The morning sun, bright and fierce, looked down upon a curious sight. In a stone-yard was a little group of persons—Troke, Burgess, Macklewain, Kirkland, and Rufus Dawes.
Three wooden staves, seven feet high, were fastened together in the form of a triangle. The structure looked not unlike that made by gypsies to boil their kettles. To this structure Kirkland was bound. His feet were fastened with thongs to the base of the triangle; his wrists, bound above his head, at the apex. His body was then extended to its fullest length, and his white back shone in the sunlight. During his tying up he had said nothing—only when Troke pulled off his shirt he shivered.
“Now, prisoner,” said Troke to Dawes, “do your duty.”
Rufus Dawes looked from the three stern faces to Kirkland's white back, and his face grew purple. In all his experience he had never been asked to flog before. He had been flogged often enough.
“You don't want me to flog him, sir?” he said to the Commandant.
“Pick up the cat, sir!” said Burgess, astonished; “what is the meaning of this?” Rufus Dawes picked up the heavy cat, and drew its knotted lashes between his fingers.
“Go on, Dawes,” whispered Kirkland, without turning his head. “You are no more than another man.”
“What does he say?” asked Burgess.
“Telling him to cut light, sir,” said Troke, eagerly lying; “they all do it.” “Cut light, eh! We'll see about that. Get on, my man, and look sharp, or I'll tie you up and give you fifty for yourself, as sure as God made little apples.”
“Go on, Dawes,” whispered Kirkland again. “I don't mind.”
Rufus Dawes lifted the cat, swung it round his head, and brought its knotted cords down upon the white back.
“Wonn!” cried Troke.
The white back was instantly striped with six crimson bars. Kirkland stifled a cry. It seemed to him that he had been cut in half.
“Now then, you scoundrel!” roared Burgess; “separate your cats! What do you mean by flogging a man that fashion?”
Rufus Dawes drew his crooked fingers through the entangled cords, and struck again. This time the blow was more effective, and the blood beaded on the skin.
The boy did not cry; but Macklewain saw his hands clutch the staves tightly, and the muscles of his naked arms quiver.
“Tew!”
“That's better,” said Burgess.
The third blow sounded as though it had been struck upon a piece of raw beef, and the crimson turned purple.
“My God!” said Kirkland, faintly, and bit his lips.
The flogging proceeded in silence for ten strikes, and then Kirkland gave a screech like a wounded horse.
“Oh!...Captain Burgess!...Dawes!...Mr. Troke!...Oh, my God!... Oh! oh!...Mercy!...Oh, Doctor!...Mr. North!...Oh! Oh! Oh!”
“Ten!” cried Troke, impassively counting to the end of the first twenty.
The lad's back, swollen into a lump, now presented the appearance of a ripe peach which a wilful child had scored with a pin. Dawes, turning away from his bloody handiwork, drew the cats through his fingers twice. They were beginning to get clogged a little.
“Go on,” said Burgess, with a nod; and Troke cried “Wonn!” again.
Roused by the morning sun streaming in upon him, Mr. North opened his bloodshot eyes, rubbed his forehead with hands that trembled, and suddenly awakening to a consciousness of his promised errand, rolled off the bed and rose to his feet. He saw the empty brandy bottle on his wooden dressing-table, and remembered what had passed. With shaking hands he dashed water over his aching head, and smoothed his garments. The debauch of the previous night had left the usual effects behind it. His brain seemed on fire, his hands were hot and dry, his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He shuddered as he viewed his pale face and red eyes in the little looking-glass, and hastily tried the door. He had retained sufficient sense in his madness to lock it, and his condition had been unobserved. Stealing into the sitting-room, he saw that the clock pointed to half-past six. The flogging was to have taken place at half-past five. Unless accident had favoured him he was already too late. Fevered with remorse and anxiety, he hurried past the room where Meekin yet slumbered, and made his way to the prison. As he entered the yard, Troke called “Ten!” Kirkland had just got his fiftieth lash.
“Stop!” cried North. “Captain Burgess, I call upon you to stop.”
“You're rather late, Mr. North,” retorted Burgess. “The punishment is nearly over.” “Wonn!” cried Troke again; and North stood by, biting his nails and grinding his teeth, during six more lashes.
Kirkland ceased to yell now, and merely moaned. His back was like a bloody sponge, while in the interval between lashes the swollen flesh twitched like that of a new-killed bullock. Suddenly, Macklewain saw his head droop on his shoulder. “Throw him off! Throw him off!” he cried, and Troke hurried to loosen the thongs.
“Fling some water over him!” said Burgess; “he's shamming.”
A bucket of water made Kirkland open his eyes. “I thought so,” said Burgess. “Tie him up again.”
“No. Not if you are Christians!” cried North.
He met with an ally where he least expected one. Rufus Dawes flung down the dripping cat. “I'll flog no more,” said he.
“What?” roared Burgess, furious at this gross insolence.
“I'll flog no more. Get someone else to do your blood work for you. I won't.”
“Tie him up!” cried Burgess, foaming. “Tie him up. Here, constable, fetch a man here with a fresh cat. I'll give you that beggar's fifty, and fifty more on the top of 'em; and he shall look on while his back cools.”
Rufus Dawes, with a glance at North, pulled off his shirt without a word, and stretched himself at the triangles. His back was not white and smooth, like Kirkland's had been, but hard and seamed. He had been flogged before. Troke appeared with Gabbett—grinning. Gabbett liked flogging. It was his boast that he could flog a man to death on a place no bigger than the palm of his hand. He could use his left hand equally with his right, and if he got hold of a “favourite”, would “cross the cuts”.
Rufus Dawes planted his feet firmly on the ground, took fierce grasp on the staves, and drew in his breath. Macklewain spread the garments of the two men upon the ground, and, placing Kirkland upon them, turned to watch this new phase in the morning's amusement. He grumbled a little below his breath, for he wanted his breakfast, and when the Commandant once began to flog there was no telling where he would stop. Rufus Dawes took five-and-twenty lashes without a murmur, and then Gabbett “crossed the cuts”. This went on up to fifty lashes, and North felt himself stricken with admiration at the courage of the man. “If it had not been for that cursed brandy,” thought he, with bitterness of self-reproach, “I might have saved all this.” At the hundredth lash, the giant paused, expecting the order to throw off, but Burgess was determined to “break the man's spirit”.
“I'll make you speak, you dog, if I cut your heart out!” he cried. “Go on, prisoner.”
For twenty lashes more Dawes was mute, and then the agony forced from his labouring breast a hideous cry. But it was not a cry for mercy, as that of Kirkland's had been. Having found his tongue, the wretched man gave vent to his boiling passion in a torrent of curses. He shrieked imprecation upon Burgess, Troke, and North. He cursed all soldiers for tyrants, all parsons for hypocrites. He blasphemed his God and his Saviour. With a frightful outpouring of obscenity and blasphemy, he called on the earth to gape and swallow his persecutors, for Heaven to open and rain fire upon them, for hell to yawn and engulf them quick. It was as though each blow of the cat forced out of him a fresh burst of beast-like rage. He seemed to have abandoned his humanity. He foamed, he raved, he tugged at his bonds until the strong staves shook again; he writhed himself round upon the triangles and spat impotently at Burgess, who jeered at his torments. North, with his hands to his ears, crouched against the corner of the wall, palsied with horror. It seemed to him that the passions of hell raged around him. He would fain have fled, but a horrible fascination held him back.
In the midst of this—when the cat was hissing its loudest—Burgess laughing his hardest, and the wretch on the triangles filling the air with his cries, North saw Kirkland look at him with what he thought a smile. Was it a smile? He leapt forward, and uttered a cry of dismay so loud that all turned.
“Hullo!” says Troke, running to the heap of clothes, “the young 'un's slipped his wind!”
Kirkland was dead.
“Throw him off!” says Burgess, aghast at the unfortunate accident; and Gabbett reluctantly untied the thongs that bound Rufus Dawes. Two constables were alongside him in an instant, for sometimes newly tortured men grew desperate. This one, however, was silent with the last lash; only in taking his shirt from under the body of the boy, he muttered, “Dead!” and in his tone there seemed to be a touch of envy. Then, flinging his shirt over his bleeding shoulders, he walked out—defiant to the last.
“Game, ain't he?” said one constable to the other, as they pushed him, not ungently, into an empty cell, there to wait for the hospital guard. The body of Kirkland was taken away in silence, and Burgess turned rather pale when he saw North's threatening face.
“It isn't my fault, Mr. North,” he said. “I didn't know that the lad was chicken-hearted.” But North turned away in disgust, and Macklewain and Burgess pursued their homeward route together.
“Strange that he should drop like that,” said the Commandant.
“Yes, unless he had any internal disease,” said the surgeon.
“Disease of the heart, for instance,” said Burgess.
“I'll post-mortem him and see.”
“Come in and have a nip, Macklewain. I feel quite qualmish,” said Burgess. And the two went into the house amid respectful salutes from either side. Mr. North, in agony of mind at what he considered the consequence of his neglect, slowly, and with head bowed down, as one bent on a painful errand, went to see the prisoner who had survived. He found him kneeling on the ground, prostrated. “Rufus Dawes.”
At the low tone Rufus Dawes looked up, and, seeing who it was, waved him off.
“Don't speak to me,” he said, with an imprecation that made North's flesh creep. “I've told you what I think of you—a hypocrite, who stands by while a man is cut to pieces, and then comes and whines religion to him.”
North stood in the centre of the cell, with his arms hanging down, and his head bent.
“You are right,” he said, in a low tone. “I must seem to you a hypocrite. I a servant of Christ? A besotted beast rather! I am not come to whine religion to you. I am come to—to ask your pardon. I might have saved you from punishment—saved that poor boy from death. I wanted to save him, God knows! But I have a vice; I am a drunkard. I yielded to my temptation, and—I was too late. I come to you as one sinful man to another, to ask you to forgive me.” And North suddenly flung himself down beside the convict, and, catching his blood-bespotted hands in his own, cried, “Forgive me, brother!”
Rufus Dawes, too much astonished to speak, bent his black eyes upon the man who crouched at his feet, and a ray of divine pity penetrated his gloomy soul. He seemed to catch a glimpse of misery more profound than his own, and his stubborn heart felt human sympathy with this erring brother. “Then in this hell there is yet a man,” said he; and a hand-grasp passed between these two unhappy beings. North arose, and, with averted face, passed quickly from the cell. Rufus Dawes looked at his hand which his strange visitor had taken, and something glittered there. It was a tear. He broke down at the sight of it, and when the guard came to fetch the tameless convict, they found him on his knees in a corner, sobbing like a child.
The morning after this, the Rev. Mr. North departed in the schooner for Hobart Town. Between the officious chaplain and the Commandant the events of the previous day had fixed a great gulf. Burgess knew that North meant to report the death of Kirkland, and guessed that he would not be backward in relating the story to such persons in Hobart Town as would most readily repeat it. “Blank awkward the fellow's dying,” he confessed to himself. “If he hadn't died, nobody would have bothered about him.” A sinister truth. North, on the other hand, comforted himself with the belief that the fact of the convict's death under the lash would cause indignation and subsequent inquiry. “The truth must come out if they only ask,” thought he. Self-deceiving North! Four years a Government chaplain, and not yet attained to a knowledge of a Government's method of “asking” about such matters! Kirkland's mangled flesh would have fed the worms before the ink on the last “minute” from deliberating Authority was dry.
Burgess, however, touched with selfish regrets, determined to baulk the parson at the outset. He would send down an official “return” of the unfortunate occurrence by the same vessel that carried his enemy, and thus get the ear of the Office. Meekin, walking on the evening of the flogging past the wooden shed where the body lay, saw Troke bearing buckets filled with dark-coloured water, and heard a great splashing and sluicing going on inside the hut. “What is the matter?” he asked.
“Doctor's bin post-morticing the prisoner what was flogged this morning, sir,” said Troke, “and we're cleanin' up.”
Meekin sickened, and walked on. He had heard that unhappy Kirkland possessed unknown disease of the heart, and had unhappily died before receiving his allotted punishment. His duty was to comfort Kirkland's soul; he had nothing to do with Kirkland's slovenly unhandsome body, and so he went for a walk on the pier, that the breeze might blow his momentary sickness away from him. On the pier he saw North talking to Father Flaherty, the Roman Catholic chaplain. Meekin had been taught to look upon a priest as a shepherd might look upon a wolf, and passed with a distant bow. The pair were apparently talking on the occurrence of the morning, for he heard Father Flaherty say, with a shrug of his round shoulders, “He woas not one of moi people, Mr. North, and the Govermint would not suffer me to interfere with matters relating to Prhotestint prisoners.” “The wretched creature was a Protestant,” thought Meekin. “At least then his immortal soul was not endangered by belief in the damnable heresies of the Church of Rome.” So he passed on, giving good-humoured Denis Flaherty, the son of the butter-merchant of Kildrum, a wide berth and sea-room, lest he should pounce down upon him unawares, and with Jesuitical argument and silken softness of speech, convert him by force to his own state of error—as was the well-known custom of those intellectual gladiators, the Priests of the Catholic Faith. North, on his side, left Flaherty with regret. He had spent many a pleasant hour with him, and knew him for a narrow-minded, conscientious, yet laughter-loving creature, whose God was neither his belly nor his breviary, but sometimes in one place and sometimes in the other, according to the hour of the day, and the fasts appointed for due mortification of the flesh. “A man who would do Christian work in a jog-trot parish, or where men lived too easily to sin harshly, but utterly unfit to cope with Satan, as the British Government had transported him,” was North's sadly satirical reflection upon Father Flaherty, as Port Arthur faded into indistinct beauty behind the swift-sailing schooner. “God help those poor villains, for neither parson nor priest can.”
He was right. North, the drunkard and self-tormented, had a power for good, of which Meekin and the other knew nothing. Not merely were the men incompetent and self-indulgent, but they understood nothing of that frightful capacity for agony which is deep in the soul of every evil-doer. They might strike the rock as they chose with sharpest-pointed machine-made pick of warranted Gospel manufacture, stamped with the approval of eminent divines of all ages, but the water of repentance and remorse would not gush for them. They possessed not the frail rod which alone was powerful to charm. They had no sympathy, no knowledge, no experience. He who would touch the hearts of men must have had his own heart seared. The missionaries of mankind have ever been great sinners before they earned the divine right to heal and bless. Their weakness was made their strength, and out of their own agony of repentance came the knowledge which made them masters and saviours of their kind. It was the agony of the Garden and the Cross that gave to the world's Preacher His kingdom in the hearts of men. The crown of divinity is a crown of thorns.
North, on his arrival, went straight to the house of Major Vickers. “I have a complaint to make, sir,” he said. “I wish to lodge it formally with you. A prisoner has been flogged to death at Port Arthur. I saw it done.”
Vickers bent his brow. “A serious accusation, Mr. North. I must, of course, receive it with respect, coming from you, but I trust that you have fully considered the circumstances of the case. I always understood Captain Burgess was a most humane man.”
North shook his head. He would not accuse Burgess. He would let the events speak for themselves. “I only ask for an inquiry,” said he.
“Yes, my dear sir, I know. Very proper indeed on your part, if you think any injustice has been done; but have you considered the expense, the delay, the immense trouble and dissatisfaction all this will give?”
“No trouble, no expense, no dissatisfaction, should stand in the way of humanity and justice,” cried North.
“Of course not. But will justice be done? Are you sure you can prove your case? Mind, I admit nothing against Captain Burgess, whom I have always considered a most worthy and zealous officer; but, supposing your charge to be true, can you prove it?”
“Yes. If the witnesses speak the truth.”
“Who are they?” “Myself, Dr. Macklewain, the constable, and two prisoners, one of whom was flogged himself. He will speak the truth, I believe. The other man I have not much faith in.”
“Very well; then there is only a prisoner and Dr. Macklewain; for if there has been foul play the convict-constable will not accuse the authorities. Moreover, the doctor does not agree with you.”
“No?” cried North, amazed.
“No. You see, then, my dear sir, how necessary it is not to be hasty in matters of this kind. I really think—pardon me for my plainness—that your goodness of heart has misled you. Captain Burgess sends a report of the case. He says the man was sentenced to a hundred lashes for gross insolence and disobedience of orders, that the doctor was present during the punishment, and that the man was thrown off by his directions after he had received fifty-six lashes. That, after a short interval, he was found to be dead, and that the doctor made a post-mortem examination and found disease of the heart.”
North started. “A post-mortem? I never knew there had been one held.”
“Here is the medical certificate,” said Vickers, holding it out, “accompanied by the copies of the evidence of the constable and a letter from the Commandant.”
Poor North took the papers and read them slowly. They were apparently straightforward enough. Aneurism of the ascending aorta was given as the cause of death; and the doctor frankly admitted that had he known the deceased to be suffering from that complaint he would not have permitted him to receive more than twenty-five lashes. “I think Macklewain is an honest man,” said North, doubtfully. “He would not dare to return a false certificate. Yet the circumstances of the case—the horrible condition of the prisoners—the frightful story of that boy—”
“I cannot enter into these questions, Mr. North. My position here is to administer the law to the best of my ability, not to question it.”
North bowed his head to the reproof. In some sort of justly unjust way, he felt that he deserved it. “I can say no more, sir. I am afraid I am helpless in this matter—as I have been in others. I see that the evidence is against me; but it is my duty to carry my efforts as far as I can, and I will do so.” Vickers bowed stiffly and wished him good morning. Authority, however well-meaning in private life, has in its official capacity a natural dislike to those dissatisfied persons who persist in pushing inquiries to extremities.
North, going out with saddened spirits, met in the passage a beautiful young girl. It was Sylvia, coming to visit her father. He lifted his hat and looked after her. He guessed that she was the daughter of the man he had left—the wife of the Captain Frere concerning whom he had heard so much. North was a man whose morbidly excited brain was prone to strange fancies; and it seemed to him that beneath the clear blue eyes that flashed upon him for a moment, lay a hint of future sadness, in which, in some strange way, he himself was to bear part. He stared after her figure until it disappeared; and long after the dainty presence of the young bride—trimly booted, tight-waisted, and neatly-gloved—had faded, with all its sunshine of gaiety and health, from out of his mental vision, he still saw those blue eyes and that cloud of golden hair.
Sylvia had become the wife of Maurice Frere. The wedding created excitement in the convict settlement, for Maurice Frere, though oppressed by the secret shame at open matrimony which affects men of his character, could not in decency—seeing how “good a thing for him” was this wealthy alliance—demand unceremonious nuptials. So, after the fashion of the town—there being no “continent” or “Scotland” adjacent as a hiding place for bridal blushes—the alliance was entered into with due pomp of ball and supper; bride and bridegroom departing through the golden afternoon to the nearest of Major Vickers's stations. Thence it had been arranged they should return after a fortnight, and take ship for Sydney.
Major Vickers, affectionate though he was to the man whom he believed to be the saviour of his child, had no notion of allowing him to live on Sylvia's fortune. He had settled his daughter's portion—ten thousand pounds—upon herself and children, and had informed Frere that he expected him to live upon an income of his own earning. After many consultations between the pair, it had been arranged that a civil appointment in Sydney would best suit the bridegroom, who was to sell out of the service. This notion was Frere's own. He never cared for military duty, and had, moreover, private debts to no inconsiderable amount. By selling his commission he would be enabled at once to pay these debts, and render himself eligible for any well-paid post under the Colonial Government that the interest of his father-in-law, and his own reputation as a convict disciplinarian, might procure. Vickers would fain have kept his daughter with him, but he unselfishly acquiesced in the scheme, admitting that Frere's plea as to the comforts she would derive from the society to be found in Sydney was a valid one.
“You can come over and see us when we get settled, papa,” said Sylvia, with a young matron's pride of place, “and we can come and see you. Hobart Town is very pretty, but I want to see the world.”
“You should go to London, Poppet,” said Maurice, “that's the place. Isn't it, sir?”
“Oh, London!” cries Sylvia, clapping her hands. “And Westminster Abbey, and the Tower, and St. James's Palace, and Hyde Park, and Fleet-street! 'Sir,' said Dr. Johnson, 'let us take a walk down Fleet-street.' Do you remember, in Mr. Croker's book, Maurice? No, you don't I know, because you only looked at the pictures, and then read Pierce Egan's account of the Topping Fight between Bob Gaynor and Ned Neal, or some such person.”
“Little girls should be seen and not heard,” said Maurice, between a laugh and a blush. “You have no business to read my books.”
“Why not?” she asked, with a gaiety which already seemed a little strained; “husband and wife should have no secrets from each other, sir. Besides, I want you to read my books. I am going to read Shelley to you.”
“Don't, my dear,” said Maurice simply. “I can't understand him.”
This little scene took place at the dinner-table of Frere's cottage, in New Town, to which Major Vickers had been invited, in order that future plans might be discussed.
“I don't want to go to Port Arthur,” said the bride, later in the evening. “Maurice, there can be no necessity to go there.”
“Well,” said Maurice. “I want to have a look at the place. I ought to be familiar with all phases of convict discipline, you know.”
“There is likely to be a report ordered upon the death of a prisoner,” said Vickers. “The chaplain, a fussy but well-meaning person, has been memorializing about it. You may as well do it as anybody else, Maurice.”
“Ay. And save the expenses of the trip,” said Maurice.
“But it is so melancholy,” cried Sylvia.
“The most delightful place in the island, my dear. I was there for a few days once, and I really was charmed.”
It was remarkable—so Vickers thought—how each of these newly-mated ones had caught something of the other's manner of speech. Sylvia was less choice in her mode of utterance; Frere more so. He caught himself wondering which of the two methods both would finally adopt.
“But those dogs, and sharks, and things. Oh, Maurice, haven't we had enough of convicts?”
“Enough! Why, I'm going to make my living out of 'em,” said Maurice, with his most natural manner.
Sylvia sighed.
“Play something, darling,” said her father; and so the girl, sitting down to the piano, trilled and warbled in her pure young voice, until the Port Arthur question floated itself away upon waves of melody, and was heard of no more for that time. But upon pursuing the subject, Sylvia found her husband firm. He wanted to go, and he would go. Having once assured himself that it was advantageous to him to do a certain thing, the native obstinacy of the animal urged him to do it despite all opposition from others, and Sylvia, having had her first “cry” over the question of the visit, gave up the point. This was the first difference of their short married life, and she hastened to condone it. In the sunshine of Love and Marriage—for Maurice at first really loved her; and love, curbing the worst part of him, brought to him, as it brings to all of us, that gentleness and abnegation of self which is the only token and assurance of a love aught but animal—Sylvia's fears and doubts melted away, as the mists melt in the beams of morning. A young girl, with passionate fancy, with honest and noble aspiration, but with the dark shadow of her early mental sickness brooding upon her childlike nature, Marriage made her a woman, by developing in her a woman's trust and pride in the man to whom she had voluntarily given herself. Yet by-and-by out of this sentiment arose a new and strange source of anxiety. Having accepted her position as a wife, and put away from her all doubts as to her own capacity for loving the man to whom she had allied herself, she began to be haunted by a dread lest he might do something which would lessen the affection she bore him. On one or two occasions she had been forced to confess that her husband was more of an egotist than she cared to think. He demanded of her no great sacrifices—had he done so she would have found, in making them, the pleasure that women of her nature always find in such self-mortification—but he now and then intruded on her that disregard for the feeling of others which was part of his character. He was fond of her—almost too passionately fond, for her staider liking—but he was unused to thwart his own will in anything, least of all in those seeming trifles, for the consideration of which true selfishness bethinks itself. Did she want to read when he wanted to walk, he good-humouredly put aside her book, with an assumption that a walk with him must, of necessity, be the most pleasing thing in the world. Did she want to walk when he wanted to rest, he laughingly set up his laziness as an all-sufficient plea for her remaining within doors. He was at no pains to conceal his weariness when she read her favourite books to him. If he felt sleepy when she sang or played, he slept without apology. If she talked about a subject in which he took no interest, he turned the conversation remorselessly. He would not have wittingly offended her, but it seemed to him natural to yawn when he was weary, to sleep when he was fatigued, and to talk only about those subjects which interested him. Had anybody told him that he was selfish, he would have been astonished. Thus it came about that Sylvia one day discovered that she led two lives—one in the body, and one in the spirit—and that with her spiritual existence her husband had no share. This discovery alarmed her, but then she smiled at it. “As if Maurice could be expected to take interest in all my silly fancies,” said she; and, despite a harassing thought that these same fancies were not foolish, but were the best and brightest portion of her, she succeeded in overcoming her uneasiness. “A man's thoughts are different from a woman's,” she said; “he has his business and his worldly cares, of which a woman knows nothing. I must comfort him, and not worry him with my follies.”
As for Maurice, he grew sometimes rather troubled in his mind. He could not understand his wife. Her nature was an enigma to him; her mind was a puzzle which would not be pieced together with the rectangular correctness of ordinary life. He had known her from a child, had loved her from a child, and had committed a mean and cruel crime to obtain her; but having got her, he was no nearer to the mystery of her than before. She was all his own, he thought. Her golden hair was for his fingers, her lips were for his caress, her eyes looked love upon him alone. Yet there were times when her lips were cold to his kisses, and her eyes looked disdainfully upon his coarser passion. He would catch her musing when he spoke to her, much as she would catch him sleeping when she read to him—but she awoke with a start and a blush at her forgetfulness, which he never did. He was not a man to brood over these things; and, after some reflective pipes and ineffectual rubbings of his head, he “gave it up”. How was it possible, indeed, for him to solve the mental enigma when the woman herself was to him a physical riddle? It was extraordinary that the child he had seen growing up by his side day by day should be a young woman with little secrets, now to be revealed to him for the first time. He found that she had a mole on her neck, and remembered that he had noticed it when she was a child. Then it was a thing of no moment, now it was a marvellous discovery. He was in daily wonderment at the treasure he had obtained. He marvelled at her feminine devices of dress and adornment. Her dainty garments seemed to him perfumed with the odour of sanctity.
The fact was that the patron of Sarah Purfoy had not met with many virtuous women, and had but just discovered what a dainty morsel Modesty was.
The hospital of Port Arthur was not a cheerful place, but to the tortured and unnerved Rufus Dawes it seemed a paradise. There at least—despite the roughness and contempt with which his gaolers ministered to him—he felt that he was considered. There at least he was free from the enforced companionship of the men whom he loathed, and to whose level he felt, with mental agony unspeakable, that he was daily sinking. Throughout his long term of degradation he had, as yet, aided by the memory of his sacrifice and his love, preserved something of his self-respect, but he felt that he could not preserve it long. Little by little he had come to regard himself as one out of the pale of love and mercy, as one tormented of fortune, plunged into a deep into which the eye of Heaven did not penetrate. Since his capture in the garden of Hobart Town, he had given loose rein to his rage and his despair. “I am forgotten or despised; I have no name in the world; what matter if I become like one of these?” It was under the influence of this feeling that he had picked up the cat at the command of Captain Burgess. As the unhappy Kirkland had said, “As well you as another”; and truly, what was he that he should cherish sentiments of honour or humanity? But he had miscalculated his own capacity for evil. As he flogged, he blushed; and when he flung down the cat and stripped his own back for punishment, he felt a fierce joy in the thought that his baseness would be atoned for in his own blood. Even when, unnerved and faint from the hideous ordeal, he flung himself upon his knees in the cell, he regretted only the impotent ravings that the torture had forced from him. He could have bitten out his tongue for his blasphemous utterings—not because they were blasphemous, but because their utterance, by revealing his agony, gave their triumph to his tormentors. When North found him, he was in the very depth of this abasement, and he repulsed his comforter—not so much because he had seen him flogged, as because he had heard him cry. The self-reliance and force of will which had hitherto sustained him through his self-imposed trial had failed him—he felt—at the moment when he needed it most; and the man who had with unflinched front faced the gallows, the desert, and the sea, confessed his debased humanity beneath the physical torture of the lash. He had been flogged before, and had wept in secret at his degradation, but he now for the first time comprehended how terrible that degradation might be made, for he realized how the agony of the wretched body can force the soul to quit its last poor refuge of assumed indifference, and confess itself conquered.
Not many months before, one of the companions of the chain, suffering under Burgess's tender mercies, had killed his mate when at work with him, and, carrying the body on his back to the nearest gang, had surrendered himself—going to his death thanking God he had at last found a way of escape from his miseries, which no one would envy him—save his comrades. The heart of Dawes had been filled with horror at a deed so bloody, and he had, with others, commented on the cowardice of the man that would thus shirk the responsibility of that state of life in which it had pleased man and the devil to place him. Now he understood how and why the crime had been committed, and felt only pity. Lying awake with back that burned beneath its lotioned rags, when lights were low, in the breathful silence of the hospital, he registered in his heart a terrible oath that he would die ere he would again be made such hideous sport for his enemies. In this frame of mind, with such shreds of honour and worth as had formerly clung to him blown away in the whirlwind of his passion, he bethought him of the strange man who had deigned to clasp his hand and call him “brother”. He had wept no unmanly tears at this sudden flow of tenderness in one whom he had thought as callous as the rest. He had been touched with wondrous sympathy at the confession of weakness made to him, in a moment when his own weakness had overcome him to his shame. Soothed by the brief rest that his fortnight of hospital seclusion had afforded him, he had begun, in a languid and speculative way, to turn his thoughts to religion. He had read of martyrs who had borne agonies unspeakable, upheld by their confidence in Heaven and God. In his old wild youth he had scoffed at prayers and priests; in the hate to his kind that had grown upon him with his later years he had despised a creed that told men to love one another. “God is love, my brethren,” said the chaplain on Sundays, and all the week the thongs of the overseer cracked, and the cat hissed and swung. Of what practical value was a piety that preached but did not practise? It was admirable for the “religious instructor” to tell a prisoner that he must not give way to evil passions, but must bear his punishment with meekness. It was only right that he should advise him to “put his trust in God”. But as a hardened prisoner, convicted of getting drunk in an unlicensed house of entertainment, had said, “God's terrible far from Port Arthur.”
Rufus Dawes had smiled at the spectacle of priests admonishing men, who knew what he knew and had seen what he had seen, for the trivialities of lying and stealing. He had believed all priests impostors or fools, all religion a mockery and a lie. But now, finding how utterly his own strength had failed him when tried by the rude test of physical pain, he began to think that this Religion which was talked of so largely was not a mere bundle of legend and formulae, but must have in it something vital and sustaining. Broken in spirit and weakened in body, with faith in his own will shaken, he longed for something to lean upon, and turned—as all men turn when in such case—to the Unknown. Had now there been at hand some Christian priest, some Christian-spirited man even, no matter of what faith, to pour into the ears of this poor wretch words of comfort and grace; to rend away from him the garment of sullenness and despair in which he had wrapped himself; to drag from him a confession of his unworthiness, his obstinacy, and his hasty judgment, and to cheer his fainting soul with promise of immortality and justice, he might have been saved from his after fate; but there was no such man. He asked for the chaplain. North was fighting the Convict Department, seeking vengeance for Kirkland, and (victim of “clerks with the cold spurt of the pen”) was pushed hither and thither, referred here, snubbed there, bowed out in another place. Rufus Dawes, half ashamed of himself for his request, waited a long morning, and then saw, respectfully ushered into his cell as his soul's physician—Meekin.
“Well, my good man,” said Meekin, soothingly, “so you wanted to see me.”
“I asked for the chaplain,” said Rufus Dawes, his anger with himself growing apace. “I am the chaplain,” returned Meekin, with dignity, as who should say—“none of your brandy-drinking, pea-jacketed Norths, but a Respectable chaplain who is the friend of a Bishop!”
“I thought that Mr. North was—”
“Mr. North has left, sir,” said Meekin, dryly, “but I will hear what you have to say. There is no occasion to go, constable; wait outside the door.”
Rufus Dawes shifted himself on the wooden bench, and resting his scarcely-healed back against the wall, smiled bitterly. “Don't be afraid, sir; I am not going to harm you,” he said. “I only wanted to talk a little.”
“Do you read your Bible, Dawes?” asked Meekin, by way of reply. “It would be better to read your Bible than to talk, I think. You must humble yourself in prayer, Dawes.”
“I have read it,” said Dawes, still lying back and watching him.
“But is your mind softened by its teachings? Do you realize the Infinite Mercy of God, Who has compassion, Dawes, upon the greatest sinners?” The convict made a move of impatience. The old, sickening, barren cant of piety was to be recommenced then. He came asking for bread, and they gave him the usual stone.
“Do you believe that there is a God, Mr. Meekin?”
“Abandoned sinner! Do you insult a clergyman by such a question?”
“Because I think sometimes that if there is, He must often be dissatisfied at the way things are done here,” said Dawes, half to himself.
“I can listen to no mutinous observations, prisoner,” said Meekin. “Do not add blasphemy to your other crimes. I fear that all conversation with you, in your present frame of mind, would be worse than useless. I will mark a few passages in your Bible, that seem to me appropriate to your condition, and beg you to commit them to memory. Hailes, the door, if you please.”
So, with a bow, the “consoler” departed.
Rufus Dawes felt his heart grow sick. North had gone, then. The only man who had seemed to have a heart in his bosom had gone. The only man who had dared to clasp his horny and blood-stained hand, and call him “brother”, had gone. Turning his head, he saw through the window—wide open and unbarred, for Nature, at Port Arthur, had no need of bars—the lovely bay, smooth as glass, glittering in the afternoon sun, the long quay, spotted with groups of parti-coloured chain-gangs, and heard, mingling with the soft murmur of the waves, and the gentle rustling of the trees, the never-ceasing clashing of irons, and the eternal click of hammer. Was he to be for ever buried in this whitened sepulchre, shut out from the face of Heaven and mankind!
The appearance of Hailes broke his reverie. “Here's a book for you,” said he, with a grin. “Parson sent it.”
Rufus Dawes took the Bible, and, placing it on his knees, turned to the places indicated by slips of paper, embracing some twenty marked texts.
“Parson says he'll come and hear you to-morrer, and you're to keep the book clean.”
“Keep the book clean!” and “hear him!” Did Meekin think that he was a charity school boy? The utter incapacity of the chaplain to understand his wants was so sublime that it was nearly ridiculous enough to make him laugh. He turned his eyes downwards to the texts. Good Meekin, in the fullness of his stupidity, had selected the fiercest denunciations of bard and priest. The most notable of the Psalmist's curses upon his enemies, the most furious of Isaiah's ravings anent the forgetfulness of the national worship, the most terrible thunderings of apostle and evangelist against idolatry and unbelief, were grouped together and presented to Dawes to soothe him. All the material horrors of Meekin's faith—stripped, by force of dissociation from the context, of all poetic feeling and local colouring—were launched at the suffering sinner by Meekin's ignorant hand. The miserable man, seeking for consolation and peace, turned over the leaves of the Bible only to find himself threatened with “the pains of Hell”, “the never-dying worm”, “the unquenchable fire”, “the bubbling brimstone”, the “bottomless pit”, from out of which the “smoke of his torment” should ascend for ever and ever. Before his eyes was held no image of a tender Saviour (with hands soft to soothe, and eyes brimming with ineffable pity) dying crucified that he and other malefactors might have hope, by thinking on such marvellous humanity. The worthy Pharisee who was sent to him to teach him how mankind is to be redeemed with Love, preached only that harsh Law whose barbarous power died with the gentle Nazarene on Calvary.
Repelled by this unlooked-for ending to his hopes, he let the book fall to the ground. “Is there, then, nothing but torment for me in this world or the next?” he groaned, shuddering. Presently his eyes sought his right hand, resting upon it as though it were not his own, or had some secret virtue which made it different from the other. “He would not have done this? He would not have thrust upon me these savage judgments, these dreadful threats of Hell and Death. He called me 'Brother'!” And filled with a strange wild pity for himself, and yearning love towards the man who befriended him, he fell to nursing the hand on which North's tears had fallen, moaning and rocking himself to and fro.
Meekin, in the morning, found his pupil more sullen than ever.
“Have you learned these texts, my man?” said he, cheerfully, willing not to be angered with his uncouth and unpromising convert.
Rufus Dawes pointed with his foot to the Bible, which still lay on the floor as he had left it the night before. “No!”
“No! Why not?”
“I would learn no such words as those. I would rather forget them.”
“Forget them! My good man, I—”
Rufus Dawes sprang up in sudden wrath, and pointing to his cell door with a gesture that—chained and degraded as he was—had something of dignity in it, cried, “What do you know about the feelings of such as I? Take your book and yourself away. When I asked for a priest, I had no thought of you. Begone!”
Meekin, despite the halo of sanctity which he felt should surround him, found his gentility melt all of a sudden. Adventitious distinctions had disappeared for the instant. The pair had become simply man and man, and the sleek priest-master quailing before the outraged manhood of the convict-penitent, picked up his Bible and backed out.
“That man Dawes is very insolent,” said the insulted chaplain to Burgess. “He was brutal to me to-day—quite brutal.”
“Was he?” said Burgess. “Had too long a spell, I expect. I'll send him back to work to-morrow.”
“It would be well,” said Meekin, “if he had some employment.”