Nevermore

This creature in the repulsive and bizarre habiliments, with cropped head and hairless face as of a patient in a lunatic asylum. Was this really himself? Was this Lance Trevanion? It could not be, unless he had gone mad. Perhaps he had without knowing it; men did not know when they lost their reason, so he had read, or how would they persist in saying they were sane? His head was burning, his eyes darkened, he gasped for breath, and before either warder could save him, fell prone and heavily on the stone floor.

He recovered to find himself in the cell to which he had first been taken. He was sitting upon the two blankets which represented bed and bedding for a hard-labour prisoner, and had been considerately propped up against an angle of the wall. He had been 'under observation' of a warder unconsciously since being carried there. This official was enabled to look in through a small barred aperture for that purpose, placed in the cell door. When the prisoner struggled into consciousness he departed, leaving Lance to realise his position and to compose his thoughts.

Merciful heaven! what thoughts were his! Let those say who have suddenly awakened to the consciousness of crime, not only alleged but legally proved; who as criminals, in spite of denial and protest, have been tried and sentenced. To the awakened knowledge of dishonour fixed, public, irrevocable! A mark for the pity of friends, for the scorn of strangers, for the chuckling triumph of enemies! Up to a certain stage of legal conflict imagination cheats the boding heart with hope of release, victory, sudden good fortune.

But, the verdict once delivered, the sentence pronounced, hope trails her wings and abandons the fated victim; faith permits the lamp to burn so low that a breath of unbelief suffices to extinguish it; charity flees in dismay from frenzied cries and imprecations. Then this is the opportunity of the enemy of mankind. This demon train finds easy entrance into the ruined fortress of the soul. The furies are not idle. Remorse, revenge, jealousy, cruel as the grave, all the unclean and baser spirits ravenous for his soul, forsaken of God and man, as he holds himself to be, gather around the scapegoat of society as the diablotins around the corpse of the physician in Doré's terrible engraving. A carnival of evil, weird and Dantesque, begins in the lonely cell. In that hour, unless his guardian angel has the power to shield him from the dread assault of the lower forces, a transformation, such as was but fabled in old classic days, takes place. The higher qualities, the loftier aspirations, the old beliefs in honour, valour, virtue, and justice take flight for ever, while the brute attributes stalk forth threatening and unchallenged.

Day after day Lance Trevanion performed mechanically his portion of appointed work among the prison herd. To them he spoke no word. When locked up with the rest for the long long solitary night, which commenced before dark and did not end till after sunrise, under gaol rules, he sat brooding over his woes. Stirling had called with printed permission from the visiting justice to see prisoner Trevanion, but he refused to meet him. How could he bear that any of his former friends should look upon him degraded and repulsive of aspect? No! He would never see them more – while in this hateful prison-house at least. Afterwards, if he were living and not turned into a wild beast, he would consider. Friends! How could a man have friends while suffering this degradation?

Towards the warders his demeanour was silent rather than sullen, but he could not be induced by threat or persuasion to affect the respectfulness which is, by regulation, enjoined between prisoners and officials. These last were indifferent, to do them justice, regarding Lance as 'a swell chap as had got it hot, and was a bit off his chump.' The exception to this state of feeling was Bracker, the head warder, who desired to be regarded with awe, and was irritable at the slightest failure of etiquette. His manner, devoid of the faintest trace of sympathy, was harsh and overbearing. To the higher class of prisoners he was especially distasteful, and from this knowledge, or other reason, they were the inmates towards whom he appeared to have the strongest dislike. It may easily be imagined that although the visiting magistrate, to whom is entrusted the duty of trying and punishing all descriptions of prison offences, is presumably impartial, yet it is within the power of any gaol official, if actuated by malicious feelings, to irritate a prisoner to the verge of frenzy, and afterwards to ensure his punishment under form of law. The trial takes place within the walls of the gaol. The warders give their evidence on oath. In a general way they corroborate each other's testimony. It is not difficult to foretell, even though the magistrate be acute and discriminating, how the decision will go. The punishments permitted in prison vary in severity. Confinement in a solitary cell with half rations, or even bread and water, for periods varying from three days to a fortnight, mark the initiatory stage of repression. Then comes the dark cell, an experience which awes the boldest.

After which, for insubordination coupled with unusual violence of speech or action, flogging may be inflicted, if a second magistrate be present at the hearing of the case. This was the code to which Lance Trevanion now found himself amenable. All ignorant of its pains and penalties, he bore himself with a sullen contempt alike of the tasks and routine observances by regulation imposed upon all prisoners. He obeyed, indeed, but with an air of indifference which provoked Bracker, who secretly resolved to 'break' him, as the prison slang goes. To that end he commenced a line of conduct which he had seldom known in his extended experience to fail. More than once, however, in his career, Bracker had been accused of cruelty to prisoners. At the last gaol where he had served the visiting magistrate had come to the conclusion that these repeated charges were not entirely without foundation, and so reporting, his official superior had warned him that if any offence of the kind was proved against him he would be disrated, if not dismissed. It was therefore incumbent on him to be wary and circumspect.

He commenced by speaking roughly to Lance almost every time he entered his cell, compelling him to roll up his blankets several times in succession under the pretence of insufficient neatness, swearing at him when there was no one near, and abusing him as a lazy lubber who wouldn't take the trouble to keep his cell neat and wanted to have a body-servant to wait upon him. Among Mr. Bracker's other engaging qualities was that of being a radical of the deepest dye in politics and a democrat particularly advanced. A child of the masses, he had received just sufficient education to qualify him for a rabid advocacy of certain communistic theories. Arising from this mental enlightenment partly, as well as from the fundamental condition of an envious and malignant nature, was a hatred of privileged orders and an unreasoning spite towards gentle-folk and aristocrats of whatever sex or grade. He had read accounts of the French Revolution and lamented that he had not the power to put in force, in these degenerate days, some of the drastic remedies by which 'the people' of France ameliorated their own condition and wiped out the long score of oppressions which they had suffered at the hands of their natural enemies.

As a man, a politician, and a warder he felt therefore a subtle satisfaction in tormenting a member of the hated class secretly. He felt it due to himself also, as a matter of professional etiquette, not to be 'bested' by a prisoner under sentence. He settled to his daily dole of insult with cruel craft and grim resolve. Such may have actuated a plantation overseer in South Carolina towards a contumacious 'nigger' in the good old slave-holding days before the war.

Daily the 'assistant torturer' pursued his course. Mere oaths and continuous abuse were always carefully timed to be out of earshot of all others. Daily Lance Trevanion endured in silence the varied taunts, the bullying tone, which he had never needed to bear from living man before. Indignant scorn lit up his sad despairing eyes at each fresh provocation. More deeply glowed their smouldering fires, but no word came from the tightly-compressed lips; no gesture told of the well-nigh unendurable mental agony within, of the almost unnatural strain.

'Yes, you may look, – blast you for an infernal stuck-up aristocrat,' Bracker said one morning. 'You know you'd like to rub me out, but you're not game —not game– do you hear that? You and all your breed in the old country, and this too, have been living all your lives on the labour of men like me, and treating us like the dirt under your feet, and you can't salute your superiors like another prisoner. You're too grand, I suppose. But by – , I'll break you down, my fine fellow, before I've done with you. I'll have you on your knees yet. You're not the first that's tried it on with me, and, my word! they paid for it. I'd like you to have seen them knuckle under before I left off dealing with them.'

The next day, on some transparent pretence, Lance was ordered to take up the work of one of the long-sentence prisoners, which involved menial and degrading, not to say disgusting duties. These he performed patiently and mechanically, yet with a far-off look as of a man in a dream. Even this penance was insufficient to appease the malevolence of his tormentor. He made a practice of standing near, watching his victim, enjoying the spectacle of the captive 'swell' engaged for hours in the meanest conceivable employment. From time to time he made brutal jokes upon the situation with his assistant warders or those prisoners who were always ready for personal reasons to take the side of their taskmasters.

After the night's stillness and respite – stillness how oppressive, even terrible in its unbroken silence! – Lance would brace himself to confront anew his bitter fate. He would repeat to himself all the reasons that he could summon for stubborn endurance and patient adherence to the course he had laid down for himself. But with the morning light came his inexorable foe, ordering him here and there, persisting in declaring that he was in the habit of breaking minor regulations, making a laughing-stock of him before other prisoners in every way, driving him along the road which was sure, in Bracker's experience, to land him in some act of overt insubordination.

One morning, after an hour's trial of every species of aggravation, Lance's patience so far failed him that he turned upon his persecutor and told him that no one but a coward would thus treat a man in his position, and who was unable to defend himself or retaliate. He did not say much, but doubtless committed himself to the extent of infringing the gaol regulations, which enjoin respect and obedience to all officials.

His adversary at once seized his advantage, and ordering him back to his cell locked him up, pushing him roughly inside the door. This portion of his duty performed, he lodged a complaint in due form of insubordination against Launcelot Trevanion, hard labour prisoner under sentence.

The gaoler held over the case until the end of the week, when Mr. M'Alpine, as visiting magistrate, regularly attended to hear cases and complaints.

The trial of prisoners charged with such offences is conducted in camera, the magistrate, the gaoler, the parties to the complaint, and the witnesses being only present. For reasons held to be sufficient, the public and the press are excluded. Evidence on oath is taken down in writing, that the depositions may be afterwards referred to. The magistrate decides on the evidence brought before him. The accused is permitted to call witnesses. But for obvious reasons the warders and the companions in captivity of the culprit or complainant constitute necessarily the only available testimony. Thus it is to be feared that occasionally the scales of justice may be deflected, and though forms are adhered to, wrong-doing triumphs and revenge is wreaked.

So, in the present case, Bracker swore positively that Lance had habitually refused to obey orders, and on this occasion had abused and threatened him in language unfit to be repeated. He handed in a paper on which was written a selection of foul expressions of his own invention. His tale was corroborated in part by another warder, who had heard Lance speak in an excited tone of voice to the complainant – though he was not near enough to catch the sense of his words. One of the prisoners – mindful of favours to come – 'swore up' in Bracker's interest, and more circumstantially confirmed his story. Against this weight of evidence Lance's denial availed nothing. His resentful demeanour tended to prejudice Mr. M'Alpine against him as being mutinous and defiant. There was no little difficulty in preserving order among the desperate détenus of the day, as it was. The sternest repression was thought necessary. In view of example and deterrent effect, Lance was therefore sentenced – after an admonition of curt severity – to a month's solitary confinement upon bread and water, the last week to be passed in the dark cell.

The ill-concealed triumph depicted on Bracker's countenance was hard to bear. The solitary cell, the meagre fare, often unduly abridged, represented to a man of Lance's temperament and experiences the extremity of human wretchedness. But a sharper sting was added by Bracker's daily jeers: 'So you won't give a civil answer yet when you're spoke to,' he said, one afternoon, stirring Lance rudely with his foot. 'And you won't stand up when you're told? Wait till to-morrow, when you're due for the dark 'un – seven days and seven nights! That'll bleach you, my flash horse-thief, like a stick of celery! I'll take the steel out of yer before I've done! Bigger chaps than you have been straightened here before now!'

On the next morning, accordingly, Lance was marched to the dark cell, and thrust in so roughly that, weakened as he was by his Lenten diet, he fell down, bruised and half-fainting. There was barely sufficient room in the small circular cell for him to lie at length, and as he regained a sitting posture and strained his eyesight to discover one ray of light amid the almost palpable darkness, he realised fully the utter desolation and horror of his position. Despair took possession of him. Forsaken of God and man, as he deemed himself to be, he raved and blasphemed like a maniac, ceasing only when sheer exhaustion brought on a stupor of insensibility, from which he passed into perturbed and fitful slumbers.

He awoke only to undergo with partially renewed faculties still keener miseries. Unaware of the time which he had passed in sleep, he was ignorant whether it was day or night. No sound penetrated the thick walls of the cell. The Cimmerian gloom was unrelieved by the faintest pencil of light. Had he been dead and entombed he could not have been more utterly separated from knowledge of the outer world – from communion with the living. Days seemed to have passed since he first entered the cell. His brain throbbed. His heart-beats were plainly audible to him in the horrible silence. Delirious fancies commenced to assail him. He saw his father's form as he had last seen it, with visage stern and inflexible. He seemed to say: 'All that I foresaw has come to pass. You have dishonoured an ancient name! – blotted a stainless escutcheon! Die, and make no sign!'

Then his cousin Estelle's sweet face came slowly out of the gloom, gazing upon him with sorrowful, angelic pity. The infinite tenderness, the boundless compassion of love, shone in her starry eyes, which, in his vision, commenced to irradiate the gloomy vault. Clearer grew the outlines of her form – a celestial brightness appeared to render visible every outline of her form, every lineament of her countenance, as she inclined herself as if to raise him from his recumbent position. He threw up his arms with a cry of joyous recognition. The action appeared to recall his wandering senses. The impenetrable dungeon gloom again closed over him like a descending iron platform. A steel band appeared to compress and still more tightly environ his brain, until a deathlike swoon terminated simultaneously both agony and sensation.

CHAPTER XIV

When Lance issued from the dark cell and was relegated to ordinary confinement, he fully justified Bracker's anticipations in one respect. He was 'bleached,' as that official had described the change of complexion likely to result. His face was ashen white, his eyes had a vacant stare like those of a blind man. He staggered from weakness, so that the warders were fain to hold him up more than once. When addressed he made no answer. It seemed as if his senses had suffered partial obliteration. Bracker was not present when his victim was returned to his cell after serving the full term of punishment. The other warders, who had no special dislike to him, were indulgent rather than otherwise in their treatment and comments.

'You're a bit low, Trevanion,' one of them said; 'I'd ask to see the doctor if I were you, and get sent to hospital for a week or two. He'll order you wine, and soup, and things. You'll be slipping your cable like that other chap Bracker got into trouble about, if you don't mind.'

Lance made no reply. He sat down slowly and doubtfully upon the folded blankets at the farther end of the cell, steadying himself with difficulty against the angle of the wall.

'Now, you take my tip,' said the elder of the two men to his fellow as they left, after bolting the cell door with the clang inseparable from prison life, 'that chap will do one of three things before a month's out. Bracker's been running him too hard. He's a well-bred 'un, and they won't stand driving. He'll either die, go mad, or – '

'Or what?' said the younger man.

'Well, Bracker had better look out. Some fine morning he'll have Trevanion's fingers in his throat, and he mayn't find it so easy to get 'em slacked off again. I've known that happen before now. And when the chap was choked off it didn't matter to Dawkins. He was the warder. It happened when I was at the stockade.'

'Why didn't it matter?'

'Because Dawkins was dead! The chap laughed when they dragged him off, and said they might do what they liked with him. He'd settled Dawkins, and that was all he cared for in the world. They might hang him now, and welcome.'

'And did they?'

'Of course they did, but we old hands knew Dawkins had been tantalising him; it was a way of his with some prisoners, and this cove made up his mind to rub him out. He got him to rights, safe enough.'

'Hadn't we better tell Bracker?'

'What for? He thinks he knows everything, and wouldn't thank us. Likely think we'd been putting up something to get his place. Let him take his chance like another man.'

When the medical officer saw Lance he ordered his immediate removal to the hospital ward. He said the prisoner was dangerously low and feeble; that his health had suffered more than could be accounted for; and that there were certain bruises and excoriations which could not have been produced in any ordinary way. He spoke kindly to Lance, and advised him to follow his treatment and diet marked out for him, and to be more cheerful and resigned if he wished to get well and come safely through his imprisonment.

'You're only a young man, Trevanion,' he would say. 'After this couple of years are out there is nothing to prevent your going to the United States, or to any other part of the world where people have never heard of you, of Ballarat – hardly of Australia, for that matter. And what a deal of life there is to come for you – the best part too. Take courage and make up your mind to bear the necessary hardship of your sentence, and look forward to the day when you will go forth a free man.'

Whether acted upon by this well-meant advice, or following out some course of action nurtured like the fungus of a dungeon in the dark depths of his brooding heart, a change took place in the sullen captive's mien. He seemed thankful for the 'medical comforts' doled out to him, and availed himself of them readily. He listened respectfully to the chaplain and gaol surgeon, and when, after a fortnight's treatment in the hospital ward, he was reported fit for the ordinary discipline of the gaol, the warders with one exception declared that they would not have known him to be the same man.

The ordinary routine of prison life is scarcely calculated to develop the finer feelings in the keepers of the wild beasts in human form over whom they hold watch and ward. Boundless dissimulation, craft and subtlety, tameless ferocity, ruthless cruelty, are their leading characteristics. Apparently peaceable and harmless, theirs is but the guile of the red Indian or the dark-souled Hindoo, biding his time until the hour comes for murder and rapine. Let but the keeper relax vigilance; let the sentinel slumber at his post, and mutiny and murder are prompt to unmask. Still, with this knowledge drilled into them by decades of experience, the ordinary prison officials are just if not merciful, strict but not severe; while their own discipline is so rigorous that any departure from regulations is sternly and invariably visited on the offending official.

Bracker was an exception – for the credit of the department it must be admitted that he was the only man in that great prison-house who would have acted as he did towards any prisoner, however vexatious.

As Lance passed into his cell he saw his oppressor watching him with the expression he knew so well. He was not long left in suspense.

'Didn't Saunders complain of not being strong enough for the wood and water work, Jackson?'

'Yes, sir,' replied the under warder.

'Well, take this man here and put him in his place. He's fat and lazy enough after his loafing in the hospital to do a little work again.'

'This way, Trevanion,' said the warder. 'You've got to work in the lower yard.'

As he passed Bracker their eyes met for an instant.

'You're not worked down yet, my man,' said Bracker, with an insolent laugh. 'Wait till you've had another month's graft where I'm going to put ye. "Jimmy Ducks" aboard an emigrant ship's a fool to it.'

Lance drew himself up for an instant and looked full into his tormentor's face. The cruel cowardly eyes fell for a moment before the gaze of the patrician, degraded and despairing as he was. Then the warder quietly pushed him on.

'Don't cross him, if you take my advice,' he said. 'He's a devil all out when he goes for a prisoner, and I never knew one that didn't come off worst in the end. You lie low for a bit and give him his head. The doctor's your friend now, and he'll see he doesn't crowd you.'

Lance nodded his head in recognition of the kindness of the man's intention, then silently commenced his laborious and uncongenial task. When he returned to his cell at night worn out and exhausted by the unwonted toil, hardly recovered indeed from the pitiable weakness to which he had been reduced, he swore a bitter oath and then and there registered an unholy vow.

From that hour he awaited but opportunity to wreak a full measure of vengeance upon his adversary. He felt his strength declining day by day. Daily did he endure the cheap taunt, the cruel mockery, the ingenious expedients, by which Bracker sought to intensify his misery. But a single chance he would yet give to him, if he had the manhood to accept it.

One morning he addressed him with the usual salute.

'I wish to speak a few words to you, and before I do so I wish you to understand that I mean no – no – disrespect – '

'Speak and be d – d,' was Bracker's courteous rejoinder.

'It is only this. You have been what the people here would call "running me," – that is, putting me to work above my strength, insulting me habitually as well. Why you should do so is best known to yourself. I can't stand it much longer. If you will leave off this line of conduct and treat me fairly, like any other prisoner, I will promise on my part to – to – behave well and reasonably. Don't decide in a hurry – it may cost both our lives.'

Bracker laughed aloud. He stopped to look at Lance more than once, then he laughed as at too exquisite a joke. It was the mockery of a fiend exulting in the agonies of a demon-tortured soul.

He misconceived the situation. He concluded that his captive's courage had failed him; that henceforth he would be able to treat him with the contemptuous cruelty with which he was wont to finish his persecutions. He triumphed in his foresight, and could not forbear showing a cowardly exultation.