It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 79

"Oh! you know, sir."

"But this gentleman does not."

"Well, gents, they had been at me a pretty while one way and another; they put me in the jacket till I fainted away."

"Stop a minute; is the jacket very painful?"

"There is nothing in the world like it, sir."

"What is its effect? What sort of pain?"

"Why, all sorts! it crushes your very heart. Then it makes you ache from your hair to your heel, till you would thank and bless any man to knock you on the head. Then it takes you by the throat and pinches you and rasps you all at one time. However, I don't think but what I could have stood up against that, if I had had food enough; but how can a chap face trouble and pain and hard labor on a crumb a day? However, what finally screwed up my stocking altogether, gents, was their taking away my gas.

It was the dark winter nights, and there was me set with an empty belly and the cell like a grave. So then I turned a little queer in the head by all accounts, and I saw things that--hem!--didn't suit my complaint at all, you know."

"What things?"

"Well, gents, it is all over now, but it makes me s.h.i.+ver still, so I don't care to be reminded; let us drop it if it is all the same to you."

"But, Naylor, for the sake of other poor fellows and to oblige me."

"Oh! your reverence, if I can oblige you that alters the case entirely.

Well, then, sir, if you must know, I saw 'Child of h.e.l.l' wrote in great letters of fire all over that side of the cell. Always every evening this was all my society, as the saying is; 'Child of h.e.l.l' wrote ten times brighter than gas.

"Couldn't you shut your eyes and go to sleep?" said Mr. Lacy.

"How could I sleep? and I did shut my eyes, and then the letters they came through my eyelids. So when this fell on the head of all my troubles I turned wild, and I said to myself one afternoon, 'Now here is my belly empty and nothing coming to it, and there is the sun a-setting, and by-and-by my cell will be brimful of h.e.l.l-fire--let me end my troubles and get one night's rest if I never see another.' So I hung myself up to the bar by my hammock-strap, and that is all I remember except finding myself on my back, with Mr. Fry and a lot round me, some coaxing and some cursing; and when I saw where I was I fell a-crying and blubbering, to think that I had so nearly broke prison and there they had got me still. I dare say Mr. Fry remembers how I took on."

"Ay, my man, I remember we got no thanks for bringing you to."

"I was a poor unconverted sinner then," replied Mr. Naylor demurely, "and didn't know my fault and the consequences; but I thank you now with all my heart, Mr. Fry, sir."

"I am to understand then that you accuse the jailer of driving you to suicide by unlawful severities?"

"No, sir, I don't. I only tell you how it happened, and you should not have asked me if you didn't care to know; and as for blaming folk, the man I blame the most is John Naylor. His reverence there has taught me to look at home. If I hadn't robbed honest folk I shouldn't have robbed myself of character and liberty and health, and Mr. Hawes wouldn't have robbed me of food and light and life wellnigh. Certainly there _is_ a deal of ignorance and stupidity in this here jail. The governor has no head-piece; can't understand that a prisoner is made out of the same stuff as he is--skin and belly, heart, soul, bones an' all. I should say he wasn't fit to be trusted with the lives of a litter of pigs, let alone a couple of hundred men and women. But all is one for that; if he was born without any gumption, as the saying is, I wasn't, and I didn't ought to be in a fool's power; that is my fault entirely, not the fool's; ain't it now? If I hadn't come to the mill the miller would never have grinded me! I sticks to that!"

"Well said, Naylor. Come, sir, One higher than the State takes precedence here. We must on no account shake a Christian frame of mind or rekindle a sufferer's wrongs. Yes, Naylor, forgive and you shall be forgiven. I am pleased with you, greatly pleased with you, my poor fellow. There is my hand!" Naylor took his reverence's hand and his very forehead reddened with pride and pleasure at so warm a word of praise from the revered mouth. They went out of the cell. Being now in the corridor, Mr. Eden addressed the Government official thus:

"My proofs draw to a close. I could multiply instances ad infinitum--but what is the use? If these do not convince you you would not believe though one rose from the dead. What do I say? Have not Naylor and Joram and many others come back from the dead to tell you by what roads they were driven there? One example remains to be shown. To a philosophical mind it is no stronger than the rest; but there are many men who can receive no very strong impression except through their senses. You may be one of these; and it is my duty to give your judgment every aid.

Where is Mr. Fry? He has left us."

"I am coming to attend you, sir," cried Evans from above. "Mr. Fry is gone to the governor."

"Where are we going?" asked Mr. Lacy.

"To examine a prisoner whom the jailer tortured with the jacket, and starved, and ended by robbing him of his gas and his bed contrary to law. Evans, since you are here, relate all that happened to Edward Josephs on the fourth of this month--and mind you don't exaggerate."

"Well, sir, they had been at him for near a month, overtasking him and then giving him the jacket, and starving him and overtasking him again on his empty stomach till the poor lad was a living skeleton. On the fourth the governor put him in the jacket, and there he was kept till he swooned."

"Ah!"

"Then they flung two buckets of water over him and that brought him to.

Then they sent him to his cell and there he was in his wet clothes. Then him being there shaking with cold, the governor ordered his gas to be taken away--his hands were shaking over it for a little warmth when they robbed him of that bit o' comfort."

"Hum!"

"Contrary to law!" put in Mr. Eden.

"Well, sir, he was a quiet lad not given to murmur, but at losing his gas he began to cry out so loud you might hear him all over the prison."

"What did he cry?"

"Sir, he cried MURDER!"

"Go on."

"Then I came to him and found him s.h.i.+vering and dripping, and crying fit to break his poor heart."

"And did you do nothing for him?"

"I did what I could, sir. I took him and twisted his bedclothes so tight round him the air could not get in, and before I left him his sobs went down and he looked like warm and sleeping after all his troubles.

Well, sir, they can tell you better that did the job, but it seems the governor sent another turnkey called Hodges to take away his bed from under him."

"Oh!"

"Well, sir! oh dear me! I hope, your reverence, I shall never have to tell this story again, for it chokes me every time." And the man was unable to go on for a while. "Well, sir, the poor thing it seems didn't cry out as he had about the gas, he took it quite quiet--that might have let them know, but some folk can see nothing till it is too late--and he gave Hodges his hand to show he bore him no malice. Eh dear! eh dear!

Would to Heaven I had never seen this wicked place!"

"Wicked place, indeed!" said Mr. Lacy solemnly. "You make me almost dread to ask the result."

"You shall see the result. Evans!"

Evans opened cell 15, and he and Mr. Eden stood sorrowful aside while Mr. Lacy entered the cell. The first thing he saw was a rude coffin standing upright by the window, the next a dead body lying stark upon a mattress on the floor. The official uttered a cry like the scream of a woman! "What is this? How dare you bring me to such a place as this?"

"This is that Edward Josephs whose sufferings you have heard and pitied."

"Poor wretch! Heaven forgive us! What, did he--did he--?"

"He took one step to meet inevitable death--he hanged himself that same night by his handkerchief to this bar. Turn his poor body, Evans. See, sir, here is Mr. Hawes's mark upon his back. These livid stripes are from the infernal jacket and helped to lash him into his grave. You are ill. Here! some wine from my flask! You will faint else!"

"Thank you! Yes, I was rather faint. It is pa.s.sed. Mr. Eden, I find my life has been spent among words--things of such terrible significance are new to me. G.o.d forgive us! how came this to pa.s.s in England in the nineteenth century? The ---- scoundrel!"

"Kick him out of the jail, but do not swear; it is a sin. By removing him from this his great temptation we may save even his blood-stained soul. But the souls of his victims? Oh, sir, when a good man is hurried to his grave our lamentations are natural but unwise; but think what he commits who hurries thieves and burglars and homicides unprepared before their eternal Judge. In this poor boy lay the materials of a saint--mild, docile, grateful, believing. I was winning him to all that is good when I fell sick. The sufferings I saw and could not stop--they made me sick. You did not know that when you let my discolored cheeks prejudice you against my truth. Oh! I forgive you, dear sir! Yes, Heaven is inscrutable; for had I not fallen ill--yes, I was leading you up to Heaven, was I not? Oh, my lost sheep! my poor lost sheep!" And the faithful shepherd, at the bottom of whose wit and learning lay a heart simpler than beats in any dunce, forgot Hawes and everything else and began to mourn by the dead body of his wandering sheep.

Then in that gloomy abode of blood and tears Heaven wrought a miracle.

One who for twenty years past had been an official became a man for full five minutes. Light burst on him--Nature rushed back upon her truant son and seized her long-forgotten empire. The frost and reserve of office melted like snow in summer before the sun of religion and humanity.

How unreal and idle appeared now the twenty years gone in tape and circ.u.mlocution! Away went his life of shadows--his career of watery polysyllables meandering through the great desert into the Dead Sea.

He awoke from his desk and saw the corpse of an Englishman murdered by routine, and the tears of a man of G.o.d dripping upon it.

Then his soul burst its desk and his heart broke its polysyllables and its tapen bonds, and the man of office came quickly to the man of G.o.d and seized his hand with both his which shook very much, and pressed it again and again, and his eyes glistened and his voice faltered. "This shall never be again. How these tears honor you! but they cut me to the heart. There! there! I believe every word you have told me now. Be comforted! you are not to blame! there were always villains in the world and fools like us that could not understand or believe in an apostle like you. We are all in fault, but not you! Be comforted! Law and order shall be restored this very day and none of these poor creatures shall suffer violence again or wrong of any sort--by G.o.d!"