MR. MEADOWS lived in a house that he had conquered three years ago by
lending money on it at fair interest in his own name. Mr. David Hall,
the proprietor, paid neither principal nor interest. Mr. Meadows
expected this contingency, and therefore lent his money. He threatened
to foreclose and sell the house under the hammer; to avoid this Mr. Hall
said, “Pay yourself the interest by living rent free in the house till
such time as my old aunt dies, drat her, and then I'll pay your money.
I wish I had never borrowed it.” Meadows acquiesced with feigned
reluctance. “Well, if I must, I must; but let me have my money as soon
as you can--” (aside) “I will end my days in this house.”
It had many conveniences; among the rest a very long though narrow
garden inclosed within high walls. At the end of the garden was a door
which anybody could open from the inside, but from the outside only by a
Bramah key.
The access to this part of the premises was by a short, narrow lane,
very dirty and very little used, because, whatever might have been in
old times, it led now from nowhere to nowhere. Meadows received by
this entrance one or two persons whom he never allowed to desecrate
his knocker. At the head of these furtive visitors was Peter Crawley,
attorney-at-law, a gentleman who every New Year's Eve used to say to
himself with a look of gratified amazement--“Another year gone, and I
not struck off the Rolls!!!”
Peter had a Bramah key intrusted to him.
His visits to Mr. Meadows were conducted thus: he opened the garden-gate
and looked up at the window in a certain passage. This passage was
not accessible to the servants, and the window with its blinds was a
signal-book.
Blinds up, Mr. Meadows out.
White blind down, Mr. Meadows in.
Blue blind down, Mr. Meadows in, but not alone.
The same key that opened the garden-door opened a door at the back
of the house which led direct to the passage above-mentioned. On the
window-seat lay a peculiar whistle constructed to imitate the whining of
a dog. Then Meadows would go to his book-shelves, which lined one side
of the room, and pressing a hidden spring open a door that nobody
ever suspected, for the books came along with it. To provide for every
contingency, there was a small secret opening in another part of the
shelves by which Meadows could shoot unobserved a note or the like
into the passage, and so give Crawley instructions without dismissing a
visitor, if he had one.
Meadows provided against surprise and discovery. His study had double
doors. Neither of them could be opened from the outside. His visitors or
servants must rap with an iron knocker; and while Meadows went to open,
the secret visitor stepped into the passage and shut the books behind
him.
It was a room that looked business. One side was almost papered with
ordnance maps of this and an adjoining county. Pigeon-holes abounded,
too, and there was a desk six feet long, chock full of little
drawers--contents indicated outside in letters of which the proprietor
knew the meaning, not I.
Between the door and the fireplace was a screen, on which, in place
of idle pictures, might be seen his plans and calculations as a land
surveyor, especially those that happened to be at present in operation
or under consideration. So he kept his business before his eye, on the
chance of a good idea striking him at a leisure moment.
“Will Fielding's acceptance falls due to-morrow, Crawley.”
“Yes, sir, what shall I do?”
“Present it; he is not ready for it, I know.
“Well, sir; what next?”
“Serve him with a writ.”
“He will be preciously put about.”
“He will. Seem sorry; say you are a little short, but won't trouble him
for a month, if it is inconvenient; but he must make you safe by signing
a judgment.”
“Ay! ay! Sir, may I make bold to ask what is the game with this young
Fielding?”
“You ought to know the game--to get him in my power.”
“And a very good game it is, sir! Nobody plays it better than you. He
won't be the only one that is in your power in these parts--he! he!” And
Crawley chuckled without merriment. “Excuse my curiosity, sir, but when
about is the blow to fall?”
“What is that to you?”
“Nothing, sir, only the sooner the better. I have a grudge against the
family.”
“Have you? then don't act upon it. I don't employ you to do your
business, but mine.
“Certainly, Mr. Meadows. You don't think I'd be so ungrateful as to
spoil your admirable plans by acting upon any little feeling of my own.”
“I don't think you would be so silly. For if you did, we should part.”
“Don't mention such an event, sir.”
“You have been drinking, Crawley!”
“Not a drop, sir, this two days.”
“You are a liar! The smell of it comes through your skin. I won't have
it. Do you hear what I say? I won't have it. No man that drinks can do
business--especially mine.”
“I'll never touch a drop again. They called me into the
public-house--they wouldn't take a denial.”
“Hold your prate and listen to me. The next time you look at a
public-house say to yourself, Peter Crawley, that is not a public-house
to you--it is a hospital, a workhouse, for a dunghill--for if you go in
there John Meadows, that is your friend, will be your enemy.”
“Heaven forbid, Mr. Meadows.”
“Drink this basinful of coffee.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir. It is very bitter.”
“Is your head clear now?”
“As a bell.”
“Then go and do my work, and don't do an atom more or an atom less than
your task.”
“No, sir. Oh, Mr. Meadows! it is a pleasure to serve you. You are as
deep as the sea, sir, and as firm as the rock. You never drink, nor
anything else, that I can find. A man out of a thousand! No little
weakness, like the rest of us, sir. You are a great man, sir. You are a
model of a man of bus--”
“Good-morning,” growled Meadows roughly, and turned his back.
“Good-morning, sir,” said Peter mellifluously. And opening the back door
about ten inches, he wriggled out like a weasel going through a chink in
a wall.
William Fielding fell like a child into the trap. “Give me time, and it
will be all right,” is the debtor's delusion. William thanked Crawley
for not pressing him, and so compelling him to force a sale of all his
hogs, fat or lean. Crawley received his thanks with a leer, returned
in four days, got the judgment signed, and wriggled away with it to
Meadows' back door.
“You take out an arrest”--Meadows gave him a pocketbook--“put it in
this, and keep it ready in your pocket night and day.”
“I dare say it will come into use before the year is out, sir.”
“I hope not.”
George Fielding gone to Australia to make a thousand pounds by farming
and cattle-feeding, that so he may claim old Merton's promised
consent to marry Susan. Susan observing Mr. Eden's precepts even more
religiously than when he was with her; active, full of charitable deeds,
often pensive, always anxious, but not despondent now, thanks to the
good physician. Meadows falling deeper and deeper in love, but keeping
it more jealously secret than ever; on his guard against Isaac, on
his guard against William, on his guard against John Meadows; hoping
everything from time and accidents, from the distance between the
lovers, from George's incapacity, of which he had a great opinion--“He
will never make a thousand pence”--but not trusting to the things he
hoped. On the contrary, watching with keen eye, and working with subtle
threads to draw everybody into his power who could assist or thwart him
in the object his deep heart and iron will were set on. William Fielding
going down the hill Meadows was mounting; getting the better of his
passion, and substituting, by degrees, a brother-in-law's regard.
Flowers and weeds have one thing in common--while they live they grow.
Natural growth is a slow process, to describe it day by day a slower.
For the next four months matters glided so quietly on the slopes I have
just indicated that an intelligent calculation by the reader may very
well take the place of a tedious chronicle by the writer. Moreover, the
same monotony did not hang over every part of our story. These very four
months were eventful enough to one of our characters; and through him,
by subtle and positive links, to every man and every woman who fills
any considerable position in this matter-of-fact romance. Therefore
our story drags us from the meadows round Grassmere to a massive,
castellated building, glaring red brick with white stone corners. These
colors and their contrast relieve the stately mass of some of that
grimness which characterizes the castles of antiquity; but enough
remains to strike some awe into the beholder.
Two round towers flank the principal entrance. On one side of the
right-hand tower is a small house constructed in the same style as the
grand pile. The castle is massive and grand. This, its satellite, is
massive and tiny, like the frog doing his little bit of bull--like
Signor Hervio Nano, a tremendous thick dwarf now no more. There is one
dimple to all this gloomy grandeur--a rich little flower-garden, whose
frame of emerald turf goes smiling up to the very ankle of the frowning
fortress, as some few happy lakes in the world wash the very foot of the
mountains that hem them. From this green spot a few flowers look up with
bright and wondering wide-opened eyes at the great bullying masonry over
their heads; and to the spectator of both, these sparks of color at the
castle-foot are dazzling and charming; they are like rubies, sapphires
and pink topaz in some uncouth angular ancient setting.
Between the central towers is a sharp arch, filled by a huge oak door
of the same shape and size, which, for further security or ornament, is
closely studded with large diamond-headed nails. A man with keys at
his girdle like the ancient housewives opens the huge door to you with
slight effort, so well oiled is it. You slip under a porch into an
inclosed yard, the great door shuts almost of itself, and now it
depends upon the housewifely man whether you ever see the vain, idle and
every-way objectionable world again.
Passing into the interior of the vast building, you find yourself in
an extensive aisle traversed at right angles by another of similar
dimensions, the whole in form of a cross. In the center of each aisle is
an iron staircase, so narrow that two people cannot pass, and so light
and open that it merely ornaments, not obstructs, the view of the aisle.
These staircases make two springs; the first takes them to the level of
two corridors on the first floor. Here there is a horizontal space of
about a yard, whence the continuation staircase rises to the second
and highest floor. This gives three corridors, all studded with doors
opening on small separate apartments, whereof anon.
Nearly all the inmates of this grim palace wear a peculiar costume and
disguise, one feature of which is a cap of coarse materials, with a
vizor to it, which conceals the features all but the chin and the eyes,
which last peep, in a very droll way, through two holes cut for that
purpose.
They are distinguished by a courteous manner to strangers, whom they
never fail to salute in passing, with great apparent cordiality; indeed,
we fear we shall never meet in the busy world with such uniform urbanity
as in this and similar retreats. It arises from two causes. One is that
here strangers are welcome from their rarity; another, that politeness
is a part of the education of the place, which, besides its other uses,
is an adult school of manners, morals, religion, grammar, writing and
cobbling.
With the exception of its halls and corridors, the building is almost
entirely divided into an immense number of the small apartments noticed
above. These are homely inside, but exquisitely clean. The furniture,
movable and fixed, none of which is superfluous, can be briefly
described. A bedstead, consisting of the side walls of the apartment;
polished steel staples are fixed in these walls, two on each side the
apartment at an elevation of about two feet and a half. The occupant's
mattress (made of cocoa bark) has two stout steel hooks at each end;
these are hooked into the staples, and so he lies across his abode.
A deal table the size of a pocket-handkerchief; also a deal tripod. A
waterspout so ingeniously contrived that, turned to the right it sends
a small stream into a copper basin, and to the left into a bottomless
close stool at some distance. A small gas-pipe tipped with polished
brass. In one angle of the wall a sort of commode, or open cupboard;
on whose shelves a bright pewter plate, a knife and fork and a wooden
spoon. In a drawer of this commode yellow soap and a comb and brush.
A grating down low for hot air to come in, if it likes, and another up
high for foul air to go out, if it chooses. On the wall a large placard
containing rules for the tenant's direction, and smaller placards
containing texts from Scripture, the propriety of returning thanks
after food, etc.; a slate and a couple of leathern kneeguards used in
polishing the room. And that is all. But the deal furniture is so clean
you might eat off it. The walls are snow, the copper basin and the brass
gaspipe glitter like red gold and pale gold, and the bed-hooks like
silver hot from the furnace. Altogether it is inviting at first sight.
To one of these snowy snug retreats was now ushered an acquaintance of
ours, Tom Robinson. A brief retrospect must dispose of his intermediate
history.
When he left us he went to the county bridewell, where he remained until
the assizes, an interval of about a month. He was tried; direct evidence
was strong against him, and he defended himself with so much ingenuity
and sleight of intellect that the jury could not doubt his sleight of
hand and morals, too. He was found guilty, identified as a notorious
thief, and condemned to twelve months' imprisonment and ten years'
transportation. He returned to the county bridewell for a few days, and
then was shifted to the castellated building.
Tom Robinson had not been in jail this four years, and, since his last
visit great changes had begun to take place in the internal economy of
these skeleton palaces and in the treatment of their prisoners.
Prisons might be said to be in a transition state. In some, as in the
county bridewell Robinson had just left, the old system prevailed in
full force. The two systems vary in their aims. Under the old, the jail
was a finishing school of felony and petty larceny. Under the new, it is
intended to be a penal hospital for diseased and contagious souls.
The treatment of prisoners is not at present invariable. Within certain
limits the law unwisely allows a discretionary power to the magistrates
of the county where the jail is; and the jailer, or, as he is now
called, the governor, is their agent in these particulars.
Hence, in some new jails you may now see the non-separate system; in
others, the separate system without silence; in others, the separate
and silent system; in others, a mixture of these, i. e., the hardened
offenders kept separate, the improving ones allowed to mix; and these
varieties are at the discretion of the magistrates, who settle within
the legal limits each jail's system.
The magistrates, in this part of their business, are represented by
certain of their own body, who are called “the visiting justices;” and
these visiting justices can even order and authorize a jailer to flog a
prisoner for offenses committed in jail.
Now, a year or two before our tale, one Captain O'Connor was governor of
this jail. Captain O'Connor was a man of great public merit. He had been
one of the first dissatisfied with the old system, and had written very
intelligent books on crime and punishment, which are supposed to have
done their share in opening the nation's eyes to the necessity of
regenerating its prisons. But after a while the visiting justices of
this particular county became dissatisfied with him; he did not go far
enough nor fast enough with the stone he had helped to roll. Books and
reports came out which convinced the magistrates that severe punishment
of mind and body was the essential object of a jail, and that it was
wrong and chimerical to attempt any cures by any other means.
Captain O'Connor had been very successful by other means, and could
not quite come to this opinion; but he had a deputy governor who did.
System, when it takes a hold of the mind, takes a strong hold, and the
men of system became very impatient of opposition, and grateful for
thorough acquiescence.
Hence it came to pass that in the course of a few months
Captain O'Connor found himself in an uncomfortable position. His
deputy-governor, Mr. Hawes, enjoyed the confidence of the visiting
justices; he did not. His suggestions were negatived; Hawes's
accepted. And, to tell the truth, he became at last useless as well as
uncomfortable; for these gentlemen were determined to carry out their
system, and had a willing agent in the prison. O'Connor was little more
than a drag on the wheel he could not hinder from gliding down the hill.
At last, it happened that he had overdrawn his account, without clearly
stating at the time that the sum, which amounted nearly to one hundred
pounds, was taken by him as an accommodation, or advance of salary.
This, which though by no means unprecedented, was an unbusiness-like
though innocent omission, justified censure.
The magistrates went farther than censure; they had long been looking
for an excuse to get rid of him and avail themselves of the zeal and
energy of Hawes. They therefore removed O'Connor, stating publicly as
their reason that he was old; and their interest put Hawes into his
place. There was something melancholy in such a close to O'Connor's
public career. Fortune used him hardly. He had been one of the first
to improve prisons, yet he was dismissed on this or that pretense, but
really because he could not keep pace with the soi-disant improvements
of three inexperienced persons. Honorable mention of his name, his
doings and his words is scattered about various respectable works by
respectable men on this subject, yet he ended in something very like
discredit.
However, the public gained this by the injustice done him--that an
important experiment was tried under an active and a willing agent.
With Governor Hawes the separate and silent system flourished in ----
Jail.
The justices and the new governor were of one mind. They had been
working together about two years when Robinson came into the jail.
During this period three justices had periodically visited the jail,
perused the reports, examined, as in duty bound, the surgeon, the
officers and prisoners, and were proud of the system and its practical
working here.
With respect to Hawes the governor, their opinion of him was best shown
in the reports they had to make to the Home Office from time to time. In
these they invariably spoke of him as an active, zealous and deserving
officer.
Robinson had heard much of the changes in jail treatment, but they
had not yet come home to him. When, therefore, instead of being turned
adrift among seventy other spirits as bad as himself, and greeted with
their boisterous acclamations and the friendly pressure of seven or
eight felonious hands, he was ushered into a cell white as driven snow,
and his housewifely duties explained to him, under a heavy penalty if a
speck of dirt should ever be discovered on his little wall, his little
floor, his little table, or if his cocoa-bark mattress should not be
neatly rolled up after use, and the strap tight, and the steel hook
polished like glass, and his little brass gas-pipe glittering like gold,
etc., Thomas looked blank and had a misgiving.
“I say, guv'nor,” said he to the under-turnkey, “how long am I to be
here before I go into the yard?”
“Talking not allowed out of hours,” was the only reply.
Robinson whistled. The turnkey, whose name was Evans, looked at him with
a doubtful air, as much as to say, “Shall I let that pass unpunished or
not?”
However, he went out without any further observation, leaving the door
open; but the next moment he returned and put his head in: “Prisoners
shut their own doors,” said he.
“Well!” drawled Robinson, looking coolly and insolently into the man's
face, “I don't see what I shall gain by that.” And Mr. Robinson
seated himself, and turning his back a little rudely, immersed himself
ostentatiously in his own thoughts.
“You will gain as you won't be put in the black hole for refractory
conduct, No. 19,” replied Evans, quietly and sternly.
Robinson made a wry face and pushed the door peevishly; it shut with
a spring, and no mortal power or ingenuity could now open it from the
inside.
“Well I'm blest,” said the self-immured, “every man his own turnkey now;
save the queen's pocket, whatever you do. Times are so hard. Box at the
opera costs no end. What have we got here? A Bible! my eye! invisible
print! Oh! I see; 'tisn't for us to read, 'tis for the visitors to
admire--like the new sheet over the dirty blankets! What's this hung up?
“GRACE AFTER MEAT.
“Oh! with all my heart, your reverence! Here, turnkey, fetch up the
venison and the sweet sauce--you may leave the water-gruel till I ring
for it. If I am to say grace let me feel it first; drat your eyes all
round, governor, turnkeys, chaplain and all the hypocritical crew!”
The next morning, at half-past five, the prison bell rang for the
officers to rise, and at six a turnkey unlocked Robinson's door, and
delivered the following in an imperious key, all in one note and without
any rests: “Prisoner to open and shake bedding, wash face, hands and
neck on pain of punishment, and roll up hammocks and clean cells and
be ready to clean corridors if required.” So chanting--slammed
door--vanished.
Robinson set to work with alacrity upon the little arrangements; he soon
finished them, and then he would not have been sorry to turn out and
clean the corridor for a change, but it was not his turn. He sat, dull
and lonely, till eight o'clock, when suddenly a key was inserted into
a small lock in the center of his door, but outside; the effect of this
was to open a small trap in the door, through this aperture a turnkey
shoved in the man's breakfast without a word, “like one flinging guts to
a bear” (Scott); and on the sociable Tom attempting to say a civil word
to him, drew the trap sharply back, and hermetically sealed the aperture
with a snap. The breakfast was in a round tin, with two compartments;
one pint of gruel and six ounces of bread. These two phases of farina
were familiar to Mr. Robinson. He ate the bread and drank the gruel,
adding a good deal of salt.
At nine the chapel bell rang. Robinson was glad. Not that he admired the
Liturgy, but he said to himself, “Now I shall see a face or two, perhaps
some old pals.”
To his dismay, the warder who opened his cell bade him at the same time
put on the prison cap, with the peak down; and when he and the other
male prisoners were mustered in the corridor, he found them all like
himself, vizor down, eyes glittering like basilisks' or cats' through
two holes, features undistinguishable. The word was given to march in
perfect silence, five paces apart, to the chapel.
The sullen pageant started.
“I've heard of this, but who'd have thought they carried the game so
far? Well, I must wait till we are in chapel and pick up a pal by the
voice, while the parson is doing his patter.”
On reaching the chapel he found, to his dismay, that the chapel was as
cellular as any other part of the prison; it was an agglomeration of one
hundred sentry-boxes, open only on the side facing the clergyman, and
even there only from the prisoner's third button upward. Warders stood
on raised platforms and pointed out his sentry-box to each prisoner with
very long slender wands; the prisoner went into it and pulled the door
(it shut with a spring), and next took his badge or number from his neck
and hung it up on a nail above his head in the sentry-box. Between the
reading-desk and the male prisoners was a small area where the debtors
sat together.
The female prisoners were behind a thick veil of close lattice-work.
Service concluded, the governor began to turn a wheel in his pew; this
wheel exhibited to the congregation a number, the convict whose number
corresponded instantly took down his badge (the sight and position of
which had determined the governor in working his wheel), drew the peak
of his cap over his face, and went out and waited in the lobby. When all
the sentry-boxes were thus emptied, dead march of the whole party back
to the main building; here the warders separated them, and sent them,
dead silent, vizors down, some to clean the prison, some to their cells,
some to hard labor, and some to an airing in the yard.
Robinson was to be aired. “Hurrah!” thought sociable Tom. Alas! he found
the system in the yard as well as in the chapel. The promenade was a
number of passages radiating from a common center; the sides of passage
were thick walls; entrance to passage an iron gate locked behind the
promenader. An officer remained on the watch the whole time to see that
a word did not creep out or in through one of the gates.
“And this they call out of doors,” grunted Robinson.
After an hour's promenade he was taken into his cell, where at twelve
the trap in his door was opened and his dinner shoved in and the trap
snapped to again, all in three seconds. A very good dinner, better
than paupers always get--three ounces of meat--no bone, eight ounces
of potatoes, and eight ounces of bread. After dinner three weary hours
without an incident. At about three o'clock one of the warders opened
his cell door and put his head in and swiftly withdrew it. Three more
monotonous hours, and then supper--one pint of gruel, and eight ounces
of bread. He ate it as slowly as he could to eke out a few minutes in
the heavy day. Quarter before eight a bell to go to bed. At eight the
warders came round and saw that all the prisoners were in bed. The next
day the same thing, and the next ditto, with this exception, that one of
the warders came into his cell and minutely examined it in dead silence.
The fourth day the chaplain visited him, asked him a few questions,
repeated a few sentences on the moral responsibility of every human
being, and set him some texts of Scripture to learn by heart. This
visit, though merely one of routine, broke the thief's dead silence and
solitude, and he would have been thankful to have a visit every day from
the chaplain, whose manner was formal, but not surly and forbidding like
the turnkeys or warders.
Next day the governor of the jail came suddenly into the cell and put
to Robinson several questions, which he answered with great affability;
then, turning on his heel, said bruskly, “Have you anything to say to
me?”
“Yes, sir, if you please.”
“Out with it then, my man,” said the governor impatiently.
“Sir, I was condemned to hard labor; now I wanted to ask you when my
hard labor is to begin, because I have not been put upon anything yet.”
“We are kinder to you than the judges then, it seems.”
“Yes, sir! but I am not naturally lazy, and--”
“A little hard work would amuse you just now?”
“Indeed, sir, I think it would; I am very much depressed in spirits.”
“You will be worse before you are better.”
“Heaven forbid! I think if you don't give me something to do I shall go
out of my mind soon, sir.”
“That is what they all say! You will be put on hard labor, I promise
you, but not when it suits you. We'll choose the time.” And the governor
went out with a knowing smile upon his face.
The thief sat himself down disconsolately, and the heavy hours, like
leaden waves, seemed to rise and rise, and roll over his head and
suffocate him, and weigh him down, down, down to bottomless despair.
At length, about the tenth day, this human being's desire to exchange
a friendly word with some other human creature became so strong that in
the chapel during service he scratched the door of his sentry-box, and
whispered, “Mate, whisper me a word, for pity's sake.” He received no
answer; but even to have spoken himself relieved his swelling soul for a
minute or two. Half an hour later four turnkeys came into his cell, and
took him down stairs and confined him in a pitch-dark dungeon.
The prisoner whose attention he had tried to attract in chapel had told
to curry favor, and was reported favorably for the same.
The darkness in which Robinson now lay was not like the darkness of our
bedrooms at night, in which the outlines of objects are more or less
visible; it was the frightful darkness that chilled and crushed the
Egyptians soul and body; it was a darkness that might be felt.
This terrible and unnatural privation of all light is very trying to all
God's creatures, to none more so than to man, and among men it is
most dangerous and distressing to those who have imagination and
excitability. Now Robinson was a man of this class, a man of rare
capacity, full of talent and the courage and energy that vent themselves
in action, but not rich in the tough fortitude which does little, feels
little and bears much.
When they took him out of the black hole after six hours' confinement he
was observed to be white as a sheet, and to tremble violently all over,
and in this state at the word of command he crept back all the way to
his cell, his hand to his eyes, that were dazzled by what seemed to
him bright daylight, his body shaking, while every now and then a loud,
convulsive sob burst from his bosom.
The governor happened to be on the corridor, looking down over the rails
as Robinson passed him. He said to him, with a victorious sneer, “You
won't be refractory in chapel again in a hurry.”
“No,” said the thief, in a low, gentle voice, despairingly.
The day after Robinson was put in the black hole the surgeon came his
rounds. He found him in a corner of his cell with his eyes fixed on the
floor.
The man took no notice of his entrance. The surgeon went up to him and
shook him rather roughly. Robinson raised his heavy eyes and looked
stupidly at him.
The surgeon laid hold of him, and placing a thumb on each side of his
eye, inspected that organ fully. He then felt his pulse; this done, he
went out with the warder. Making his report to the governor, he came in
turn to Robinson.
“No. 19 is sinking.”
“Oh! is he? Fry” (turning to a warder), “what has 19's treatment been?”
“Been in his cell, sir, without labor since he came. Blackhole
yesterday, for communicating in chapel.”
“What is the matter with him?”
“Doctor says he is sinking.”
“What the devil do you mean by his sinking?”
“Well, sir,” replied the surgeon, with a sort of dry deference, “he is
dying--that is what I mean.”
“Oh, he is dying, is he; d--n him, we'll stop that. Here, Fry, take
No. 19 out into the garden, and set him to work. And put him on the
corridors to-morrow.”
“Is he to be let talk to us, sir?”
“Humph! yes!”
Robinson was taken out into the garden; it was a small piece of ground
that had once been a yard; it was inclosed within walls of great height,
and to us would have seemed a cheerless place for horticulture, but to
Robinson it appeared the garden of Eden. He gave a sigh of relief and
pleasure, but the next moment his countenance fell.
“They won't let me stay here!”
Fry took him into the center of the garden, and put a spade into his
hand. “Now you dig this piece,” said he in his dry, unfriendly tone,
“and if you have time cut the edges of this grass path square.” The
words were scarcely out of his mouth before Robinson drove the spade
into the soil with all the energy of one of God's creatures escaping
from system back to nature.
Fry left him in the garden after making him pull down his vizor, for
there was one more prisoner working at some distance.
Robinson set to with energy, and dug for the bare life. It was a sort of
work he knew very little about, and a gardener would have been disgusted
at his ridges, but he threw his whole soul into it and very soon had
nearly completed his task. Having been confined so long without exercise
his breath was short, and he perspired profusely; but he did not care
for that. “Oh, how sweet this is after being buried alive,” cried he,
and in went the spade again. Presently he was seized with a strong
desire to try the other part of his task, the more so as it required
more skill and presented a difficulty to overcome. A part of the path
had been shaved and the knippers lay where they had been last used.
Robinson inspected the recent work with an intelligent eye, and soon
discovered traces of a white line on one side of the path, that served
as a guide to the knippers. “Oh! I must draw a straight line,” said
Robinson out loud, indulging himself with the sound of a human voice.
“But how? can you tell me that,” he inquired of a gooseberry bush that
grew near. The words were hardly out of his mouth before, peering about
in every direction, he discovered an iron spike with some cord wrapped
round it and, not far off, a piece of chalk. He pounced on them, and
fastening the spike at the edge of the path attempted to draw a
line with the chalk, using the string as a ruler. Not succeeding, he
reflected a little, and the result was that he chalked several feet
of the line all round until it was all white; then with the help of a
stake, which he took for his other terminus, he got the chalked string
into a straight line just above the edge of the grass. Next pressing it
tightly down with his foot, he effected a white line on the grass. He
now removed the string, took the knippers, and following his white
line, trimmed the path secundum artem. “There,” said Robinson, to the
gooseberry-bush, but not very loud for fear of being heard and punished,
“I wonder whether that is how the gardeners do it. I think it must be.”
He viewed his work with satisfaction, then went back to his digging, and
as he put the finishing stroke Fry came to bring him back to his cell.
It was bedtime.
“I never worked in a garden before,” began Robinson, “so it is not so
well done as it might be, but if I was to come every day for a week,
I think I could master it. I did not know there was a garden in this
prison. If ever I build a prison there shall be a garden in it as big as
Belgrave Square.”
“You are precious fond of the sound of your own voice, No. 19,” said Fry
dryly.
“We are not forbidden to speak to the warders, are we?”
“Not at proper times.”
He threw open cell-door 19, and Robinson entered.
Before he could close the door Robinson said, “Good-night and thank
you.”
“G'night,” snarled Fry sullenly, as one shamed against his will into a
civility.
Robinson lay awake half the night, and awoke the next morning rather
feverish and stiff, but not the leaden thing he was the day before.
A feather turns a balanced scale. This man's life and reason had been
engaged in a drawn battle with three mortal enemies--solitude, silence
and privation of all employment. That little bit of labor and wholesome
thought, whose paltry and childish details I half blush to have given
you, were yet due to my story, for they took a man out of himself,
checked the self-devouring process, and helped elastic nature to recover
herself this bout.
The next day Robinson was employed washing the prison. The next he got
two hours in the garden again, and the next the trades'-master was sent
into his cell to teach him how to make scrubbing-brushes. The man
sat down and was commencing a discourse when Robinson interrupted him
politely:
“Sir, let me see you work, and watch me try to do the same, and correct
me.”
“With all my heart,” said the trades'-master.
He remained about half an hour with his pupil, and when he went out he
said to one of the turnkeys, “There is a chap in there that can pick up
a handicraft as a pigeon picks up peas.”
The next day the surgeon happened to look in. He found Robinson as busy
as a bee making brushes, pulled his eye open again, felt his pulse, and
wrote something down in his memorandum-book. He left directions with
the turnkey that No. 19 should be kept employed, with the governor's
permission.
Robinson's hands were now full; he made brushes, and every day put some
of them to the test upon the floor and walls of the building.
It happened one day as he was doing housemaid in corridor B, that he
suddenly heard unwonted sounds issue from a part of the premises into
which he had not yet been introduced, the yard devoted to hard labor.
First he heard a single voice shouting: that did not last long; then a
dead silence; then several voices, among which his quick ear recognized
Fry's and the governor's. He could see nothing; the sounds came from one
of the hard-labor cells. Robinson was surprised and puzzled. What were
these sounds that broke the silence of the living tomb? An instinct told
him it was no use asking a turnkey, so he devoured his curiosity and
surprise as best he might.
The very next day, about the same hour, both were again excited by
noises from the same quarter equally unintelligible. He heard a great
noise of water slashed in bucketsful against a wall, and this was
followed by a sort of gurgling that seemed to him to come from a human
throat; this latter, however, was almost drowned in an exulting chuckle
of several persons, among whom he caught the tones of a turnkey called
Hodges and of the governor himself. Robinson puzzled and puzzled
himself, but could not understand these curious sounds, and he could
see nothing except a quantity of water running out of one of the labor
cells, and coursing along till it escaped by one of the two gutters
that drained the yard. Often and often Robinson meditated on this, and
exerted all his ingenuity to conceive what it meant. His previous jail
experience afforded him no clew, and as he was one of those who hate to
be in the dark about anything this new riddle tortured him.
However, the prison was generally so dead dumb and gloomy that upon two
such cheerful events as water splashing and creatures laughing he could
not help crowing a little out of sympathy without knowing why.
The next day, as Robinson was working in the corridor, the governor came
in with a gentleman whom he treated with unusual and marked respect.
This gentleman was the chairman of the quarter-sessions, and one of
those magistrates who had favored the adoption of the present system.
Mr. Williams inspected the prison; was justly pleased with its exquisite
cleanness; he questioned the governor as to the health of the prisoners,
and received for answer that most of them were well, but that there
were some exceptions; this appeared to satisfy him. He went into the
labor-yard, looked at the cranks, examined the numbers printed on each
in order to learn their respective weights, and see that the prisoners
were not overburdened.
Went with the governor into three or four cells, and asked the prisoners
if they had any complaint to make.
The unanimous answer was “No!”
He then complimented the governor--and drove home to his own house,
Ashtown Park.
There, after dinner, he said to a brother magistrate, “I inspected the
jail to-day; was all over it.”
The next morning Fry, the morose, came into Robinson's cell with a more
cheerful countenance than usual. Robinson noticed it.
“You are put on the crank,” said Fry.
“Oh! am I?”
“Of course you are. Your sentence was hard labor, wasn't it? I don't
know why you weren't sent on a fortnight ago.”
Fry then took him out into the labor-yard, which he found perforated
with cells about half the size of his hermitage in the corridor. In each
of these little quiet grottoes lurked a monster, called a crank. A crank
is a machine of this sort--there springs out of a vertical post an iron
handle, which the workman, taking it by both hands, works round and
round, as in some country places you may have seen the villagers draw a
bucket up from a well. The iron handle goes at the shoulder into a small
iron box at the top of the post; and inside that box the resistance to
the turner is regulated by the manufacturer, who states the value of the
resistance outside in cast-iron letters. Thus:
5-lb. crank. 7-lb. crank. 10, 12, etc., etc.
“Eighteen hundred revolutions per hour,” said Mr. Fry, in his voice of
routine, and “you are to work two hours before dinner.”
So saying he left him, and Robinson, with the fear of punishment before
him, lost not a moment in getting to work. He found the crank go easy
enough at first, but the longer he was at it the stiffer it seemed to
turn. And after about four hundred turns he was fain to breathe and rest
himself. He took three minutes' rest, then at it again. All this time
there was no taskmaster, as in Egypt, nor whipper-up of declining sable
energy, as in Old Kentucky. So that if I am so fortunate as to have
a reader aged ten, he is wondering why the fool did not confine his
exertions to saying he had made the turns. My dear, it would not do.
Though no mortal oversaw the thief at his task, the eye of science was
in that cell and watched every stroke and her inexorable finger marked
it down. In plain English, on the face of the machine was a thing like
a chronometer with numbers set all round and a hand which, somehow or
other, always pointed to the exact number of turns the thief had made.
The crank was an autometer, or self-measurer, and in that respect your
superior and mine, my little drake.
This was Robinson's first acquaintance with the crank. The tread-wheel
had been the mode in his time; so by the time he had made three thousand
turns he was rather exhausted. He leaned upon the iron handle and sadly
regretted his garden and his brushes; but fear and dire necessity were
upon him; he set to his task and to work again. “I won't look at the
meter again, for it always tells me less than I expect. I'll just plow
on till that beggar comes. I know he will come to the minute.”
Sadly and doggedly he turned the iron handle, and turned and turned
again; and then he panted and rested a minute, and then doggedly to his
idle toil again. He was now so fatigued that his head seemed to have
come loose, he could not hold it up, and it went round and round and
round with the crank-handle. Hence it was that Mr. Fry stood at the
mouth of the den without the other seeing him.
“Halt,” said Fry. Robinson looked up, and there was the turnkey
inspecting him with a discontented air. “I'm done,” thought Robinson,
“here he is as black as thunder--the number not right, no doubt.”
“What are ye at,” growled Fry. “You are forty over,” and the said Fry
looked not only ill-used but a little unhappy. Robinson's good behavior
had disappointed the poor soul.
This Fry was a grim oddity; he experienced a feeble complacency when
things went wrong--but never else.
The thief exulted, and was taken back to his cell. Dinner came almost
immediately. Four ounces of meat instead of three; two ounces less
bread, but a large access of potatoes, which more than balanced the
account.
The next day Robinson was put on the crank again, but not till the
afternoon. He had finished about half his task, when he heard at some
little distance from him a faint moaning. His first impulse was to run
out of his cell and see what was the matter, but Hodges and Fry were
both in the yard, and he knew that they would report him for punishment
upon the least breach of discipline. So he turned and turned the crank,
with these moans ringing in his ears and perplexing his soul.
Finding they did not cease, he peeped cautiously into the yard, and
there he saw the governor himself as well as Hodges and Fry. All three
were standing close to the place whence these groans issued, and with an
air of complete unconcern.
But presently the groans ceased, and then mysteriously enough the little
group of disciplinarians threw off their apathy. Hodges and Fry went
hastily to the pump with buckets, which they filled, and then came back
to the governor; the next minute Robinson heard water dashed repeatedly
against the walls of the cell, and then the governor laughed, and Hodges
laughed, and even the gloomy Fry vented a brief grim chuckle.
And now Robinson quivered with curiosity as he turned his crank, but
there was no means of gratifying it. It so happened, however, that some
ten minutes later the governor sent Hodges and Fry to another part of
the prison, and they had not been gone long before a message came to
himself, on which he went hastily out, and the yard was left empty.
Robinson's curiosity had reached such a pitch that notwithstanding the
risk he ran--for he knew the governor would send back to the yard the
very first disengaged officer he met--he could not stay quiet. As the
governor closed the gate he ran with all speed to the cell, he darted
in, and then the thief saw what made the three honest men laugh so. He
saw it, and started back with a cry of dismay, for the sight chilled the
felon to the bone.
A lad about fifteen years of age was pinned against the wall in agony by
a leathern belt passed round his shoulders and drawn violently round
two staples in the wall. His arms were jammed against his sides by a
straight waistcoat fastened with straps behind, and those straps drawn
with the utmost severity. But this was not all. A high leathern collar a
quarter of an inch thick squeezed his throat in its iron grasp. His
hair and his clothes were drenched with water which had been thrown in
bucketsful over him, and now dripped from him on the floor. His face
was white, his lips livid, his eyes were nearly glazed, and his teeth
chattered with cold and pain.
A more unprincipled man than Robinson did not exist; but burglary and
larceny do not extinguish humanity in a thinking rascal as resigning the
soul to system can extinguish it in a dull dog.
“Oh, what is this!” cried Robinson, “what are the villains doing to
you?”
He received no answer; but the boy's eyes opened wide, and he turned
those glazing eyes, the only part of his body he could turn, toward the
speaker. Robinson ran up to him, and began to try and loosen him.
At this the boy cried out, almost screaming with terror, “Let me alone!
let me alone! They'll give it me worse if you do, and they'll serve you
out, too!”
“But you will die, boy. Look at his poor lips!”
“No, no, no! I shan't die! No such luck!” cried the boy impatiently and
wildly. “Thank you for speaking kind to me. Who are you? tell me quick,
and go. I am ---- Josephs, No. 15, Corridor A.”
“I am Robinson, No. 19, Corridor B.”
“Good-bye, Robinson, I shan't forget you. Hark, the door! Go! go! go!
go! go!”
Robinson was already gone. He had fled at the first click of a key in
the outward door, and darted into his cell at the moment Fry got into
the yard. An instinct of suspicion led this man straight to Robinson's
hermitage. He found him hard at work. Fry scrutinized his countenance,
but Robinson was too good an actor to betray himself; only when Fry
passed on he drew a long breath. What he had seen surprised as well
as alarmed him, for he had always been told the new system discouraged
personal violence of all sorts; and in all his experience of the old
jails he had never seen a prisoner abused so savagely as the young
martyr in the adjoining cell. His own work done, he left for his own
dormitory. He was uneasy, and his heart was heavy for poor Josephs; but
he dared not even cast a look toward his place of torture, for the other
executioners had returned, and Fry followed grim at his heels like a
mastiff dogging a stranger out of the premises.
That evening Robinson spent in gloomy reflections and forebodings. “I
wish I was in the hulks or anywhere out of this place,” said he. As for
Josephs, the governor, after inspecting his torture for a few minutes,
left the yard again with his subordinates, and Josephs was left alone
with his great torture for two hours more; then Hodges came in and
began to loose him, swearing at him all the time for a little rebellious
monkey that gave more trouble than enough. The rebellious monkey made
no answer, but crawled slowly away to his dungeon, shivering in his
drenched clothes, stiff and sore, his bones full of pain, his heart full
of despondency.
Robinson had now eight thousand turns of the crank per day, and very
hard work he found it; but he preferred it to being buried alive all day
in his cell; and warned by Josephs' fate, he went at the crank with all
his soul, and never gave them an excuse for calling him “refractory.” It
happened, however, one day, just after breakfast, that he was taken
with a headache and shivering; and not getting better after chapel,
but rather worse, he rang his bell and begged to see the surgeon. The
surgeon ought to have been in the jail at this hour. He was not, though,
and as he had been the day before, and was accustomed to neglect the
prisoners for any one who paid better, he was not expected this day.
Soon after Fry came to the cell and ordered Robinson out to the crank.
Robinson told him he was too ill to work.
“I must have the surgeon's authority for that, before I listen to it,”
replied Fry, amateur of routine.
“But he is not in the jail, or you would have it.”
“Then he ought to be.”
“Well, is it my fault he's shirking his duty? Send for him, and you'll
see he will tell you I am not fit for the crank to-day; my head is
splitting.”
“Come, no gammon, No. 19; it is the crank or the jacket, or else the
black hole. So take which you like best.”
Robinson rose with a groan of pain and despondency.
“It is only eight thousand words you have got to say to it, and they are
not many for such a tongue as yours.”
At the end of the time Fry came to the mouth of the labor-cell with a
grim chuckle. “He will never have done his number this time.” He found
Robinson kneeling on the ground, almost insensible, the crank-handle
convulsively grasped in his hands. Fry's first glance was at this
figure, that a painter might have taken for a picture of labor
overtasked; but this was neither new nor interesting to Fry. He went
eagerly to examine the meter of the crank--there lay his heart, such as
it was--and to his sorrow he found that No. 19 had done his work before
he broke down. What it cost the poor fever-stricken wretch to do it can
easier be imagined than described.
They assisted Robinson to his cell, and that night he was in a burning
fever. The next day the surgeon happened by some accident to be at his
post, and prescribed change of diet and medicines for him. “He would be
better in the infirmary.”
“Why?” said the governor.
“More air.”
“Nonsense, there is plenty of air here. There is a constant stream of
air comes in through this,” and he pointed to a revolving cylinder in
the window constructed for that purpose. “You give him the right stuff,
doctor,” said Hawes jocosely, “and he won't slip his wind this time.”
The surgeon acquiesced according to custom.
It was not for him to contradict Hawes, who allowed him to attend the
jail or neglect it, according to his convenience, i. e., to come three
or four times a week at different hours, instead of twice every day at
fixed hours.
It was two days after this that the governor saw Hodges come out of a
cell laughing.
“What are ye grinning at?” said he, in his amiable way.
“No. 19 is light-headed, sir, and I have been listening to him. It would
make a cat laugh,” said Hodges apologetically. He knew well enough the
governor did not approve of laughing in the jail.
The governor said nothing, but made a motion with his hand, and Hodges
opened cell 19 and they both went in.
No. 19 lay on his back flushed and restless with his eyes fixed on
vacancy. He was talking incessantly and without sequence. I should fail
signally were I to attempt to transfer his words to paper. I feel my
weakness and the strength of others who in my day have shown a singular
power of fixing on paper the volatile particles of frenzy; however, in
a word, the poor thief was talking as our poetasters write, and amid his
gunpowder, daffodils, bosh and other constellations there mingled gleams
of sense and feeling that would have made you and me very sad.
He often recurred to a girl he called Mary, and said a few gentle words
to her; then off again into the wildest flights. While Mr. Hawes and
his myrmidons were laughing at him, he suddenly fixed his eyes on some
imaginary figure on the opposite wall and began to cry out loudly, “Take
him down. Don't you see you are killing him? The collar is choking him!
See how White he is! His eyes stare! The boy will die! Murder! murder!
murder! I can't bear to see him die.” And with these words he buried his
head in the bedclothes.
Mr. Hawes looked at Mr. Fry; Mr. Fry answered the look. “He must have
seen Josephs the other day.”
“Ay! he is mighty curious. Well, when he gets well!” and, shaking his
fist at the sufferer, Mr. Hawes went out of the cell soon after.