A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time

They walked in the direction of that portion of the parade-ground which was marked, in great white letters, "34 gang," with the broad arrow beneath. Near to this stood a building composed chiefly of wood and iron, and marked in similar letters "E Hall." They entered a corridor that led to an open landing in the shape of a many-sided polygon, each side being a door. In the middle of the landing there was an iron circular staircase that led to landings above and below. A warder paraded the open space, which was lighted by gas-jets.

"Hush! Look," said the doctor, standing by the peep-hole in one of the doors, and at the same time putting out the gas-jet that burned on the door-jamb.

Hugh Ritson approached, and at first he could see nothing in the darkness. But he heard a curious clanking noise from within. Then the glimmer of a feeble candle came through the bars, and he saw a box-like apartment, some seven feet long by four feet broad and eight feet high. It was a punishment cell. There was a shelf at the opposite end, and a tin wash-basin stood on it.

On the side of the door there must have been a similar shelf, on which the candle burned. A broom, a can, and a bowl were on the brick floor. There was no other furniture except a hammock swung from end to end, and the convict was lying in it at this moment. It could be seen that a heavy chain was fastened with riveted rings around each ankle, and linked about the waist by a strap. At every movement this chain clanked; night and day it was there; if the prisoner shifted in his sleep, its grating sound broke on the silence of the cell, and banished the only sunshine of his life, the sunshine of his dreams. His head was back to the door so that the light of the candle burning on the shelf might fall on a slate which rested on his breast. Though he occupied a punishment cell he was writing, and Hugh Ritson's quick eyes could decipher the words: "Oh, that it would please God to destroy me; that He would but loose His hand and cut me off! Oh, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" He paused in his writing and pecked like a bird at a hard piece of bread beside him.

Hugh Ritson fell back, and as his infirm foot grated along the floor, the convict started and turned his face. It was a blank, pale face, full of splendid resolution and the nobility of suffering, but without one ray of hope.

"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.

But Hugh Ritson's eyes were on the ground, and he made no answer.

They went to church. The civil guard was drawn up under the gallery with loaded rifles. Eight hundred convicts attended service; some of them were penitent; most of them were trying to make a high profession of contrition as a bid for the good graces of the chaplain. The obtrusive reverence of one sinister gray-head near at hand attracted Hugh Ritson's especial attention. He knelt with his face to the gallery in which the choir sat. Beside him was a youth fresh from Millbank. The hoary sinner was evidently initiating the green hand into the mysteries of his new home. He was loud in his responses, but his voice had a trick of dropping suddenly to a whispered conference.

"Who's the fat 'un in the choir? A chap as is doing his ten. His missis chared to keep the kids, and one morning early he popped the old girl's shoes."

The voice of the chaplain interrupted further explanation; but after another loud response the old rascal's mouth was twisted awry with the words:

"He's a wide 'un, he is – seat in the choir got comfortable cushions. Besides, he gets off Saturday morning's work for practicing – got no more voice nor a corn-crake."

Evidently it was no disadvantage here to be the greatest of vagabonds. When a cadaverous old Jew came hobbling up the aisle with his gang, the gray-head whispered, with awe:

"It's old Mo; he's in the stocking gang; but I did business with him when he could ha' sent old Rothschild home for a pauper."

At one moment the attention of the green hand was arrested by a tall man in the black and gray that indicated a convict who had attempted to escape.

"Says he's in for twenty thousand, but it's a lie," whispered the old man; "he only knocked a living out of the religious fake."

The last of the conference that Hugh Ritson overheard was a piece of touching advice.

"Them as 'as any pluck in 'em turns savage, same as B 2001; them as 'asn't, knocks under, same as me; and I says to you, knock under."

After service the sacrament was celebrated. There must have been many hundreds of communicants, all humble in their piety. It could be noticed that the chaplain had sometimes to keep a tight grip of the goblet containing the wine.

That night Hugh Ritson lodged at the doctor's quarters. He did not lie, but, as on the night before, he walked the long hours through, steadfastly resisting every temptation to sleep. At five in the morning he heard the great bell at the gate ring for two minutes, and, shortly afterward, the tramp, tramp, tramp of many feet under his window. The convicts, to the number of fifteen hundred, were drawn up on the parade-ground. They looked chill in the cold light of early morning; their gray jackets lay loose on their spare shoulders; their hands hung inertly at their sides, and they walked with the oscillating motion of men whose feet were sore in their heavy boots. The civil guard was drawn up, the chief warder whistled, and then the men fell out into gangs of twenty-five each, attended by an assistant warder.

"Rear rank, take two paces to the right – march."

Then the tramp, tramp again. As the outside gangs passed through the gate, each officer in charge received his rifle, bayonet, belt, and cartridge-box from the armorer at the lodge. The stone-dressing gang passed close under the window, and Hugh Ritson reeled back as one of the men – a stalwart fellow in a blue cap, who was walking abreast of a misshapen creature with a face full of ferocity – lifted his eyes upward from the file.

At eight o'clock the governor appeared at his receiving-office. He was a slight man with the face and figure of a greyhound. His military frock-coat was embossed with Crimean medals, and he was redolent of the odor of Whitehall. He received Hugh Ritson's papers with a curious mixture of easy courtesy and cold dignity – a sort of combination of the different manners in which he was wont to bow to a secretary of state and condemn a convict to the chain and bread and water.

"The men are back to breakfast at nine," he said. "Watkins," to the chief warder, "have B 2001 brought round to the office immediately 34 gang returns."

Hugh Ritson had left the receiving-office and was crossing the parade-ground when a loud hubbub arose near the lodge.

"The boat!" shouted twenty voices, and a covey of convicts ran in the direction of a shed where an eight-oar boat was kept on the chocks. "A man has mizzled – run a wagon into the sea and is drifting down the race."

How the demons laughed, how they cursed in jest, how they worked, how luminous were their eyes and haggard faces at the prospect of recapturing one of their fellow-prisoners who had tried to make his escape! Every convict who helped to catch a fugitive was entitled to a remission of six days. The doctor took Hugh Ritson up on to the lead flat that covered his quarters. From that altitude they could see over the prison wall to the rocky coast beyond. Near the ruins of the old church a gang of convicts were running to and fro, waving their hands, and shouting in wild excitement.

"It's gang 34," said the doctor, "Jim-the-ladder's gang."

The sun had risen, the sea was glistening in its million facets, and into many a rolling wave a sea-bird dipped its corded throat. In the silvery water-way there was something floating that looked as if it might have been a tub. It was the wagon that the convict had driven into the water for a boat.

"It will sink – it's shod with thick hoops of iron," said the doctor.

The convict could be seen standing in it. He had thrown off his coat and cap, and his sleeveless arms were bare to the armpits. The civil guard ran to the cliff and fired. One shot hit. The man could be seen to tear the coarse linen shirt from his breast and bind it above the wrist.

"Why does he not crouch down?" said Hugh Ritson: he did not know who this convict was, but in his heart there was a feverish desire that the prisoner should escape.

"He's a doomed man – he's in the race – it's flowing hard, and he'll drift back to the island," said the doctor.

Half an hour later a posse of the civil guard, with two assistant warders, brought the recaptured fugitive into the governor's receiving-office. The stalwart fellow strode between the warders with a firm step and head erect. He wore no jacket or cap, and on one bare arm a strip of linen was roughly tied. His breast was naked, his eyes were aflame, and save for a black streak of blood across the cheek, his face was ashy pale. But that man was not crushed by his misfortunes; he seemed to crush them.

"Take that man's number," said the governor.

"Ay, take it, and see you take it rightly," said the convict.

"It's B 2001," said the chief warder.

The governor consulted a paper that lay on his table.

"Send for the gentleman," he said to an attendant. "It's well for you that you are wanted by the law officers of the Crown," he added, turning to the prisoner.

The convict made no answer; he was neither humble nor sullen; his manner was frank but fierce, and made almost brutal by a sense of wrong.

The next moment Hugh Ritson stepped into the office. His eyes dropped, and his infirm foot trailed heavily along the floor. He twitched at his coat with nervous fingers; his nostrils quivered; his whole body trembled perceptibly.

"This is the man," said the chief warder, with a deferential bow.

Hugh Ritson tried to raise his eyes, but they fell suddenly. He opened his lips to speak, but the words would not come. And meantime the wet, soiled, naked, close-cropped, blood-stained convict, flanked by armed warders, stood before him with head erect and eyes that searched his soul. The convict rested one hand on his hip and pointed with the other at Hugh Ritson's abject figure.

"What does this man want with me?" he said, and his voice was deep.

At that Hugh Ritson broke in impetuously:

"Paul, I will not outrage your sufferings by offering you my pity."

The officers looked into each other's faces.

"I want none of your pity!" said the convict, bitterly.

"No; it is I who need yours," said Hugh Ritson, in a low tone.

The convict laughed a hard laugh, and turned to the warders.

"Here, take me away – I've had enough of this."

"Listen. I have something to say to you – something to do for you, too."

The convict broke afresh into a laugh.

"Take me away, will you?"

"What if I say I am sorry for the past?" said Hugh.

"Then you are a hypocrite!" the convict answered.

Hugh Ritson drew himself up, and took his breath audibly. In one swift instant his face became discolored and his features pinched and rigid. There was silence, and then in a low, broken tone, he said:

"Paul, you know well what sort of a man I am; don't drive me too hard. I have come here to do you a service. Remember your sufferings – "

Once again the convict broke into a cold laugh.

"Remember that others – one other – may be suffering with you."

The convict's haughty look fled like a flash of light.

"Here, take me out of this," he muttered in a low, hoarse voice. He took a step back, but the guard closed around him. "I won't stand to listen to this man. Do you hear? I won't listen," he said hotly; "he has come to torture me – that's all!"

"I have come to undo what I have done," said Hugh. "Paul, let me undo it. Don't rouse the bad part of me at this crisis of your life and mine."

The convict paused, and said more quietly:

"Then it's your policy to undo it."

Hugh Ritson flinched. The words had gone to his heart like a spear. If he had dared to mask his motive, that thrust would have left it naked.

"I will not wrong the truth by saying I am a changed man," he answered meekly. "My motive is my own; but my act shall be all in all to you."

The convict's face lightened.

"You have used me for your vengeance," he said; "you shall not use me for your contrition also. Guards, let me out – let me out, I tell you!"

The governor interposed:

"When you leave this room you go direct to the cells."

"Ay, take me to your cells, and let me lie there and die and rot," said the convict.

"Take him away," said the governor.

"Paul, I beseech you to hear me!" cried Hugh, amid the clanking of the arms of the guard.

"Take him away!" the governor shouted again.

An hour after, B 2001 was recalled to the receiving-office. He was quiet enough now.

"We have an order respecting you from the Secretary of State," said the governor. "You are required to give evidence at a trial. At two o'clock you leave Portland for Cumberland, and your guard goes with you."

The convict bent his head and went out in silence.

CHAPTER XV

Paul Ritson – let him be known by his official number no more – was not taken to the punishment cells. He was set to work with the stone-dressing gang stationed near the gate of the prison. The news of his attempt to escape had not spread more rapidly than rumors of his approaching departure.

"I say," shouted a hoary convict, "take a crooked message out?"

"What's your message?"

"On'y a word to the old girl telling her where she'll find a bunch of keys as she wants partic'lar."

"Write her yourself, my man."

"What, and the governor read it, and me get a bashing, and the crushers pinch the old moll? Well, I am surprised at ye; but I forgot, you're a straight man, you are."

A mocking laugh followed this explanatory speech.

A young fellow with a pale, meek face and the startled eyes of a hare crept close up to where Paul Ritson worked, and took a letter out of one of his boots.

"This is the last I had from home," he said, quietly, and put the letter into Paul's hands.

It was a soiled and crumpled paper, so greasy from frequent handlings and so much worn by many foldings that the writing could scarcely be deciphered. Home? It was dated from the Union of Liverpool, and had come from his invalid wife and his children, all living there.

The poor fellow could not read, but he had somehow learned the letter by heart, and was able to point out each bit of family history in the exact place where it was recorded.

He had lost his class privileges, and was not allowed to reply; and now he wanted to know if Paul Ritson could get down to Liverpool and see his wife and little ones, and tell them how well he was, and how lusty he looked, and what fine times he had of it – "just to keep up their spirits, you know."

"I say, you sir," bawled a sinister gray-head – the same whose conversation was overheard in church – "I hear as you're a employer of labor when yer not lagged. Any chance? I wants to leave my sitivation. Long hours, and grub reg'lar onsatisfactory. Besides, my present employer insists on me wearing a collar with a number – same as a wild beast or a bobby. It's gettin' ridic'lus. So I've give notice, and I flit in September. Maybe ye see as I'm growing my wings to fly." The hoary sinner pointed upward to his grizzly hair, which was longer than the hair of his comrades. "On'y it's coming out another tint o' awrburn nor what it was ten years ago, and the old woman won't have the same pride in my pussonal appearance."

At two o'clock the assistant warder known as Jim-the-ladder marched Paul Ritson to the chief warder's office. There the convict was handcuffed and the warder armed. Then they set out.

On the steamboat that plied between the Portland Ferry and Weymouth the convict dress attracted much attention. The day was some sort of chapel festival, and great numbers of chapel people in holiday costume crowded the decks and climbed the paddle-boxes; the weather was brilliant; the sun danced on the waters like countless fairies on a floor of glass; a brass band played on the bridge.

Again at the Weymouth railway station the people gathered in little groups, and looked askance at the convict. During the few minutes which elapsed before the train left the platform, a knot of spectators stood before the carriage and peered in at the window.

Paul Ritson paid little heed to these attentions, but they were often unwelcome enough. "Keep clear of him – see the blue cap?" "What an ill-looking fellow – to be sure, his looks are enough to hang him."

Paul laughed bitterly. His heart felt cold within him at that moment. If he had worn broadcloth and a smile, how different the popular verdict might have been. Who then would have said that he was a villain? Certainly not yonder sleek minister of Christ who was humming a psalm tune a moment ago, and paused to whisper, "Be sure your sin will find you out." The black-coated Pharisee was handing a lady into a first-class carriage.

The train started. Paul threw himself back in his seat, and thought of all that had occurred since he made this journey before. He was traveling in the other direction then, and what an agony was that first experience of convict life! He had never thought of it from that day to this.

Other and more poignant memories had day after day obliterated the recollection of that experience. But it came back now as freshly as if it had all occurred yesterday. He was one of a gang of twenty who were traveling from Millbank to Dartmoor. The journey to Waterloo in the prison van had been a terrible ordeal. He had thought in the cells that it would be nothing to him if people in the streets recognized him. The shameful punishment of an innocent man was not his, but the law's disgrace.

Yet, when he was marched out into the prison grounds abreast of a cadaverous wretch with shrunken brows and the eyes of a hawk, an old thief in front of him, and a murderer convicted of manslaughter treading on his heels, the cold sweat burst in great beads from his forehead.

He had meant to hold up his head, and if people looked into his face to look frankly back into their faces. But when his turn came he leaped into the van, and his chin buried itself in his breast.

Then the crowds drawn up on the pavement outside as the gates rolled back and the van passed through; the crush in a busy thoroughfare when the van stopped to let a line of crowded omnibuses go by; the horrible scene at the station when the convicts were marched down the platform, and every ear was arrested by the tramp, tramp of twenty fettered men!

Above all, the jests and the laughter of the older hands who had served their time before, and were superior to all small considerations of public shame! "I say, you with the gig-lamps, toss a poor devil a bit o' 'bacco." "Seen us afore? In coorse you have. You in the white choker, look hard while yer at it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to suppress such jesting.

Paul Ritson could not forbear to laugh aloud when he remembered with what an agony of sweat he had that day crept back into his seat.

Times had changed since then. He had spent a year and a half in a government school, and had been educated out of all torturing delicacy.

The warder attempted to draw him into conversation. Jim-the-ladder repeatedly protested that he bore no malice. "I'm a good fellow at bottom," he said more than once, and Paul Ritson showed no malice. But he laughed bitterly at a grim and an obvious thought that the warder's dubious words suggested. Failing in his efforts at conciliation, the warder charged his pipe and relapsed into a long silence.

They had a compartment to themselves. At a station where the train stopped a man opened the door and had already put one foot into the carriage when he recognized the caste of his traveling companions. He disappeared in a twinkling. Paul Ritson did his best to restrain the anger that well-nigh choked him. He merely sent a ringing laugh after the retreating figure. At another station a police inspector, dressed in a little brief authority, caught sight of the blue cap and gray jacket, and bustled up to examine the warder's papers. Then, with a lofty look, he strode through the group of spectators whom his presence had attracted.

Arrived at Waterloo, the warder hailed a cab, and they drove to Scotland Yard to report themselves. There they supped on cocoa and brown bread, with the addition of a rasher of bacon and a pipe for the warder. Thence they were driven to Euston to catch the nine-o'clock train to Penrith.

The journey north was uneventful. At Rugby, Stafford, and elsewhere, the train stopped, and little groups of people looked in at the convict, and made apposite comments on his appearance, crime, and condition. Paul Ritson often shut his eyes and said nothing. Sometimes a sneer curled his lip, sometimes he burst into a bitter laugh. He was thinking that this was a fitting close to the degradation of his prison life. If one feeling of delicacy, one tender sentiment, one impulse of humanity remained to him when the gates of Portland closed behind him; it only required this cruel torture to crush it forever.

In spite of the risk of dismissal and the more immediate danger at the hands of Paul Ritson, the warder coiled himself up and fell asleep. It was after midnight when they reached Crewe, and from that point of the journey the worst of the torment ceased. Their merciful fellow-men were mostly in bed, dreaming of heroic deeds that they were doing. But the silence of night had its own torture. As the train rumbled on through the darkness, now rattling in a long tunnel, now sliding into open air like a boat into still water, Paul Ritson's mind went back to the day which seemed now to be so far away that it might have belonged to another existence, when he traveled this road with the dear soul who had trusted her young and cloudless life to his keeping. Where was she now? Peace be with her, wheresoever she was! He recalled her tenderest glance, he seemed to hear her softest tone; the light pressure of her delicate fingers was now on his hands – the hard hands that wore the irons. And even at that moment, when all his soul went out to the pure young wife who had shared his sufferings, and he felt as if time and space were nothing, as if he had drawn her to him by the power of his yearning love, it seemed to him that all at once there rang in his ears the shrill, sharp voices of the convicts rapping out their foul and frightful oaths.

He leaped to his feet, with a muttered oath on his own lips, and when the imagined agony with which he surprised himself had given way to a new sense of his actual sufferings, his heart grew yet more cold and bitter. He thought of what he had been and of what he was. There could be no disguising the truth – he was a worse man. Yes; whatsoever had once been pure in him, whatsoever had once been generous, whatsoever had once been of noble aspiration, was now impure, and ungenerous, and ignoble. Above all else, he had lost that tenderness which is the top and crown of a strong man. He felt as if the world had lifted its hand against him, and as if he were ready and eager to strike back.

They reached Penrith toward four in the morning, and then the carriage in which they traveled was shunted on to the branch line to await the first train toward Cockermouth. The day was breaking. From the window Paul Ritson could see vaguely the few ruins of the castle. That familiar object touched him strangely. He hardly knew why, but he felt that a hard lump at his heart melted away. By and by the brakeman shouted to the signalman in the gray silence of the morning. The words were indifferent – only some casual message – but they were spoken in the broad Cumbrian that for a year and a half had never once fallen on Paul Ritson's ear. Then the lump that had melted as his heart seemed to rise to his throat.

The gray light become intermingled with red, and soon the sky to the east was aflame. Paul let down the carriage window, and long waves of sweet mountain air, laden with the smell of peat, flowed in upon him. His lips parted and his breast expanded. At five o'clock the engine was attached. A few carriages were added at the platform, and these contained a number of pitmen, in their red-stained fustian, going down for the morning shift. When the train moved westward, the sun had risen, and all the air was musical with the songs of the birds. Very soon the train ran in among the mountains, and then at last the bitterness of Paul Ritson's heart seemed to fall away from him like a garment. That quick thrill of soul which comes when the mountains are first seen after a long absence is a rapture known to the mountaineer alone. Paul saw his native hills towering up to the sky, the white mists flying off their bald crown, the torrents leaping down their brant sides, and the tears filled his eyes and blotted it all out. The sedge-warbler was singing with the wheatear, and, though he could not see them now, he knew where they were: the sedge-warbler was flitting among the rushes of the low-land mere; the wheatear was perched on the crevice of gray rock in which it had laid its pale-blue eggs; the sheep were bleating on the fells, and he knew their haunts by the lea of the bowlders and along the rocky ledges where grew the freshest grasses. Down the corries of Blencathra, long drifts of sheep were coming before the dogs, and he knew that the shepherds had been out on the fells during the short summer night, numbering the sheep for the washing in the beck below.