It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 50

"Cut it?"

"Turn your back on the whole ignorant lot, and save yourself for better things. Why, you will win many a battle yet, your reverence, if you don't fling yourself away this time," said Evans in tones of homely cheerfulness and encouragement.

There was a deal of good sense in the rough fellow's words and a homely sympathy not intruded but rather, as it were, forcing its way against the speaker's intention. All this co-operated powerfully with Mr. Eden's present inclination and feeling as he lay sick and despondent upon the couch.

"So that is really your advice?" inquired Mr. Eden, feebly and regretfully.

"Yes, your reverence, that is my advice."

Mr. Eden rose in a moment like an elastic spring, and whirled round in front of Evans. "And this is my answer--RETRO SATANAS!" shouted he, with two eyes flas.h.i.+ng like a pair of sabers in the sun.

"Mercy on us," roared Evans, recoiling so hastily that he rolled over a chair, "what is that?" and he sat upon the floor a long way off, with eyes like saucers, and repeated in a whisper, "what is that?"

"A quotation," replied the other grimly.

"A quotation! now only think of that" said Evans, much relieved.

"Sounded like cussing and swearing in Latin."

"Come here, my good friend, and sit beside me."

Evans came gingerly.

"Well, but ye mustn't thunder at me in Latin any more."

"Well, I won't."

"It isn't fair; how can I stand up against Latin?"

"Well, come here and I'll have at you in the vulgar tongue. Aha! So you come in robust health and spirits and tempt a poor, broken, sick creature to mount the white feather; to show his soldierly qualities by running from the foe to some cool spot where there are no enemies, and there fighting the good fight in peace. Evans, you are a good creature, but you are a poor creature. Yes, Hawes is strong, yet I will resist him. And I am weak--yet I will resist. He will get the justices on his side--yet I will resist. I am sick and dispirited--yet I will resist.

The representative of humanity and Christianity in a stronghold of darkness and cruelty and wrong must never sag with doubt nor shake with fear. I will fight with pen and hand and tongue against these outlaws, so long as there is a puff of wind in my body, and a drop of indomitable blood in my veins."

"No doubt you are game enough," mourned Evans; "I wish you wern't."

"And as for you, you came here to seduce a sick, broken creature from his Master's service; you shall remain to be enlisted in it yourself instead."

Evans shuffled uneasily on his chair at these words. "I think I am on your side," said he.

"Half! but it is no use being half anything; your hour is come to choose between all right and all wrong."

"I wouldn't be long choosing if it warn't for one thing."

"And what is that one thing which can outweigh the one thing needful?"

"My wife and my four children; if I get myself turned out of this jail how am I to find bread for that small lot?"

"And do you think s.h.i.+lly-shallying between two stools will secure your seat? You have gone too far with me to retract; don't you see that the jailer means to get you dismissed the next time the justices visit the jail for business? Can't you read your fate in the man's eye?"

Evans groaned. "I read it, I read it, but I didn't want to believe it."

"He set a trap for you half an hour after you had defended me."

"He did! I told my wife I was a gone c.o.o.n, but she overpersuaded me; 'Keep quiet,' said she, 'and 'twill blow over.' But you see it in the same light as I did, don't you, sir?"

Mr. Eden smiled grimly in a.s.sent.

"You are a doomed man," said he coolly; "half measures can't save you, but whole measures may--perhaps."

"What is to be done, sir?" asked Evans helplessly.

"Your only chance is to go heart and hand with me in the project which occupies me now."

"I will, sir," cried Fluctuans, with a sudden burst of resolution, "for I'm druv in a corner. So please tell me what is your project?"

"To get Mr. Hawes dismissed from this jail."

As he uttered these words the reverend gentleman had a severe spasm which forced him to lie back and draw his breath hard. Evans uttered something between a cry of dismay and a groan of despair, and stared down upon this audacious invalid with wonder and ire at his supernatural but absurd cool courage.

"Turn our governor out of this jail? Now hark to that. You might as well try to move a mountain; and look at you lying there scarce able to move yourself, and talking like that."

"Pour me out a cup of tea, Mr. Faintheart; I am in great pain--thank you."

He took the cup, and as he stirred it he said coolly, "Did you ever read of Marshal Saxe, Mr. Faintheart? He fought the battle of Fontenoy as he lay a dying. He had himself carried on his bed of death from one part of the field to another; at first the fight went against him, but he spurned craven counsels with his expiring heart; he saw the enemy's blunder with his dying eye, and waved his troops on to victory with his dying hand. This is one of the great feats of earth. But the soldiers of Christ are as stout-hearted as any man that ever carried a marshal's baton or a sergeant's pike. Yes! I am ill, and I feel as if I were dying, Evans; but living or dying I am the Lord's. I will fight for Him to the last gasp, and I will thrust this malefactor from his high office with the last action of my hand--Will you help me, or will you not?"

"I will, sir! I will! What on earth can I do?"

"You can turn the balanced scale and win the day!"

"Can I, sir?" cried Evans, greatly puzzled.

"You will find some wine in that cupboard, my man; fill yourself a tumbler. I will sip my tea, and explain myself. You think this Hawes is a mountain;--no! he is a large pumpkin hollow at the core. You think him strong;--no! he but seems so, because some of the many at whose mercy he is are so weak. There is a flaw in Hawes, which must break him sooner or later. He is a felon. The law hangs over his head by a single hair; he has forfeited his office, and will be turned out of it the moment we can find among his many superiors one man with one grain either of honesty or intelligence."

"But how shall we find that, sir?"

"By looking for it everywhere, till we find it somewhere. Mr. Hawes tells me, in other words, that the visiting justices do not possess the one grain we require. I profit by the intelligence the enemy was weak enough to give me, and I go--not to the visiting justices. To-morrow, if my case is ready, I send a memorial to the Home-Office, accuse Hawes of felonious practices, and demand an inquiry."

Evans's eye sparkled; he began to gather strength from the broken man.

"But now comes the difficulty. A man should never strike a feeble blow.

My appeal will be read by half-educated clerks. If I don't advance something that the small official mind can take in, I shall never reach the heads of the office. It would be madness to begin by attacking national prejudices, by combating a notion so stupid, and therefore so deep-rooted, as that prisoners have no legal rights. No! the pivot of my a.s.sault must be something that a boy can afford to be able to comprehend for eighty pounds a year and a clerk's desk in a Government office.

Now, Mr. Hawes has, for many months past, furnished false reports to the justices and to the Home-Office. Here is the true stepping-stone to an inquiry, here is the fact to tell on the official mind; for the man's cruelty and felonious practices are only offenses against G.o.d and the law; but a false report is an offense against the office. And here I need your help."

"You shall have it, sir."

"I want to be able to prove this man's reports to be lies. I think such a proof exists," said Mr. Eden, very thoughtfully. "Now, if it does, you alone can get hold of it for me. One of the turnkeys notes down every punishment of a prisoner in a small pocket-book, for I have seen him."

"Yes, sir; Fry does--never misses!"

"What becomes of those notes?"