It Is Never Too Late to Mend — Chapter X, part 1

* Sometimes thought.

CHAPTER X. 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.