“WILL you eat your mutton with me to-day, Palmer?” said Mr. Williams at
the gate of the jail.
“I should be very happy, but I am engaged to dine with the
lord-lieutenant.”
So Mr. Williams drove home to Ashtown Park, and had to sit down to
dinner with his own small family party.
Mr. Williams' mutton consisted of first a little strong gravy soup
lubricated and gelatinized with a little tapioca; vis-a-vis the soup a
little piece of salmon cut out of the fish's center; lobster patties,
rissoles, and two things with French names, stinking of garlic, on the
flank.
Enter a boiled turkey poult with delicate white sauce; a nice tongue,
not too green nor too salt, and a small saddle of six-tooth mutton,
home-bred, home-fed; after this a stewed pigeon, faced by greengage
tart, and some yellow cream twenty-four hours old; item, an iced
pudding. A little Stilton cheese brought up the rear with a nice salad.
This made way for a foolish trifling dessert of muscatel grapes, guava
jelly and divers kickshaws diluted with agreeable wines varied by a
little glass of Marasquino & Co., at junctures. So far so nice!
But alas! nothing is complete in this world, not even the dinner of a
fair round justice with fat capon lined. There is always some drawback
or deficiency here below--confound it! The wretch of a cook had
forgotten to send up the gruel a la Josephs.
Next day, after Mr. Williams had visited the female prisoners and
complimented Hawes on having initiated them into the art of silence, he
asked where the chaplain was. Hawes instantly dispatched a messenger
to inquire, and remembering that gentleman's threatened remonstrance,
parried him by anticipation, thus:
“By-the-by, sir, I have a little complaint to make of him.”
“Indeed!” said Mr. Williams, “what is that?”
“He took a prisoner's part against the discipline; but he doesn't know
them, and they humbug him. But, sir, ought he to preach against me in
the chapel of the jail?”
“Certainly not! Surely he has not been guilty of such a breach of
discipline and good taste.”
“Oh! but wait, sir,” said Hawes, “hear the whole truth, and then perhaps
you will blame me. You must know, sir, that I sometimes let out an oath.
I was in the army, and we used all to swear there; and now a little of
it sticks to me in spite of my teeth, and if his reverence had done me
the honor to take me to task privately about it, I would have taken off
my hat to him; but it is another thing to go and preach at me for it
before all the jail.”
“Of course it is. Do you mean to say he did that?”
“He did, sir. Of course, he did not mention my name, but he preached
five-and-thirty minutes all about swearing, and they all knew who he was
hitting. I could see the warders grinning from ear to ear, as much as to
say, 'There's another rap for you, governor!'”
“I'll speak to him.”
“Thank you, sir; don't be hard on him, for he is a deserving officer;
but if you would give him a quiet hint not to interfere with me. We have
all of us plenty to do of our own in a jail, if he could but see it. Ah!
here comes the chaplain, sir. I will leave you together, if you please;”
and Mr. Hawes made off with a business air.
The chaplain came up and bowed to Mr. Williams, who saluted him in turn
somewhat coldly. There was a short silence. Mr. Williams was concocting
a dignified rebuke. Before he could get it out the chaplain began:
“I wished to speak with you yesterday, sir.
“I am at your service, Mr. Jones. What is it?”
“I want you to look into our punishments; they are far more numerous and
severe than they used to be.”
“On the contrary I find them less numerous.”
“Why, there is one punished every day.”
“I have been carefully over the books, and I assure you there is a
marked decrease in the number of punishments.”
“Then they cannot be all put down.”
“Nonsense, Mr. Jones, nonsense!”
“And, then, the severity of these punishments, sir! Is it your wish that
a prisoner should be strapped in the jacket so tight that we cannot get
a finger between the leather and his flesh?”
“Not unless he is refractory.”
“But prisoners are very seldom refractory.”
“Indeed! that is news to me.”
“I assure you, sir, there are no quieter set of men than prisoners
generally. They know there is nothing to be gained by resistance.”
“They are on their good behavior before you. You don't see through them,
my good sir. They are like madmen--you would take them for lambs till
they break out. Do you know a prisoner here called Josephs?”
“Yes, sir, perfectly well.”
“Well, now, what is his character, may I ask?”
“HE IS A MILD, QUIET, DOCILE LAD.”
“Ha! ha! ha! I thought so. Prisoners are the refuse of the earth.
The governor knows them, and how to manage them. A discretion must be
allowed him, and I see no reason to interfere between him and refractory
prisoners except when he invites us.”
“You are aware that several attempts at suicide have been made within
the last few months?”
“Sham attempts, yes.”
“One was not sham, sir,” said Mr. Jones, gravely
“Oh, Jackson, you mean. No, but he was a lunatic, and would have made
away with himself anywhere--Hawes is convinced of that.”
“Well, sir, I have told you the fact; I have remonstrated against the
uncommon seventies practiced in this jail--seventies unknown in Captain
O'Connor's day.”
“And I have received and answered your remonstrance, sir, and there that
matter ought to end.”
This, and the haughty tone with which it was said, discouraged and
nettled the chaplain; he turned red and said:
“In that case, sir, I have no more to say. I have discharged my
conscience.” With these words he was about to withdraw, but Mr. Williams
stopped him.
“Mr. Jones, do you consider a clergyman justified in preaching at
people?”
“Certainly not.”
“The pulpit surely ought not to be made a handle for personality. It is
not the way to make the pulpit itself respected.”
“I don't understand you, sir.”
“Mr. Hawes is much hurt at a sermon you preached against him.”
“A sermon against him--never!”
“I beg your pardon; you preached a whole sermon against swearing--and he
swears.”
“Oh--yes! I remember--the Sunday before last. I certainly did reprobate
in my discourse the habit of swearing, but no personality to Hawes was
intended.”
“No personality intended when you know he swears!”
“Yes, but the warders swear, too. Why should Mr. Hawes take it all to
himself?”
“Oh! if the turnkeys swear, then it was not so strictly personal.”
“To be sure,” put in Mr. Jones inadvertently, “I believe they learned it
of the governor.”
“There you see! Well, and even if they did not, why preach against the
turnkeys? why preach at any individuals or upon passing events at all? I
can remember the time no clergyman throughout the length and breadth of
the land noticed passing events from the pulpit.”
“I am as far from approving the practice as you are, sir.”
“In those days the clergy and the laity respected one another, and there
was peace in the Church.”
“I can only repeat, sir, that I agree with you; the pulpit should be
consecrated to eternal truths, not passing events.”
“Good! very good! Well, then?”
“What Mr. Hawes complains of was a mere accident.”
“An accident, Mr. Jones? Oh, Mr. Jones!”
“An accident which I undertake to explain to Mr. Hawes himself.”
“By all means; that will be the best way of making friends again. I need
not tell you that a jail could not go on in which the governor and the
chaplain did not pull together. The fact is, Mr. Jones, the clergy, of
late, have been assuming a little too much, and that has made the
laity a little jealous. Now, although you are a clergyman, you are her
majesty's servant so long as you are here, and must co-operate with the
general system of the jail. Come, sir, you are younger than I am; let me
give you a piece of advice, 'DON'T OVERSTEP YOUR DUTY,' etc.”
In this strain Mr. Williams buz, buz, buzzed longer than I can afford
him paper, it is so dear. He pumped a stream of time-honored phrases
on his hearer, and dissolved away with him as the overflow of a pump
carries away a straw on its shallow stream down a stable-yard.
When the pump was pumped dry he stopped.
Then the chaplain, who had listened with singular politeness, got in a
word. “You forget, sir, I have resigned the chaplaincy of the jail?”
“Oh! ah! yes! well, then, I need say no more; good-day, Mr. Jones.”
“Good-morning, sir.”
Soon after this up came Hawes with a cheerful countenance.
“Well, parson, are you to manage the prisoners and I to preach to them,
or are we to go on as we are?”
“Things are to go on as they are, Mr. Hawes; but that is nothing to
me, I have discharged my conscience. I have remonstrated against the
seventies practiced on our prisoners. COLD WATER HAS BEEN THROWN ON MY
REMONSTRANCES, and I shall therefore interfere no more.”
“That is the wise way to look at it, you may depend!”
“We shall see which was in the right. I have discharged my conscience.
But, Mr. Hawes, I am hurt you should say I preached a sermon against
you.”
“I dare say you are, sir, but who began it; if you had not talked of
complaining to the justices of me, I should never have said a word
against you.”
“That is all settled; but it is due to my character to show you that
I had no intention of pointing at you or any living creature from the
pulpit.”
“Well, make me believe that.”
“If you will do me the favor to come to my room I can prove it to you.”
The chaplain took the governor to his room and opened two drawers in a
massive table.
“Mr. Hawes,” said he, “do you see this pile of sermons in this
right-hand drawer?”
“I see them,” said Hawes, with a doleful air, “and I suppose I shall
hear some of them before long.”
“These,” said Mr. Jones, smiling with perfect good-humor at the
innocuous sneer, “are sermons I composed when I was curate of
Little-Stoke. Of late I have been going regularly through my
Little-Stoke discourses, as you may see. I take one from the pile in
this drawer, and after first preaching it in the jail I place it in the
left drawer on that smaller pile.”
“That you mayn't preach it again by accident; well, that is business.”
“If you look into the left pile near the top, you will find the one I
preached against profane discourse, with the date at which it was first
composed.”
“Here it is, sir--Little-Stoke, May 15, 1847.”
“Well, Mr. Hawes, now was that written against you?--come!”
“No! I confess it could not; but look here, if a man sends a bullet into
me, it doesn't matter to me whether he made the gun on purpose or shot
me out of an old one that he had got by him.”
“But I tell you that I took the sermon out in its turn, and knew no more
what it was about until I opened it in the pulpit, than I knew what this
one is about which I am going to preach next Sunday morning--it was all
chance.”
“It was my bad luck, I suppose,” said Hawes a little sulkily.
“And mine, too. Could I anticipate that a discourse composed for and
preached to a rural congregation would be deemed to have a personal
application here?”
“Well, no!”
“I have now only to add that I extremely regret the circumstance.”
“Say no more, sir. When a gentleman expresses his regret to another
gentleman, there is an end of the grievance.
“I will take care the sort of thing never happens again.”
“Enough said, sir.”
“It never can, however, for I shall preach but one more Sunday here.”
“And I'm very sorry for it, Mr. Jones.”
“And after this occurrence I am determined to write both sermons for the
occasion, so there is sure to be nothing personal in them.”
“Yes, that is the surest way. Well, sir, you and I never had but this
one little misunderstanding, and now that is explained, we shall part
friends.”
“A glass of ale, Mr. Hawes?”
“I don't care if I do, sir.” (The glasses were filled and emptied.) “I
must go and look after my chickens; the justices have ordered Gillies to
be flogged. You will be there, I suppose, in half an hour.”
“Well, if my attendance is not absolutely necessary--”
“We will excuse you, sir, if not convenient.”
“Thank you--good-morning!” and the reconciled officials parted.
Little Gillies was hoisted to receive twenty lashes; at the twelfth the
governor ordered him down.
He broke off the tale as our magazines do, with a promise--“To be
continued.”
Little Gillies, like their readers, cried out, “No, sir. Oh, sir! please
flog me to an end, and ha' done with it. I don't feel the cuts near so
much now--my back seems dead like.”
Little Gillies was arguing against himself. Hawes had not divided his
punishment with the view of lessening his pain. It was droll, but more
sad than droll to hear the poor little fellow begging Hawes to flog him
to an end, to flog him out; with similar idioms.
“Hold your [oath] noise!” Hawes shrunk with disgust from noise in his
prison, and could not comprehend why the prisoners could not take their
punishments without infringing upon the great and glorious silence of
which the jail was the temple and he the high priest. “The beggars get
no good by kicking up a row,” argued he.
“Hold your noise!--take him to his cell!”
Whether it was because he had desecrated the temple with noise, or from
the accident of having attracted the governor's attention, the weight of
the system fell on this small object now.
Gillies was ordered to make a fabulous number of crank
revolutions--fabulous, at least, in connection with his tender age; he
was put on the lightest crank, but the lightest was heavy to thirteen
years. Not being the infant Hercules, he could not perform this labor;
so Hawes put him in jacket and collar almost the whole day. His young
and supple frame was in his favor, but once or twice he could hardly
help shamming, and then they threw half a bucket over him.
The next day he was put on the crank, and not being able to complete
the task that was set him before dinner, he was strapped up until the
evening. The next day the governor tried another tack. He took away his
meat soup and gruel, and gave him nothing but bread and water. Strange
to say, this change of diet did not supply the deficiency; he could
not do the infant Hercules his work even on bread and water. Then the
governor deprived the obstinate little dog of his chapel. “If you won't
work, I'm [participle] if you shall pray.” The boy missed the recreation
of hearing Mr. Jones hum the Liturgy; missed it in a way you cannot
conceive. Your soporific was his excitement; think of that.
Little Gillies became sadly dispirited, and weaker at the crank than
before; ergo, the governor sentenced him to be fourteen days without bed
or gas.
But when they took away his bed and did not light his gas little Gillies
began to lose his temper; he made a great row about this last stroke of
discipline. “I won't live such a life as this,” said little Gillies, in
a pet. “Why don't the governor hang me at once?”
“What is that noise?” roared the governor, who was in the corridor and
had long ears.
“It is No. 50 kicking up a row at having his bed and gas taken,” replied
a turnkey, with a note of admiration in his voice.
The governor bounced into the cell. “Are you grumbling at that, you
rebellious young rascal? you forget there are a dozen lashes owing you
yet.” Now the boy had not forgotten, but he hoped the governor had.
“Well, you shall have the rest to-morrow.”
With these words ringing in his ears, little Gillies was locked up
for the night at six o'clock. His companions darkness and unrest-for a
prisoner's bed is the most comfortable thing he has, and the change from
it to a stone floor is as great to him as it would be to us--darkness
and unrest, and the cat waiting to spring on him at peep of day. Quae
cum ita erant, as the warder put the key into his cell the next morning
he heard a strange gurgling; he opened the door quickly, and there was
little Gillies hanging; a chair was near him on which he had got to
suspend himself by his handkerchief from the window; he was black in
the face, but struggling violently, and had one hand above his head
convulsively clutching the handkerchief. Fry lifted him up by the knees
and with some difficulty loosed the handkerchief.
Little Gillies, as soon as his throat could vent a sound, roared with
fright at the recent peril, and then cried a bit, finally expressed
a hope his breakfast would not be taken from him for this act of
insubordination.
This infraction of discipline was immediately reported to the governor.
“Little brute,” cried Hawes, viciously, “I'll work him!”
“Oh! he knew I was at hand, sir,” said Fry, “or he would not have tried
it.”
“Of course he would not; I remember last night he was grumbling at his
bed being taken away. I'll serve him out!”
Soon after this the governor met the chaplain and told him the case. “He
shall make you an apology”--imperative mood him.
“Me, an apology!”
“Of course--you are the officer that has the care of his soul and he
shall apologize to you for making away with it or trying it on.”
This resolution was conveyed to Gillies with fearful threats, so when
the chaplain visited him he had got his lesson pat.
“I beg your reverence's pardon for hanging myself,” began he at sight,
rather loud and as bold as brass.
“Beg the Almighty's pardon, not mine.”
“No! the governor said it was yours I was to beg,” demurred Gillies.
“Very well. But you should beg God's pardon more than mine.”
“For why, sir?”
“For attempting your life, which was His gift.”
“Oh! I needn't beg His pardon; He doesn't care what becomes of me; if He
did He wouldn't let them bully me as they do day after day, drat 'em.”
“I am sorry to see one so young as you so hardened. I dare say the
discipline of the jail is bitter to you, it is to all idle boys; but you
might be in a much worse place--and will if you do not mend.”
“A worse place than this, your reverence! Oh, my eye!”
“And you ought to be thankful to Heaven for sending the turnkey at that
moment (here I'm sorry to say little Gillies grinned satirically), or
you would be in a worse place. Would you rather be here or in hell?”
half asked, half explained the reverend gentleman in the superior tone
of one closing a discussion forever.
“In hell!!!” replied Gillies, opening his eyes with astonishment at the
doubt.
Mr. Jones was dumfounded; of all the mischances that befall us in
argument this coup perplexes us most. He looked down at the little
ignorant wretch, and decided it would be useless to waste theology
on him. He fell instead into familiar conversation with him, and then
Gillies, with the natural communicativeness of youth, confessed to him
“that he had heard the warder at the next cell before he ventured to
step off the chair and suspend himself.”
“Well! but you ran a great risk, too. Suppose he had not come into your
cell--suppose he had been called away for a minute.”
“I should have been scragged, and no mistake,” said the boy, with a
shiver. Throttling had proved no joke. “But I took my chance of that,”
added Gillies. “I was determined to give them a fright; besides, if he
hadn't come, it would all be over by now, sir, and all the better for
me, I know.”
Further communication was closed by the crank, which demanded young
Hopeful by its mouthpiece, Fry. After dinner, to his infinite disgust,
he received the other moiety of his flogging; but by a sort of sulky
compensation his bed was kicked into his cell again at night by Fry
acting under the governor's orders.
“That was not a bad move, hanging myself a little--a very little,”
said the young prig. He hooked up his recovered treasure; and, though
smarting all over, coiled himself up in it, and in three minutes forgot
present pain, past dangers and troubles to come.
The plan pursued with Robinson was to keep him at low-water mark by
lowering his diet; without this, so great was his natural energy and
disposition to work, that no crank excuse could have been got for
punishing him, and at this period he was too wise and self-restrained to
give any other. But after a few days of unjust torture he began to lose
hope; and with hope patience oozed away too, and his enemy saw with grim
satisfaction wild flashes of mad rage come every now and then to his
eye, harder and harder to suppress. “He will break out before long,”
said Hawes to himself, “and then--”
Robinson saw the game, and a deep dark hatred of his enemy fought on the
side of his prudence. This bitter raging struggle of contending passions
in the thief's heart harmed his soul more than had years of burglary and
petty larceny. All the vices of the old jail system are nothing compared
with the diabolical effect of solitude on a heart smarting with daily
wrongs.
Brooding on self is always corrupting; but to brood on self and wrongs
is to ripen for madness, murder and all crime. Between Robinson
and these there lay one little bit of hope--only one, but it was a
reasonable one. There was an official in the jail possessed of a large
independent authority; and paid (Robinson argued) to take the side of
humanity in the place. This man was the representative of the national
religion in the jail, as Hawes was of the law. Robinson was too sharp at
picking up everything in his way, and had been too often in prisons and
their chapels not to know that cruelty and injustice are contrary to
the Gospel, and to the national religion, which is in a great measure
founded thereon. He therefore hoped and believed the chaplain of the
jail would come between him and his persecutor if he could be made to
understand the case. Now it happened just after the justices had thrown
cold water on Mr. Jones's little expostulation that Robinson was pinned
to the wall, jammed in the waistcoat, and throttled in the collar. He
had been thus some time, when, casting his despairing eyes around they
alighted upon the comely, respectable face of Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones was
looking gravely at the victim.
Robinson devoured him with his eyes and his ears. He heard him say in an
undertone:
“What is this for?”
“Hasn't done his work at the crank,” was the answer.
Then Mr. Jones, after taking another look at the sufferer, gave a sigh
and walked away. Robinson's hopes from this gentleman rose; moreover,
part of his sermon next Sunday inveighed against inhumanity; and
Robinson, who had no conception the sermon was several years old, looked
on it as aimed at Hawes and his myrmidons and as the precursor of other
and effective remonstrances. Not long after this, to his delight, the
chaplain visited him alone. He seized this opportunity of securing the
good man's interference in his favor. He told him in glowing words the
whole story of his sufferings; and with a plain and manly eloquence
appealed to him to make his chapel words good and come between the
bloodhounds and their prey.
“Sir, there are twenty or thirty poor fellows besides me that will bless
your four bones night and day, if you will but put out your hand and
save us from being abused like dogs and nailed to the wall like kites
and weasels. We are not vermin, sir, we are men. Many a worse man is
abroad than we that are caged here like wild beasts. Our bodies are
men's bodies, sir, and our hearts are men's hearts. You can't soften
_their_ hearts, for they haven't such a thing about them; but only just
you open your mouth and speak your mind in right-down earnest, and you
will shame them into treating us openly like human beings, let them hate
us and scorn us at bottom as they will. We have no friend here, sir, but
you, not one; have pity on us! have pity on us!”
And the thief stretched out his hands, and fixed his ardent, glistening
eyes upon the successor of the apostles.
The successor of the apostles hung his head and showed plainly that he
was not unmoved. A moment of suspense followed--Robinson hung upon his
answer. At length Mr. Jones raised his head and said, with icy coldness:
“Mr. Hawes is the governor of this jail. I have no power to interfere
with his acts, supported as they are by the visiting justices; and I
have but one advice to give you: Submit to the discipline and to Mr.
Hawes in everything; it will be the worse for you if you don't.”
So saying, he went out abruptly, leaving his petitioner with his eyes
fixed ruefully upon the door by which his last hope had left him.
The moment the reverend official had got outside the door, his
countenance, which had fallen, took a complacent air. He prided himself
that he had conquered an impulse, an idle impulse.
“The poor fellow is in the right,” said he to himself as he left
the cell; “but if I had let him see I thought so, he might have been
encouraged to resist, and then he would have only suffered all the
more.”
And so, having done what he calculated was the expedient thing to do, he
went his way satisfied and at peace with Mr. Hawes and all mankind.
When he glided away and took hope with him, disdain, despair and frenzy
gushed from the thief's boiling bosom in one wild moan; and with that
moan he dashed himself on his face on the floor, though it was as hard
as Hawes and cold as Jones.
Thus he lay crushed in blank despair a moment, the next he rose fiercely
to his knees, he looked up through the hole they called his window, and
saw a little piece of blue sky no bigger than a Bible, he held his hand
up to that blue sky, he fixed his dilating eye on that blue sky, and
with one long raging yell of horrible words hurled from a heart set on
fire by wrongs and despair and tempting fiends, he cursed the successor
of the apostles before the Majesty of Heaven.