It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 81

"Oh! we turn bold when a body is ill, don't we, aunt?"

"I am not shy for one at the best of times," remarked the latter.

"Under Heaven you saved my life, at least I think so, Susan, for the medicinal power of soothing influences is immense, I am sure it is apt to be underrated; and then it was you who flew to Malvern and dragged Gulson to me at the crisis of my fate; dear little true-hearted friend, I am sorry to think I can never repay you."

"You forget, Mr. Eden," said Susan, almost in a whisper, "I was paid beforehand."

I wish I could convey the native grace and gentle dignity of grat.i.tude with which the farmer's daughter murmured these four words, like a d.u.c.h.ess acknowledging a kindness.

"Eh?" inquired Mr. Eden, "oh! ah! I forgot," said he naively. "No! that is nonsense, Susan. You have still an immense Cr. against my name; but I know a way--Mrs. Davies, for as simple as I sit here you see in me the ecclesiastic that shall unite this young lady to an honest man, who, report says, loves her very dearly; so I mean to square our little account."

"That is fair, Susan; what do you say?"

"La, aunt! why I shouldn't look upon it as a marriage at all if any clergyman but Mr. Eden said the words."

"That is right," laughed Mr. Eden, "always set some little man above some great thing, and then you will always be--a woman. I must write the plot of my sermon, ladies, but you can talk to me all the same."

He wrote and purred every now and then to the women, who purred to each other and now and then to him. Neither Hawes nor any other irritation rankled in his heart, or even stuck fast in his memory. He had two sermons to prepare for Sunday next, and he threw his mind into them as he had into the battle he had just won. "Hoc agebat."

CHAPTER XXVII.

His reverence in the late battle showed himself a strategist, and won without bringing up his reserves; if he had failed with Mr. Lacy he had another arrow behind in his quiver. He had been twice to the mayor and claimed a coroner's jury to sit on a suicide. The mayor had consented and the preliminary steps had been taken.

The morning after the jailer's dismissal the inquest was held. Mr. Eden, Evans, Fry and others were examined, and the case came out as clear as the day and black as the night.

When twelve honest Englishmen, men of plain sense, not men of system, men taken from the public not from public offices, sat in a circle with the corpse of a countryman at their knees, fiebat lux; 'twas as though twelve suns had burst into a dust-hole.

"Manslaughter!" cried they, and they sent their spokesman to the mayor and said yet more light must be let into this dusthole, and the mayor said, "Ay and it shall, too. I will write to London and demand more light." And the men of the public went to their own homes and told their wives and children and neighbors what cruelties and villainies they had unearthed, and their hearers, being men and women of that people, which is a G.o.d in intellect and in heart compared with the criticasters that try to misguide it with their shallow guesses and cant and with the clerks that execute it in other men's names, cried out, "See now! What is the use our building courts of law or prisons unless they are to be open unto us. Shut us out--keep walls and closed gate between us and our servants--and what comes of our courts of law and our prisons? Why they turn nests of villainy in less than no time."

The twelve honest Englishmen had hardly left the jail an hour, crying "manslaughter!" and crying "shame!" when all in a moment "TOMB!" fell a single heavy stroke of the great prison bell. The heart of the prison leaped, and then grew cold--a long chill pause, then "TOMB!" again. The jurymen had told most of his fellow-sufferers how Josephs was driven into his grave--and now--

"TOMB!" the remorseless iron tongue crashed out one by one the last sad, stern monosyllables of this sorrowfulest of human tales.

They put him in his coffin ("TOMB!") a boy of sixteen, who would be alive now but that caitiffs, whom G.o.d confound on earth, made life an _impossibility_ to him ("TOMB!"), and that Shallows and Woodc.o.c.ks, whom G.o.d confound on earth, and unconscientious non-inspecting inspectors, flunkeys, humbugs, hirelings, whom G.o.d confound on earth ("TOMB!"), left these scoundrels month after month and year after year unwatched, though largely paid by the queen and the people to watch them ("TOMB!"). Look on your work, hirelings, and listen to that bell, which would not be tolling now if you had been men of brains and scruples instead of sordid hirelings. The priest was on his knees, praying for help from heaven to go through the last sad office with composure, for he feared his own heart when he should come to say "ashes to ashes" and "dust to dust"

over this hapless boy, that ought to be in life still. And still the great bell tolled, and many of the prisoners were invited kindly in a whisper to come into the chapel; but Fry could not be spared and Hodges fiercely refused. And now the bell stopped, and as it stopped, the voice of the priest arose, "I am the resurrection and the life."

A deep and sad gloom was upon all as the last sad offices were done for this poor young creature cut short by foul play in the midst of them.

And for all he could do the priest's voice trembled often, and a heavy sigh mingled more than once with the holy words.

What is that? "THIS OUR BROTHER!"--a thief our brother?--ay! the priest made no mistake, those were the words; pause on them. Two great characters contradicted each other to the face over dead Josephs. Unholy State said, "Here is the carca.s.s of a thief whom I and society honestly believe to be of no more importance than a dog--so it has unfortunately got killed between us, no matter how; take this carca.s.s and bury it," said unholy State. Holy Church took the poor abused remains with reverence, prayed over them as she prays over the just, and laid them in the earth, calling them "this our brother." Judge now which is all in the wrong, unholy State or holy Church--for both cannot be right.

Now while the grave is being filled in, judge, women of England and America, between these two--unholy State and holy Church. The earth contains no better judges of this doubt than you. Judge and I will bow to your verdict with a reverence I know male cliques too well to feel for them in a case where the great capacious heart alone can enlighten the clever, little, narrow, shallow brain.

Thus in the nineteenth century--in a kind-hearted nation--under the most humane sovereign the world has ever witnessed on an earthly throne--holy Church in vain denouncing the miserable sinners that slay the thief their brother--Edward Josephs has been done to death in the queen's name--in the name of England--and in the name of the law.

But each of these great insulted names has its sworn defenders, its honored and paid defenders. It is not for us to suppose that men so high in honor will lay aside themselves and turn curs.

Ere I close this long story, let us hope I shall be able to relate with what zeal and honor statesmen disowned and punished wholesale manslaughter done in the name of the State; and with what zeal and horror judges disowned and punished wholesale manslaughter done in their name; and so, in all good men's eyes, washed off the blood with which a hireling had bespattered the state ermine and the snow-white robe of law.

For the present, the account between Josephs and the law stands thus:--Josephs has committed the smallest theft imaginable. He has stolen food. For this the law, professing to punish him with certain months' imprisonment, has inflicted capital punishment; has overtasked, crucified, starved--overtasked, starved, crucified--robbed him of light, of sleep, of hope, of life; has destroyed his body, and perhaps his soul. Sum total--1st page of account--

Josephs a larcenist and a corpse. The law a liar and a felon.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

JOSEPHS has dropped out of our story. Mr. Hawes has got himself kicked out of our story. The other prisoners, of whom casual mention has been made, were never in our story, any more than the boy Xury in "Robinson Crusoe." There remains to us in the prison Mr. Eden and Robinson, a saint and a thief.

My readers have seen how the saint has saved the thief's life. They shall guess awhile how on earth Susan Merton can be affected by that circ.u.mstance. They have seen a set of bipeds acting on the notion that all prisoners are incurable: they have seen a thief, thus despaired of, driven toward despair, and almost made incurable through being thought so. Then they have seen this supposed incurable fall into the hands of a Christian that held "it is never too late to mend;" and generally I think that, feebly as my pen has drawn so great a character, they can calculate, by what Mr. Eden has already done, what he will do while I am with Susan and George; what love, what eloquence, what ingenuity he will move to save this wandering sheep, to turn this thief honest and teach him how to be honest yet not starve.

I will ask my reader to bear in mind, that the good and wise priest has no longer his hands tied by a jailer in the interest of the foul fiend.

But then, against all this, is to be set the slippery heart of a thief, a thief almost from his cradle. Here are great antagonist forces and they will be in daily almost hourly collision for months to come. In life nothing stands still; all this will work goodward or badward. I must leave it to work.

CHAPTER XXIX.

MR. EDEN'S health improved so visibly that Susan Merton announced her immediate return to her father. It was a fixed idea in this young lady's mind that she and Mrs. Davies had no business in the house of a saint upon earth, as she called Mr. Eden, except as nurses.

The parting of attached friends has always a touch of sadness needless to dwell on at this time. Enough that these two parted as brother and young sister, and a spiritual adviser and advised, with warm expressions of Christian amity, and an agreement on Susan's part to write for advice and sympathy whenever needed.

On her arrival at Gra.s.smere Farm there was Mr. Meadows to greet her.

"Well, that is attentive!" cried Susan. There was also a stranger to her, a Mr. Clinton.

As nothing remarkable occurred this evening, we may as well explain this Mr. Clinton. He was a speculator, and above all a setter on foot of rotten speculations, and a keeper on foot a little while of lame ones.

No man exceeded him in the art of rose-tinting bad paper or parchment.

He was sanguine and fluent. His mind had two eyes, an eagle's and a bat's; with the first he looked at the "pros," and with the second at the "cons" of a spec.

He was an old acquaintance of Meadows, and had come thirty miles out of the way to show him how to make 100 per cent without the shadow of a risk. Meadows declined to violate the laws of Nature, but, said he, "If you like to stay a day or two I will introduce you to one or two who have money to fling away." And he introduced him to Mr. Merton. Now that worthy had a fair stock of latent cupidity, and Mr. Clinton was the man to tempt it.

In a very few conversations he convinced the farmer that there were a hundred ways of making money, all of them quicker than the slow process of farming and the unpleasant process of denying one's self superfluities and growing saved pennies into pounds.

"What do you think, John," said Merton one day to Meadows, "I have got a few hundreds loose. I'm half minded to try and turn them into thousands for my girl's sake. Mr. Clinton makes it clear, don't you think?"

"Well, I don't know," was the reply. "I have no experience in that sort of thing, but it certainly looks well the way he puts it."

In short, Meadows did not discourage his friend from co-operating with Mr. Clinton; for his own part he spoke him fair, and expressed openly a favorable opinion of his talent and his various projects, and always found some excuse or other for not risking a halfpenny with him.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

ONE day Mr. Meadows walked into the post-office of Farnborough and said to Jefferies, the postmaster, "A word with you in private, Mr.

Jefferies."

"Certainly, Mr. Meadows--come to my back parlor, sir; a fine day, Mr.