Into the Highways and Hedges Part 52

To do him justice, the preacher, though he had lamentably small sense of the expedient, was not naturally quarrelsome, and had rubbed shoulders against too many strange bedfellows to be over fastidious.

The crowded room in which the men slept together anyhow, under filthy mats on the floor, shocked him much less than it would shock any respectable member of society now-a-days. He relinquished his share of the rug, a third share; and stretched himself on the floor, as near to the window as he could get.

Everything was dirty; the men, the floor, and, not least, the conversation! Barnabas was glad that there was no gla.s.s in the windows, though not much fresh air seemed to make its way in anyhow. He had a great capability for abstracting himself from what was going on around him, and had been in bad places before,--though none, he was constrained to allow to himself, quite so bad as this. But when the key turned in the lock, shutting in for the night all these offscourings of the London streets; then, indeed, began a scene of mad drunken riot, of iniquity and cruelty, that pierced through his abstraction and forced him to attend.

He sat up in his corner, looking on with eyes that grew eager with desire to lift his testimony against the gambling and drinking and blasphemy that seemed to challenge him; but even he hesitated.

He was disheartened and sickened; he felt his faith low, his power to speak wanting. A sense of the certainty of failure, for once, deterred him; the strong impulse that carried other hearts was not present (possibly because he was physically tired, though this was a reason which would never have occurred to him), and he held his peace.

Of fear, in the sense of dread of personal harm to himself, he had little by nature and less by practice; but a deep moral depression and humility that underlay his boldness, and was less paradoxical than it at first seemed, sometimes closed his lips.

When the "spirit moved him," he would speak, nothing doubting; but, at times, he would sit in mental sackcloth, with no consciousness of Divine inspiration.

In the daytime, want of employment further depressed him; he had been accustomed all his life to hard exercise; and the comparative confinement of his London life had begun to tell on his health and spirits, even before his imprisonment. He would have been thankful for any form of labour,--a desire which certainly was not common among his companions. Not that the wards were devoid of amus.e.m.e.nt; papers and even books circulated freely, the last of a kind that increased the preacher's bigoted distaste for "book larning," and that he was, perhaps, justified in stigmatising as inventions of the devil! Tobacco and cards were also plentiful; gaming went on without intermission from morning till night, and of feasting and fighting there was plenty.

Barnabas would probably have come in for rough usage, even without any aggressive act on his part, had it not been for his size and strength, that made him so obviously an awkward subject to bully.

The bronzed, fair-bearded man, standing in his corner, "glowering" at a scene that, certainly, was brutal enough, had an expression in his blue eyes that looked as if he might be dangerous.

Possibly he was going mad! There was a large proportion of real lunatics in Newgate, and there were some sham ones, who feigned madness as the time of their trial approached; and their presence added to the insanely reckless character of the revels.

During the whole of the first week in prison, Barnabas had stood apart, silent and grave.

He was anxious about his wife; he was cast down by spiritual depression; and the sense that he was "forsaken of the Lord" was strong on him.

Moreover,--and this was a thing that had rarely occurred to him,--he was tormented by uncertainty. It was against his instinct and principle to betray a confession; he would rather be hanged himself, as he had said to Margaret, than do that;--but yet, to leave the murderer free to commit any fresh crime that might be suggested to his depraved nature might lead to consequences from which even Barnabas, who seldom looked at consequences, shrank. All these causes, combined with the close atmosphere and want of sleep, weighed on him; he felt as if unable to pray, or to command his thoughts; he was "delivered over to Satan".

It was Margaret's visit that broke the spell. The sight of her, stirring his heart with most human love, roused him, and chased away the spiritual melancholy which was overpowering him. He became ashamed of his downheartedness.

He should stand at her side free again, and the sound of her last words nurtured a hope that he had often found it best not to dwell on overmuch,--would grim Newgate give him his wife's heart?

Shame on him for his cowardly depression! He deserved no favours, heavenly or earthly; but he would be depressed no longer. He went back to the yard after Margaret's visit with fresh spirit. Some of the prisoners had made a circle round a new-comer, a fair-haired lad of fifteen, who had the too girlish and refined "prettiness" that some fair-skinned boys retain so long, and who looked younger than he was.

The chaff and rough horse-play they were indulging in hardly amounted to actual ill-usage; but the boy looked frightened to death. He was singing in a high sweet treble, forced thereto by divers threats.

He evidently did not know the words of the song, for one of his self-const.i.tuted teachers kept prompting him, amid roars of laughter. It was a villainous song, and Barnabas hoped the lad didn't understand it.

He had been brought in the day before, protesting his innocence in eager childish fas.h.i.+on,--as if it mattered to any one there whether he was innocent or not! At any rate, if he was when he entered, he hadn't much chance of being so when he should leave. Barnabas looked on in disgust for a few minutes, and then turned to a wardsman.

"Surely," he said, "that lad hadn't ought to be here?"

The middle yard in which they stood was supposed to be occupied by the most abandoned and worst cla.s.s of criminals, men charged with the most revolting crimes; but the wardsmen of Newgate were apparently apt to consider the incorrigible offence, the offence of poverty (indeed, it is hard of cure) and an inability to pay ward dues, ranked the offender with the most depraved.

"Oh! you're the Lord Chief Justice in disguise, perhaps!" said the man.

"Or his grace the Archbishop!"

"If I was the judge," said the preacher, "I'd far sooner ha' had that boy strung up to the nearest lamp post, guilty or no', than ha'

pitchforked him in here, to ruin his body an' soul both! It 'ud ha' been a deal more merciful."

"Such a 'ighly moral cove as you 'ad better interfere," said the man.

"The parson don't come in 'ere at present; he give up comin' after Hopping Jack took to a.s.sistin' him in 'is duties."

The speaker laughed silently over some hidden joke.

"He comes in just afore the 'angman now to the men as is fixed for 'anging, a sort of last grace before meat," he said. "They ain't so larky then."

Barnabas had not attended to the last remark; something he had heard or seen made his hand clench; and he turned on the wardsman hotly.

"Can ye do nothing, man?" he said. "_You_ put that child here, because he couldn't pay th' ward dues (which be unlawful extortion anyway); he's only up for a matter o' stealin'; it 'ull lay at your door if those brutes make him----"

The rest of the sentence remained unfinished. Before he had got to the end of it, Barnabas had felt the appeal useless: the wardsman was momentarily staggered by the unprecedented and unbounded impudence of this new-comer; but, before he had even fully fathomed the whole extent of it, the preacher sprang into the middle of the ring, and stood by the boy's side.

There was a moment's absolute silence. Then Barnabas Thorpe's ringing voice pealed through the yard in a vigorous denunciation; he took the throng of reprobates so by surprise that he got through a whole sentence unmolested.

The motley crowd all stood and gaped; the boy clung to his arm.

Some men who were playing at leapfrog stopped, and stared; the dice fell from Hopping Jack's hand. If a thunder-clap, louder than usual, had broken out just over their heads, it would have produced just that effect, stunning and startling them. Then, with a howl of mingled laughter and anger, they all fell on the preacher at once; and the wardsman laughed silently again.

Barnabas fought desperately, first for the boy's sake, then in sheer self-defence; for his blows had enraged and roused the wild beast in these men. It was no joke now; they meant to punish him.

He set his teeth hard, and held his own for a short minute; but one to sixty is too heavy odds, and the righteous cause that triumphs in the end has a way of triumphing only through the blood of its upholders. He was down first on his knees, then on his face, then they all closed over him; he had not even taken the precaution to put his back against the yard wall, and his a.s.sailants were on all sides. He was down, and to kick a man on the ground was excellent sport, and this man had certainly brought it on himself. The wardsman usually interfered before things came to quite such a pa.s.s; but, on this occasion, he discreetly retired; the preacher had needed a lesson, and no one was in the least inclined to forbear.

The surgeon's report mentioned that one of the prisoners had had his ribs broken, but no further official notice was taken of this little episode; and the prisoner himself was rather surprised when he woke to consciousness (a highly disagreeable experience!), and found himself still alive, and lying in a corner of the ward, albeit without a square inch free from bruises, and with an odd sensation of having been kicked inside as well as out, making breathing a matter of pain.

He tried to sit upright, but the effort hurt him, turning him dizzy and sick; and he desisted.

"He's been shamefully mauled," some one was saying. "His own mother wouldn't know him. Done in a drunken brawl, I suppose? That's the second case from the middle yard within a fortnight. I should think you've about had your fill of fighting, eh? How do you feel?"

"Oncommon sore," said Barnabas; "but what became of th' lad?"

"He'll fare the worse for your interference," said the surgeon. "Keep still, or I can't fasten this bandage. Well, you've tried football from the ball's point of view. There's no accounting for tastes! Bless me, there's more bruise than whole skin about you; one might as well patch a stocking that's all holes!"

His fingers were not gentler than his words, but it was the latter that had made Barnabas wince. "What are they doin' wi' that boy? He's not a lad o' much spirit--I could see that; he'll be like wax in their hands, if some one don't interfere."

"They'll make it a point of honour to corrupt him as fast as possible now; you've gained that by interfering," said the surgeon. "But then the same result would have been reached in any case, sooner or later. If he wasn't a young blackguard when he came in, which I doubt, he'll take his degree in iniquity before the a.s.sizes. It's no good struggling to get up, you can't! And what the devil are you in such a hurry for? You'd better digest the lesson they've given you."

The surgeon had no sympathy for Methodist preachers; the canting criminal, to which cla.s.s he supposed Barnabas belonged, was the kind he liked least.

He had a cold tolerance for black sheep in general; "they were born bad, as was clearly proved by the shape of their skulls," he would remark; and, while he was a great advocate for hanging them for the sake of society, he neither regarded them with moral indignation, nor sympathised with the illogical efforts of philanthropists.

"You'll find it enough to occupy you," he added drily. He was struck, in spite of himself, at the way this man stood pain. "You'll feel that kicking worse in an hour. I must say it seems to have taken a good amount of beating to beat you!"

"I'd not say--I was beat--while I was alive," said Barnabas in gasps, for speaking was painful. "Ay, it's a lesson to me--I've been a bit too backward--ta'en up wi' my own affairs!--I desarved to fail--but I'll try again--so soon as I can stand. Beaten! I'm _not_ beaten!"

Barnabas lay in his corner for three days and nights. He ought to have been put into the infirmary, but the infirmary was just then given up to certain political prisoners,--gentlemen who were decidedly out of place in Newgate, but who were made as comfortable as circ.u.mstances and the easy politeness of the governor allowed.