It Is Never Too Late to Mend — Chapter XVIII, part 1
CHAPTER XVIII. MR.
HAWES went about the prison next day morose and melancholy.
He spoke to no one, and snapped those who spoke to him.
He punished no prisoner all day, but he looked at them as a wolf at fortified sheep.
He did not know what to do to avert the blow he had drawn so perseveringly on his own head.
At one time he thought of writing to the Home Office and aspersing his accuser; then he regretted his visit to Ashtown Park.
“What an unlucky dog I am!
I go to see a man that I was sure of before I went, and while I am gone the ---- parson steals a march on me.
He will beat me!
If I hadn't been a fool I should have seen what a dangerous devil he is.
No putting him out of temper and no putting him out of heart!
He will beat me!
The zealous services of so many years won't save me with an ungrateful Government.
I shall lose my stipend!
” For a while even stout-hearted, earnest Mr. Hawes was depressed with gloom and bitter foreboding; but he had a resource in trouble good Mr. Eden in similar case had not.
In the despondency of his soul he turned--to GROG.
Under the inspiration of that deity he prepared for a dogged defense.
He would punish no more prisoners, let them do what they might, and then if an inquiry should take place he would be in case to show that by his past severities he had at last brought his patients to such perfection that weeks had elapsed without a single punishment.
With this and the justices' good word he would weather the storm yet.
Thus passed three days without one of those assaults on prisoners he called punishment; but this enforced forbearance made him hate his victims.
He swore at them, he threatened them all round, and with deep malice he gave open orders to punish which he secretly countermanded, so that in fact he did punish, for blows suspended over the head fall upon the soul.
Thus he made his prisoners share his gloom.
He was unhappy; he was dull; robbed of an excitement which had become butter to his daily bread.
All prison life is dull.
Chaplain, turnkeys, jailers, all who live in prisons are prisoners.
Barren of mental resources, too stupid to see far less read the vast romance that lay all round him, every cell a volume;
too mindless to comprehend his own grand situation on a salient of the State and of human nature, and to discern the sacred and endless pleasures to be gathered there, this unhappy dolt, flung into a lofty situation by shallow blockheads, who like himself saw in a jail nothing greater nor more than a “place of punishment,” must still like his prisoners and the rest of us have some excitement to keep him from going dead.
What more natural than that such a nature should find its excitement in tormenting, and that by degrees this excitement should become first a habit then a need?
Growth is the nature of habit, not of one sort or another but of all--even of an unnatural habit.
Gin grows on a man--charity grows on a man--tobacco grows on a man--blood grows on a man.
At a period of the Reign of Terror the Parisians got to find a day weary without the guillotine.
If by some immense fortuity there came a day when they were not sprinkled with innocent blood the poor souls s'ennuyaient.
This was not so much thirst for any particular liquid as the habit of excitement.
Some months before, dancing, theaters, boulevard, etc. , would have made shift to amuse these same hearts, as they did some months after when the red habit was worn out.
Torture had grown upon stupid, earnest Hawes; it seasoned that white of egg, a mindless existence.
Oh!
how dull he felt these three deplorable days, barren of groans, and white faces, and livid lips, and fellow-creatures shamming,* and the bucket.
* A generic term for swooning, or sickening, or going mad, in a prison.
Mr. Hawes had given a sulky order that the infirmary should be prepared for the sick, and now on the afternoon of the third day the surgeon had met him there by appointment.
“Will they get well any quicker here?
” asked Hawes ironically.
“Why, certainly,” replied the other.
Hawes gave a dissatisfied grunt.
“I hate moving prisoners out of the cells; but I suppose I shall get you into trouble if I don't. ” “Indeed!
” said the other, with an inquiring air; “how?
” “Parson threatens you very hard for letting the sick ones lie in their cells,” said Hawes slyly.
“But never mind, old boy--I shall stand your friend and the justices mine.
We shall beat him yet,” said Hawes, assuming a firmness he did not feel lest this man should fall away from him and perhaps bear witness against him.
“I think you have beat him already,” replied the other calmly.
“What do you mean?
” “I have just come from Mr. Eden.
He sent for me.
” “What, isn't he well?
” “I wish he'd die!
But there is no chance of that.
” “Well, there is always a chance of a man dying who has got a bilious fever.
” “Why you don't mean he is seriously ill?
” cried Hawes in excitement.
“I don't say that, but he has got a sharp attack.
” Mr. Hawes examined the speaker's face.
It was as legible as a book from the outside.
He went from the subject to one or two indifferent matters, but he could not keep long from what was uppermost.
“Sawyer,” said he, “you and I have always been good friends.
” “Yes, Mr. Hawes.
” “I have never been hard upon you.
You ought to be here every day, but the pay is small and I have never insisted on it, because I said he can't afford to leave patients that pay.
” “No, Mr. Hawes, and I am much obliged to you.
” “Are you?
Then tell me--between ourselves now--how ill is he?
” “He has got bilious fever consequent upon jaundice.
” Hawes lowered his voice.
“Is he in danger?
” “In danger?
Why, no, not at present.
” “Oh!
then it is only an indisposition after all.
” “It is a great deal more than that--it is fever and bile.
” “Can't you tell me in two words how ill he is?
” “Not till I see how the case turns.
” “When will you be able to say then?
” “When the disorder declares itself more fully.
” Hawes exploded in an oath.
“You humbugs of doctors couldn't speak plain to save yourselves from hanging.
” There was some truth in this ill-natured excuse.
After fifteen years given to the science of obscurity Mr. Sawyer literally could not speak plain all in one moment.
The next morning there was no service in the chapel, the chaplain was in bed.
This spoke for itself, and Hawes wore a look of grim satisfaction at the announcement.
But this was not all.
In the afternoon came a letter from Mr. Williams with a large inclosure signed by her majesty's secretary's secretary, and written by her secretary's secretary's secretary.
Its precise contents will be related elsewhere.
Its tendency may be gathered from this.
Hawes had no sooner read it than exultation painted itself on his countenance.
“Close the infirmary and bring me the key.
And you, Fry, put these numbers on the cranks to-morrow.
” He scribbled with his pencil, and gave him a long list of the proscribed.
No Mr. Eden shone now upon Mr. Robinson's solitude.
He waited, and waited, and hoped till the day ended, but no!
The next day the same thing.
He longed for Mr. Eden's hour to come; it came, but not with it came his one bit of sunshine, his excitement, his amusement, his consolation, his friend, his brother, his all.
And so one heavy day succeeded another, and Robinson became fretful, and very, very sad.
One day, as he sat disconsolate and foreboding in his cell, he heard a stranger's voice talking to Fry outside.
And what was more strange, Fry appeared to be inviting this person to inspect the cells.
The next moment his door was opened, and a figure peeped timidly into the cell from behind Fry, whose arm she clutched in some anxiety.
Robinson looked up--it was Susan Merton.
She did not instantly know him in his prison dress and his curly hair cut short; he hung his head, and this action and the recognition it implied made her recognize him.
“Oh!
” cried she, “it is Mr. Robinson!
” The thief turned his face to the wall.
Even he was ashamed before one who had known him as Mr. Robinson; but the next moment he got up and said earnestly, “Pray, Miss Merton, do me a favor--you had always a kind heart Ask that man what has become of Mr. Eden--he will answer you.
” “Mr. Robinson,” cried Susan, “I have no need to ask Mr. Fry.
I am staying at Mr. Eden's house.
He is very ill, Mr. Robinson.
” “Ah!
I feared as much!
he never would have deserted me else.
What is the trouble?
” “You may well say trouble!
it is the prison that has fretted him to death,” cried Susan, half bitterly, half sorrowfully.
“But he will get well!
it is not serious?
” inquired Robinson anxiously.
Fry pricked his ears.
“He is very ill, Mr. Robinson,” and Susan sighed heavily.
“I'll pray for him.
He has taught me to pray--all the poor fellows will pray for him that know how.
Miss Merton, good for nothing as I am, I would die for Mr. Eden this minute if I could save his life by it.
” Susan thought of this speech afterward.
Now she but said, “I will tell him what you say.
” “And won't you bring me one word back from his dear mouth?
” “Yes!
I will!
good-by, Mr. Robinson.
” Robinson tried to say good-by, but it stuck in his throat, Susan retired, and his cell seemed darker than ever.
Mr. Eden lay stricken with fever.
He had been what most of us would have called ill long before this.
The day of Carter's crucifixion was a fatal day to him.
On that day for the first time he saw a crucifixion without being sick after it.
The poor soul congratulated himself so on this; but there is reason to think that same sickness acted as a safety-valve to his nature; when it ceased the bile overflowed and mixed with his blood, producing that horrible complaint jaundice.
Even then if the causes of grief and wrong had ceased he might perhaps have had no dangerous attack.
But everything was against him; constant grief, constant worry and constant preternatural exertions to sustain others while drooping himself.
Even those violent efforts of will by which he thrust back for a time the approaches of his malady told heavily upon him at last.
The thorough-bred horse ran much longer than a cocktail would, but he could not run forever.
He lay unshaven, hollow-eyed and sallow.
Mrs. Davies and Susan watched him by turns, except when he compelled them to go and take a little rest or amusement.
The poor thing's thoughts were never on himself, even when he was light-headed, and this was often, though not for long together.
It was generally his poor prisoners, and what he was going to do for them.
This is how Susan Merton came to visit Robinson.
One day, seeing his great interest in all that concerned the prison, and remembering there was a book addressed to one of the officers, Susan, who longed to do something, however small, to please him, determined to take this book to its destination.
Leaving Mrs. Davies with a strict injunction not to stir from Mr. Eden's room till she came back, she went to the prison and knocked timidly at the great door.
It was opened instantly, and as Susan fancied, fiercely, by a burly figure.
Susan, suppressing an inclination to run away, asked tremulously: “Does Mr. Fry live here?
” “Yes.
” “Can I speak to him?
” “Yes.
Come in, miss. ” Susan stepped in.
The man slammed the door.
Susan wished herself on its other side.
“My name is Fry.
What is your pleasure with me?
” “Mr. Fry, I am so glad I have found you.
I am come here from a friend of yours.
” “From a friend of mine??!!
” said Fry, with a mystified air.
“Yes; from Mr. Eden.
Here is the book, Mr. Fry; poor Mr. Eden could not bring it you himself, but you see he has written your name on the cover with his own hand.
” Fry took the book from Susan's hand, and in so doing observed that she was lovely; so to make her a return for bringing him “Uncle Tom,” and for being so pretty, Fry for once in his life felt generous, and repaid her by volunteering to show her the prison--indulgent Fry!
To his surprise Susan did not jump at this remuneration.
On the contrary, she said hastily: “Oh!
no!
no!
no!
” Then, seeing by his face that her new acquaintance thought her a madwoman, she added: “That is, yes!
I think I should like to see it a little--a very little--but if I do you must keep close by me, Mr. Fry.
” “Why of course I shall keep with you,” replied Fry somewhat contemptuously.
“No strangers admitted except in company of an officer.
” Susan still hung fire.
“But you mustn't go to show me the very wicked ones.
” “Why they are all pretty much of a muchness for that.
” “I mean the murderers--I couldn't bear such a sight.
” “Got none,” said Fry sorrowfully; “parted with the last of that sort four months ago--up at eight down at nine you understand, miss. ” Happily Susan did not understand this brutal allusion; and, not to show her ignorance, she said nothing, but passed to a second stipulation--“And, Mr. Fry, I know the men that set fire to Farmer Dean's ricks are in this jail; I won't see them; they would give me such a turn, for that seems to me the next crime after murder to destroy the crops after the very weather has spared them.
” Fry smiled superior; then he said sarcastically: “Don't you be frightened, some of our lot are beauties; your friend the parson is as fond of some of 'em as a cow is of her calf.
” “Oh!
then show me those ones.
” Fry took her to one or two cells.
Whenever he opened a cell door she always clutched him on both ribs, and this tickled Fry, so did her simplicity.
At last he came to Robinson's cell.
“In here there is a sulky chap.
” “Oh!
then let us go on to the next.
” “But this is one his reverence is uncommon fond of,” said Fry, with a sneer and a chuckle; so he flung open the door, and if the man had not hung his head Susan would hardly have recognized in his uniform corduroy and close-cropped hair the vulgar Adonis who had sat glittering opposite her at table the last time they met.
After the interview which I have described, Susan gratified Fry by praising the beautiful cleanliness of the prison, and returned, leaving a pleasant impression even on this rough hide and “Uncle Tom” behind her.
When she got home she found her patient calm but languid.
While she was relating her encounter with Robinson, and her previous acquaintance with him, the knock of a born fool at a sick man's door made them all start.
It was Rutila, with a long letter bearing an ample seal.
Mr. Eden took it with brightening eye, read it, and ground it almost convulsively in his hand.
“Asses!
” cried he; but the next moment he groaned and bowed his head.
Her majesty's secretary's secretary's secretary had written to tell him that his appeal for an inquiry had traveled out of the regular course; it ought to have been made in the first instance to the visiting justices, whose business it was to conduct such inquiries, and that it lay with these visiting justices to apply to the Home Office for an extraordinary inquiry if they found they could not deal with the facts in the usual way.
The office, therefore, had sent copies of his memorial to each of the visiting justices, who at their next inspection of the jail would examine into the alleged facts, and had been requested to insert the results in their periodical report.
Mr. Eden sat up in bed, his eye glittering.
“Bring me my writing-desk.
” It was put on the bed before him, but with many kind injunctions not to worry himself.
He promised faithfully.
He wrote to the Home Office in this style: “A question of life and death cannot be played with as you have inconsiderately proposed; nor can a higher jurisdiction transfer an appeal to a lower one without the appellant's consent.
Such a course is still more out of order when the higher judge is a salaried servant of the State and the lower ones are amateurs.
This was so self-evident that I did not step out of the direct line to cast reflections upon unpaid servants.
You have not seen what is self-evident--you drive me, therefore, to explanations.
“I offered you evidence that this jailer is a felon, who has hoodwinked the visiting justices and has deceived you.
But between you and the justices is this essential difference: they have been hoodwinked in spite of their own eyes, their own ears, and contact with that mass of living and dying evidence, the prisoners.
You have been deceived without a single opportunity of learning the truth.
“Therefore I appealed, and do appeal, not to convicted incompetency, but to those whose incompetency remains to be proved.
Perhaps you will understand me better if I put it thus: I still accuse the jailer of more than a hundred felonious assaults upon prisoners, of attacks upon their lives by physical torture, by hunger, thirst, preposterous confinement in dark dungeons, and other illegal practices; and I now advance another step and accuse the visiting justices of gross dereliction of their duty, of neglecting to ascertain the real practice of the jailer in some points, and in others of encouraging, aiding and abetting him in open violations of the prison rules printed and issued by Act of Parliament.
Of these rules, which are the jail code, I send you a copy.
I note the practices of the jail by the side of the rules of the jail.
By comparing the two you may calculate the amount of lawless cruelty perpetrated here in each single day; then ask yourself whether an honest man who is on the spot can wait four or five months till justice, crippled by routine, comes hobbling instead of sweeping to their relief.
“For Heaven's sake, bring to bear upon a matter vital to the State one-half the intelligence, zeal and sense of responsibility you will throw this evening into some ambiguous question of fleeting policy of speculative finance.
Here are one hundred and eighty souls to whose correction, cure and protection the State is pledged.
No one of all these lives is safe a single day.
In six weeks I have saved two lives that were gone but for me.
I am now sick and enfeebled by the exertions I have had to make to save lives, and am in no condition to arrest the progress of destruction.
I tell you that more lives will fall if you do not come to my aid at once!
and for every head that falls from this hour I hold you responsible to God and the State.
“If I fail to prove my several accusations, as a matter of course I shall be dismissed from my office deservedly; and this personal risk entitles me not only to petition for, but to demand an inquiry into the practice of ---- Jail.
And in the queen's name, whose salaried servant I am, I do demand it on the instant and on the spot.
” Thus did flesh and blood address gutta-percha.
The excitement of writing this letter did the patient no good.
A
reaction came, and that night his kind nurses were seriously alarmed about him.
They sent for the surgeon, who felt his pulse and his skin and looked grave.
However, he told them there was no immediate danger, and wrote a fresh prescription.
The patient would eat nothing but bread and water and gruel; but he took all the doctor's medicines, which were raking ones; only at each visit and prescription he cross-examined him as to what effect he hoped to produce by his prescription, and compared the man's expectations with the result.
This process soon brought him to the suspicion that in his case Aesculapius's science was guess-work.
But we go on hoping and hoping something from traditional remedies, even when they fail and fail and fail before our eyes.
He was often light-headed, and vented schemes of charity and benevolence ludicrous by their unearthly grandeur.
One day he was more than light-headed--he was delirious, and frightened his kind nurses; and to this delirium succeeded great feebleness, and this day for the first time Susan made up her mind that it was Heaven's will earth should lose this man, of whom, in truth, earth was scarce worthy.
She came to his side and said tenderly, “Let me do something for you.
Shall I read to you, or sing you a hymn?
” Her voice had often soothed and done him good.
“Tell me what I can do for you!
” The man smiled gratefully, then looked imploringly in her eyes, and said, “Dear Susan, go for me into the prison and pay Strutt and Robinson each a visit.
Strutt the longest, he is the oldest.
Poor things!
they miss me sadly.
” Susan made no foolish objection.
She did what she was asked, and came back and told him all they had said and all she had said; and how kind everybody was to her in the prison; and how they had all asked how he was to-day.
“They are very good,” said he feebly.
Soon after he dosed; and Susan, who always wore a cheerful look to his face, could now yield to her real feelings.
She sat at some little distance from the bed and tried to work, and every now and then looked up to watch him, and again and again her eyes were blinded; and she laid down her work, for her heart said to her, “A few short days and you will see him no more.
” Mrs. Davies, too, was grave and sad.
She had made the house neat and clean from cellar to garret, and now he who should have enjoyed it lay there sick unto death.
“Susan,” said she, “I doubt I have been sent here to set his house in order against his--” “Oh!
don't tell me that,” cried Susan, and she burst into a fit of sobbing, for Mrs. Davies had harped her own fear.
“Take care, he is waking, Susan.
He must not see us.
” “Oh, no!
” and the next moment she was by her patient's side with a cheerful look and voice and manner well calculated to keep any male heart from sinking, sick or well.
Heavy heart and hopeful face!
such a nurse was Susan Merton.
This kind deception became more difficult every day.
Her patient wasted and wasted; and the anxious look that is often seen on a death-stricken man's face showed itself.
Mrs. Davies saw it and Susan saw it; but the sick man himself as yet had never spoken of his decease; and both Mrs. Davies and Susan often wondered that he did not seem to see his real state.
But one day it so happened that he was light-headed and greatly excited, holding a conversation.
His eye was flashing, and he spoke in bursts, and then stopped a while and seemed to be listening in irritation to some arguments with which he did not agree.
The enthusiast was building a prison in the air.
A prison with a farm, a school, and a manufactory attached.
Here were to be combined the good points of every system, and others of his own.
“Yes,” said he, in answer to his imaginary companion, “there shall be both separation and silence for those whose moral case it suits--for all, perhaps, at first--but not for all always.
Away with your Morrison's pill-system; your childish monotony of moral treatment in cases varying and sometimes opposed.
“Yes, but I would.
I would allow a degree of intercourse between such as were disposed to confirm each other in good.
Watch them?
why, of course--and closely, too.
“Intelligent labor for every creature in the place.
No tickets-of-leave to let the hypocritical or self-deceiving ones loose upon the world.
“No, I test their repentance first with a little liberty.
“How?
Why fly them with a string before I let them fly free!
“Occupation provided outside the prison-gates; instead of ticket-of-leave let the candidate work there on parole and come into the prison at night.
“Some will break parole and run away?
All the better.
Then you know their real character.
Telegraph them.
You began by photographing them--send their likenesses to every town--catch them--cell them.
“Indeed!
And pray what would these same men have done had you given them the ticket-of-leave instead?
“By the present plan your pseudo-convert commits a dozen crimes before his hypocrisy is suspected; by ours a single offense warns you and arms you against him.
“Systems avail less than is supposed.
For good or ill all depends on your men--not your machinery.
“We have got rid of the old patch that rotted our new garment.
When I first was chaplain of a jail--” His mind had gone forward some years.
“Then we were mad--thought a new system could be worked by men of the past, by jailers and turnkeys belonging to the dark and brutal age that came before ours.
“Those dark days are passed.
Now we have really a governor and warders instead of jailers and turnkeys.
The nation has discovered these are high offices, not mean ones.
“Yes, Lepel, yes!
Our officers are men picked out of all England for intelligence and humanity.
They co-operate with me.
Our jail is one of the nation's eyes--it is a school, thank Heaven, it is not a dungeon!
--I
am in bed!
