May 12th—landed to-day at Norfolk Island, and have been introduced to my new abode, situated some eleven hundred miles from Sydney. A solitary rock in the tropical ocean, the island seems, indeed, a fit place of banishment. It is about seven miles long and four broad. The most remarkable natural object is, of course, the Norfolk Island pine, which rears its stately head a hundred feet above the surrounding forest. The appearance of the place is very wild and beautiful, bringing to my mind the description of the romantic islands of the Pacific, which old geographers dwell upon so fondly. Lemon, lime, and guava trees abound, also oranges, grapes, figs, bananas, peaches, pomegranates, and pine-apples. The climate just now is hot and muggy. The approach to Kingstown—as the barracks and huts are called—is properly difficult. A long low reef—probably originally a portion of the barren rocks of Nepean and Philip Islands, which rise east and west of the settlement—fronts the bay and obstructs the entrance of vessels. We were landed in boats through an opening in this reef, and our vessel stands on and off within signalling distance. The surf washes almost against the walls of the military roadway that leads to the barracks. The social aspect of the place fills me with horror. There seems neither discipline nor order. On our way to the Commandant's house we passed a low dilapidated building where men were grinding maize, and at the sight of us they commenced whistling, hooting, and shouting, using the most disgusting language. Three warders were near, but no attempt was made to check this unseemly exhibition.
May 14th.—I sit down to write with as much reluctance as though I were about to relate my experience of a journey through a sewer.
First to the prisoners' barracks, which stand on an area of about three acres, surrounded by a lofty wall. A road runs between this wall and the sea. The barracks are three storeys high, and hold seven hundred and ninety men (let me remark here that there are more than two thousand men on the island). There are twenty-two wards in this place. Each ward runs the depth of the building, viz., eighteen feet, and in consequence is simply a funnel for hot or cold air to blow through. When the ward is filled, the men's heads lie under the windows. The largest ward contains a hundred men, the smallest fifteen. They sleep in hammocks, slung close to each other as on board ship, in two lines, with a passage down the centre. There is a wardsman to each ward. He is selected by the prisoners, and is generally a man of the worst character. He is supposed to keep order, but of course he never attempts to do so; indeed, as he is locked up in the ward every night from six o'clock in the evening until sunrise, without light, it is possible that he might get maltreated did he make himself obnoxious.
The barracks look upon the Barrack Square, which is filled with lounging prisoners. The windows of the hospital-ward also look upon Barrack Square, and the prisoners are in constant communication with the patients. The hospital is a low stone building, capable of containing about twenty men, and faces the beach. I placed my hands on the wall, and found it damp. An ulcerous prisoner said the dampness was owing to the heavy surf constantly rolling so close beneath the building. There are two gaols, the old and the new. The old gaol stands near the sea, close to the landing-place. Outside it, at the door, is the Gallows. I touched it as I passed in. This engine is the first thing which greets the eyes of a newly-arrived prisoner. The new gaol is barely completed, is of pentagonal shape, and has eighteen radiating cells of a pattern approved by some wiseacre in England, who thinks that to prevent a man from seeing his fellowmen is not the way to drive him mad. In the old gaol are twenty-four prisoners, all heavily ironed, awaiting trial by the visiting Commission, from Hobart Town. Some of these poor ruffians, having committed their offences just after the last sitting of the Commission, have already been in gaol upwards of eleven months!
At six o'clock we saw the men mustered. I read prayers before the muster, and was surprised to find that some of the prisoners attended, while some strolled about the yard, whistling, singing, and joking. The muster is a farce. The prisoners are not mustered outside and then marched to their wards, but they rush into the barracks indiscriminately, and place themselves dressed or undressed in their hammocks. A convict sub-overseer then calls out the names, and somebody replies. If an answer is returned to each name, all is considered right. The lights are taken away, and save for a few minutes at eight o'clock, when the good-conduct men are let in, the ruffians are left to their own devices until morning. Knowing what I know of the customs of the convicts, my heart sickens when I in imagination put myself in the place of a newly-transported man, plunged from six at night until daybreak into that foetid den of worse than wild beasts.
May 15th.—There is a place enclosed between high walls adjoining the convict barracks, called the Lumber Yard. This is where the prisoners mess. It is roofed on two sides, and contains tables and benches. Six hundred men can mess here perhaps, but as seven hundred are always driven into it, it follows that the weakest men are compelled to sit on the ground. A more disorderly sight than this yard at meal times I never beheld. The cook-houses are adjoining it, and the men bake their meal-bread there. Outside the cook-house door the firewood is piled, and fires are made in all directions on the ground, round which sit the prisoners, frying their rations of fresh pork, baking their hominy cakes, chatting, and even smoking.
The Lumber Yard is a sort of Alsatia, to which the hunted prisoner retires. I don't think the boldest constable on the island would venture into that place to pick out a man from the seven hundred. If he did go in I don't think he would come out again alive.
May 16th.—A sub-overseer, a man named Hankey, has been talking to me. He says that there are some forty of the oldest and worst prisoners who form what he calls the “Ring”, and that the members of this “Ring” are bound by oath to support each other, and to avenge the punishment of any of their number. In proof of his assertions he instanced two cases of English prisoners who had refused to join in some crime, and had informed the Commandant of the proceedings of the Ring. They were found in the morning strangled in their hammocks. An inquiry was held, but not a man out of the ninety in the ward would speak a word. I dread the task that is before me. How can I attempt to preach piety and morality to these men? How can I attempt even to save the less villainous?
May 17th.—Visited the wards to-day, and returned in despair. The condition of things is worse than I expected. It is not to be written. The newly-arrived English prisoners—and some of their histories are most touching—are insulted by the language and demeanour of the hardened miscreants who are the refuse of Port Arthur and Cockatoo Island. The vilest crimes are perpetrated as jests. These are creatures who openly defy authority, whose language and conduct is such as was never before seen or heard out of Bedlam. There are men who are known to have murdered their companions, and who boast of it. With these the English farm labourer, the riotous and ignorant mechanic, the victim of perjury or mistake, are indiscriminately herded. With them are mixed Chinamen from Hong Kong, the Aborigines of New Holland, West Indian blacks, Greeks, Caffres, and Malays, soldiers for desertion, idiots, madmen, pig-stealers, and pick-pockets. The dreadful place seems set apart for all that is hideous and vile in our common nature. In its recklessness, its insubordination, its filth, and its despair, it realizes to my mind the popular notion of Hell.
May 21st.—Entered to-day officially upon my duties as Religious Instructor at the Settlement.
An occurrence took place this morning which shows the dangerous condition of the Ring. I accompanied Mr. Pounce to the Lumber Yard, and, on our entry, we observed a man in the crowd round the cook-house deliberately smoking. The Chief Constable of the Island—my old friend Troke, of Port Arthur—seeing that this exhibition attracted Pounce's notice, pointed out the man to an assistant. The assistant, Jacob Gimblett, advanced and desired the prisoner to surrender the pipe. The man plunged his hands into his pockets, and, with a gesture of the most profound contempt, walked away to that part of the mess-shed where the “Ring” congregate.
“Take the scoundrel to gaol!” cried Troke.
No one moved, but the man at the gate that leads through the carpenter's shop into the barracks, called to us to come out, saying that the prisoners would never suffer the man to be taken. Pounce, however, with more determination than I gave him credit for, kept his ground, and insisted that so flagrant a breach of discipline should not be suffered to pass unnoticed. Thus urged, Mr. Troke pushed through the crowd, and made for the spot whither the man had withdrawn himself.
The yard was buzzing like a disturbed hive, and I momentarily expected that a rush would be made upon us. In a few moments the prisoner appeared, attended by, rather than in the custody of, the Chief Constable of the island. He advanced to the unlucky assistant constable, who was standing close to me, and asked, “What have you ordered me to gaol for?” The man made some reply, advising him to go quietly, when the convict raised his fist and deliberately felled the man to the ground. “You had better retire, gentlemen,” said Troke. “I see them getting out their knives.”
We made for the gate, and the crowd closed in like a sea upon the two constables. I fully expected murder, but in a few moments Troke and Gimblett appeared, borne along by a mass of men, dusty, but unharmed, and having the convict between them. He sulkily raised a hand as he passed me, either to rectify the position of his straw hat, or to offer a tardy apology. A more wanton, unprovoked, and flagrant outrage than that of which this man was guilty I never witnessed. It is customary for “the old dogs”, as the experienced convicts are called, to use the most opprobrious language to their officers, and to this a deaf ear is usually turned, but I never before saw a man wantonly strike a constable. I fancy that the act was done out of bravado. Troke informed me that the man's name is Rufus Dawes, and that he is the leader of the Ring, and considered the worst man on the island; that to secure him he (Troke) was obliged to use the language of expostulation; and that, but for the presence of an officer accredited by his Excellency, he dared not have acted as he had done.
This is the same man, then, whom I injured at Port Arthur. Seven years of “discipline” don't seem to have done him much good. His sentence is “life”—a lifetime in this place! Troke says that he was the terror of Port Arthur, and that they sent him here when a “weeding” of the prisoners was made. He has been here four years. Poor wretch!
May 24th.—After prayers, I saw Dawes. He was confined in the Old Gaol, and seven others were in the cell with him. He came out at my request, and stood leaning against the door-post. He was much changed from the man I remember. Seven years ago he was a stalwart, upright, handsome man. He has become a beetle-browed, sullen, slouching ruffian. His hair is grey, though he cannot be more than forty years of age, and his frame has lost that just proportion of parts which once made him almost graceful. His face has also grown like other convict faces—how hideously alike they all are!—and, save for his black eyes and a peculiar trick he had of compressing his lips, I should not have recognized him. How habitual sin and misery suffice to brutalize “the human face divine”! I said but little, for the other prisoners were listening, eager, as it appeared to me, to witness my discomfiture. It is evident that Rufus Dawes had been accustomed to meet the ministrations of my predecessors with insolence. I spoke to him for a few minutes, only saying how foolish it was to rebel against an authority superior in strength to himself. He did not answer, and the only emotion he evinced during the interview was when I reminded him that we had met before. He shrugged one shoulder, as if in pain or anger, and seemed about to speak, but, casting his eyes upon the group in the cell, relapsed into silence again. I must get speech with him alone. One can do nothing with a man if seven other devils worse than himself are locked up with him.
I sent for Hankey, and asked him about cells. He says that the gaol is crowded to suffocation. “Solitary confinement” is a mere name. There are six men, each sentenced to solitary confinement, in a cell together. The cell is called the “nunnery”. It is small, and the six men were naked to the waist when I entered, the perspiration pouring in streams off their naked bodies! It is disgusting to write of such things.
June 26th.—Pounce has departed in the Lady Franklin for Hobart Town, and it is rumoured that we are to have a new Commandant. The Lady Franklin is commanded by an old man named Blunt, a protegé of Frere's, and a fellow to whom I have taken one of my inexplicable and unreasoning dislikes.
Saw Rufus Dawes this morning. He continues sullen and morose. His papers are very bad. He is perpetually up for punishment. I am informed that he and a man named Eastwood, nicknamed “Jacky Jacky”, glory in being the leaders of the Ring, and that they openly avow themselves weary of life. Can it be that the unmerited flogging which the poor creature got at Port Arthur has aided, with other sufferings, to bring him to this horrible state of mind? It is quite possible. Oh, James North, remember your own crime, and pray Heaven to let you redeem one soul at least, to plead for your own at the Judgment Seat.
June 30th.—I took a holiday this afternoon, and walked in the direction of Mount Pitt. The island lay at my feet like—as sings Mrs. Frere's favourite poet—“a summer isle of Eden lying in dark purple sphere of sea”. Sophocles has the same idea in the Philoctetes, but I can't quote it. Note: I measured a pine twenty-three feet in circumference. I followed a little brook that runs from the hills, and winds through thick undergrowths of creeper and blossom, until it reaches a lovely valley surrounded by lofty trees, whose branches, linked together by the luxurious grape-vine, form an arching bower of verdure. Here stands the ruin of an old hut, formerly inhabited by the early settlers; lemons, figs, and guavas are thick; while amid the shrub and cane a large convolvulus is entwined, and stars the green with its purple and crimson flowers. I sat down here, and had a smoke. It seems that the former occupant of my rooms at the settlement read French; for in searching for a book to bring with me—I never walk without a book—I found and pocketed a volume of Balzac. It proved to be a portion of the Vie Priveé series, and I stumbled upon a story called La Fausse Maitresse. With calm belief in the Paris of his imagination—where Marcas was a politician, Nucingen a banker, Gobseck a money-lender, and Vautrin a candidate for some such place as this—Balzac introduces me to a Pole by name Paz, who, loving the wife of his friend, devotes himself to watch over her happiness and her husband's interest. The husband gambles and is profligate. Paz informs the wife that the leanness which hazard and debauchery have caused to the domestic exchequer is due to his extravagance, the husband having lent him money. She does not believe, and Paz feigns an intrigue with a circus-rider in order to lull all suspicions. She says to her adored spouse, “Get rid of this extravagant friend! Away with him! He is a profligate, a gambler! A drunkard!” Paz finally departs, and when he has gone, the lady finds out the poor Pole's worth. The story does not end satisfactorily. Balzac was too great a master of his art for that. In real life the curtain never falls on a comfortably-finished drama. The play goes on eternally.
I have been thinking of the story all evening. A man who loves his friend's wife, and devotes his energies to increase her happiness by concealing from her her husband's follies! Surely none but Balzac would have hit upon such a notion. “A man who loves his friend's wife.”—Asmodeus, I write no more! I have ceased to converse with thee for so long that I blush to confess all that I have in my heart.—I will not confess it, so that shall suffice.
August 24th.—There has been but one entry in my journal since the 30th June, that which records the advent of our new Commandant, who, as I expected, is Captain Maurice Frere.
So great have been the changes which have taken place that I scarcely know how to record them. Captain Frere has realized my worst anticipations. He is brutal, vindictive, and domineering. His knowledge of prisons and prisoners gives him an advantage over Burgess, otherwise he much resembles that murderous animal. He has but one thought—to keep the prisoners in subjection. So long as the island is quiet, he cares not whether the men live or die. “I was sent down here to keep order,” said he to me, a few days after his arrival, “and by God, sir, I'll do it!”
He has done it, I must admit; but at a cost of a legacy of hatred to himself that he may some day regret to have earned. He has organized three parties of police. One patrols the fields, one is on guard at stores and public buildings, and the third is employed as a detective force. There are two hundred soldiers on the island. And the officer in charge, Captain McNab, has been induced by Frere to increase their duties in many ways. The cords of discipline are suddenly drawn tight. For the disorder which prevailed when I landed, Frere has substituted a sudden and excessive rigour. Any officer found giving the smallest piece of tobacco to a prisoner is liable to removal from the island..The tobacco which grows wild has been rooted up and destroyed lest the men should obtain a leaf of it. The privilege of having a pannikin of hot water when the gangs came in from field labour in the evening has been withdrawn. The shepherds, hut-keepers, and all other prisoners, whether at the stations of Longridge or the Cascades (where the English convicts are stationed) are forbidden to keep a parrot or any other bird. The plaiting of straw hats during the prisoners' leisure hours is also prohibited. At the settlement where the “old hands” are located railed boundaries have been erected, beyond which no prisoner must pass unless to work. Two days ago Job Dodd, a negro, let his jacket fall over the boundary rails, crossed them to recover it, and was severely flogged. The floggings are hideously frequent. On flogging mornings I have seen the ground where the men stood at the triangles saturated with blood, as if a bucket of blood had been spilled on it, covering a space three feet in diameter, and running out in various directions, in little streams two or three feet long. At the same time, let me say, with that strict justice I force myself to mete out to those whom I dislike, that the island is in a condition of abject submission. There is not much chance of mutiny. The men go to their work without a murmur, and slink to their dormitories like whipped hounds to kennel. The gaols and solitary (!) cells are crowded with prisoners, and each day sees fresh sentences for fresh crimes. It is crime here to do anything but live.
The method by which Captain Frere has brought about this repose of desolation is characteristic of him. He sets every man as a spy upon his neighbour, awes the more daring into obedience by the display of a ruffianism more outrageous than their own, and, raising the worst scoundrels in the place to office, compels them to find “cases” for punishment. Perfidy is rewarded. It has been made part of a convict-policeman's duty to search a fellow-prisoner anywhere and at any time. This searching is often conducted in a wantonly rough and disgusting manner; and if resistance be offered, the man resisting can be knocked down by a blow from the searcher's bludgeon. Inquisitorial vigilance and indiscriminating harshness prevail everywhere, and the lives of hundreds of prisoners are reduced to a continual agony of terror and self-loathing.
“It is impossible, Captain Frere,” said I one day, during the initiation of this system, “to think that these villains whom you have made constables will do their duty.”
He replied, “They must do their duty. If they are indulgent to the prisoners, they know I shall flog 'em. If they do what I tell 'em, they'll make themselves so hated that they'd have their own father up to the triangles to save themselves being sent back to the ranks.”
“You treat them then like slave-keepers of a wild beast den. They must flog the animals to avoid being flogged themselves.”
“Ay,” said he, with his coarse laugh, “and having once flogged 'em, they'd do anything rather than be put in the cage, don't you see!”
It is horrible to think of this sort of logic being used by a man who has a wife, and friends and enemies. It is the logic that the Keeper of the Tormented would use, I should think. I am sick unto death of the place. It makes me an unbeliever in the social charities. It takes out of penal science anything it may possess of nobility or worth. It is cruel, debasing, inhuman.
August 26th.—Saw Rufus Dawes again to-day. His usual bearing is ostentatiously rough and brutal. He has sunk to a depth of self-abasement in which he takes a delight in his degradation. This condition is one familiar to me.
He is working in the chain-gang to which Hankey was made sub-overseer. Blind Mooney, an ophthalmic prisoner, who was removed from the gang to hospital, told me that there was a plot to murder Hankey, but that Dawes, to whom he had shown some kindness, had prevented it. I saw Hankey and told him of this, asking him if he had been aware of the plot. He said “No,” falling into a great tremble. “Major Pratt promised me a removal,” said he. “I expected it would come to this.” I asked him why Dawes defended him; and after some trouble he told me, exacting from me a promise that I would not acquaint the Commandant. It seems that one morning last week, Hankey had gone up to Captain Frere's house with a return from Troke, and coming back through the garden had plucked a flower. Dawes had asked him for this flower, offering two days' rations for it. Hankey, who is not a bad-hearted man, gave him the sprig. “There were tears in his eyes as he took it,” said he.
There must be some way to get at this man's heart, bad as he seems to be.
August 28th.—Hankey was murdered yesterday. He applied to be removed from the gaol-gang, but Frere refused. “I never let my men 'funk',” he said. “If they've threatened to murder you, I'll keep you there another month in spite of 'em.”
Someone who overheard this reported it to the gang, and they set upon the unfortunate gaoler yesterday, and beat his brains out with their shovels. Troke says that the wretch who was foremost cried, “There's for you; and if your master don't take care, he'll get served the same one of these days!” The gang were employed at building a reef in the sea, and were working up to their armpits in water. Hankey fell into the surf, and never moved after the first blow. I saw the gang, and Dawes said—
“It was Frere's fault; he should have let the man go!”
“I am surprised you did not interfere,” said I. “I did all I could,” was the man's answer. “What's a life more or less, here?”
This occurrence has spread consternation among the overseers, and they have addressed a “round robin” to the Commandant, praying to be relieved from their positions.
The way Frere has dealt with this petition is characteristic of him, and fills me at once with admiration and disgust. He came down with it in his hand to the gaol-gang, walked into the yard, shut the gate, and said, “I've just got this from my overseers. They say they're afraid you'll murder them as you murdered Hankey. Now, if you want to murder, murder me. Here I am. Step out, one of you.” All this, said in a tone of the most galling contempt, did not move them. I saw a dozen pairs of eyes flash hatred, but the bull-dog courage of the man overawed them here, as, I am told, it had done in Sydney. It would have been easy to kill him then and there, and his death, I am told, is sworn among them; but no one raised a finger. The only man who moved was Rufus Dawes, and he checked himself instantly. Frere, with a recklessness of which I did not think him capable, stepped up to this terror of the prison, and ran his hands lightly down his sides, as is the custom with constables when “searching” a man. Dawes—who is of a fierce temper—turned crimson at this and, I thought, would have struck him, but he did not. Frere then—still unarmed and alone—proceeded to the man, saying, “Do you think of bolting again, Dawes? Have you made any more boats?”
“You Devil!” said the chained man, in a voice pregnant with such weight of unborn murder, that the gang winced. “You'll find me one,” said Frere, with a laugh; and, turning to me, continued, in the same jesting tone, “There's a penitent for you, Mr. North—try your hand on him.”
I was speechless at his audacity, and must have shown my disgust in my face, for he coloured slightly, and as we were leaving the yard, he endeavoured to excuse himself, by saying that it was no use preaching to stones, and such doubly-dyed villains as this Dawes were past hope. “I know the ruffian of old,” said he. “He came out in the ship from England with me, and tried to raise a mutiny on board. He was the man who nearly murdered my wife. He has never been out of irons—except then and when he escaped—for the last eighteen years; and as he's three life sentences, he's like to die in 'em.”
A monstrous wretch and criminal, evidently, and yet I feel a strange sympathy with this outcast.
The town house of Mr. Richard Devine was in Clarges Street. Not that the very modest mansion there situated was the only establishment of which Richard Devine was master. Mr. John Rex had expensive tastes. He neither shot nor hunted, so he had no capital invested in Scotch moors or Leicestershire hunting-boxes. But his stables were the wonder of London, he owned almost a racing village near Doncaster, kept a yacht at Cowes, and, in addition to a house in Paris, paid the rent of a villa at Brompton. He belonged to several clubs of the faster sort, and might have lived like a prince at any one of them had he been so minded; but a constant and haunting fear of discovery—which three years of unquestioned ease and unbridled riot had not dispelled—led him to prefer the privacy of his own house, where he could choose his own society. The house in Clarges Street was decorated in conformity with the tastes of its owner. The pictures were pictures of horses, the books were records of races, or novels purporting to describe sporting life. Mr. Francis Wade, waiting, on the morning of the 20th April, for the coming of his nephew, sighed as he thought of the cultured quiet of North End House.
Mr. Richard appeared in his dressing-gown. Three years of good living and hard drinking had deprived his figure of its athletic beauty. He was past forty years of age, and the sudden cessation from severe bodily toil to which in his active life as a convict and squatter he had been accustomed, had increased Rex's natural proneness to fat, and instead of being portly he had become gross. His cheeks were inflamed with the frequent application of hot and rebellious liquors to his blood. His hands were swollen, and not so steady as of yore. His whiskers were streaked with unhealthy grey. His eyes, bright and black as ever, lurked in a thicket of crow's feet. He had become prematurely bald—a sure sign of mental or bodily excess. He spoke with assumed heartiness, in a boisterous tone of affected ease.
“Ha, ha! My dear uncle, sit down. Delighted to see you. Have you breakfasted?—of course you have. I was up rather late last night. Quite sure you won't have anything. A glass of wine? No—then sit down and tell me all the news of Hampstead.”
“Thank you, Richard,” said the old gentleman, a little stiffly, “but I want some serious talk with you. What do you intend to do with the property? This indecision worries me. Either relieve me of my trust, or be guided by my advice.”
“Well, the fact is,” said Richard, with a very ugly look on his face, “the fact is—and you may as well know it at once—I am much pushed for money.”
“Pushed for money!” cried Mr. Wade, in horror. “Why, Purkiss said the property was worth twenty thousand a year.”
“So it might have been—five years ago—but my horse-racing, and betting, and other amusements, concerning which you need not too curiously inquire, have reduced its value considerably.”
He spoke recklessly and roughly. It was evident that success had but developed his ruffianism. His “dandyism” was only comparative. The impulse of poverty and scheming which led him to affect the “gentleman” having been removed, the natural brutality of his nature showed itself quite freely. Mr. Francis Wade took a pinch of snuff with a sharp motion of distaste. “I do not want to hear of your debaucheries,” he said; “our name has been sufficiently disgraced in my hearing.”
“What is got over the devil's back goes under his belly,” replied Mr. Richard, coarsely. “My old father got his money by dirtier ways than these in which I spend it. As villainous an old scoundrel and skinflint as ever poisoned a seaman, I'll go bail.”
Mr. Francis rose. “You need not revile your father, Richard—he left you all.”
“Ay, but by pure accident. He didn't mean it. If he hadn't died in the nick of time, that unhung murderous villain, Maurice Frere, would have come in for it. By the way,” he added, with a change of tone, “do you ever hear anything of Maurice?”
“I have not heard for some years,” said Mr. Wade. “He is something in the Convict Department at Sydney, I think.” “Is he?” said Mr. Richard, with a shiver. “Hope he'll stop there. Well, but about business. The fact is, that—that I am thinking of selling everything.”
“Selling everything!”
“Yes. 'Pon my soul I am. The Hampstead place and all.”
“Sell North End House!” cried poor Mr. Wade, in bewilderment. “You'd sell it? Why, the carvings by Grinling Gibbons are the finest in England.”
“I can't help that,” laughed Mr. Richard, ringing the bell. “I want cash, and cash I must have.—Breakfast, Smithers.—I'm going to travel.”
Francis Wade was breathless with astonishment. Educated and reared as he had been, he would as soon have thought of proposing to sell St. Paul's Cathedral as to sell the casket which held his treasures of art—his coins, his coffee-cups, his pictures, and his “proofs before letters”.
“Surely, Richard, you are not in earnest?” he gasped.
“I am, indeed.”
“But—but who will buy it?”
“Plenty of people. I shall cut it up into building allotments. Besides, they are talking of a suburban line, with a terminus at St. John's Wood, which will cut the garden in half. You are quite sure you've breakfasted? Then pardon me.”
“Richard, you are jesting with me! You will never let them do such a thing!”
“I'm thinking of a trip to America,” said Mr. Richard, cracking an egg. “I am sick of Europe. After all, what is the good of a man like me pretending to belong to 'an old family', with 'a seat' and all that humbug? Money is the thing now, my dear uncle. Hard cash! That's the ticket for soup, you may depend.”
“Then what do you propose doing, sir?”
“To buy my mother's life interest as provided, realize upon the property, and travel,” said Mr. Richard, helping himself to potted grouse.
“You amaze me, Richard. You confound me. Of course you can do as you please. But so sudden a determination. The old house—vases—coins—pictures—scattered—I really—Well, it is your property, of course—and—and—I wish you a very good morning!”
“I mean to do as I please,” soliloquized Rex, as he resumed his breakfast. “Let him sell his rubbish by auction, and go and live abroad, in Germany or Jerusalem if he likes, the farther the better for me. I'll sell the property and make myself scarce. A trip to America will benefit my health.”
A knock at the door made him start.
“Come in! Curse it, how nervous I'm getting. What's that? Letters? Give them to me; and why the devil don't you put the brandy on the table, Smithers?”
He drank some of the spirit greedily, and then began to open his correspondence.
“Cussed brute,” said Mr. Smithers, outside the door. “He couldn't use wuss langwidge if he was a dook, dam 'im!—Yessir,” he added, suddenly, as a roar from his master recalled him.
“When did this come?” asked Mr. Richard, holding out a letter more than usually disfigured with stampings.
“Lars night, sir. It's bin to 'Amstead, sir, and come down directed with the h'others.” The angry glare of the black eyes induced him to add, “I 'ope there's nothink wrong, sir.”
“Nothing, you infernal ass and idiot,” burst out Mr. Richard, white with rage, “except that I should have had this instantly. Can't you see it's marked urgent? Can you read? Can you spell? There, that will do. No lies. Get out!”
Left to himself again, Mr. Richard walked hurriedly up and down the chamber, wiped his forehead, drank a tumbler of brandy, and finally sat down and re-read the letter. It was short, but terribly to the purpose.
“THE GEORGE HOTEL, PLYMOUTH,” 17th April, 1846.
“MY DEAR JACK,—
“I have found you out, you see. Never mind how just at present. I know all about your proceedings, and unless Mr. Richard Devine receives his “wife” with due propriety, he'll find himself in the custody of the police. Telegraph, dear, to Mrs. Richard Devine, at above address.
“Yours as ever, Jack,
“SARAH.
“To Richard Devine, Esq., “North End House, “Hampstead.”
The blow was unexpected and severe. It was hard, in the very high tide and flush of assured success, to be thus plucked back into the old bondage. Despite the affectionate tone of the letter, he knew the woman with whom he had to deal. For some furious minutes he sat motionless, gazing at the letter. He did not speak—men seldom do under such circumstances—but his thoughts ran in this fashion: “Here is this cursed woman again! Just as I was congratulating myself on my freedom. How did she discover me? Small use asking that. What shall I do? I can do nothing. It is absurd to run away, for I shall be caught. Besides, I've no money. My account at Mastermann's is overdrawn two thousand pounds. If I bolt at all, I must bolt at once—within twenty-four hours. Rich as I am, I don't suppose I could raise more than five thousand pounds in that time. These things take a day or two, say forty-eight hours. In forty-eight hours I could raise twenty thousand pounds, but forty-eight hours is too long. Curse the woman! I know her! How in the fiend's name did she discover me? It's a bad job. However, she's not inclined to be gratuitiously disagreeable. How lucky I never married again! I had better make terms and trust to fortune. After all, she's been a good friend to me.—Poor Sally!—I might have rotted on that infernal Eaglehawk Neck if it hadn't been for her. She is not a bad sort. Handsome woman, too. I may make it up with her. I shall have to sell off and go away after all.—It might be worse.—I dare say the property's worth three hundred thousand pounds. Not bad for a start in America. And I may get rid of her yet. Yes. I must give in.—Oh, curse her!—[ringing the bell]—Smithers!” [Smithers appears.] “A telegraph form and a cab! Stay. Pack me a dressing-bag. I shall be away for a day or so. [Sotto voce]—I'd better see her myself.—[ Aloud]—Bring me a Bradshaw! [Sotto voce]—Damn the woman.”
Though the house of the Commandant of Norfolk Island was comfortable and well furnished, and though, of necessity, all that was most hideous in the “discipline” of the place was hidden, the loathing with which Sylvia had approached the last and most dreaded abiding place of the elaborate convict system, under which it had been her misfortune to live, had not decreased. The sights and sounds of pain and punishment surrounded her. She could not look out of her windows without a shudder. She dreaded each evening when her husband returned, lest he should blurt out some new atrocity. She feared to ask him in the morning whither he was going, lest he should thrill her with the announcement of some fresh punishment.
“I wish, Maurice, we had never come here,” said she, piteously, when he recounted to her the scene of the gaol-gang. “These unhappy men will do you some frightful injury one of these days.”
“Stuff!” said her husband. “They've not the courage. I'd take the best man among them, and dare him to touch me.”
“I cannot think how you like to witness so much misery and villainy. It is horrible to think of.”
“Our tastes differ, my dear.—Jenkins! Confound you! Jenkins, I say.” The convict-servant entered. “Where is the charge-book? I've told you always to have it ready for me. Why don't you do as you are told? You idle, lazy scoundrel! I suppose you were yarning in the cookhouse, or—”
“If you please, sir.”
“Don't answer me, sir. Give me the book.” Taking it and running his finger down the leaves, he commented on the list of offences to which he would be called upon in the morning to mete out judgment.
“Meer-a-seek, having a pipe—the rascally Hindoo scoundrel!—Benjamin Pellett, having fat in his possession. Miles Byrne, not walking fast enough.—We must enliven Mr. Byrne. Thomas Twist, having a pipe and striking a light. W. Barnes, not in place at muster; says he was 'washing himself'—I'll wash him! John Richards, missing muster and insolence. John Gateby, insolence and insubordination. James Hopkins, insolence and foul language. Rufus Dawes, gross insolence, refusing to work.—Ah! we must look after you. You are a parson's man now, are you? I'll break your spirit, my man, or I'll—Sylvia!”
“Yes.”
“Your friend Dawes is doing credit to his bringing up.”
“What do you mean?”
“That infernal villain and reprobate, Dawes. He is fitting himself faster for—” She interrupted him. “Maurice, I wish you would not use such language. You know I dislike it.” She spoke coldly and sadly, as one who knows that remonstrance is vain, and is yet constrained to remonstrate.
“Oh, dear! My Lady Proper! can't bear to hear her husband swear. How refined we're getting!”
“There, I did not mean to annoy you,” said she, wearily. “Don't let us quarrel, for goodness' sake.”
He went away noisily, and she sat looking at the carpet wearily. A noise roused her. She looked up and saw North. Her face beamed instantly. “Ah! Mr. North, I did not expect you. What brings you here? You'll stay to dinner, of course.” (She rang the bell without waiting for a reply.) “Mr. North dines here; place a chair for him. And have you brought me the book? I have been looking for it.”
“Here it is,” said North, producing a volume of 'Monte Cristo'. She seized the book with avidity, and, after running her eyes over the pages, turned inquiringly to the fly-leaf.
“It belongs to my predecessor,” said North, as though in answer to her thought. “He seems to have been a great reader of French. I have found many French novels of his.”
“I thought clergymen never read French novels,” said Sylvia, with a smile.
“There are French novels and French novels,” said North. “Stupid people confound the good with the bad. I remember a worthy friend of mine in Sydney who soundly abused me for reading 'Rabelais', and when I asked him if he had read it, he said that he would sooner cut his hand off than open it. Admirable judge of its merits!”
“But is this really good? Papa told me it was rubbish.”
“It is a romance, but, in my opinion, a very fine one. The notion of the sailor being taught in prison by the priest, and sent back into the world an accomplished gentleman, to work out his vengeance, is superb.”
“No, now—you are telling me,” laughed she; and then, with feminine perversity, “Go on, what is the story?”
“Only that of an unjustly imprisoned man, who, escaping by a marvel, and becoming rich—as Dr. Johnson says, 'beyond the dreams of avarice'—devotes his life and fortune to revenge himself.”
“And does he?”
“He does, upon all his enemies save one.”
“And he—?” “She—was the wife of his greatest enemy, and Dantès spared her because he loved her.”
Sylvia turned away her head. “It seems interesting enough,” said she, coldly.
There was an awkward silence for a moment, which each seemed afraid to break. North bit his lips, as though regretting what he had said. Mrs. Frere beat her foot on the floor, and at length, raising her eyes, and meeting those of the clergyman fixed upon her face, rose hurriedly, and went to meet her returning husband.
“Come to dinner, of course!” said Frere, who, though he disliked the clergyman, yet was glad of anybody who would help him to pass a cheerful evening.
“I came to bring Mrs. Frere a book.”
“Ah! She reads too many books; she's always reading books. It is not a good thing to be always poring over print, is it, North? You have some influence with her; tell her so. Come, I am hungry.”
He spoke with that affectation of jollity with which husbands of his calibre veil their bad temper.
Sylvia had her defensive armour on in a twinkling. “Of course, you two men will be against me. When did two men ever disagree upon the subject of wifely duties? However, I shall read in spite of you. Do you know, Mr. North, that when I married I made a special agreement with Captain Frere that I was not to be asked to sew on buttons for him?”
“Indeed!” said North, not understanding this change of humour.
“And she never has from that hour,” said Frere, recovering his suavity at the sight of food. “I never have a shirt fit to put on. Upon my word, there are a dozen in the drawer now.”
North perused his plate uncomfortably. A saying of omniscient Balzac occurred to him. “Le grand écueil est le ridicule,” and his mind began to sound all sorts of philosophical depths, not of the most clerical character.
After dinner Maurice launched out into his usual topic—convict discipline. It was pleasant for him to get a listener; for his wife, cold and unsympathetic, tacitly declined to enter into his schemes for the subduing of the refractory villains. “You insisted on coming here,” she would say. “I did not wish to come. I don't like to talk of these things. Let us talk of something else.” When she adopted this method of procedure, he had no alternative but to submit, for he was afraid of her, after a fashion. In this ill-assorted match he was only apparently the master. He was a physical tyrant. For him, a creature had but to be weak to be an object of contempt; and his gross nature triumphed over the finer one of his wife. Love had long since died out of their life. The young, impulsive, delicate girl, who had given herself to him seven years before, had been changed into a weary, suffering woman. The wife is what her husband makes her, and his rude animalism had made her the nervous invalid she was. Instead of love, he had awakened in her a distaste which at times amounted to disgust. We have neither the skill nor the boldness of that profound philosopher whose autopsy of the human heart awoke North's contemplation, and we will not presume to set forth in bare English the story of this marriage of the Minotaur. Let it suffice to say that Sylvia liked her husband least when he loved her most. In this repulsion lay her power over him. When the animal and spiritual natures cross each other, the nobler triumphs in fact if not in appearance. Maurice Frere, though his wife obeyed him, knew that he was inferior to her, and was afraid of the statue he had created. She was ice, but it was the artificial ice that chemists make in the midst of a furnace. Her coldness was at once her strength and her weakness. When she chilled him, she commanded him.
Unwitting of the thoughts that possessed his guest, Frere chatted amicably. North said little, but drank a good deal. The wine, however, rendered him silent, instead of talkative. He drank that he might forget unpleasant memories, and drank without accomplishing his object. When the pair proceeded to the room where Mrs. Frere awaited them, Frere was boisterously good-humoured, North silently misanthropic.
“Sing something, Sylvia!” said Frere, with the ease of possession, as one who should say to a living musical-box, “Play something.”
“Oh, Mr. North doesn't care for music, and I'm not inclined to sing. Singing seems out of place here.”
“Nonsense,” said Frere. “Why should it be more out of place here than anywhere else?”
“Mrs. Frere means that mirth is in a manner unsuited to these melancholy surroundings,” said North, out of his keener sense.
“Melancholy surroundings!” cried Frere, staring in turn at the piano, the ottomans, and the looking-glass. “Well, the house isn't as good as the one in Sydney, but it's comfortable enough.”
“You don't understand me, Maurice,” said Sylvia. “This place is very gloomy to me. The thought of the unhappy men who are ironed and chained all about us makes me miserable.”
“What stuff!” said Frere, now thoroughly roused. “The ruffians deserve all they get and more. Why should you make yourself wretched about them?”
“Poor men! How do we know the strength of their temptation, the bitterness of their repentance?”
“Evil-doers earn their punishment,” says North, in a hard voice, and taking up a book suddenly. “They must learn to bear it. No repentance can undo their sin.”
“But surely there is mercy for the worst of evil-doers,” urged Sylvia, gently.
North seemed disinclined or unable to reply, and nodded only.
“Mercy!” cried Frere. “I am not here to be merciful; I am here to keep these scoundrels in order, and by the Lord that made me, I'll do it!”
“Maurice, do not talk like that. Think how slight an accident might have made any one of us like one of these men. What is the matter, Mr. North?”
Mr. North has suddenly turned pale.
“Nothing,” returned the clergyman, gasping—“a sudden faintness!” The windows were thrown open, and the chaplain gradually recovered, as he did in Burgess's parlour, at Port Arthur, seven years ago. “I am liable to these attacks. A touch of heart disease, I think. I shall have to rest for a day or so.” “Ah, take a spell,” said Frere; “you overwork yourself.”
North, sitting, gasping and pale, smiles in a ghastly manner. “I—I will. If I do not appear for a week, Mrs. Frere, you will know the reason.”
“A week! Surely it will not last so long as that!” exclaims Sylvia.
The ambiguous “it” appears to annoy him, for he flushes painfully, replying, “Sometimes longer. It is, a—um—uncertain,” in a confused and shame-faced manner, and is luckily relieved by the entry of Jenkins.
“A message from Mr. Troke, sir.”
“Troke! What's the matter now?”
“Dawes, sir, 's been violent and assaulted Mr. Troke. Mr. Troke said you'd left orders to be told at onst of the insubordination of prisoners.”
“Quite right. Where is he?” “In the cells, I think, sir. They had a hard fight to get him there, I am told, your honour.”
“Had they? Give my compliments to Mr. Troke, and tell him that I shall have the pleasure of breaking Mr. Dawes's spirit to-morrow morning at nine sharp.”
“Maurice,” said Sylvia, who had been listening to the conversation in undisguised alarm, “do me a favour? Do not torment this man.”
“What makes you take a fancy to him?” asks her husband, with sudden unnecessary fierceness.
“Because his is one of the names which have been from my childhood synonymous with suffering and torture, because whatever wrong he may have done, his life-long punishment must have in some degree atoned for it.”
She spoke with an eager pity in her face that transfigured it. North, devouring her with his glance, saw tears in her eyes. “Does this look as if he had made atonement?” said Frere coarsely, slapping the letter.
“He is a bad man, I know, but—” she passed her hand over her forehead with the old troubled gesture—“he cannot have been always bad. I think I have heard some good of him somewhere.”
“Nonsense,” said Frere, rising decisively. “Your fancies mislead you. Let me hear you no more. The man is rebellious, and must be lashed back again to his duty. Come, North, we'll have a nip before you start.”
“Mr. North, will not you plead for me?” suddenly cried poor Sylvia, her self-possession overthrown. “You have a heart to pity these suffering creatures.”
But North, who seemed to have suddenly recalled his soul from some place where it had been wandering, draws himself aside, and with dry lips makes shift to say, “I cannot interfere with your husband, madam,” and goes out almost rudely.
“You've made old North quite ill,” said Frere, when he by-and-by returns, hoping by bluff ignoring of roughness on his own part to avoid reproach from his wife. “He drank half a bottle of brandy to steady his nerves before he went home, and swung out of the house like one possessed.”
But Sylvia, occupied with her own thoughts, did not reply.