Into the Highways and Hedges Part 56

No, it ain't for that, nor for the sake of the stuff you talk. I've heard all that before. But you had a fine chance to pay me out for the game I started in the yard; and you didn't take it--quite contrariwise; and _that_ sticks in my throat, for I tell you I felt pretty sick when the doctor, d----n him, called _you_ in."

"Why, man, what did you suppose I'd do?" said Barnabas. "Ye needn't be grateful to me for not behaving like a devil."

In his most unregenerate days he could never have revenged himself in cold blood on a defenceless and suffering creature. The idea was so utterly abhorrent to him that he felt disgusted at the suggestion, and even at the grat.i.tude that took for granted that he might have been tempted in such wise.

Hopping Jack laughed hoa.r.s.ely, and said he knew what he'd have done if he'd got a cove who'd broken his ribs under his thumb. But, apparently, from that hour he looked upon the preacher as belonging to a different species, and placed in him an implicit trust that was not without pathos.

When the time of the sessions drew near he became alternately wildly flighty and deeply despondent,--the former being his ordinary condition, the latter only occasional.

He was superst.i.tious, and had a deep-seated belief in luck, which had failed him of late; when the despondent phase was on, he became rather dangerous both to himself and to others.

Physical pain added largely to his depression, for he still suffered from the injury to his eye. Barnabas felt the responsibility, that always drove him to do his utmost, doubly great, because this waggish scamp, who was the approved "funny man" of Newgate, evinced at times a strong, almost dog-like affection for him. But Jack was not the only one among all that miserable crew who appealed strongly to Barnabas Thorpe's ruling pa.s.sion to "save".

After all, the reckless licence, the apparently brutal callousness, and shameful blasphemy that reigned in the wards were heightened and partially excused by the fact that half these men felt the shadow of the gallows on them; with such a spectre in the corner they drank deep and laughed loudly, lest it should grow too plain. "Oh, it ain't come to that _yet_," one of them said, shuddering, in answer to an entreaty of the preacher to pause and think. "I ain't got to the thinkin' time."

Yet, on the whole, Barnabas influenced them. The prison chaplain had given up the press yard as a bad job; but then the chaplain had a good many interests which were quite as important to him as the "converting"

of sinners. Barnabas was a man of one idea: even where the woman he loved was concerned, he would have deliberately advised her to lay down her bodily life, as she had laid down her position and worldly wealth, if that could, by any possibility, have seemed necessary for the furtherance of Christ's kingdom; and his extreme singleness of aim told, as it always must, whether the aim is high or low. It is possible indeed that his very limitations made him the more effective. The men who see many sides of a question are chary of spilling their blood. The liberal-minded philosophers have their place in the world, but they can't rescue those who are sinking; they can only explain why they sink--which, no doubt, is equally useful.

Those Newgate sermons were preached with the intense fervour of one who believed that the "night was soon coming" for many of his hearers. But the constant strain on mind and body was growing more evident: the preacher was no longer the man he had been when he had first entered Newgate, and protested so vigorously against the iniquities of the press yard; he had grown quite grey in these three months, and his broad shoulders were bowed.

Dr. Merrill was moved to violent indignation on the subject. It was sheer waste of the most magnificent const.i.tution he had ever come across, he said; and Barnabas Thorpe was innocent. Barnabas himself was not indignant; his was not the sort of nature that turns sour in adversity. He generally took things simply, with few questionings as to the why and wherefore; but the hopefulness that had characterised him as to his own prospects rather failed about this time.

"It's allus afore seemed to me most like that I'd get what I wanted, for I used to feel somehow that there was such a deal o' pushin' power in wanting," he said once. "Two months back I hadn't a doubt but what I'd be proved clear; but I doan't know now. Arter all, when I come to think, I've never had what I've most set my heart on for my own sake, though I've been helped in my work. Some people want sunshine, and some are coa.r.s.er natured, maybe, and best managed t'other way. Happen I won't be proved innocent; happen I'm the sort as is best without much satisfaction. But it seems as if that 'ud be hard on my wife, for she's quite a different make to me, and a much finer; and I can't somehow think as _she_ needs sorrow. My poor little la.s.s! she's had enough."

The very tone of the remark showed how the natural buoyant spirit had been knocked out of him; though his pa.s.sion for working in season and out of season was even stronger than before.

He was gentler than he had been; and the most miserable turned to him with an instinctive hope that the mercy of heaven might possibly, after all, be as deep as the mercy of this man, even if equally uncompromising. He saw Margaret seldom now. He often was not fit to stand at the grating; and, moreover, he feared that these unsatisfactory meetings were almost more pain than pleasure to his darling.

Early in November, Hopping Jack, together with three accomplices, was tried, and condemned to death; but while the sentence of hanging was recorded oftener then than it is at present, there was also a greater probability of getting off. In nine cases out of ten the sentence was successfully appealed against; and the tenth man probably suffered the extreme penalty as an "example," at times when there was a scare about the especial sin he was condemned for.

Unfortunately for Jack, the crime in which he had been taken red-handed was rife just then; and the public hot against that cla.s.s of evil-doers.

The agony of suspense was consequently sharp enough; and Barnabas in his heart hoped that a juster judge than any earthly one would not hold the poor wretch guilty for the mad outbreaks that characterised this awful time of waiting for the result of the appeal. Surely no one had the right to inflict a six weeks' torture of uncertainty! He succeeded with much difficulty in getting Jack off an imprisonment in the dark cell. He felt convinced that the dark would drive the man out of his remaining senses. After that, he held himself accountable for Jack's vagaries, and very frequently managed to restrain them. The doctor, at the preacher's earnest entreaty, declared the culprit an "unfit subject" for solitary confinement in utter darkness.

"Though, mind you, he's an equally 'unfit subject' for a.s.sociation with his fellows in the light," he remarked to Barnabas. "They'd much better put him out of the world as soon and as quickly as possible. He's one of nature's mistakes, and you had better not have mercy on mistakes, Thorpe, as you ought to know." A piece of advice that had been given before, with equal want of effect!

The wardsman liked Barnabas none the better for this second interference; but it did not at first occur to the preacher that he was being purposely ill-treated when his food was scantier than it ought to have been, when his gruel was handed to him in a pail, instead of a basin, and when he was carefully excluded from a share of the fire.

When he did discover that these paltry revenges were constant and unremitting, and likely to continue, unless he paid the ward dues, he took no notice of them. There was, certainly, a strong vein of the family obstinacy in Barnabas, and he wasn't going to "give in" to an illegal extortion simply because he was rather colder, hungrier, and more uncomfortable than need be.

The worst days of Newgate, when a gaoler could actually torture or flog a rebellious prisoner, were happily past, and he had too much st.u.r.dy pride to complain to the authorities of such mean and petty indignities as he endured, but they probably affected his broken health; and that November was bitterly cold.

He had never in his life before suffered from weather; but he suffered terribly now, both by day and night. The rugs that covered the men were never washed, and he had resolved to prefer comparative cleanliness and cold to unmitigated dirt, and was very angry with his own softness for feeling the frost, "like a woman". Indeed, in his ordinary health it would have done him no harm; but, unfortunately, his bones had not recovered from the violent handling they had received, and he lay awake pretty constantly with racking rheumatic pains in them, and began to stoop like a man of sixty.

At last, towards the end of the month, his turn came.

The case had roused wide interest, both actors in it having already, in widely different ways, made a certain amount of sensation in London. The court was full, and the crowd outside dense.

More than one glance was directed curiously at the preacher's wife, who stood among the spectators, and was quite unconscious of criticism or interest, whether kindly or adverse. Margaret stood between Tom Thorpe and Dr. Merrill; but her whole attention was concentrated on Barnabas.

This sea of upturned faces was nothing to her.

George Sauls, looking over the heads of the crowd, caught a glimpse of her, and bit his lip with a sensation of sharp pain, and of something very like envy. He would almost have exchanged places with the prisoner, if by so doing he could make that one woman look at him thus with all her soul in her eyes. That which he could not have, that which would never be his, seemed to him at that moment to loom large and clear, to be the only reality in a world of shadows. He told himself that he was mad, quite mad, and that it was lucky for him that his madness could take no effect. He told himself that this woman was only like other women; that even if her heart could be turned to him by some magic, if he could give all his ambitions and all his wealth in exchange for her, he would wake, when his dream should be over, and regret the bargain. He told himself that he knew what this was made of; that he had been "in love" before now. But the odd part of it was that he did _not_ know.

If the wickedness of our own hearts sometimes takes us by surprise, so, I think, does their goodness. Mr. Sauls had a const.i.tutional dislike to mysteries, and preferred thinking about what he could understand; but there were elements in his love for Meg which would astonish him yet.

Meanwhile, this story that the counsel for the prosecution was telling was not a particularly pleasant one for Mrs. Thorpe to hear; though it was absolutely necessary that it should be told. George Sauls'

expression grew stolid and impenetrable as he listened. He was already low in her estimation. Very well: she should have the satisfaction of knowing that her estimate was right, and _he_ would have the satisfaction of seeing Barnabas Thorpe hang.

The counsel dwelt on the enmity that had existed between the prosecutor and the prisoner,--an enmity that he described as being, on the prisoner's side, pa.s.sionate and unrestrained, and almost bordering on monomania. He should call two witnesses to the fact of Barnabas Thorpe's having already attempted Mr. Sauls' life fifteen years before this last outrage. He spoke of that scene in the churchyard where not even the presence of death had availed to quell the prisoner's mad pa.s.sion.

Neither the futility of such a wild act of vengeance, nor the indecency of brawling over a newly made grave, had had power to restrain him then: the same violent impulse had evidently possessed him again in later life, when no friendly hands were present to hold him back. He went on to describe how the two men had met again in the hay-field, where the preacher had denounced Mr. Sauls as "unfit to sit at table with Mrs.

Thorpe," and when Mr. Sauls had suggested that the preacher had better try to "bring him to repentance" when Mrs. Thorpe was not by. A farm labourer, who would be called to give evidence, had overheard that interview.

Then he told how Mr. Sauls had started on his walk to N----town, following a track that lay across the marshes. This track led only to Caulderwell Farm, and was little frequented. He was followed by his enemy. Mr. Sauls openly acknowledged that he had done his best, on this occasion, to provoke a quarrel. He had demanded an explanation of the words that the preacher had used in the hay-field, and had asked tauntingly whether Barnabas Thorpe only preached "when sheltered by petticoats". Close on this scene followed the tragic and nearly fatal crime for which Barnabas Thorpe stood arraigned. The preacher and Mr.

Sauls had parted in anger; Mr. Sauls had gone but a short distance when he was struck to the ground by a blow on the back of his head. Mr. Sauls did not see his a.s.sailant, but the facts of the case spoke for themselves. Crimes of violence were rare in that part of the country.

Mr. Sauls was a stranger in N----town. He was not aware that any man, with the exception of the preacher, bore him, or had reason to bear him, a grudge. Whoever had struck the blow had meant to kill, and had all but accomplished the fulfilment of his desire. Tom Thorpe, who had found the prosecutor unconscious and hurt nigh to death, and the doctor who was in attendance on him, would be called as witnesses.

The prisoner listened to the speech for the prosecution with a curiously composed air. Once only, when the counsel described the meeting on the marsh, his brows contracted with momentary anxiety. A minute later he raised his head and looked hard at George Sauls. He was glad that that gentleman had had the grace to keep Margaret's name out of the affair.

His eyes met his accuser's, and, oddly enough, for a single moment, in the midst of this trial, which was for the life of one of them, these two were of the same mind.

When the witnesses for the prosecution were called, the prisoner's interest seemed to lapse. He nodded rea.s.suringly to poor old Giles, who was heartbroken at having to give evidence against him, but otherwise he paid little heed to what was going on. He was physically exhausted, which partly accounted for his apathy, and he had made up his mind to let things take their course. He had absolutely refused to allow Margaret to employ counsel on his behalf, but he had very little fear as to the result of the trial. His defence was in "the hands of the Lord"; he would "bide quiet," and leave it there. Meg had found it vain to attempt to shake this resolution. Barnabas had a prejudice against lawyers, and his prejudices were not easily removed, but he had also a more reasonable ground for refusing their aid. He hated half measures, and felt that there was little use in telling half a story, while he was bound in honour not to tell the whole. In the absence of counsel, he made one short and trenchant remark on his own behalf.

"If I had meant to kill Mr. Sauls, there'd ha' been no need for me to come behind an' hit i' th' dark," he said. "I should ha' done it face to face, for I was a bit th' stronger o' th' two then; an', if ye ask him, he'll bear me out there. I'm not generally scared o' fair fighting."

There was a little hastily suppressed murmur in the court at the last words.

The story of the middle yard had somehow got about. No one doubted the truth of that last statement. The man's voice was low and his speech as short as could well be, but his bowed shoulders and whitened hair spoke for him. Margaret turned to the red-haired doctor with a proud smile on her white lips.

"They'll _have_ to believe him," she said; and the doctor laughed grimly. "He had better have all Newgate into the witness box!"

But indeed there was no need for the denizens of Newgate to testify to the preacher's character. Honest men there were in plenty who were more than ready with their evidence. Barnabas called three only; but one of the most distinctive features of the trial was the crowd of would-be witnesses who clamoured outside the police court, begging, and sometimes threatening in their eagerness, "to say a word" for the accused. "I know that the preacher never murdered any one or tried to--why? 'Cos he cured my baby when it was chokin' with croup; and I've trudged seven miles to say so," said one draggled, tired-out woman, who could not be persuaded to see that her baby's life had no possible connection with the case.

"Ye've tuk oop th' wrong soart, an' I've summat to say to th' judge abeawt th' preacher. Thae knows he tented me through the black fever an'----What? ye won't let me in? The judge is a fule man!" cried a st.u.r.dy and irate countryman, who was convinced that his not being allowed to storm the witness box was a proof of the gross miscarriage of justice. Men actually fought to get into the already over-crowded court.

The testimony as to the preacher's character from east and west and north and south was simply overpowering.

Margaret lingered to shake hands with more than one friend of the preacher's when she left the heated court at the end of the first day of the trial.

"When my husband is free again, he will thank you himself," she said.

And the men drew back to let her pa.s.s, with little murmurs of sympathy.

Tom Thorpe was still on one side of her, and the prison doctor on the other.

"Ye'd better get out o' this as quick as ye can," Tom cried; but Meg, who usually shrank from contact with strangers, was in no hurry now. The shouts for Barnabas and the groans for Mr. Sauls made her blood tingle.

The sharp anxiety at her heart hurt less when she was in the midst of those excited partisans. She had smiled bravely whenever Barnabas had looked at her, but the sight of him had awakened a pa.s.sion of indignation that she dreaded being alone with. She wished she could have stayed in the midst of a crowd till the second day's trial should begin. Tom was excited too; his deep-set eyes were glowing, and he hurried her on almost roughly.

"Look 'ee," he said, "I'm thinking some o' those lads as came wi' me 'ull mayhap gi'e Mr. Sauls a warm welcome when he comes out; an' I'd like to see it! Just get clear o' th' scrimmage, an' then I'll go back.

Lord bless ye! I've been too kind to that gentleman; but now I've seen our lad's face----" His voice choked.

Meg looked first at him, and then at the knot of L----shire men who stood by the door, and whose "warm welcome" was waiting for George Sauls. She felt instinctively that it would be of no avail to plead with Tom. She turned round and caught hold of the doctor; who had, she knew, been kind to her husband.