It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 53

"What letter? what letter?"

"The long one. I found it on the table."

"You don't mean you posted that letter?"

"Why, it was to go, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was to go, but it was wonderfully intelligent of you."

"La! Mr. Eden, don't talk so; you make me ashamed. Why, there was 'immediate' written on it in your own hand. Was I to wake you up to ask whether that meant it was to stay here immediate, or go to London immediate?" Then she pondered a moment. "He thinks I am a fool," said she, in quiet explanation, without a shade of surprise or anger.

"Well! Susan, my dear friend, you don't know what a service you have done me!"

Susan glittered with pleasure.

"There!" cried he, "you have spared me this most unpleasant task," and he flung his unfinished papers into a basket. Mr. Eden congratulated himself in his way, i.e., thanked Heaven Susan had come there; the next thing was, he had a twinge of conscience. "I half suspected Fry of taking it in the interest of Hawes, his friend. Poor Fry, who is a brute, but as honest a man as myself, every bit. He shall have his book, at all events. I'll put his name on it that I mayn't forget it again."

Mr. Eden took the book from its shelf, wrapped it in paper, and wrote on the cover, "For Mr. Fry from F. Eden." As the incidents of the day are ended, I may as well relate what this book was and how Fry came to ask for it.

The book was "Uncle Tom," a story which discusses the largest human topic that ever can arise; for the human race is bisected into black and white. Nowadays a huge subject greatly treated receives justice from the public, and "Uncle Tom" is written in many places with art, in all with red ink and with the biceps muscle.

Great by theme, and great by skill, and greater by a writer's soul honestly flung into its pages, "Uncle Tom," to the surprise of many that twaddle traditional phrases in reviews and magazines about the art of fiction, and to the surprise of no man who knows anything about the art of fiction, was all the rage. Not to have read it was like not to have read the _Times_ for a week.

Once or twice during the crucifixion of a prisoner Mr. Eden had said bitterly to Fry, "Have you read 'Uncle Tom?'"

"No!" would Fry grunt.

But one day that the question was put to him he asked, with some appearance of interest, "Who is Uncle Tom?"

Then Mr. Eden began to reflect. "Who knows? The cases are in a great measure parallel. Prisoners are a tabooed cla.s.s in England, as are blacks in some few of the United States. The lady writes better than I can talk. If she once seizes his sympathies by the wonderful power of fiction, she will touch his conscience through his heart. This disciple of Legree is fortified against me; Mrs. Stowe may take him off his guard. He said slyly to Fry, 'Not know Uncle Tom! Why it is a most interesting story--a charming story. There are things in it, too, that meet your case.'"

"Indeed, sir."

"It is a book you will like. Shall I lend it you?"

"If you please, sir. Nights are drawing in now."

"I will, then."

And he would; but that frightful malady, jaundice, among its other feats, impairs the patient's memory; and he forgot all about it. So Fry, whose curiosity was at last excited, came for the book. The rest we know.

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 pa.s.sed three days without one of those a.s.saults 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 b.u.t.ter 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 s.h.i.+ft 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, a.s.suming 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."