The World's Greatest Books - Volume 7 Part 12

_IV.--Into Smooth Waters_

Exhilarated by freedom, Alfred began to nurse aspiring projects; he would indict his own father and the doctor, and wipe off the stigma they had cast on him. Meantime, he would cure David and restore him to his family. They bowled along towards blue water with a perfect sense of security. But at Folkestone, David disappeared, and Alfred, hearing as he ran wildly all over the place that there was "another party on the same lay"--the mad gentleman's wife--took the first train to London, dispirited and mortified. David was in good hands, however, and Alfred had glorious work on hand--love and justice.

He at once put his affairs into a lawyer's hands, and thought of love alone. After a violent encounter with his late keepers and a narrow escape from capture, in the midst of Elysium with Julia, her mother returned in despair. David had completely disappeared. Again these lovers were separated, and again Edward's commonsense came to the rescue. Alfred went back to Oxford to read for his first cla.s.s, and Julia to her district visiting, while the terrible delays of the law went on. Alfred had begun to believe trial by jury would never be allowed him, and when at last, after many postponements, the trial did come on, he was being examined in the schools, and refused to come till his counsel had actually opened the case. Mr. Thomas Hardie, Alfred's uncle, was the defendant, for it was proved he had authorised Alfred's arrest.

A detective had been employed to find Mr. Barkington, a little man in Julia's district, whom the lawyers suspected might be useful; and when the trial was half over, he led them all in great excitement to the back slums of Westminster. Mr. Barkington, _alias_ Noah Skinner, was wanted by another client of his.

The room was full of an acrid vapour, and a mummified figure sat at the table, dead this many a day of charcoal fumes; in his hand a banker's receipt to David Dodd, Esq., for 14,000. The lawyer was handing it to Julia, having just found a will bequeathing all Skinner had in the world to her, with his blessing, when a solemn voice said: "No; it is mine."

A keen cry from Julia's heart, and in an instant she was clinging round her father's neck. Edward could only get at his hand. Instinct told them Heaven had given them back their father, mind and all.

Alfred Hardie slipped out, and ran like a deer to tell Mrs. Dodd.

Husband and wife met alone in Mrs. Dodd's room. No eyes ventured to witness a scene so strange, so sacred.

They all thought in their innocence that Hardie _v_. Hardie was now at an end, with Captain Dodd ready to prove Alfred's sanity; but the lawyer advised them not to put the captain to the agitation of the witness-box.

Mr. Thomas Hardie, the defendant, won the case for Alfred by admitting in the witness-box that his brother Richard had declared that "if you don't put Alfred in a madhouse, I will put you in one."

The jury found for the plaintiff, Alfred Hardie, and gave the damages at 3,000. The verdict was received with acclamation by the people, and in the midst of this Alfred's lawyer announced that the plaintiff had just gained his first cla.s.s at Oxford.

Mr. Richard Hardie restored the 14,000, and a few years later died a monomaniac, believing himself penniless when he possessed 60,000.

Alfred married Julia, and, with the consent of his wife, took his father to live with them. Then Alfred determined to pay in full all who had been ruined by the bank failure, and in time the old bank was reopened with Edward Dodd as managing partner. In the end, no creditor of Richard Hardie was left unpaid. Alfred went in for politics and became an M.P.

for Barkington; whence to dislodge him I pity anyone who tries.

It Is Never Too Late to Mend

"It is Never Too Late to Mend, a Matter-of-Fact Romance,"

published in 1856, is, like "Hard Cash," a story with a purpose, the object in this instance being to ill.u.s.trate the abuses of prison discipline in England and Australia. Many of the pa.s.sages describing Australian life are exceptionally vivid and imaginative, and exhibit Charles Reade, if not in the front rank of novelists of his day, at least occupying a high position.

_I.--In Berkshire_

George Fielding, a.s.sisted by his brother William, tilled The Grove--as nasty a little farm as any in Berkshire. It was four hundred acres, all arable, and most of it poor, sour land. A bad bargain, and the farmer being sober, intelligent, proud, sensitive, and unlucky, is the more to be pitied.

Susanna Merton was beautiful and good; George Fielding and she were acknowledged lovers, but latterly old Merton had seemed cool whenever his daughter mentioned the young man's name.

William Fielding, George's brother, was in love with his brother's sweetheart, but he never looked at her except by stealth; he knew he had no business to love her.

While George Fielding had been going steadily down-hill, till even the bank declined to give him credit, Mr. Meadows, who had been a carter, was, at forty years of age, a rich corn-factor and land surveyor.

This John Meadows was not a common man. He had a cool head, and an iron will; and he had the soul of business--method.

Meadows was generally respected; by none more than by old Merton. In fact, it seemed to Merton that John Meadows would make a better son-in-law than George Fielding.

The day came when a distress was issued against Fielding's farm for the rent, and as it happened on that very day Susan and her father had come to dinner at The Grove. Old Merton, knowing how things stood, spoke his mind to George.

"You are too much of a man, I hope, to eat a woman's bread; and if you are not, I am man enough to keep the girl from it. If Susan marries you she will have to keep you instead of you her."

"Is this from Susanna, as well as you?" said George, with a trembling lip.

"Susan is an obedient daughter. What I say she'll stand to."

This was blow number two for George Fielding. The third stroke on that day was the arrest of Mr. Robinson who had been staying at The Grove as a lodger. Mr. Robinson dressed well, too well, perhaps, but somehow the rustics wouldn't accept him for a gentleman. George had taken a great liking to his lodger, and Mr. Robinson was equally sincere in his friendship for Fielding. And now it turned out that the fools who had disparaged Robinson were right, and he, George Fielding, wrong. Before his eyes, and amidst the grins of a score of gaping yokels, Thomas Robinson, alias Scott, a professional thief, was handcuffed and carried off to the county gaol.

This finished George. An invitation to go out to Australia with the younger son of a neighbouring landowner, hitherto disregarded, was now accepted.

Old Merton approved the decision, and when his daughter implored him not to let George go, he replied plainly, to both of them:

"Susan! Mayhap the lad thinks me his enemy, but I'm not. My daughter shall not marry a bankrupt farmer, but you bring home a thousand pounds--just one thousand pounds--to show me you are not a fool, and you shall have my daughter, and she shall have my blessing." And the old farmer gave George his hand upon it.

Meadows exulted, thinking, with George in Australia, he could secure his own way with Susan and old Merton. He had forgotten one man; old Isaac Levi, of whom he had made an implacable enemy, by insisting on his turning out of the house where he lived. Meadows, having bought the house, intended to live in it himself, and treated the prayers and entreaties of the old Jew with contempt. Only the interference of George Fielding, on the day of his own ruin, had saved old Levi from personal violence at the hands of Meadows; and so while George was sinking under the blows of fortune, he had made a friend in Isaac Levi.

Before George sailed William promised that he would think no more of Susan as a sweetheart.

"She's my sister from this hour--no more, no less," he declared. "And may the red blight fall on my arm and my heart if I or any man takes her from you--any man! Sooner than a hundred men should take her from you while I am here I'd die at their feet a hundred times."

William kept his eye on Meadows, but Meadows soon had William in his clutches. For John Meadows lent money upon ricks, waggons, leases, and such things, to farmers in difficulties, employing as his agent in these transactions a middle-aged, disreputable lawyer named Peter Crawley--a cunning fool and a sot.

First William Fielding, and then old Merton were heavy debtors to Peter Crawley, that is to John Meadows; for Merton, a solid enough farmer, was beguiled into rash and ruinous speculations by a friend of Meadows'.

And now George Fielding is gone to Australia to make a thousand pounds by farming and cattle-feeding, so that he may marry Susan. Susan, at home, is often pensive and always anxious, but not despondent. Meadows is falling deeper and deeper in love, but keeping it jealously secret; on his guard against Isaac Levi, and on his guard against William; hoping everything from time and accidents, and from George's incapacity to make money; and watching with keen eye and working with subtle threads to draw everybody into his power who could a.s.sist or thwart him in his object. William Fielding is going down the hill, Meadows was mounting; getting the better of his pa.s.sion, and gradually subst.i.tuting a brother-in-law's regard. Within eighteen months William was happily married to another farmer's daughter in the neighbourhood.

_II.--In Gaol_

Under Governor Hawes the separate and silent system flourished in ---- gaol, and the local justices entirely approved the system. In the view of Hawes and the justices severe punishment of mind and body was the essential object of a gaol.

Now Tom Robinson had not been in gaol these four years, and though he had heard much of the changes in gaol treatment, they had not yet come home to him. When, therefore, instead of being greeted with the boisterous acclamations of other spirits as bad as himself, he was ushered into a cell white as driven snow, and his duties explained to him, the heavy penalty he was under should a speck of dirt ever be discovered on the walls or floor, Thomas looked blank and had a misgiving. To his dismay he found that the silent cellular system was even carried out in the chapel, where each prisoner had a sort of sentry-box to himself, and that the hour's promenade for exercise conversation was equally impossible.

The turnkeys were surly and forbidding, and the hours dragged wearily to this active-minded prisoner. Robinson was driven to appeal to the governor to put him on hard labour.

"We'll choose the time for that," said the governor, with a knowing smile. "You'll be worse before you are better, my man."

On the tenth day Robinson tried to exchange a word with a prisoner in chapel, and for this he was taken to the black-hole.

Now Robinson was a man of rare capacity, full of talent and the courage and energy that show in action, but not rich in the fort.i.tude that bears much. When they took him out of the black-hole, after six hours'

confinement, he was observed to be white as a sheet, and to tremble violently all over.