The bed was empty.
_My wife was gone!_
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
Here Clide’s journal breaks off. A long gap ensues, and we must fill it up
from the recollections of others. The scene that followed the discovery of
his young wife’s flight was not to be described. First, it was incredulity
that filled the old Moat. “Gone! Fled! Nonsense!” protested Admiral de
Winton, walking up and down the corridor, where he had rushed out in semi‐
nocturnal attire when Stanton had burst into his room with the dreadful
intelligence. The old sailor was scarcely to be recognized in the
_déshabillé_ of his coatless and wigless person, as he blustered loudly,
his hands in his pockets, zigzagging to and fro as if he were pacing the
quarter‐deck and expostulating angrily with a surly crew.
Sir Simon Harness was calmer. He did not contradict his friend’s vehement
assertion that it was all a trick of Isabel’s to terrify us; he even made
a show of pooh‐poohing the notion of a flight as absurd, ridiculous, not
to be entertained for a moment. But there was not that heartiness in his
voice or manner that carries conviction to others. Mrs. de Winton also
made a semblance of chiming in with the admiral’s view, but it was a
palpable failure. Mr. Simpson was the only one who did not try to act his
part in the kindly comedy. He was fully convinced that it was no comedy,
but a most miserable drama that was beginning for the son of his old
friend and client. He had mistrusted Isabel from the first moment he fixed
his keen, legal vision on her. Mrs. de Winton had, it is true, inoculated
him beforehand with a good share of her own mistrust, and he came to the
scrutiny with a jaundiced eye; prejudiced, and predetermined not to be
fascinated or beguiled out of his severest judgment. He regarded hers as a
case of which he was to take a strictly legal view, and which was to be
investigated, sifted, and proved before he would endorse it. It was a very
odd case on the face of it; but Benjamin Simpson had had many odd cases to
deal with in the course of his experience, and he flattered himself he was
not to be baffled by a child scarcely out of her teens. She might be very
clever, and succeed in hoodwinking a rich young gentleman into marrying
her, on the strength of a fictitious story of misery and a still more
fictitious one of heiresship; but she was not likely to stand Simpson’s
cross‐examination long without breaking down. Such ungallant reflections
as these had been passing through the lawyer’s brain while he sipped his
claret and watched the fair face that sat opposite to him at the dinner‐
table, glancing at him with eyes that flashed more brightly than her
jewels. He had made up his mind, as he looked at her, that she was a
delusion; she would disappear sooner or later. The news of her flight was
therefore only a surprise by its suddenness. Clide was rushing all over
the basement story, calling out Isabel’s name into every room, while Mrs.
de Winton and her own and Isabel’s maid were pursuing a similar search in
the upper part of the house. The rambling old mansion was echoing from end
to end with opening and shutting of doors and cries of the fugitive’s
name; but no answer was heard except the echoes of the voices and the
doors.
“My dear boy,” said the admiral, pausing on his imaginary quarterdeck, as
Clide came up the stairs, “I’ll stake my head on it, the sly little puss
is playing a game of hide‐and‐seek with us, and laughing fit to kill
herself in some cupboard or other, while we are kicking up this row; take
my word for it, the best thing we can do is to go quietly to our own beds,
and before long she’ll come out of her hiding‐place.”
Clide muttered an impatient “stuff and nonsense!” Was she likely to perish
herself such a night as this playing hide‐and‐seek for their amusement—she
that could not bear a breath of cold? Even crossing through a fireless
room she would shiver like an aspen. The admiral grunted something about
“deserving to be whipped,” and turned to his zigzag promenade again.
Stanton and some of the other men‐servants had gone out to scour the park
and the gardens; they had been absent now long enough to have discovered
something, if there was anything to discover, but the stars made no answer
to their calling. “Madame! Mistress!” they shouted, till at last they gave
it up, and retraced their steps to the house. Clide had been going to the
window in a restless way, looking out into the night, and listening as if
he expected to hear the silence send him back some sign. It was impossible
to say whether he believed the least bit in the hide‐and‐seek theory,
whether he had a lingering hope of hearing Isabel call out to him or
appear from some corner, or whether he was just in that condition of mind
that precludes alike sitting still or doing something. He might be excited
by hope, or he might be stupefied by despair. He was as white as ashes,
and came and went with the quick, unsteady gait of a man who has lost his
self‐command, and is swayed only by the force of some terrible emotion.
Clide’s face was a fine, manly one; it would have been noble but for the
weakness of the chin and a certain tremulous movement of the lower
lip—perhaps of both; for the upper one was shaded by a light‐brown
moustache that prevented you seeing whether it had the firmness that would
have redeemed the lower one. The eyes were expressive, rather sleepy when
the face was in repose; but they woke up with flashes of lightning when he
was excited, and transfigured the whole countenance into one of energy and
power. There was no need to be a physiognomist to judge of the character
of such a face. The most unskilled observer could read it like a book.
There were all the elements of a stormy life there—passive strength, and
passions that needed only a spark to kindle them into a flame; a man who,
as he was taken, would be as easily led as a lamb or as intractable as a
young hyena. He had started in life with the fixed purpose of steering
clear of storms, of saving himself trouble and avoiding fuss. Poor Clide!
Life, he fancied, had a lake of oil at the entrance of the wide sea where
storms blew and waves roared angrily, and he had made up his mind to
anchor in the lake, and never venture beyond its peaceful margin.
The servants had come back—those that had been scouring the park—and the
others, who had been slamming doors all through the house, were
congregating in twos and threes upon the stairs leading to the broad
landing off which their young mistress’ room stood, its door wide open,
with a dismal, vacant air about it already.
“I see her! There she is!” exclaimed Clide. He had been staring for some
minutes out of the window, and suddenly bounded down the great oak stairs,
and out in the path, making for a clump of laurel‐trees far down near the
water. The admiral, Sir Simon, Simpson, and Mrs. de Winton pressed into
the embrasure of the window, the servants peeping over their heads to
catch a sight of the figure he was pursuing; but they saw nothing except
the winter trees, that stood like silver against the sky, while their
straggling shadows lay black upon the lawn. Still Clide bounded on,
calling out Isabel! Isabel! as he ran, and still no sound answered him;
the thud of his footfall on the frosty grass came sharply distinct in the
silence.
“The boy is dazed!” muttered his uncle; “it was a shadow he saw. But, no!
By Jove, there she is!” Clide was now close upon the laurels, that looked
like a black mound in the moonlight. The group in the window saw a white,
crouching figure rise slowly at his approach; he stopped, uttered a cry of
disappointment, and turned drearily back towards the house.
“What is it? Who is it?” shouted several voices; but before Clide answered
a moonbeam lighted up the figure of a deer, as it glided lightly over the
sward, and disappeared into the distant copse.
Instead of entering the house at once, Clide wandered round towards the
stables. It occurred to him that something in that region might suggest a
clew to the mode of his wife’s escape. He was quickly undeceived. Every
door was locked. There was no sign of any horse having disturbed the
slumbers of its companions.
“There is no use in your passing the night out of doors,” said Sir Simon,
who came to see where Clide had gone. “Come in, and let us put our heads
together to see what is to be done. I’m inclined to believe with De Winton
that it is a trick, and that the foolish child is amusing herself at
seeing us all out of doors searching for her.”
Whether this was honest or not, Clide felt it was meant in kindness. He
let his old friend draw his arm within his and lead him back into the
house. It was lighted up as for an impromptu illumination; every servant,
male and female, was afoot, and they had busied themselves in and out of
all the up‐stair rooms that for years had been untenanted; and as it was
necessary to do something, they lighted candles.
“Suppose it is not a trick!” said Clide, looking into Sir Simon’s face
with a terrible question in his eyes.
“That’s what we have got to find out,” replied the baronet evasively.
“Meantime, come up and let us hear what the others have to say.”
They had nothing to say. Presently Mrs. de Winton remarked:
“I wonder what dress she had on? If she kept on her jewels, and that light
gauze one, with the low body and short sleeves, she wore at dinner, she
can’t have gone far.”
They, went into the empty room to investigate. The jewels were gone, every
one she had worn; there were the empty cases. But the light gauze dress
was there hanging in the wardrobe, as if her maid had carefully put it
away. What she had put on to replace it was the next point which Mr.
Simpson insisted on clearing up. All the elegant dresses of the young
bride’s trousseau were tossed out of drawers and wardrobes by
Susette—Susette had been engaged for her by Clide himself after their
marriage—and counted over, till one was found missing in the roll: the
claret‐colored silk in which she had travelled down from London, and had
never worn since. It was the most appropriate dress of all she had for a
midnight flight, and, being dark, would escape observation. Mr. Simpson
seized immediately on this, “making a point” of it in his legal way, that
so exasperated Clide he could have flown at the lawyer’s throat and
strangled him on the spot. He resisted the impulse, and turned away,
inviting Mrs. de Winton by a sign to go with him. He walked into his own
dressing‐room, and, when his step‐mother had followed him, he closed the
door, and took a turn in the room with a quick, passionate step.
“What in the name of heaven can it be?” he said, stopping abruptly and
coming close up to her, as she stood by the mantel‐piece.
“She is gone,” answered his step‐mother. “I hardly doubted it for an
instant. I have been expecting some such catastrophe for several days
past. If you ask me why, I cannot tell you. I somehow never trusted.... My
dear Clide,” she continued in an earnest tone of kindness, quite unlike
her usual cold manner to him, “I wish with all my heart I could do
something or say something to comfort you or help you. Can you throw no
light at all on it from your own knowledge of things? Is there nothing in
what you know, or in what you do not know, about her antecedents and
connections to help you to form some guess? Where can she have gone to,
and who has she gone with?”
Clide clenched his hand, and moved away with an expression of anguish that
was dreadful.
“Gone to!” he repeated suddenly. “Why, what fools we are not to have seen
to that at once! But it’s not too late....” He pulled out his watch....
“It’s just three‐quarters of an hour since we missed her. Sir Simon and I
will saddle a couple of horses and ride both ways, for Glanivold and
Lanfarl. If she is making for either, we may overtake her.”
He was going to the door, but Mrs. de Winton laid her hand on his arm.
“Not three‐quarters of an hour since we missed her, but she may be gone
more than three hours. It was scarcely eight o’clock when she came up‐
stairs to lie down, and now it’s ten minutes past twelve. Supposing she’s
gone to the station....”
“Nonsense!” broke in Clide; “the station is three hours’ walk from this.
She could no more do it than an infant.”
“I’m only _supposing_; one must suppose something,” replied his step‐
mother patiently. “The train leaves at a quarter to twelve; so if that
were her object, it is too late to stop her.”
“There’s something too absurd in the idea! It’s simply impossible!”
declared Clide with a vehemence that carried no sense of conviction with
it—rather the contrary. “It’s absurd to contemplate it,” he repeated; “but
if you would sleep easier for having the thing certified, I’ll jump into
the saddle, and ride to the station and inquire.”
“Inquire what? Consider what you are going to do, Clide,” said Mrs. de
Winton, holding him back firmly—“raise a hue and cry after your wife as if
she were a runaway thief! Suppose it turns out after all to be a trick,
and that we see her emerge out of some closet or corner before you come
back; how will you look after sending it over the country that your wife
disappeared one night? Do you imagine the world will believe the story of
the game of hide‐and‐seek?”
Before he could reply Sir Simon and the admiral burst into the room.
“We found this on her dressing‐table,” said the admiral, handing his
nephew a note. Clide took it. A cold chill ran through his blood. He tore
open the letter. It ran thus:
“Clide, I am going to leave you. I don’t ask you to forgive me. You can
never do that. But God help me! I shall suffer for having so wickedly
deceived you. I should not have been worthy of you, even if I had been as
true as I have been false. But I loved you, and I shall never love anybody
else. Don’t try to find me. You will never find me. Good‐by, Clide. Forget
me and be happy.
“Your wicked but remorseful and loving
Isabel.”
The letter dropped from the young man’s hand, and he fell to the ground
with a cry.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
We return to Clide’s journal:
The sun was shining over the sea—the strong‐waved sea that washes the
northern coast of France, the country of legends and cider, and gray ruins
and chivalry, and all that survives in the France of to‐day of the France
of long ago, the “plaisant pays de France” that poets sang to Marie Stuart
in her happy days of young queenhood. There to the right, as the steamer
paddled towards the port, stood the cliff where William of Normandy
harangued his Norsemen before they embarked with him to snatch from Harold
by force the crown he had not been able by fraud to prevent his assuming.
Dieppe lay twinkling in the sunlight below, a town of gossip and carved
ivory and many odors. As we entered the harbor, a strain of wild,
plaintive music came floating towards us from the shore. It was the hymn
of the fishermen’s wives, pulling the fishing smacks along the pier.
Children were toddling by the side of the mothers, and clutching by the
rope with their small fingers, while their shrill trebles piped in chorus
with the elders. A pretty picture, if I had been in a mood to admire it.
But the gloom within quenched all the brightness without.
The boat was steered alongside the quay, where half the town, it seemed to
me, had assembled to jeer at our pea‐green faces, as we emerged from our
separate purgatories and staggered up the gangway. I never feel so
thorough a misanthrope as when I see my fellow‐creatures enjoying the
humiliation of my steamboat misery, and hear them chuckling over me as I
pass along the plank that leads from deck to dry land. On this particular
occasion I remember with what a vehemence of hatred I resented their
inhumanity, and I assumed as defiant an air as was compatible with my
abject bodily and mental condition, as I marched on with my fellow‐
victims, and passed between two hedges of eager, staring eyes. My uncle
was with me. But he was not abject. He was far removed from such a
wretched infirmity as sea‐sickness, and nothing but his kindheartedness
prevented him from joining with the chucklers who were making merry at our
expense. It was almost an aggravation of my own suffering to see the
intensity of his sympathy, the way in which he was perpetually mounting
guard beside me to ward off any random shaft that the chance remarks of
others every now and then aimed at me.
I had now spent six weary months prosecuting my search, the most
extraordinary and unfortunate that ever man was engaged in, and up to the
day I started for Dieppe I had failed to obtain the smallest clew. I had
left nothing untried. I had stimulated the activity of Scotland Yard by
reckless liberality; I had set the whole detective force in motion, but to
no purpose.
I had had recourse to the mysterious column in the _Times_ for months
together; but the agony of feeling that my appeals to Isabel to “come back
to her husband, or communicate with him by letter,” was making all the
breakfast‐tables in the kingdom laugh, brought no response from the
fugitive herself. All this time my uncle seconded me by his exertions and
supported me by his kindness. I think I should have gone mad, if it had
not been for him. He never tired of my lamentations, my long, sullen fits
of gloom, the wearisome refrain of my self‐reproach, my endless wondering
at the behavior of Isabel, and my cursing and swearing at the stupidity of
the Scotland Yard people. He bore with me as patiently as a mother with a
sick child. My step‐mother had talked him into her belief that Isabel had
been on the stage, and that the most likely place to hear of her would be
amongst managers and play‐actors. There was something utterly revolting to
me in this notion, and I burst out into such uncontrollable anger one day
when my uncle was arguing in favor of it with a degree of sense that was
quite unanswerable, that he determined never to broach the supposition
again to me. This did not prevent him from following up the idea by
employing agents in every direction to hunt the theatres both of London
and the provincial towns. Meanwhile, I was secretly doing the same. I
could not look the thing bravely in the face, even with him; but I had in
my innermost heart a dread, amounting at times to certainty, that he was
right, and that if ever I found my wife it would be in the green‐room or
on the stage. I discovered afterwards that my dear old uncle knew
perfectly well the game I was playing, but he left me under the delusion
that he believed in my disbelief, and so spared me the shame I morbidly
shrank from. More than once a false alarm led me to fancy that these were
realized, and that she was in the hands of a manager, and then my
sensation was one of poignant misery, almost of despair. While I knew
nothing I might yet hope. My feelings resembled that of the French miser
who, while looking for the will that if found would rob him of a legacy,
confessed naively: “Je cherche en priant Dieu de ne pas trouver.”
I was sitting at breakfast in my lodgings in Piccadilly one morning when
my uncle came suddenly in, and said abruptly:
“You told me once that the sign by which the police could positively
identify her was a silver tooth?”
“Yes,” I replied, and my heart thumped against my ribs; “a silver tooth in
the left jaw, rather far back.”
“Did it never occur to you to make inquiries amongst the dentists?”
“No, that never occurred to me! But now that you mention it, it seems very
strange that it should not. I quite remember her speaking to me of a
clever one who had put in the silver tooth for her; how he had at first
been obstinate and annoyed about it, and then when it was done how pleased
he was with it. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!” I
cried in vexation; “but to‐morrow I will begin and set inquiries on foot
in this direction.”
“You needn’t trouble about it,” said my uncle; “I’ve found the man who did
it.”
“You have!” I cried. “And he has seen her! He has told you something! For
heaven’s sake, uncle, speak at once. What does the man know?”
“No great things,” answered my uncle, stepping from the hearth‐rug, where
he had been standing with his back to the clock, and flinging himself into
an arm‐chair. “It seems that your step‐mother’s fancy was the right one
after all; the child _was_ brought up for public singing, and she was here
ten days ago. For aught this dentist can tell, she may be here still; but
I think not. She came to him to have something done to this identical
silver tooth. It was hurting her, and she was in a great state about it,
because she had just got an engagement to sing at a provincial theatre
this season; she didn’t say where, but the last time he saw her—she went
to him for several days running—she was fidgetting about the weather—you
remember we had some stiffish gales last week—and wondering what sort of
passage the people would have who were crossing the Channel with the wind
so high. He could give me no idea what port she had in her mind, or in
fact anything but just what I tell you. Well, I thought it was as well to
make inquiries before I set you on the go again, so I telegraphed to the
police at all the French ports, and just a minute ago I got this from
Dieppe.”
He handed the telegram to me: “Beautiful young woman, answers to
description. Landed on Saturday; sings to‐night. Hôtel Royal. Elderly man
with her.” There was not a doubt in my mind but that this was Isabel. The
elderly man must be the villain who passed himself off as her uncle. I
said so; my uncle agreed with me.
“The dentist fellow described him just as you do,” he continued—“a gruff
old man, with a brown coat and broad‐brimmed hat, and a disagreeable
snuffle when he talked. He used to go with her a year ago, when she got
the silver tooth made, and he was with her the other day. And now, my boy,
when are we to start for Dieppe? Let’s look at the time‐table.”
We started by the tidal train, and reached Dieppe about five P.M. that
evening. It was the season, and every hotel was brimful of English and
French fashion, come to bathe itself in the briny wave of that strong salt
sea. We went straight to the Hôtel Royal, but the landlord had not even a
garret where he could put up a bed for us. The lodging‐houses in the whole
length of the Rue Aguado were overflowing, and we were finally driven to
explore the Faubourg de la Barre, where we were thankful to be taken in by
a garrulous old landlady, who showed us two small rooms on the first
floor. I was not in a frame of mind to quarrel with the accommodation, but
I heard the admiral relieving himself in strong vernacular on the
corkscrew staircase.
We deposited our light _impedimenta_ in these lodgings, and then went out
to see what information was to be gathered concerning the object of our
journey. The first thing we beheld on entering the Grande Rue was a
placard announcing “La Sonnambula” for that evening; the _prima donna_ was
to be a “gifted young soprano _débutante_, Signorina Graziella.” We went
to the box‐office; every place was taken, and we had only a prospect of
standing‐room in the space between the first tier and the balcony. The
_prima donna_ had been heralded by such a flourish of trumpets that the
whole population was eager to hear her—so the box‐keeper informed us.
By this time it was six o’clock; but I was fed by something stronger than
meat, and it never occurred to me that since my breakfast, which had been
suspended before I was half through it, I had tasted no food. My uncle’s
sympathy, however, being of the healthiest kind, was not proof against the
demands of nature, and he suggested that it was time to think of dinner. I
was ashamed of having so entirely forgotten his comfort in my own
absorbing preoccupation, and proposed that we should go to the _table‐
d’hôte_ of the Hôtel Royal, which was served at six. I would have eaten
merely to keep him company; but the first spoonful of soup seemed to choke
me. The brave old sailor was near losing temper with me at last, and vowed
that he would wash his hands of me if I didn’t eat my dinner. He had
roughed it on many a heavy sea, and in nine cases out of ten it was his
hearty appetite that kept him afloat and pulled him through. In any case,
he would not admit fasting to be an element in sentiment with rational
human beings. He called for a bottle of Château Lafitte, and insisted on
my helping him to empty it. I did my best, and the result was that before
dinner was over the generous wine repaid me for the effort, and enabled me
to take, if not a more hopeful, at any rate a less utterly disconsolate,
view of life, and of the particular chapter of it I was now passing
through. It had a still kinder effect on my uncle; his heart soon warmed
by the juice of the red grape to such an extent that he talked of my
miserable position cheerfully, as if it had been the most ordinary
occurrence, and as if there was no reason why I should despond about it at
all. He persisted in treating Isabel as a naughty child who had never been
taught submission to the rules of life, and broke through them the moment
she found they trammelled her. It was no unprecedented event for an
excitable young thing to go mad about the stage; there were, on the
contrary, plenty of instances of it. He could count them on his
fingers—young ladies who had gone quite mad about it, and who had calmed
down, when the freak was over, into excellent wives and mothers. Why
should not this silly little puss do the same? I did not dare remind him
of those terrible words, written in her own hand: “If I were as true as I
have been false.”
It was a solace to hear him rambling on in his good‐natured, foolish talk.
Only when he repeated with stout emphasis for the tenth time that she was
herself the victim and dupe of the designing old scoundrel who called her
his niece, I ventured to remark: “But Simpson says....” “Simpson is an
ass!” snarled my uncle, and I at once assented, and declared my belief
that Simpson was an ass.
The moment we had finished our Château Lafitte we rose and left the
crowded room, where new‐comers were still pouring in to seize upon every
seat as it was vacated. I had been casting uneasy glances towards the
door, after first quickly scanning the three hundred heads that were
bobbing up and down over as many soup‐plates when we entered; but my fears
were vain. Isabel was not likely to run such a risk, if she wished—as
evidently she did wish—to remain undiscovered. I overheard some persons
near us discussing the appearance of the _prima donna_, who, they
observed, never showed herself off the stage. Many curious idlers had
wasted hours lolling about the hotel door, in hopes of seeing her come out
to walk or bathe; but since she had been in Dieppe—four days now—no one
had caught a glimpse of her. They little dreamed, as they bandied this
gossip with one another, that they were stabbing a heart with every word.
The persistent avoidance of notice was but too significant to me of the
_prima donna’s_ identity. It wanted yet half an hour of the time for the
theatre, and my uncle said we might as well spend it inhaling the fresh
breeze that was blowing from the north, borne in by the advancing tide. He
linked his arm in mine, and we sauntered down to the beach. The waves were
breaking in low thunder‐sobs upon the shingles, and all the town that was
not dining was out of doors watching them. The Etablissement was crowded,
and the music of the band that was playing there came floating towards us
with every roll of the waves; but the hum of the chattering crowd rose
distinctly above the sobbing of the sea and the murmur of the more distant
orchestra. I was too excited, too absorbed in my own thoughts, to realize
distinctly anything around me, but I quite well remember how I was
impressed in a vague yet vivid way by the contrast between the sad,
majestic tide heaving and surging on one side, and the human stream
rippling to and fro on the other, dressed out in such tawdry gear, and
simpering and chattering and subsiding like the frothy foam on the
billows. I can remember, too, how I turned, irritated and sick, from the
sight of it to the prettier, purer one of children playing on the sward
beside the beach. The peals of their innocent laughter did not jar upon
me; there was no discord between it and the dirge‐like sound of the water
washing the shore. All this passed and repassed before me like something
in a dream.
But the time was hurrying on, and now I was impatient to see my doom with
my own eyes, or to know that the reprieve was prolonged, and that I might
yet cling to a plank of hope.
“I think it’s time we were going,” I remarked, pulling out my watch; “the
crowd is thinning, and I suppose it is bound in the same direction.” We
were late, as I expected; every spot was filled in the little theatre when
we arrived, and the performance had begun. As the box‐keeper opened the
door to admit us to our standing‐post on the first tier, we were almost
thrown back by the roar of applause that burst upon our ears; it rose and
fell like a mighty gust of wind, and seemed literally to make the ground
shake under our feet and the walls tremble round us. For a moment I was
stunned. There was a lull, and then we went in. The singer had left the
stage, but the air was still vibrating with the melody of her voice and of
the rapturous echoes it had awakened. A fine barytone was confiding his
despair and his hopes to the audience, but it fell idly on their ears
after what had gone before. The _Sonnambula_ appeared again; the first
notes were greeted by another salvo of bravos, louder, more impassioned
and prolonged, than the first; again and again the plaudits rose,
handkerchiefs fluttered, and hands clapped—the house was electrified. She
could bear it no longer; overcome by emotion, she held out her arms to the
spectators in an entreating gesture that seemed to say: “Enough! Spare me;
I can bear no more!” It was either an impulse of childlike nature or the
most finished piece of art ever seen on the stage. Whatever it was, the
effect was tremendous. I suppose it could not really have been so, but I
would have sworn that the house rocked. It was a sustained roll of human
thunder from the pit to the gallery, and from the gallery to the pit.
Isabel—for it was she—made another passionate response with the same
childlike, bewitching grace, and rushed off the scene. I was rooted to the
spot, not daring to look at my uncle; not thinking of him, of anything. I
was like a man in a nightmare, held fast in the grasp of a spectre,
longing to call for help, but powerless to utter a sound.
The manager came forward and addressed a few words of expostulation to the
audience; implored them to control their ecstasies a little for the sake
of the sensitive and gifted being who had called them forth. He was
nervous and at the same time triumphant. He was answered by a loud buzz of
assent. The _Sonnambula_ once more came forth, and this time a deep,
suppressed murmur was the only interruption. The dress, the glare, the
gaslight, the strange way the lustrous coils of her black hair were
arranged—tumbled in a sort of studied tangle all over the forehead—while a
veil, half on, half off, concealed part of the face, the entire
transformation of the _mise‐en‐scène_, in fact, might easily have
disguised her identity from eyes less preternaturally keen than mine; but
my glance had scarcely fallen on the frail, shrouded figure, as it glided
in from the background, than I knew that I beheld my wife; beheld her
clasped—gracious heavens! yes, I saw it, and stood there motionless and
dumb—clasped by the man who was howling out some idiotic lamentations. She
stepped forward, and began to sing. Her head was first slightly bowed over
her breast, and her hands clasped and hanging. The first bars were warbled
out in a kind of bird‐like whisper, as if she were in a dream; but little
by little they grew higher, more sonorous, until, carried away by the
power of the music and her own magnificent interpretation of it, she flung
back her head, and let the gossamer cloud fall from it, revealing the
unshrouded contour of the face, upturned, inspired, all alight with the
triumph of the hour, while the bell‐like notes rang out with a breadth and
pathos that melted and stirred every heart in that vast crowd like touches
of fire. It was a vision of beauty that defies all words. I neither spoke
nor moved while the song lasted; but when the last chord died out, and the
pent‐up hearts of the listeners broke forth in new peals that seemed to
sweep over the songstress in a flood of joy and triumph, I awoke and came
to my senses.
“Come away!” I gasped, and turned to move out. But the words stuck in my
throat. My uncle had caught the delirium, and was cheering and bravoing
like a maniac. “Glorious! Grand, by Jove! Encore! Splendid!” He was
shouting like a madman, whirling his hat and stamping. His brown face was
young again. I never beheld such a transformation in any human
countenance.
“Are you mad, sir?” I shrieked into his ear, while I clutched his arm.
I suppose he was mad; I know he kept on the same frantic shouts and
clappings for several minutes, not paying any more heed to me than to the
floor he was so vigorously stamping. I was frightened at last. I thought
anguish and shame for me had driven him out of his mind; so, taking him
gently by the arm, I said I wanted to speak to him. He let me push him on
before me, and we got out. He was still much excited, and neither of us
spoke till we were in the open air.
“My dear boy,” he said suddenly, with a shamefaced look, “I couldn’t help
it for the life of me! By Jove, but it was the grandest thing I ever heard
in my life. The house reeled round you. I would stake my head there wasn’t
a sane man in it but yourself!”
I laughed bitterly. The irony of the words was dreadful. “Sane?” I cried.
“You think I was sane? I thank heaven I behaved like a sane man; but if I
had been within reach of that ruffian’s throat, I’d have dashed his brains
out as ruthlessly as any escaped maniac from Bedlam. I would do it now, if
I had him!”
My uncle stopped and looked at me. He was thoroughly sobered, and I could
see that he was terrified. He told me long afterwards that he never could
have believed passion could transfigure a face as it did mine; he said I
had _murder_ written in my eyes as plainly as ever it was written on a
printed page. And I believe him. I felt I could have committed murder at
that moment. I would have killed that man, if I had held him, if the
gallows had been there to hang me the next hour. I have never felt the
same towards murderers since that moment. It was an awful revelation to me
of the hidden springs of crime that may lie deep down in a man’s heart,
and never be suspected even by himself, until the touch that can wake them
into deadly life has come. I can never think of that evening without an
humbling sense of my own innate wickedness, of the benign mercy that
overruled that frightful impulse. Given the immediate opportunity and the
absence of the supreme, supervening goodness that stood between me and
myself, and I should have been a murderer. The gulf that separates each
one of us from crime is narrower than we imagine. The discovery of this
truth is humbling, but perhaps none the less salutary for that.
“Come along, Clide; come along with me,” my uncle said in the soothing
tone one uses to a fractious child. “It’s all my fault. I ought to have
known better than to let you go there at all; I ought to have gone by
myself. I’m no better than a blubbering old idiot to you, my boy.”
I went with him passively; we walked to our lodgings without speaking. I
shall never forget the kindness of my uncle all through that night. He was
as patient and as gentle with me as a woman, bearing with me as tenderly
as a mother could have done. I could not rest, and I would not let him
rest. I called for _café noir_, and I kept drinking cup after cup of it
until, added to the stronger stimulant that was setting my blood on fire,
I almost worked myself into a brain fever, bursting out into paroxysms of
childish rebellion, and then lapsing into fits of dumb despair. I had
first insisted on rushing off to the hotel and lying in wait for Isabel,
and compelling her there and then either to return to me or to part from
me for ever; but my uncle was inexorable in opposing this, and I knew by
his tone that he was not to be trifled with. There was a something about
him in certain moods that made resistance to his will as impossible as
wrestling with an elephant. I gave in, and allowed him to give his reasons
for preventing my taking a step which, result how it might, was sure to be
a most humiliating one for me; not only or chiefly as a husband, but as a
De Winton. My uncle’s anxiety lest the old name should suffer by the event
threw his sympathy for my individual sorrow comparatively into the shade.
While my wife’s flight was known only to my immediate household, my step‐
mother—whose pride and touchiness about the honor of a De Winton was
almost as morbid as his own—and the three tried friends of my dear
father’s youth, it was just possible that it might remain a secret beyond
that small circle, and he clung to this hope as tenaciously as I did to
the hope of recovering my wife. The De Wintons were a proud race, and
justly so. We had nobler things to be proud of than the primary one of
ancient, and I may venture to say illustrious, lineage: we could boast
with truth that there was no bar sinister on the old escutcheon; our men
had never known cowardice, nor our women shame; no maiden of our house had
dishonored a father’s white hairs, or wife brought a blot upon her
husband’s name. I was the last of our line so far, and the thought that it
should die out under a cloud of shame with me was bitter with the
bitterness of death to the admiral; for he was at heart as proud as a
Plantagenet, with all his free and easy talk, and his jovial, jolly‐tar
manner to everybody, especially to his inferiors. _Noblesse oblige_ was
engraven on the inmost core of his honest heart; and he could not conceive
a De Winton feeling less acutely on the point than he did himself. He had
never been married; this partially accounted, perhaps, for his inability
to merge the De Winton in the husband. It is possible that, if I had never
been married, I should have comprehended his stern abstract view of the
case, and have felt with him that the husband’s misery was as nothing
compared to the blow dealt at the pride of a De Winton. As it was, I could
not feel this. I could have seen the whole clan of the De Wintons and
their escutcheon in the bottom of the Red Sea, if I could have rescued
myself from the anguish of renouncing for ever the young wife who had so
cruelly charmed and blighted my life. I was driven to make this unworthy
avowal on my uncle’s suggesting that, assuming it were still possible for
me to forgive her, she might lay it down as a condition of our reunion
that she was to pursue her career on the stage. He merely threw out the
idea as a wild notion that crossed his thoughts for a moment; but when I
hinted at the possibility of yielding to this painful and humiliating
condition rather than renounce Isabel for ever, he flew into such a frenzy
of indignation that to calm him I believe I was cowardly enough to swallow
my words, and declare that they had not been spoken in earnest. It was
some time, however, before he subsided from the agitation they caused him.
The idea of alluding, even in jest, to the possibility of a play‐actress
flaunting our name upon the boards of the theatre was too dreadful to be
contemplated without unmitigated horror. If I let her go her mad career
alone, the chances were that this disgrace would be spared us. Isabel had
proved clearly enough so far that she desired secrecy to the full as much
as we did; but if she continued on the stage as my wife, secrecy became
impossible. She might play under the assumed name she now bore, but the
true one would soon be blazoned abroad, do what we all might to conceal
it. The managers who speculated on her voice would be quick to discover
it, and make capital out of it. The admiral was so strong in his
denunciation of the madness of the whole thing that he convinced me he was
right. This little incident left him more than ever determined to keep me
as much as possible in the background, and I so far acknowledged the
wisdom of his views as to consent to let him go by himself to try and see
Isabel in the morning.
It proved a fruitless mission. The _concierge_ said that the _signorina_
had not left her room yet; but the servant, in answer to my uncle’s ring
at her door, informed him that she had gone out for an early drive—it was
not eight o’clock—and that she would not be in until dinner‐hour. Would
monsieur take the trouble to call later? Monsieur said he would, and he
did; but he was then informed that the _signorina_ had taken a chill in
her drive, and had gone to bed. My uncle came home in great wrath; he
believed no more in the chill than he had believed in the drive, and he
was for writing there and then to Isabel, telling her so, and demanding an
interview without more ado, using firm language and hinting at sterner
measures if she refused. I entreated him not to do this. I don’t know
whether in the bottom of my heart I believed the servant’s story, but I
persuaded myself and then him that I did; that it was only natural that a
tender, delicate‐fibred creature like her should have been done up after
the excitement of last evening; and that we had better leave her in peace
for a day. He pooh‐poohed this contemptuously: the excitement was just
what she liked in the business; it was what play‐actors, men and women,
all alike lived on. He humored me, however, and consented to put off the
letter till the next day. Meantime, something might turn up. I might meet
her uncle myself, and button‐hole the scoundrel on the spot. He must walk
out some time or other, and I was determined to be on the watch. I paced
up and down before the hotel for three weary hours, glancing up
continually at the windows. I knew from my uncle what floor Isabel
occupied. Once I fancied I caught sight of the fellow’s face looking out
for a moment, and then hurriedly withdrawn. Was it only fancy, or had he
really seen me, and drawn back to escape my seeing him? I lounged into the
coffee‐room, and adroitly elicited from one of the waiters that the
_signorina_ was keeping very quiet, so as to avoid any disappointment for
the forthcoming representation; she was to sing again in two nights, and
no one was to be admitted to see her in the interval. Orders to this
effect had been given to the _concierge_, who was to deny all visitors on
the plea of the _signorina’s_ state of nervous debility, which made the
slightest excitement off the stage fatal to her. When I repeated this to
the admiral, he set his brown face in a scowl, and we very nearly
quarrelled outright before he again yielded to my resistance, and agreed
to wait two days more, and see whether she kept her engagement for the
next performance. On the morning of the second day we both went out
together to the baths. As we were passing through the Etablissement
gardens, a young man came up to a group of people walking ahead of us, and
gave some news that provoked sudden surprise, apparently of no pleasant
nature; for we heard the words, “Abominable sell!” “What an extraordinary
affair!” repeated with angry emphasis. We had not heard a word of what the
young man had said, but the broken comments that reached us seemed, as if
by some magnetic influence, to inform us of their meaning. The admiral, in
his off‐hand, sailor way, walked up to the party, and asked if any
accident had happened on the coast. “Oh! no; no accident,” the bearer of
the news said, “but a most disagreeable thing for everybody. Graziella has
bolted, no one knows when or how; her rooms were found vacant an hour ago,
and there was not a trace of her or the fellow who was with her. The Hôtel
Royal was in a tremendous commotion about it; the landlord had been down
to the station and to the quay, but there was no trace of them at either
place. The landlord believed they had eloped during the night, by some
highway or by‐way, so as to avoid detection; but why or wherefore was the
mystery. They had paid their bill. It was a horrible sell, for the little
creature was the trump‐card of the season—a second Malibran.”
I knew as well as if I had followed my uncle, and heard the intelligence
with my own ears, what he had to tell me when he turned back, and came up
to me, intending to break it gently. It seemed utterly useless after this
to go to the hotel with the hope of gaining further particulars, but I
urged at the same time that it was possible the landlord himself might be
a party to the affair, and that, if he had been bought over to hold his
tongue, he might be bought to loosen it. I could not count on the
necessary command over myself to speak or to listen to others speaking of
the event at this stage, so I yielded to my uncle’s wish, and went home;
he accompanied me to the door, for he judged by my looks that I was not
fit to be left to go back alone. He then started off to the Rue Aguado. He
found the place in an uproar about the flight, but no one could throw a
particle of light on the time, the manner, or the motive of it. The
_concierge_ remembered seeing a lady, small and slight, and with a very
elastic step, walk rapidly out of the house late on the previous evening,
dressed in the deepest mourning, with a widow’s crape veil, and holding
her handkerchief to her eyes, as if crying bitterly; he had remarked her
at the time, and thought she had been visiting some one in the hotel, and
that she was in fresh mourning for her husband, poor thing! Everybody
agreed that this must have been La Graziella in disguise. But beyond this
not the smallest clew was found that could direct the pursuit of the
fugitives. Their luggage had been carried off as mysteriously as
themselves; no one had seen it removed. This induced the suspicion that
they must have had an accomplice on the premises. The landlord, however,
had a precedent to fall back on—a swindler who had lived at his expense
for three weeks, and then decamped one fine morning, bag and baggage,
having carried them all off himself, disguised as a porter, while several
travellers were under way in the courtyard with their separate lots of
luggage, and porters were hurrying in and out with them.
For two days after this event, which checkmated every movement on our
part, we did nothing but wander about Dieppe, watching helplessly for some
information that could have directed us what to do. My uncle was
constantly down on the quay and at the railway station, questioning the
sailors and the officials, and always coming back just as void of
information as he went. He was more irascible than ever now about the
honor of the De Wintons, and would not allow me to interfere directly or
indirectly. I resented this tyranny; but the fact of my interference
having already proved so disastrous gave him the whip‐hand over me, and I
felt it was wiser in my own interest to subside and let him act. He was
actively seconded in his endeavors to track the fugitives by the manager
of the theatre, who was resolved—so we heard on all sides—to spare neither
trouble nor expense in recapturing his prize. The collapse of such a
_prima donna_ was a serious loss to him; he had gone to considerable
expense in preparing for her _début_, and it had been so brilliant as to
ensure the promise of an overflowing house to the end of the season. On
one side my uncle was gratified at the intelligence and energy displayed
by the manager; but on the other hand it put him in a ferment of terror.
What if, in his search after Graziella, he should discover who she was and
what name she bore! The bare thought of this almost drove him frantic. The
manager’s opinion, it would seem, was that she had escaped in a fishing‐
smack. This was the most likely mode of flight for any one, indeed, to
adopt from a seaport town like Dieppe; no preliminaries were required in
the way of tickets or passports, and the fugitives might steer themselves
to any coast they pleased, and land unobserved where it suited them. It
was useless, however, for us to leave Dieppe until we heard something.
While the manager was vigorously prosecuting the search on his side, my
uncle was busy on ours. He suggested that it would be well to make an
exploring expedition amongst the hamlets on the cliffs‐groups of huts
scattered at short intervals over the long range of the _falaises_
overhanging the sea, and inhabited by a scanty and miserable population.
We had felt it necessary to take a few safe agents of the police into our
confidence; and before setting to work among the _gens de falaise_, as
they are called by the dwellers on the plain, we consulted them as to the
best mode of proceeding, and asked some information as to the sort of
people we had to deal with. The police advised us to leave the attempt
alone. They said the “folk of the cliffs” were so simple that their name
was a by‐word for stupidity down below. It required little short of a
surgical operation to convey a new idea of the simplest kind into their
brain. There was a story current in the town of how, not so very long ago,
a gang of robbers prowled about the neighborhood, and made it expedient
for the mayor to issue a proclamation, wherein it was notified that nobody
would be allowed to enter the gates after night‐fall without a lantern.
The notice was placarded all over the walls, and this is how it worked
with the _gens de falaise_: Ding‐dong came a ring at the gate one evening,
and the sentry called out: “Qui vive?”
“Gens de falaise!” (Pronounced fa_w_laise.)
“Have you a lantern?”
“Eh, oui!”
“Is there a candle in it?”
“Eh, non! We were not told to!”
“Well, now you’re told to; be off and get one!”
Next evening ding‐dong come the travellers again. “Qui vive?”
“Gens de falaise!”
“Have you a lantern?”
“Eh, oui!”
“And a candle in it?”
“Eh, oui?”
“Is it lighted?”
“Eh, non! We were not told to.”
“Well, now you’re told to; go back and light it.”
Away went the _gens de falaise_ again, and finally returned a third time
to the charge with a lantern and a candle in it, and lighted.
This was not very encouraging to persons who wanted to question
intelligent observers. We tried it, however, but soon found that rumor had
not maligned the simple dwellers on the cliffs, and that nothing was to be
gleaned from their dull, unobservant eyes.
Four days passed, and still we were in the same dense darkness. The
suspense and inaction became unendurable to me.
“Uncle,” I said, “I can stand this no longer. I will run up to Paris, and
set the lynx‐eyes of the police there on the lookout for us. Perhaps it
will be of no use; but anything is better than waiting here doing
nothing.”
My uncle fell in with the idea at once. I set off to Paris, and left him
at Dieppe, where, in truth, it seemed more likely that information of some
sort must transpire sooner or later.
To Be Continued.
The Colonization Of New South Wales By Great Britain. Concluded.
It is obvious, then, that, if the remarkable prosperity which has befallen
the English Colonies in Australia is to be ascribed, in any degree, to the
sagacity of the government that sent out the first expedition, or of those
who then and subsequently presided over it, we must look for it in the
perfection of the reformatory system, with a view to which the original
constitution of the colony was exclusively framed. The idea of making the
colonization of a newly discovered territory of prodigious resources
subservient to the reformation of as many as possible of the criminals of
an over‐populated country is a conception of the noblest philanthropy; as
the attempt to use a new and promising colony for the mere purpose of
getting rid anyhow of the dangerous classes would be an act of guilty
folly, the result of an indolent and heartless selfishness, such as even
the most heartless and the most selfish of oligarchies should blush to
have perpetrated. For the prosecution of the former object more care and
pains should have been expended than under ordinary circumstances in
sending out to the new settlement a colony fully equipped with all that
the mother‐country had to give it. The reformed, as they stepped forth
from their cells and shackles, once more masters of their own actions,
free agents, reinvested with reason’s noblest prerogative—the liberty of
choosing good and rejecting evil—should have found a sound and healthy
society with which to mingle. They should have found themselves at once
amidst a society based on those principles of religion, law, and justice
which characterize even the feeblest form of Christian civilization. Such
a society they should have found immediately outside their prison‐walls,
into which they might glide, as it were, unperceived, and from which they
should gradually and insensibly take their tone. What man in his sober
senses could have anticipated any thorough and permanent reformation of
criminals in a society consisting exclusively, after making exception of
the officials and the military guard, of the very criminals themselves? In
reading the inaugural address of the first governor, we naturally conclude
that the government which organized the expedition was deeply impressed
with the necessity of an opposite course. But the illusion is soon
dispelled. We discover to our astonishment that the infant colony took out
with it no one condition of a civilized society. Of law there was simply
none. Even the formalities of martial law, when, soon after the settlement
of the penal colony, it was thought expedient to have recourse to them,
were found to be impracticable, because of some technical difficulty which
there had not been the sagacity to foresee and provide against. Whatever
there was of justice was wholly dependent on the caprice and dispositions
of individuals. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless the fact
that, after the retirement of the first governor, the administration of
the colony was entrusted for three years to the hands of the officers of
the 102d Regiment. Unfit for such a responsibility as were the sea‐
captains from amongst whom the first four governors were selected,
officers of the army were yet more so. The previous habits and training of
English regimental officers are such as to disqualify them, generally
speaking, for judicial functions. But the unfitness of military men in
England for this office was much greater at that period than at the
present day, as they were more illiterate. The government of a colony
transferred to a regimental mess‐room forms indeed a humiliating contrast
to the glowing periods of Commander Phillip. Mr. Therry tells us (p. 69):
“The first four governors of New South Wales, Phillip, Hunter,
King, and Bligh, exercised a rule (and this includes the mess‐room
interregnum) which partook much of the character of the government
of a large jail or penitentiary.”
Two years and a half after the disembarkation of the first batch of
convicts fresh instructions arrived from the home government respecting
the allotment of land. By these instructions, the advantages already
enjoyed by the emancipists were extended to the privates and non‐
commissioned officers of the military guard on the spot, but no provision
whatsoever was made for free emigrants from the mother‐country. So that,
when the sixth governor, Macquarie, “considered that the colony was
selected as a depot for convicts; that the land properly belonged to them,
as they emerged from their condition of servitude, and that emigrants were
intruders on the soil,” we can only conclude that he interpreted the
policy of the government at home more correctly than the more enthusiastic
sailor who first presided over it. In spite of the singular incapacity
displayed in the first organization of the settlement at Sydney, the
following illustration of the state of law and society therein twenty
years after its establishment, would be incredible if we had it on less
trustworthy authority than that of Mr. Therry. He tells us (p. 74) that,
during the rule of one Capt. Bligh, 1806‐8, “the judge‐advocate, Atkins,
was a person of no professional mark, and was, besides, of a very
disreputable character.” The governor reported of him to the Secretary of
State that “he had been known to pronounce sentence of death when
intoxicated”! With Atkins was associated a convict named Crossley, who had
been transported for forging a will, and for perjury, and who had been
convicted of swindling in the colony.
The result of such a state of things was as unavoidable as it was fatal.
If the reformatory system in the penal colony had been as wise and
efficacious as it was lamentably, nay, wickedly, the reverse, such of the
convicts as yielded to the nobler motives of civil life and the claims of
conscience should have been able to mix unnoticed with the sounder part of
the community. Bygones should have been really bygones. The past should
have been simply ignored. No allusion to it should have been tolerated.
The expiated crime should have been buried out of sight and recollection,
so long as there was no relapse. There should have been no such class as
an emancipist class. The reformatory institution should have remained as a
thing apart, sending from time to time its contingent of convalescents to
be incorporated with the healthy body politic.
Instead of this, as the colony increased, the moneyed and influential
class, the leading class, in a colony intended to reproduce the glories of
England in the fifth great division of the world, consisted of emancipated
convicts. No pains taken to perpetuate the memory of these people’s
disgrace could have attained so undesirable an object more effectually.
They stood out a distinctly marked order in the state. They became landed
proprietors, magistrates, high government officials, even legal
functionaries. Instead of a decent veil of oblivion being thrown over
their antecedents, they were, as in a Methodist experience, even
ostentatiously displayed. It almost constituted a boast, and was worn as
though it were a decoration of honor. When, subsequently, through the
encouragement of one or two of the governors and other causes, the tide of
emigration set in from the mother‐country another moneyed and influential
class arose of untainted reputation. A bitter rivalry between the two was
the immediate consequence. The emancipists excited no sympathy or
compassion for the lingering memory of a misfortune which their subsequent
lives might be supposed to have retrieved, but which, instead of an
obliterated brand, was ostentatiously retained as the badge of a powerful
class, which became thus an object of contempt to the more respectable
new‐comers. The crimes for which they had been punished, and of which they
should, therefore, no longer have borne the burden, reappeared as their
accusers in the intercourse of social life. Society snatched up the sword
which the law had in mercy laid aside; a remitted punishment was exacted
in another form; and the benevolent aim of rescuing the worst class of
criminals from irremediable ruin by a reformatory process, if it were ever
seriously entertained, was wholly frustrated. For scarcely had the infant
settlement, through the gradual influx of immigrants, begun to assume the
appearance of a colony, when the original sin of its constitution appeared
in the form of an evil, fatal not only to the well‐being, but even to the
very existence of a free community. Instead of any effort being made to
heal or, at least, to alleviate this evil by some consistent line of
policy, it was aggravated by the capricious preference of one or other of
the rival classes by successive governors, according to their several
idiosyncrasies. An evil of this nature could end only with the extinction
of one or other of the antagonistic classes, or the dissolution of the
colony; unless indeed the whole reformatory system were remodelled on an
entirely different plan. The problem was solved by the adoption of the
former alternative. The natural advantages of the country and the
commercial energy of the Anglo‐Saxon race proved, at last, too strong for
a reformatory system which was not only crude and faulty to the utmost
degree, but was literally destructive of its own end and object. After a
long struggle against obstacles greater than ever before hindered the
development of vast natural resources, the colony prevailed over the
prison, and the entail of emancipation was finally cut off by the
abolition of transportation in the year 1840.
Turn we now to the penal portion of this quite unique organization for the
reformation of criminals. Here, it may be, we shall be able to trace some
indications, at least, of that humane sympathy, that sorrow for a fellow‐
creature’s fall and anxiety for his restoration, which appeals to whatever
of good may be lingering in the heart of the criminal, not to mention the
higher and more tender charities which religion inspires. No gentler
instrument of cure would appear to have suggested itself to the minds of
the members of the English government of 1788 than the lash!—the lash in
the hands of sots and ruffians!
“I was once present in the police office in Sydney when a convict
was sentenced to fifty lashes for not taking off his hat to a
magistrate as he met him on the road.”
Of Capt. P. C. King, who administered the government from 1800 to 1806,
Mr. Therry writes:
“He was a man of rough manners, and prone to indulge in offensive
expressions borrowed from the language then in vogue in the
navy.... His temper was irascible and wayward. At one time he
assumed a tone of arrogant and unyielding dictation; at another,
he indulged in jokes unsuited to the dignity of his position.”