It was some time before I could sufficiently accustom myself to my new
life in the Isle of Portland to be able to think clearly and distinctly
about the terrible blow that had fallen upon me. In the midst of all the
petty troubles and discomforts of prison existence, I had no leisure at
first fully to realize the fact that I was a convicted felon with
scarcely a hope--not of release; for that I cared little--but of
rehabilitation.
Slowly, however, I began to grow habituated to the new hard life imposed
upon me, and to think in my cell of the web of circumstance which had
woven itself so irresistibly around me.
I had only one hope. Emily knew I was innocent. Emily suspected, like
me, that the Wulfric had been stolen. Emily would do her best, I felt
certain, to heap together fresh evidence, and unravel this mystery to
its very bottom.
Meanwhile, I thanked Heaven for the hard mechanical daily toil of
cutting stone in Portland prison. I was a strong athletic young fellow
enough. I was glad now that I had always loved the river at Oxford; my
arms were stout and muscular. I was able to take my part in the regular
work of the gang to which I belonged. Had it been otherwise--had I been
set down to some quiet sedentary occupation, as first-class
misdemeanants often are, I should have worn my heart out soon with
thinking perpetually of poor Emily's terrible trouble.
When I first came, the Deputy-Governor, knowing my case well (had there
not been leaders about me in all the papers?), very kindly asked me
whether I would wish to be given work in the book-keeping department,
where many educated convicts were employed as clerks and assistants. But
I begged particularly to be put into an outdoor gang, where I might have
to use my limbs constantly, and so keep my mind from eating itself up
with perpetual thinking. The Deputy-Governor immediately consented, and
gave me work in a quarrying gang, at the west end of the island, near
Deadman's Bay on the edge of the Chesil.
For three months I worked hard at learning the trade of a quarryman, and
succeeded far better than any of the other new hands who were set to
learn at the same time with me. Their heart was not in it; mine was.
Anything to escape that gnawing agony.
The other men in the gang were not agreeable or congenial companions.
They taught me their established modes of intercommunication, and told
me several facts about themselves, which did not tend to endear them to
me. One of them, 1247, was put in for the manslaughter of his wife by
kicking; he was a low-browed, brutal London drayman, and he occupied the
next cell to mine, where he disturbed me much in my sleepless nights by
his loud snoring. Another, a much slighter and more intelligent-looking
man, was a skilled burglar, sentenced to fourteen years for "cracking a
crib" in the neighbourhood of Hampstead. A third was a sailor, convicted
of gross cruelty to a defenceless Lascar. They all told me the nature of
their crimes with a brutal frankness which fairly surprised me; but when
I explained to them in return that I had been put in upon a false
accusation, they treated my remarks with a galling contempt that was
absolutely unsupportable. After a short time I ceased to communicate
with my fellow-prisoners in any way, and remained shut up with my own
thoughts in utter isolation.
By-and-by I found that the other men in the same gang were beginning to
dislike me strongly, and that some among them actually whispered to one
another--what they seemed to consider a very strong point indeed against
me--that I must really have been convicted by mistake, and that I was a
regular stuck-up sneaking Methodist. They complained that I worked a
great deal too hard, and so made the other felons seem lazy by
comparison; and they also objected to my prompt obedience to our
warder's commands, as tending to set up an exaggerated and impossible
standard of discipline.
Between this warder and myself, on the other hand, there soon sprang up
a feeling which I might almost describe as one of friendship. Though by
the rules of the establishment we could not communicate with one another
except upon matters of business, I liked him for his uniform courtesy,
kindliness, and forbearance; while I could easily see that he liked me
in return, by contrast with the other men who were under his charge. He
was one of those persons whom some experience of prisons then and since
has led me to believe less rare than most people would imagine--men in
whom the dreary life of a prison warder, instead of engendering hardness
of heart and cold unsympathetic sternness, has engendered a certain
profound tenderness and melancholy of spirit. I grew quite fond of that
one honest warder, among so many coarse and criminal faces; and I found,
on the other hand, that my fellow-prisoners hated me all the more
because, as they expressed it in their own disgusting jargon, I was
sucking up to that confounded dog of a barker. It happened once, when I
was left for a few minutes alone with the warder, that he made an
attempt for a moment, contrary to regulations, to hold a little private
conversation with me.
"1430," he said in a low voice, hardly moving his lips, for fear of
being overlooked, "what is your outside name?"