It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 43

"The best ever I had, or ever shall."

"Then tell me."

"I'll try; but it is a long story, and the door is so thick."

"Ah! but I hear you better now. I have got used to your voice.

"Well, sir; but I've no words to speak to you as I ought. Why did I use to tremble when you used to speak kind to me? Sir, when I first came here I hadn't a bad heart. I was a felon, but I was a man. They turned me to a brute by cruelty and wrong. You came too late, sir. It wasn't Tom Robinson you found in that cell. I had got to think all men were devils They poisoned my soul! I hated G.o.d and man!

"The very chaplain before you said good, kind words in church, but out of it he was Hawes' tool! Then you came and spoke good, kind words. My heart ran to meet them; then it drew back all shivering and said, this is a hypocrite, too! I was a fool and a villain to think so for a moment, and perhaps I didn't at bottom, but I was turned to gall.

"Oh, sir! you don't know what it is to lose hope, to find out that do what you will you can't be right, can't escape abuse and hatred and torture. Treat a man like a dog and you make him one!

"But you came. Your voice, your face, your eye were all pity and kindness. I hoped, but I was afraid to hope! I had seen but two things--butchers and hypocrites. Then I had sworn in my despair never to speak again, and I wouldn't speak to you. Fool! How kind and patient you were. Sir, once when you left me you sighed as you closed the cell door.

I came after you to beg your pardon, when it was too late; indeed I did, upon my honor. And when you would rub the ointment on my throat in spite of my ingrat.i.tude, I could have worshipped you; but my pride held me back like an iron hand. Why did I tremble? that was the devil and my better part fighting inside me for the upper hand. And another thing, I did not dare speak to you. I felt that if I did I should give way altogether, like a woman or a child. I feel so now. For, oh! can't you guess what it must be to a poor fellow when all the rest are savage as wolves and one is kind as a woman? Oh! you have been a friend to me. You don't know all you have done. You have saved my life. When you came here a stocking was knotted round my throat; a minute later the man you call your brother--G.o.d bless you--would have been no more. There, I never meant you should know that, and now it has slipped out. My benefactor!

my kind friend! my angel! for you are an angel and not a man. What can I do to show you what I feel? What can I say? There, I tremble all over now as I did then. I'm choking for words, and the cruel, thick door keeps me from you. I want to put my neck under your foot, for I can't speak. All I say isn't worth a b.u.t.ton. Words! words! words! give me words that mean something. They shan't keep me from you, they shan't!

they shan't! My stubborn heart was between us once, now there is only a door. Give me your hand! give me your hand before my heart bursts."

"There! there!"

"Hold it there!"

"Yes! yes!"

"My lips are here close opposite it. I am kissing your dear hand. There!

there! there! I bless you! I love you! I adore you! I am kissing your hand, and I am on my knees blessing you and kissing. Oh, my heart! my heart! my heart!"

There was a long silence, disturbed only by sobs that broke upon the night from the black cell. Mr. Eden leaned against the door with his hand in the same place; the prisoner kissed the spot from time to time.

"Your reverence is crying, too!" was the first word spoken, very gently.

"How do you know?"

"You don't speak, and my heart tells me you are shedding a tear for me; there was only that left to do for me."

Then there was another silence, and true it was that the good man and the bad man mingled some tears through the ma.s.sy door. These two hearts pierced it, and went to and fro through it, and melted in spite of it, and defied and utterly defeated it.

"Did you speak, dear sir?"

"No! not for the world! Weep on, my poor sinning, suffering brother.

Heaven sends you this blessed rain; let it drop quietly on your parched soul, refresh you, and shed peace on your troubled heart. Drop, gentle dew from heaven, upon his spirit; prepare the dry soul for the good seed!"

And so the bad man wept abundantly; to him old long-dried sources of tender feeling were now unlocked by Christian love and pity.

The good man shed a gentle tear or two of sympathy--of sorrow, too, to find so much goodness had been shut up, driven in and wellnigh quenched forever in the poor thief.

To both these holy drops were as the dew of Hermon on their souls.

O lacryrnarum fons tenero sacros Ducentium ortus ex animo; quater Felix in imo qui scatentem Pectore te pia Nynmpha sensit.

Robinson was the first to break silence.

"Go home, sir, now; you have done your work, you have saved me. I feel at peace. I could sleep. You need not fear to leave me now."

"I shall sit here until you are asleep, and then I will go. Do you hear this?" and he scratched the door with his key.

"Yes, sir."

"Well, when I do so and you do not tap in reply I shall know you are asleep."

Robinson, whose heart was now so calmed, felt his eyes get heavier and heavier. After a while he spoke to Mr. Eden but received no reply.

"Perhaps he is dozing," thought Robinson. "I won't disturb him."

Then he composed himself, lying close to the door to be near his friend.

After a while Mr. Eden scratched the door with his key. There was no answer; then he rose softly and went to his own room.

Robinson slept--slept like an infant after this feverish day. His body lay still in a hole dark and almost as narrow as the grave, but his spirit had broken prison. Tired nature's sweet restorer descended like a dove upon his wet eyelids, and fanned him with her downy wings, and bedewed the hot heart and smarting limbs with her soothing, vivifying balm.

At six o'clock Evans went and opened Robinson's cell door. He was on the ground sleeping, with a placid smile on his face. Evans looked down at him with a puzzled air. While contemplating him he was joined by Fry.

"Ugh!" grunted that worthy, "seems to agree with him." And he went off and told Hawes.

Directly after chapel, which he was not allowed to attend, came an order to take Robinson out of the dark cell and put him on the crank.

The disciplinarian, defeated in his attempt on Robinson, was compensated by a rare stroke of good fortune--a case of real refractoriness even this was not perfect, but it answered every purpose.

In one of the labor cells they found a prisoner seated with the utmost coolness across the handle of his crank. He welcomed his visitants with a smile, and volunteered a piece of information--"It is all right."

Now it couldn't be all right, for it was impossible he could have done his work in the time. Hawes looked at the face of the crank to see how much had been done, and lo! the face was broken and the index had disappeared. As Mr. Hawes examined the face of the crank, the prisoner leered at him with a mighty silly cunning.

This personage's name was Carter; it may be as well to explain him. Go into any large English jail on any day in any year you like, you shall find there two or three prisoners who have no business to be in such a place at all--half-witted, half-responsible creatures, missent to jail by shallow judges contentedly executing those shallow laws they ought to modify and stigmatize until civilization shall come and correct them.

These imbeciles, if the nation itself was not both half-witted and a thoughtless, ignorant dunce in all matters relating to such a trifle (Heaven forgive us!) as its prisons, would be taken to the light not plunged into darkness; would not be shut up alone with their no-minds to acc.u.mulate the stupidity that has undone them, but forced into collision with better understandings; would not be closeted in a jail, but in a mild asylum with a school attached.

The offenses of these creatures is seldom theft, hardly ever violence.

This idiot was sentenced to two years' separate confinement for being the handle with which two knaves had pa.s.sed base coin. The same day the same tribunal sentenced a scoundrel who was not an idiot, and had beaten and kicked his wife to the edge of the grave--to fourteen years'

imprisonment? no--to four months.

Mr. Carter had observed that Fry looked at a long iron needle on the face of the crank and that when he had been lazy somehow this needle pointed out the fact to Fry. He could not understand it, but then the world was brimful of things he could not understand one bit. It was no use standing idle till he could comprehend rerum naturam--bother it.

In short, Mr. Carter did what is a dangerous thing for people in his condition to do, he cogitated, and the result of this unfamiliar process was that he broke the gla.s.s of the crank face, took out the index, shied the pieces of gla.s.s carefully over the wall, secreted the needle, took about ten turns of the crank, and then left off and sat down, exulting secretly.

When they came, as usual, and went to consult the accusing needle, he chuckled and leered with foolish cunning. But his chuckle died away into a most doleful quaver when he found himself surrounded, jacketed, strapped and collared. He struggled furiously at first, like some wild animal in a net; and when resistance was hopeless the poor, half-witted creature lifted up his voice and uttered loud, wild-beast cries of pain and terror that rang through the vast prison.

These horrible cries brought all the warders to the spot, and Mr. Eden.

There he found Carter howling, and Hawes in front of him, cursing and threatening him with destruction if he did not hold his noise.