Quanto si fende
La rocca per dar via a chi va suso
N'andai 'nfino ove'l cerchiar si prende
Com'io nel quinto giro fui dischiuso
Vidi gente per esso che piangea
Glacendo a terra tutta volta in giuso
Adhaesit pavimento anima mia
Sentia dir loro con si alti sospiri
Che la parola appena s'intendea.
'O eletti di Deo, i cui soffriri
E giustizia e speranza fan men duri--'
DANTE. Purgatorio
Ah, sir, we have learnt the way to get your company,' said Hector
Ernescliffe, as he welcomed his father-in-law at Maplewood; 'we have
only to get under sentence.'
'Sick or sorry, Hector; that's the attraction to an old doctor.'
'And,' added Hector, with the importance of his youthful magisterial
dignity, 'I hope I have arranged matters for you to see him. I wrote
about it; but I am afraid you will not be able to see him alone.'
Great was the satisfaction with which Hector took the conduct of the
expedition to Portland Island; though he was inclined to encumber it
with more lionizing than the good Doctor's full heart was ready for.
Few words could he obtain, as in the bright August sunshine they
steamed out from the pier at Weymouth, and beheld the gray sides of the
island, scarred with stone quarries, stretching its lengthening
breakwater out on one side, and on the other connected with the land by
the pale dim outline of the Chesill Bank. The water was dancing in
golden light; white-sailed or red-sailed craft plied across it; a ship
of the line lay under the lee of the island, practising gunnery, the
three bounds of her balls marked by white columns of spray each time of
touching the water, pleasure parties crowded the steamer; but to Dr.
May the cheerfulness of the scene made a depressing contrast to the
purpose of his visit, as he fixed his eyes on the squared outline of
the crest of the island, and the precipitous slope from thence to the
breakwater, where trains of loaded trucks rushed forth to the end,
discharged themselves, and hurried back.
Landing at the quay, in the midst of confusion, Hector smiled at the
Doctor's innocent proposal of walking, and bestowed him in a little
carriage, with a horse whose hard-worked patience was soon called out,
as up and up they went, through the narrow, but lively street, past the
old-fashioned inn, made memorable by a dinner of George III.; past the
fossil tree, clamped against a house like a vine; past heaps of slabs
ready for transport, a church perched up high on the slope, and a
parsonage in a place that looked only accessible to goats. Lines of
fortification began to reveal themselves, and the Doctor thought
himself arrived, but he was to wind further on, and be more struck with
the dreariness and inhospitality of the rugged rock, almost bare of
vegetation, the very trees of stone, and older than our creation; the
melancholy late ripening harvest within stone walls, the whole surface
furrowed by stern rents and crevices riven by nature, or cut into
greater harshness by the quarries hewn by man. The grave strangeness of
the region almost marked it out for a place of expiation, like the
mountain rising desolate from the sea, where Dante placed his prisoners
of hope.
The walls of a vast enclosure became visible; and over them might be
seen the tops of great cranes, looking like the denuded ribs of
umbrellas. Buildings rose beyond, with deep arched gateways; and a
small town was to be seen further off. Mr. Ernescliffe sent in his
card at the governor's house, and found that the facilities he had
asked for had been granted. They were told that the prisoner they
wished to see was at work at some distance; and while he was summoned,
they were to see the buildings. Dr. May had little heart for making a
sight of them, except so far as to judge of Leonard's situation; and he
was passively conducted across a gravelled court, turfed in the centre,
and containing a few flower-beds, fenced in by Portland's most natural
productions, zamias and ammonites, together with a few stone coffins,
which had once inclosed corpses of soldiers of the Roman garrison.
Large piles of building inclosed the quadrangle; and passing into the
first of these, the Doctor began to realize something of Leonard's
present existence. There lay before him the broad airy passage, and
either side the empty cells of this strange hive, as closely packed,
and as chary of space, as the compartments of the workers of the
honeycomb.
'Just twice as wide as a coffin,' said Hector, doing the honours of
one, where there was exactly width to stand up between the bed and the
wall of corrugated iron; 'though, happily, there is more liberality of
height.'
There was a ground glass window opposite to the door, and a shelf,
holding a Bible, Prayer and hymn book, and two others, one religious,
and one secular, from the library. A rust-coloured jacket, with a
black patch marked with white numbers, and a tarpaulin hat, crossed
with two lines of red paint on the crown, hung on the wall. The Doctor
asked for Leonard's cell, but it was in a distant gallery, and he was
told that when he had seen one, he had seen all. He asked if these
were like those that Leonard had previously inhabited at Milbank and
Pentonville, and hearing that they were on the same model, he almost
gasped at the thought of the young enterprising spirit thus caged for
nine weary months, and to whom this bare confined space was still the
only resting-place. He could not look by any means delighted with the
excellence of the arrangements, grant it though he might; and he was
hurried on to the vast kitchens, their ranges of coppers full of
savoury steaming contents, and their racks of loaves looking all that
was substantial and wholesome; but his eyes were wandering after the
figures engaged in cooking, to whom he was told such work was a reward;
he was trying to judge how far they could still enjoy life; but he
turned from their stolid low stamp of face with a sigh, thinking how
little their condition could tell him of that of a cultivated nature.
He was shown the chapel, unfortunately serving likewise for a
schoolroom; the centre space fitted for the officials and their
families, the rest with plain wooden benches. But it was not an hour
for schooling, and he went restlessly on to the library, to gather all
the consolation he could from seeing that the privation did not extend
to that of sound and interesting literature. He had yet to see the
court, where the prisoners were mustered at half-past five in the
morning, thence to be marched off in their various companies to work.
He stood on the terrace from which the officials marshalled them, and
he was called on to look at the wide and magnificent view of sea and
land; but all he would observe to Hector was, 'That boy's throat has
always been tender since the fever.' He was next conducted to the
great court, the quarry of the stones of the present St. Paul's, and
where the depression of the surface since work began there, was marked
by the present height of what had become a steep conical edifice,
surmounted by a sort of watch-tower. There he grew quite restive, and
hearing a proposal of taking him to the Verne Hill works half a mile
off, he declared that Hector was welcome to go; he should wait for his
boy.
Just then the guide pointed out at some distance a convict approaching
under charge of a warder; and in a few seconds more, the Doctor had
stepped back to a small room, where, by special favour, he was allowed
to be with the prisoner, instead of seeing him through a grating, but
only in the presence of a warder, who was within hearing, though not
obtrusively so. Looking, to recognize, not to examine, he drew the
young man into his fatherly embrace.
'You have hurt your hands,' was his first word, at the touch of the
bruised fingers and broken skin.
'They are getting hardened,' was the answer, in an alert tone, that
gave the Doctor courage to look up and meet an unquenched glance;
though there was the hollow look round the eyes that Tom had noticed,
the face had grown older, the expression more concentrated, the
shoulders had rounded; the coarse blue shirt and heavy boots were dusty
with the morning's toil, and the heat and labour of the day had left
their tokens, but the brow was as open, the mouth as ingenuous as ever,
the complexion had regained a hue of health, and the air of alacrity
and exhilaration surprised as much as it gratified the visitor.
'What is your work?' he asked.
'Filling barrows with stones, and wheeling them to the trucks for the
breakwater,' answered Leonard, in a tone like satisfaction. 'But pray,
if you are so kind, tell me,' he continued, with anxiety that he could
not suppress, 'what is this about war in America?'
'Not near Indiana; no fear of that, I trust. But how did you know,
Leonard?'
'I saw, for one moment at a time, in great letters on a placard of the
contents of newspapers, at the stations as we came down here, the
words, 'Civil War in America;' and it has seemed to be in the air here
ever since. But Averil has said nothing in her letters. Will it
affect them?'
The Doctor gave a brief sketch of what was passing, up to the battle of
Bull Run; and his words were listened to with such exceeding avidity,
that he was obliged to spend more minutes than he desired on the
chances of the war, and the Massissauga tidings, which he wished to
make sound more favourable than he could in conscience feel that they
were; but when at last he had detailed all he knew from Averil's
letters, and it had been drunk in with glistening eyes, and manner
growing constantly less constrained, he led back to Leonard himself:
'Ethel will write at once to your sister when I get home; and I think I
may tell her the work agrees with you.'
'Yes; and this is man's work; and it is for the defences,' he added,
with a sparkle of the eye.
'Very hard and rough,' returned the Doctor, looking again at the
wounded hands and hard-worked air.
'Oh, but to put out one's strength again, and have room!' cried the
boy, eagerly.
'Was it not rather a trying change at first?'
'To be sure I was stiff, and didn't know how to move in the morning,
but that went off fast enough; and I fill as many barrows a day as any
one in our gang.'
'Then I may tell your sister you rejoice in the change?'
'Why, it's work one does not get deadly sick of, as if there was no
making one's self do it,' said Leonard, eagerly; 'it is work! and
besides, here is sunshine and sea. I can get a sight of that every
day; and now and then I can get a look into the bay, and
Weymouth--looking like the old time.' That was his first sorrowful
intonation; but the next had the freshness of his age, 'And there are
thistles!'
'Thistles?'
'I thought you cared for thistles; for Miss May showed me one at
Coombe; but it was not like what they are here--the spikes pointing out
and pointing in along the edges of the leaves, and the scales lapping
over so wonderfully in the bud.'
'Picciola!' said the Doctor to himself; and aloud, 'Then you have time
to enjoy them?'
'When we are at work at a distance, dinner is brought out, and there is
an hour and a half of rest; and on Sunday we may walk about the yards.
You should have seen one of our gang, when I got him to look at the
chevaux de frise round a bud, how he owned it was a regular patent
invention; it just answered to Paley's illustration.'
'What, the watch?' said the Doctor, seeing that the argument had been
far from trite to his young friend. 'So you read Paley?'
'I read all such books as I could get up there,' he answered; 'they
gave one something to think about.'
'Have you no time for reading here?'
'Oh, no! I am too sleepy to read except on school days and Sundays,'
he said, as if this were a great achievement.
'And your acquaintance--is he a reader of Paley too?'
'I believe the chaplain set him on it. He is a clerk, like me, and not
much older. He is a regular Londoner, and can hardly stand the work;
but he won't give in if he can help it, or we might not be together.'
Much the Doctor longed to ask what sort of a friend this might be, but
the warder's presence forbade him; and he could only ask what they saw
of each other.
'We were near one another in school at Pentonville, and knew each
other's faces quite well, so that we were right glad to be put into the
same gang. We may walk about the yard together on Sunday evening too.'
The Doctor had other questions on his lips that he again restrained,
and only asked whether the Sundays were comfortable days.
'Oh, yes,' said Leonard, eagerly; but then he too recollected the
official, and merely said something commonplace about excellent
sermons, adding, 'And the singing is admirable. Poor Averil would envy
such a choir as we have! We sing so many of the old Bankside hymns.'
'To make your resemblance to Dante's hill of penitence complete, as
Ethel says,' returned the Doctor.
'I should like it to be a hill of purification!' said Leonard,
understanding him better than he had expected.
'It will, I think,' said the Doctor, 'to one at least. I am comforted
to see you so brave. I longed to come sooner, but--'
'I am glad you did not.'
'How?' But he did not pursue the question, catching from look and
gesture, that Leonard could hardly have then met him with
self-possession; and as the first bulletin of recovery is often the
first disclosure of the severity of an illness, so the Doctor was more
impressed by the prisoner's evident satisfaction in his change of
circumstances, than he would have been by mere patient resignation; and
he let the conversation be led away to Aubrey's prospects, in which
Leonard took full and eager interest.
'Tell Aubrey I am working at fortifications too,' he said, smiling.
'He could not go to Cambridge without you.'
'I don't like to believe that,' said Leonard, gravely; 'it is carrying
the damage I have done further: but it can't be. He always was fond of
mathematics, and of soldiering. How is it at the old mill?' he added,
suddenly.
'It is sold.'
'Sold?' and his eyes were intently fixed on the Doctor.
'Yes, he is said to have been much in debt long before; but it was
managed quietly--not advertised in the county papers. He went to
London, and arranged it all. I saw great renovations going on at the
mill, when I went to see old Hardy.'
'Good old Hardy! how is he?'
'Much broken. He never got over the shock; and as long as that fellow
stayed at the mill, he would not let me attend him.'
'Ha!' exclaimed Leonard, but caught himself up.
A message came that Mr. Ernescliffe feared to miss the boat; and the
Doctor could only give one tender grasp and murmured blessing, and
hurry away, so much agitated that he could hardly join in Hector's
civilities to the officials, and all the evening seemed quite struck
down and overwhelmed by the sight of the bright brave boy, and his
patience in his dreary lot.
After this, at all the three months' intervals at which Leonard might
be seen, a visit was contrived to him, either by Dr. May or Mr. Wilmot;
and Aubrey devoted his first leave of absence to staying at Maplewood,
that Hector might take him to his friend; but he came home expatiating
so much on the red hair of the infant hope of Maplewood, and the fuss
that Blanche made about this new possession, that Ethel detected an
unavowed shade of disappointment. Light and whitewash, abundant fare,
garments sufficient, but eminently unbecoming, were less impressive
than dungeons, rags, and bread and water; when, moreover, the prisoner
claimed no pity, but rather congratulation on his badge of merit,
improved Sunday dinner, and promotion to the carpenter's shop, so as
absolutely to excite a sense of wasted commiseration and uninteresting
prosperity. Conversation constrained both by the grating and the
presence of the warder, and Aubrey, more tenderly sensitive than his
brother, and devoid of his father's experienced tact, was too much
embarrassed to take the initiative, was afraid of giving pain by
dwelling on his present occupations and future hopes, and confused
Leonard by his embarrassment. Hector Ernescliffe discoursed about
Charleston Harbour and New Orleans; and Aubrey stood with downcast
eyes, afraid to seem to be scanning the convict garb, and thus
rendering Leonard unusually conscious of wearing it. Then when in
parting, Aubrey, a little less embarrassed, began eagerly and in much
emotion to beg Leonard to say if there was anything he could get for
him, anything he could do for him, anything he would like to have sent
him, and began to promise a photograph of his father, Leonard checked
him, by answering that it would be an irregularity--nothing of personal
property was allowed to be retained by a prisoner.
Aubrey forgot all but the hardship, and began an outburst about the
tyranny.
'It is quite right,' said Leonard, gravely; 'there is nothing that
might not be used for mischief if one chose.'
And the warder here interfered, and said he was quite right, and it
always turned out best in the end for a prisoner to conform himself,
and his friends did him no good by any other attempt, as Mr.
Ernescliffe could tell the young gentleman. The man's tone, though
neither insolent nor tyrannical, but rather commendatory of his charge,
contrasting with his natural deference to the two gentlemen, irritated
poor Aubrey beyond measure, so that Hector was really glad to have him
safe away, without his having said anything treasonable to the
authorities. The meeting, so constrained and uncomfortable, had but
made the friends more vividly conscious of the interval between the
cadet and the convict, and, moreover, tended to remove the aureole of
romance with which the unseen captive had been invested by youthful
fancy.
To make the best of a prolonged misfortune does absolutely lessen
sympathy, by diminishing the interest of the situation; and even the
good Doctor himself was the less concerned at any hindrance to his
visits to Portland, as he uniformly found his prisoner cheerful,
approved by officials, and always making some small advance in the
scale of his own world, and not, as his friends without expected of
him, showing that he felt himself injured instead of elated by such
rewards as improved diet, or increased gratuities to be set to his
account against the time when, after eight years, he might hope for
exportation with a ticket of leave to Western Australia.
The halo of approaching death no longer lighted him up, and after the
effusion of the first meeting, his inner self had closed up, he was
more ready to talk of American news than of his own feelings, and
seemed to look little beyond the petty encouragements devised to suit
the animal natures of ordinary prisoners, and his visitors sometimes
feared lest his character were not resisting the deadening, hardening
influence of the unvaried round of manual labour among such associates.
He had been soon advanced from the quarry to the carpenter's shop, and
was in favour there from his activity and skill; but his very
promotions were sad--and it was more sad, as some thought, for him to
be gratified by them. But, as Dr. May always ended, what did they know
about him?