It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 75

"I play to win. I am playing for human lives. This, sir, is the torture, marks of which you have seen on the prisoners; but your inexperience will not detect at a glance all the diabolical ingenuity and cruelty that lurks in this piece of linen and these straps of leather. However, it works thus: The man being in the jacket its back straps are drawn so tight that the sufferer's breath is impeded, and his heart, lungs and liver are forced into unnatural contact. You stare. I must inform you that Nature is a wonderfully close packer. Did you ever unpack a human trunk of its stomach, liver, lungs and heart, and then try to replace them? I have; and, believe me, as no gentleman can pack like a shopman, so no shopman can pack like Nature. The victim's body and organs being crushed these two long straps fasten him so tight to the wall that he cannot move to ease the frightful cramps that soon attack him. Then steps in by way of climax this collar, three inches and a half high.

See, it is as stiff as iron, and the miscreants have left the edges unbound that it may do the work of a man-saw as well as a garotte. In this iron three-handed gripe the victim writhes and sobs and moans with anguish, and, worse than all, loses his belief in G.o.d."

"This is a stern picture," said Mr. Lacy, hanging his head.

"Until what with the freezing of the blood in a body jammed together and flattened against a wall--what with the crushed respiration and the cowed heart a deadly faintness creeps over the victim and he swoons away!"

"Oh!"

"It is a lie--a base, malignant lie!" shouted Hawes.

"I am glad to hear it, Mr. Hawes."

Here the justices with great beat joined in and told Mr. Lacy he would be much to blame if he accepted any statement made against so respectable a man as Mr. Hawes. Then they all turned indignantly on Mr.

Eden. That gentleman's eyes sparkled with triumph.

"I have been trying a long time to make him speak, but he was too cunning. It is a lie, is it?"

"Yes, it is a lie."

"What is a lie?"

"The whole thing."

"Give me your book, Mr. Hawes. What do you mean by 'the punishment-jacket,' an entry that appears so constantly here in your handwriting?"

"I never denied the jacket."

"Then what is the lie of which you have accused me? Show me--that I may ask your pardon and His I serve for so great a sin as a lie."

"It is a lie to say that the jacket tortures the prisoners and makes them faint away; it only confines them. You want to make me out a villain, but it is your own bad heart that makes you think so or say so without thinking it."

"Now, Mr. Lacy, I think we have caught our eel. This, then, is the ground you take; if it were true that this engine, instead of merely confining men, tortured them to fainting, then you say you would be a villain. You hesitate, sir; can't you afford to admit that, after all?"

"Yes, I can."

"But on the other hand you say it is untrue that this engine tortures?"

"I do."

"Prove that by going into it for one hour. I have seen you put a man in it for six."

"Now, do you really think I am going to make myself a laughing-stock to the whole prison?"

"Well, but consider what a triumph you are denying yourself to prove me a liar and yourself a true man. It would be the greatest feat of dialects the world ever saw; and you need not stand on your dignity--better men than you have been in it, and there goes one of them. Here, Evans, come this way. We want you to go into the punishment-jacket." The man recoiled with a ludicrous face of disgust and dismay. Mr. Lacy smiled.

"Now, your reverence, don't think of it. I don't want to earn no more guineas that way."

"What does he mean?" asked Mr. Lacy.

"I gave him a guinea to go into it for half an hour, and he calls it a hard bargain."

"Oh, you have been in it, then? Tell me, is it torture or is it only confinement?"

"Con-finement! con-found such confinement, I say. Yes, it is torture and the worst of torture. Ask his reverence, he has been in the oven as well as me."

Mr. Lacy opened his eyes wide.

"What!" said he, with a half grin, "have you been in it?"

"That he has, sir," said Evans, grinning out in return. "Bless you, his reverence is not the one to ask a poor man to stand any pain he daren't face himself."

"There, there, we don't want to hear about his reverence," said his reverence very sharply. "Mr. Hawes says it is not torture, and therefore he won't face it. 'It is too laughable and painless for me,' says slippery Mr. Hawes. 'It _is_ torture, and therefore I won't face it,'

says the more logical Mr. Evans. But we can cut this knot for you, Mr. Lacy. There are in this dungeon a large body of men so steeped in misery, so used to torture for their daily food, that they will not be so nice as Messrs. Hawes and Evans. 'Fiat experimentum in corpore vili.'

Follow me, sir; and as we go pray cast your eyes over the prison rules, and see whether you can find 'a punishment-jacket.' No, sir, you will not find even a Spanish collar, or a pillory, or a cross, far less a punishment-jacket which combines those several horrors."

Mr. Hawes hung back and begged a word with the justices. "Gentlemen, you have always been good friends to me--give me a word of advice, or at least let me know your pleasure. Shall I resign--shall I fling my commission in this man's face who comes here to usurp your office and authority?"

"Resign! Nonsense!" said Mr. Williams. "Stand firm. We will stand by you, and who can hurt you then?"

"You are very good, sirs. Without you I couldn't put up with any more of this--to be baited and badgered in my own prison, after serving my queen so many years by sea and land."

"Poor fellow!" said Mr. Woodc.o.c.k.

"And how can I make head against such a man as Eden--a lawyer in a parson's skin, an orator too that has a hundred words to say to my one?"

"Let him talk till he is hoa.r.s.e, we will not let him hurt you."

"Thank you, gentlemen, thank you. Your wishes have always been my law.

You bid me endure all this insolence; honored by your good opinion, and supported by your promise to stand by me, I will endure it." And Mr.

Hawes was seen to throw off the uneasiness he had put on to bind the magistrates to his defense.

"They are coming back again."

"Who is this with them?"

Mr. Hawes muttered an oath. "It is a refractory prisoner I had sent to the dark cell. I suppose they will examine him next, and take his word against mine."

(Chorus of Visiting Justices.) "Shame!"

CHAPTER XXV.

MR. EDEN had taken Mr. Lacy to the dark cells. Evans, who had no key of them, was sent to fetch Fry to open them. "We will kill two birds with one stone--disinter a patient for our leathern gallows, and a fresh incident of the ---- Inquisition. Open this door, Mr. Fry."

The door was opened. A feeble voice uttered a quavering cry of joy that sounded like wailing, and a figure emerged so suddenly and distinctly from the blackness that Mr. Lacy started. It was Thomas Robinson, who crept out white and shaking, with a wild, haggard look. He ran to Mr.

Eden like a great girl. "Don't let me go back--don't let me go back, sir!" And the cowed one could hardly help whimpering.