His sensibilities were wrought up to an unwonted pitch. He was like a waif adrift in unknown waters, a cloud without anchor in a tempestuous sky; yet he felt that night as he had never felt before, that he had suddenly become possessed of another and most painful sense. Not a face in that sea of faces but he seemed to know its secret fear, its joy and sorrow, the watchful dread that seared the hidden heart, the fluttering hope that buoyed it up.
It was an awful thing to be turned adrift in a world of sin and suffering with this agonizing sense. He could look, whether he would or not, beneath the smiling and rubicund countenance of the hail-fellow-well-met to that corrosive spot within where the trust of the widow and fatherless had been betrayed; or see beyond the stolid and heavy appearance proper to the ox the quivering features of the man who had stood long years ago above the dead body of the woman who had thrown her death at his door as sole reward for the life he had wrecked.
Nay, not only did the past write its manual there, but the future wrote its sign. He knew that the young girl in pink ribbons who was hurrying along with a smile on her lips, from the shop in the west to that unknown home in the east where the child of her shame had laughed and crowed and climbed up her bosom to her chin, was doomed to find that the source of all her joy and half her sorrow lay cold and stiff in its crib.
He grew fearful of himself; he shuddered as the unsuspected murderer brushed his elbow; he shuddered yet more as a mirror flashed back the reflection of his own hard face, and the idea came to him that perhaps other eyes could see what his eyes saw.
He turned down Arundel Street and on to the Embankment. No! no! no! the merciful G.o.d had not willed it that any man should look so deeply into the heart of his fellow-man. That was indeed to know good and evil; and the thought stole over him that perhaps it was in degree as a man had eaten of the forbidden fruit of the tree of life that he was cursed with this bitter knowledge.
Here, on the quiet pavement that echoed to his footsteps, the air was free. He uncovered his head, and the light west wind played in his hair and cooled his temples. Not a star shone overhead, and the river that flowed in the bed below was dark. More dark to him was the sea of humanity that flowed above.
He had heard that the death-roll of the Thames was one of every day for the year, and he leaned over the granite wall and wondered if the old river had claimed its toll for the day that was now almost done. His hair seemed to rise from its roots as he thought that perhaps at that very instant, in the black waters beneath him, the day"s sacrifice was washing past.
He walked on, and the dull buzz of the Strand fell on his ear. What, after all, was the old G.o.d of the river to the Juggernaut of the city?
And it was now, when the fret of the day had worn down, that Hugh Ritson thought of all that he had left behind him in the distant north. There in the darkness and the silence, amid the mountains, by the waving trees and the rumbling ghylls, lay half the ruins of his ruined life. The glow of old London"s many lights could not reach so far, but the shadow of that dark spot was here.
CHAPTER XIII.
The clocks struck midnight, and he returned to the hotel at which he had engaged a bed. He did not lie down to sleep, but walked to and fro the night through.
Next morning at ten he was at the Home Office again. He saw the secretary and some of the law officers of the Crown. When he came out he carried in his pocket an order to visit a convict in Portland, and was attended by a police-sergeant in plain clothes. They took train from Waterloo at two in the afternoon, and reached Weymouth at six. When they crossed the strip of sea, the best of the day was gone, and a fresh breeze blew across the breakwater.
The Saxon walls of the castle at the foot of the Vern Hill reflected the chill blue of the water; but far above, where the rocky coast dipped to the beach, the yellow stone, with the bluish clay in its crevices, shone in the glow of the sinking sun.
Hugh Ritson and his companion put up for the night at the Portland Arms Inn. A ruddy, round-faced man in middle life, clean shaven and dressed youthfully, was smoking in the parlor. He exchanged a salutation with the cordiality of one who was nothing loath for a chat; then he picked up the old Reeve staff, and explained the ancient method of computing t.i.thes. But Hugh Ritson was in no humor for conversation, and after dinner he set out for a solitary walk. He took the road that turns from the beach through the villages of Chiswell and Fortune"s Well. When he reached the top of the hill the sea lay around him; and beneath him, to the right and left of the summit, were the quarries where the convicts labored, with two branches of an inclined railway leading down to the breakwater. On the summit itself, known as the Grove, was a long, high granite wall, with a broad gate-way, and the lancet lights of a lodge at one side of it. This was the convict prison, and the three or four houses in front of it were the residences of governor, chaplain, and chief warder. A cordon of cottages at a little distance were the homes of the a.s.sistant warders. There were a few shops amid this little group of cottages, and one public house, the Spotted Dog.
Hugh Ritson strolled into the tavern and sat down in a little "snuggery," which was separated from a similar apartment by a wooden part.i.tion that stood no higher than a tall man"s height, and left a s.p.a.ce between the top stile and the ceiling. A company of men gossiped at the other side of the part.i.tion.
"Talk of B 2001," said a guttural voice (Hugh Ritson started at the sound), "I took the stiff"ning out of him first go off. When he"d done he separates and come on from the moor; I saw he wasn"t an old lag, so says I to "im, "Green "un," I says, "if you"re leary, you"ll fetch a easy lagging, and if you"re not, it"ll be bellows to mend with you."
"What d"ye mean?" he says. "It"s bloomin" "ard work here," I says, "and maybe you don"t get shin-of-beef soup to do it on. Bread and water, for a word," I says. "You"re in my gang, quarrying, and I won"t work you "ard except I"m druv to it, but I want wide men in my gang," I says, "and no putting the stick on agen the screw." "Don"t understand," he says. "Then follow a straight tip," I says; "stand by your warder and he"ll stand by you." Blest if that lag as I"d give that good advice to didn"t get me fined the very next day."
"Never!" said sundry incredulous voices.
"It was a hot afternoon, and I"d just whipped a quid in my mouth and leaned atop of my musket for forty winks after dinner. The second-timers was codding afront of me, and 2001 and the young chap as was dying of the consumption was wheeling and filling ahead. Well, up comes the governor right in front of 2001, and shouts, "Warder," he shouts, "you"re fined for inattention." Then off he goes. All right, Mr. 2001, I says, I"ll not misremember."
"What did you do?"
"Do?" (a loud, hollow laugh). "That was when the barracks was building, and one day a bit of a newspaper blowed over from the officers"
quarters, and 2001 came on it, and the botcher picked it up. He"d chucked hisself quick. "Right about face--march." He got seven stretch, a month"s marks, and lost his bedding."
A hearty laugh followed this account of a "screw"s" revenge on a "green"
convict. Hugh Ritson listened and shuddered.
"I ain"t surprised at anything from that luny," said another voice. "He was in my gang at the moor, and I know"d "im. They put "im in the soap-suds gang first, but he got hisself shifted. Then they sent "im botching with the tailors, but he put out his broom for the governor, and said a big l.u.s.ty man same as "im wasn"t for sitting on a board all day. The flat didn"t want to fetch a easy lagging, that"s the fact."
There was a loud guffaw.
"So they put "im in my turf gang out on the moor, and one day a old clergyman come in gaiters and a broad-brimmer, and a face as if the master of the house were a-shaking at his hand, and the missis flopping down-stairs to give him a smack of the lips. Well, 2001 saw him in Princ.i.p.al Warder Rennell"s office, and not afore the bars. So next day I says, "Got anybody outside as would like to send you summat by the Underground?" "The what?" he says, reg"lar black in the face. "The underground railway," I says, tipping him a wink. "Get away from me, you bloodsucker!" he says. But I pinched "im. The old lags were laughing at one of the grave-digger"s oyster-openers, when up comes Rennell. "Who"s laughing?" he says. "It"s 2001," I says; "he"s always idling and malingering.""
"Ha, ha, ha! what did he get?"
"Three days" bread and water, a week"s marks, and loss of cla.s.s privileges. He didn"t mind the grub and the time, but Jack-in-the-box, who was warder on his landing, said he took it proper bad as he couldn"t write home to the missis."
"What"s his dose?"
"Three. One of the old lags would do it on his head, and fetch it easy, too. He"s a scholar, and could get to be a wardsman in the infirmary, or medicine factotum for the croaker, or maybe book-keeper for the governor. But he"s earned no remissions, and he"ll fill his time afore he slings his hook again."
Hugh Ritson could support the gossip no longer. He got up to leave the house, but before doing so he pushed open the door that led to the adjoining room, and stood a moment on the threshold, comprehending everything and everybody in one quick glance. The air breathed fresh outside. He walked in the gathering gloom of evening to the ruins of the church by the cliff, and, pa.s.sing through the lych-gate, he came on the beaten track to the rocks. The rocks lay a hundred feet beneath, torn from the mainland in craggy ma.s.ses that seemed ready to slide from their base to the deep chasm between. Could it be possible that men who were the slaves of hinds like those in yonder tavern could cling to their little lives while a deliverance like this beetling cliff stood near? A cold smile played on Hugh Ritson"s face as he thought that, come what would, such slavery was not for him.
The sycamore by the ruined chancel pattered in the breeze, and the wheatear"s last notes came from its top-most bough. Far below the waves were rocking lazily. There were other waves at Hugh Ritson"s feet--the graves of dead men. Some who were buried there long ago were buried in their chains. Under the earth the fettered men--on the ruins of the church the singing bird. Across the sea the light was every moment fading. In another hour the day would be done, and then the moon would look down peacefully on the fettered and the free.
Hugh Ritson returned to the Portland Arms Inn. He found the police-sergeant in conversation with the ruddy-faced gentleman who had wished to explain to him the mysteries of the Reeve staff.
"He is the doctor at the prison," whispered the sergeant aside.
Presently Hugh turned to the doctor and said:
"Do you happen to know the convict B 2001?"
"Yes--Drayton," said the doctor; "calls himself Ritson. Are you a friend?"
Hugh Ritson"s face quivered slightly.
"No," he answered, "I am not his friend." Then, after a pause, "But I have an order to see him. Besides, I have just heard him discussed by a company of wardens in a pot-house on the hill."
"Who were they? What were they like?"
"A tall man, one of them, fifty-five years of age, gray hair, grizzly beard, dark, vindictive eyes, a gash on one cheek, and a voice like a crow"s."
"Humph! Jim-the-ladder--a discharged soldier."
"Another, a cadaverous fellow, with a plausible tongue."
"Horrocks--an old second-cla.s.ser; served his time at Dartmoor and got promotion--doubtful official discipline."
"They both deserve one more and much higher promotion," said Hugh Ritson, with emphasis.
"You mean this." The doctor laughed, and put the forefinger of one hand, held horizontally, to the tip of the other, held upright.
"Can it be possible that the law is unable to maintain a fair stand-up fight with crime, and must needs call a gang of poltroons and blackmailers to its a.s.sistance?"
"You heard a bad account of B 2001, I judge?"
"I heard of nothing that he had done which the Pope of Rome might have feared to acknowledge."