For the Term of His Natural Life Part 56

Sylvia was compelled to smile at the compliment, made in the presence of some twenty prisoners, who were carrying the various trunks and packages up the hill, and she remarked that the said prisoners grinned at the Commandant's clumsy courtesy. "I don't like Captain Burgess, Maurice,"

she said, in the interval before dinner. "I dare say he did flog that poor fellow to death. He looks as if he could do it."

"Nonsense!" said Maurice, pettishly; "he's a good fellow enough.

Besides, I've seen the doctor's certificate. It's a trumped-up story. I can't understand your absurd sympathy with prisoners."

"Don't they sometimes deserve sympathy?"

"No, certainly not--a set of lying scoundrels. You are always whining over them, Sylvia. I don't like it, and I've told you before about it."

Sylvia said nothing. Maurice was often guilty of these small brutalities, and she had learnt that the best way to meet them was by silence. Unfortunately, silence did not mean indifference, for the reproof was unjust, and nothing stings a woman's fine sense like an injustice. Burgess had prepared a feast, and the "Society" of Port Arthur was present. Father Flaherty, Meekin, Doctor Macklewain, and Mr.

and Mrs. Datchett had been invited, and the dining-room was resplendent with gla.s.s and flowers.

"I've a fellow who was a professional gardener," said Burgess to Sylvia during the dinner, "and I make use of his talents."

"We have a professional artist also," said Macklewain, with a sort of pride. "That picture of the 'Prisoner of Chillon' yonder was painted by him. A very meritorious production, is it not?"

"I've got the place full of curiosities," said Burgess; "quite a collection. I'll show them to you to-morrow. Those napkin rings were made by a prisoner."

"Ah!" cried Frere, taking up the daintily-carved bone, "very neat!"

"That is some of Rex's handiwork," said Meekin. "He is very clever at these trifles. He made me a paper-cutter that was really a work of art."

"We will go down to the Neck to-morrow or next day, Mrs. Frere," said Burgess, "and you shall see the Blow-hole. It is a curious place."

"Is it far?" asked Sylvia.

"Oh no! We shall go in the train."

"The train!"

"Yes--don't look so astonished. You'll see it to-morrow. Oh, you Hobart Town ladies don't know what we can do here."

"What about this Kirkland business?" Frere asked. "I suppose I can have half an hour with you in the morning, and take the depositions?"

"Any time you like, my dear fellow," said Burgess. "It's all the same to me."

"I don't want to make more fuss than I can help," Frere said apologetically--the dinner had been good--"but I must send these people up a 'full, true and particular', don't you know."

"Of course," cried Burgess, with friendly nonchalance. "That's all right. I want Mrs. Frere to see Point Puer."

"Where the boys are?" asked Sylvia.

"Exactly. Nearly three hundred of 'em. We'll go down to-morrow, and you shall be my witness, Mrs. Frere, as to the way they are treated."

"Indeed," said Sylvia, protesting, "I would rather not. I--I don't take the interest in these things that I ought, perhaps. They are very dreadful to me."

"Nonsense!" said Frere, with a scowl. "We'll come, Burgess, of course."

The next two days were devoted to sight-seeing. Sylvia was taken through the hospital and the workshops, shown the semaph.o.r.es, and shut up by Maurice in a "dark cell". Her husband and Burgess seemed to treat the prison like a tame animal, whom they could handle at their leisure, and whose natural ferocity was kept in check by their superior intelligence.

This bringing of a young and pretty woman into immediate contact with bolts and bars had about it an incongruity which pleased them. Maurice penetrated everywhere, questioned the prisoners, jested with the gaolers, even, in the munificence of his heart, bestowed tobacco on the sick.

With such graceful rattlings of dry bones, they got by and by to Point Puer, where a luncheon had been provided.

An unlucky accident had occurred at Point Puer that morning, however, and the place was in a suppressed ferment. A refractory little thief named Peter Brown, aged twelve years, had jumped off the high rock and drowned himself in full view of the constables. These "jumpings off" had become rather frequent lately, and Burgess was enraged at one happening on this particular day. If he could by any possibility have brought the corpse of poor little Peter Brown to life again, he would have soundly whipped it for its impertinence.

"It is most unfortunate," he said to Frere, as they stood in the cell where the little body was laid, "that it should have happened to-day."

"Oh," says Frere, frowning down upon the young face that seemed to smile up at him. "It can't be helped. I know those young devils. They'd do it out of spite. What sort of a character had he?"

"Very bad--Johnson, the book."

Johnson bringing it, the two saw Peter Brown's iniquities set down in the neatest of running hand, and the record of his punishments ornamented in quite an artistic way with flourishes of red ink

"20th November, disorderly conduct, 12 lashes. 24th November, insolence to hospital attendant, diet reduced. 4th December, stealing cap from another prisoner, 12 lashes. 15th December, absenting himself at roll call, two days' cells. 23rd December, insolence and insubordination, two days' cells. 8th January, insolence and insubordination, 12 lashes.

20th January, insolence and insubordination, 12 lashes. 22nd February, insolence and insubordination, 12 lashes and one week's solitary. 6th March, insolence and insubordination, 20 lashes."

"That was the last?" asked Frere.

"Yes, sir," says Johnson.

"And then he--hum--did it?"

"Just so, sir. That was the way of it."

Just so! The magnificent system starved and tortured a child of twelve until he killed himself. That was the way of it.

After luncheon the party made a progress. Everything was most admirable.

There was a long schoolroom, where such men as Meekin taught how Christ loved little children; and behind the schoolroom were the cells and the constables and the little yard where they gave their "twenty lashes".

Sylvia shuddered at the array of faces. From the stolid nineteen years old b.o.o.by of the Kentish hop-fields, to the wizened, shrewd, ten years old Bohemian of the London streets, all degrees and grades of juvenile vice grinned, in untamable wickedness, or snuffed in affected piety.

"Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven," said, or is reported to have said, the Founder of our Established Religion. Of such it seemed that a large number of Honourable Gentlemen, together with Her Majesty's faithful commons in Parliament a.s.sembled, had done their best to create a Kingdom of h.e.l.l.

After the farce had been played again, and the children had stood up and sat down, and sung a hymn, and told how many twice five were, and repeated their belief in "One G.o.d the Father Almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth", the party reviewed the workshops, and saw the church, and went everywhere but into the room where the body of Peter Brown, aged twelve, lay starkly on its wooden bench, staring at the gaol roof which was between it and Heaven.

Just outside this room, Sylvia met with a little adventure. Meekin had stopped behind, and Burgess, being suddenly summoned for some official duty, Frere had gone with him, leaving his wife to rest on a bench that, placed at the summit of the cliff, overlooked the sea. While resting thus, she became aware of another presence, and, turning her head, beheld a small boy, with his cap in one hand and a hammer in the other.

The appearance of the little creature, clad in a uniform of grey cloth that was too large for him, and holding in his withered little hand a hammer that was too heavy for him, had something pathetic about it.

"What is it, you mite?" asked Sylvia.

"We thought you might have seen him, mum," said the little figure, opening its blue eyes with wonder at the kindness of the tone. "Him!

Whom?"

"Cranky Brown, mum," returned the child; "him as did it this morning. Me and Billy knowed him, mum; he was a mate of ours, and we wanted to know if he looked happy."

"What do you mean, child?" said she, with a strange terror at her heart; and then, filled with pity at the aspect of the little being, she drew him to her, with sudden womanly instinct, and kissed him. He looked up at her with joyful surprise. "Oh!" he said.

Sylvia kissed him again.

"Does n.o.body ever kiss you, poor little man?" said she.