looked at the face of the crank to see how much had been done, and lo! the face was broken and the index had disappeared. As Mr. Hawes examined the face of the crank, the prisoner leered at him with a mighty silly cunning.

This personage's name was Carter; it may be as well to explain him. Go into any large English jail on any day in any year you like, you shall find there two or three prisoners who have no business to be in such a place at all--half-witted, half-responsible creatures, missent to jail by shallow judges contentedly executing those shallow laws they ought to modify and stigmatize until civilization shall come and correct them.

These imbeciles, if the nation itself was not both half-witted and a thoughtless, ignorant dunce in all matters relating to such a trifle (Heaven forgive us!) as its prisons, would be taken to the light not plunged into darkness; would not be shut up alone with their no-minds to accumulate the stupidity that has undone them, but forced into collision with better understandings; would not be closeted in a jail, but in a mild asylum with a school attached.

The offenses of these creatures is seldom theft, hardly ever violence. This idiot was sentenced to two years' separate confinement for being the handle with which two knaves had passed base coin. The same day the same tribunal sentenced a scoundrel who was not an idiot, and had beaten and kicked his wife to the edge of the grave--to fourteen years' imprisonment? no--to four months.

Mr. Carter had observed that Fry looked at a long iron needle on the face of the crank and that when he had been lazy somehow this needle pointed out the fact to Fry. He could not understand it, but then the world was brimful of things he could not understand one bit. It was no use standing idle till he could comprehend rerum naturam--bother it. In short, Mr. Carter did what is a dangerous thing for people in his condition to do, he cogitated, and the result of this unfamiliar process was that he broke the glass of the crank face, took out the index, shied the pieces of glass carefully over the wall, secreted the needle, took about ten turns of the crank, and then left off and sat down, exulting secretly.

When they came, as usual, and went to consult the accusing needle, he chuckled and leered with foolish cunning. But his chuckle died away into a most doleful quaver when he found himself surrounded, jacketed, strapped and collared. He struggled furiously at first, like some wild animal in a net; and when resistance was hopeless the poor, half-witted creature lifted up his voice and uttered loud, wild-beast cries of pain and terror that rang through the vast prison.

These horrible cries brought all the warders to the spot, and Mr. Eden. There he found Carter howling, and Hawes in front of him, cursing and threatening him with destruction if he did not hold his noise.

He might as well have suspended a dog from a branch by the hind leg and told him he mustn't howl.

This sight drove a knife through Mr. Eden's heart. He stood among them white as a sheet. He could not speak; but his pale face was a silent protest against this enormity. His look of horror and righteous indignation chilled and made uneasy the inquisitors, all but Hawes.

“Hold your noise, ye howling brute, or I'll”--and he clapped his hand before Carter's mouth.