CHAPTER VI. IN WHICH THE CHAPLAIN IS TAKEN ILL.

Though the house of the Commandant of Norfolk Island was comfortable and well furnished, and though, of necessity, all that was most hideous in the “discipline” of the place was hidden, the loathing with which Sylvia had approached the last and most dreaded abiding place of the elaborate convict system, under which it had been her misfortune to live, had not decreased. The sights and sounds of pain and punishment surrounded her. She could not look out of her windows without a shudder. She dreaded each evening when her husband returned, lest he should blurt out some new atrocity. She feared to ask him in the morning whither he was going, lest he should thrill her with the announcement of some fresh punishment.

“I wish, Maurice, we had never come here,” said she, piteously, when he recounted to her the scene of the gaol-gang. “These unhappy men will do you some frightful injury one of these days.”

“Stuff!” said her husband. “They've not the courage. I'd take the best man among them, and dare him to touch me.”

“I cannot think how you like to witness so much misery and villainy. It is horrible to think of.”

“Our tastes differ, my dear.—Jenkins! Confound you! Jenkins, I say.” The convict-servant entered. “Where is the charge-book? I've told you always to have it ready for me. Why don't you do as you are told? You idle, lazy scoundrel! I suppose you were yarning in the cookhouse, or—”

“If you please, sir.”

“Don't answer me, sir. Give me the book.” Taking it and running his finger down the leaves, he commented on the list of offences to which he would be called upon in the morning to mete out judgment.

“Meer-a-seek, having a pipe—the rascally Hindoo scoundrel!—Benjamin Pellett, having fat in his possession. Miles Byrne, not walking fast enough.—We must enliven Mr. Byrne. Thomas Twist, having a pipe and striking a light. W. Barnes, not in place at muster; says he was 'washing himself'—I'll wash him! John Richards, missing muster and insolence. John Gateby, insolence and insubordination. James Hopkins, insolence and foul language. Rufus Dawes, gross insolence, refusing to work.—Ah! we must look after you. You are a parson's man now, are you? I'll break your spirit, my man, or I'll—Sylvia!”

“Yes.”

“Your friend Dawes is doing credit to his bringing up.”

“What do you mean?”

“That infernal villain and reprobate, Dawes. He is fitting himself faster for—” She interrupted him. “Maurice, I wish you would not use such language. You know I dislike it.” She spoke coldly and sadly, as one who knows that remonstrance is vain, and is yet constrained to remonstrate.

“Oh, dear! My Lady Proper! can't bear to hear her husband swear. How refined we're getting!”

“There, I did not mean to annoy you,” said she, wearily. “Don't let us quarrel, for goodness' sake.”

He went away noisily, and she sat looking at the carpet wearily. A noise roused her. She looked up and saw North. Her face beamed instantly. “Ah! Mr. North, I did not expect you. What brings you here? You'll stay to dinner, of course.” (She rang the bell without waiting for a reply.) “Mr. North dines here; place a chair for him. And have you brought me the book? I have been looking for it.”

“Here it is,” said North, producing a volume of 'Monte Cristo'. She seized the book with avidity, and, after running her eyes over the pages, turned inquiringly to the fly-leaf.

“It belongs to my predecessor,” said North, as though in answer to her thought. “He seems to have been a great reader of French. I have found many French novels of his.”

“I thought clergymen never read French novels,” said Sylvia, with a smile.

“There are French novels and French novels,” said North. “Stupid people confound the good with the bad. I remember a worthy friend of mine in Sydney who soundly abused me for reading 'Rabelais', and when I asked him if he had read it, he said that he would sooner cut his hand off than open it. Admirable judge of its merits!”

“But is this really good? Papa told me it was rubbish.”

“It is a romance, but, in my opinion, a very fine one. The notion of the sailor being taught in prison by the priest, and sent back into the world an accomplished gentleman, to work out his vengeance, is superb.”

“No, now—you are telling me,” laughed she; and then, with feminine perversity, “Go on, what is the story?”

“Only that of an unjustly imprisoned man, who, escaping by a marvel, and becoming rich—as Dr. Johnson says, 'beyond the dreams of avarice'—devotes his life and fortune to revenge himself.”

“And does he?”

“He does, upon all his enemies save one.”

“And he—?” “She—was the wife of his greatest enemy, and Dantès spared her because he loved her.”

Sylvia turned away her head. “It seems interesting enough,” said she, coldly.

There was an awkward silence for a moment, which each seemed afraid to break. North bit his lips, as though regretting what he had said. Mrs. Frere beat her foot on the floor, and at length, raising her eyes, and meeting those of the clergyman fixed upon her face, rose hurriedly, and went to meet her returning husband.

“Come to dinner, of course!” said Frere, who, though he disliked the clergyman, yet was glad of anybody who would help him to pass a cheerful evening.

“I came to bring Mrs. Frere a book.”

“Ah! She reads too many books; she's always reading books. It is not a good thing to be always poring over print, is it, North? You have some influence with her; tell her so. Come, I am hungry.”

He spoke with that affectation of jollity with which husbands of his calibre veil their bad temper.

Sylvia had her defensive armour on in a twinkling. “Of course, you two men will be against me. When did two men ever disagree upon the subject of wifely duties? However, I shall read in spite of you. Do you know, Mr. North, that when I married I made a special agreement with Captain Frere that I was not to be asked to sew on buttons for him?”

“Indeed!” said North, not understanding this change of humour.

“And she never has from that hour,” said Frere, recovering his suavity at the sight of food. “I never have a shirt fit to put on. Upon my word, there are a dozen in the drawer now.”

North perused his plate uncomfortably. A saying of omniscient Balzac occurred to him. “Le grand écueil est le ridicule,” and his mind began to sound all sorts of philosophical depths, not of the most clerical character.

After dinner Maurice launched out into his usual topic—convict discipline. It was pleasant for him to get a listener; for his wife, cold and unsympathetic, tacitly declined to enter into his schemes for the subduing of the refractory villains. “You insisted on coming here,” she would say. “I did not wish to come. I don't like to talk of these things. Let us talk of something else.” When she adopted this method of procedure, he had no alternative but to submit, for he was afraid of her, after a fashion. In this ill-assorted match he was only apparently the master. He was a physical tyrant. For him, a creature had but to be weak to be an object of contempt; and his gross nature triumphed over the finer one of his wife. Love had long since died out of their life. The young, impulsive, delicate girl, who had given herself to him seven years before, had been changed into a weary, suffering woman. The wife is what her husband makes her, and his rude animalism had made her the nervous invalid she was. Instead of love, he had awakened in her a distaste which at times amounted to disgust. We have neither the skill nor the boldness of that profound philosopher whose autopsy of the human heart awoke North's contemplation, and we will not presume to set forth in bare English the story of this marriage of the Minotaur. Let it suffice to say that Sylvia liked her husband least when he loved her most. In this repulsion lay her power over him. When the animal and spiritual natures cross each other, the nobler triumphs in fact if not in appearance. Maurice Frere, though his wife obeyed him, knew that he was inferior to her, and was afraid of the statue he had created. She was ice, but it was the artificial ice that chemists make in the midst of a furnace. Her coldness was at once her strength and her weakness. When she chilled him, she commanded him.

Unwitting of the thoughts that possessed his guest, Frere chatted amicably. North said little, but drank a good deal. The wine, however, rendered him silent, instead of talkative. He drank that he might forget unpleasant memories, and drank without accomplishing his object. When the pair proceeded to the room where Mrs. Frere awaited them, Frere was boisterously good-humoured, North silently misanthropic.

“Sing something, Sylvia!” said Frere, with the ease of possession, as one who should say to a living musical-box, “Play something.”

“Oh, Mr. North doesn't care for music, and I'm not inclined to sing. Singing seems out of place here.”

“Nonsense,” said Frere. “Why should it be more out of place here than anywhere else?”

“Mrs. Frere means that mirth is in a manner unsuited to these melancholy surroundings,” said North, out of his keener sense.

“Melancholy surroundings!” cried Frere, staring in turn at the piano, the ottomans, and the looking-glass. “Well, the house isn't as good as the one in Sydney, but it's comfortable enough.”

“You don't understand me, Maurice,” said Sylvia. “This place is very gloomy to me. The thought of the unhappy men who are ironed and chained all about us makes me miserable.”

“What stuff!” said Frere, now thoroughly roused. “The ruffians deserve all they get and more. Why should you make yourself wretched about them?”

“Poor men! How do we know the strength of their temptation, the bitterness of their repentance?”

“Evil-doers earn their punishment,” says North, in a hard voice, and taking up a book suddenly. “They must learn to bear it. No repentance can undo their sin.”

“But surely there is mercy for the worst of evil-doers,” urged Sylvia, gently.

North seemed disinclined or unable to reply, and nodded only.

“Mercy!” cried Frere. “I am not here to be merciful; I am here to keep these scoundrels in order, and by the Lord that made me, I'll do it!”

“Maurice, do not talk like that. Think how slight an accident might have made any one of us like one of these men. What is the matter, Mr. North?”

Mr. North has suddenly turned pale.

“Nothing,” returned the clergyman, gasping—“a sudden faintness!” The windows were thrown open, and the chaplain gradually recovered, as he did in Burgess's parlour, at Port Arthur, seven years ago. “I am liable to these attacks. A touch of heart disease, I think. I shall have to rest for a day or so.” “Ah, take a spell,” said Frere; “you overwork yourself.”

North, sitting, gasping and pale, smiles in a ghastly manner. “I—I will. If I do not appear for a week, Mrs. Frere, you will know the reason.”

“A week! Surely it will not last so long as that!” exclaims Sylvia.

The ambiguous “it” appears to annoy him, for he flushes painfully, replying, “Sometimes longer. It is, a—um—uncertain,” in a confused and shame-faced manner, and is luckily relieved by the entry of Jenkins.

“A message from Mr. Troke, sir.”

“Troke! What's the matter now?”

“Dawes, sir, 's been violent and assaulted Mr. Troke. Mr. Troke said you'd left orders to be told at onst of the insubordination of prisoners.”

“Quite right. Where is he?” “In the cells, I think, sir. They had a hard fight to get him there, I am told, your honour.”

“Had they? Give my compliments to Mr. Troke, and tell him that I shall have the pleasure of breaking Mr. Dawes's spirit to-morrow morning at nine sharp.”

“Maurice,” said Sylvia, who had been listening to the conversation in undisguised alarm, “do me a favour? Do not torment this man.”

“What makes you take a fancy to him?” asks her husband, with sudden unnecessary fierceness.

“Because his is one of the names which have been from my childhood synonymous with suffering and torture, because whatever wrong he may have done, his life-long punishment must have in some degree atoned for it.”

She spoke with an eager pity in her face that transfigured it. North, devouring her with his glance, saw tears in her eyes. “Does this look as if he had made atonement?” said Frere coarsely, slapping the letter.

“He is a bad man, I know, but—” she passed her hand over her forehead with the old troubled gesture—“he cannot have been always bad. I think I have heard some good of him somewhere.”

“Nonsense,” said Frere, rising decisively. “Your fancies mislead you. Let me hear you no more. The man is rebellious, and must be lashed back again to his duty. Come, North, we'll have a nip before you start.”

“Mr. North, will not you plead for me?” suddenly cried poor Sylvia, her self-possession overthrown. “You have a heart to pity these suffering creatures.”

But North, who seemed to have suddenly recalled his soul from some place where it had been wandering, draws himself aside, and with dry lips makes shift to say, “I cannot interfere with your husband, madam,” and goes out almost rudely.

“You've made old North quite ill,” said Frere, when he by-and-by returns, hoping by bluff ignoring of roughness on his own part to avoid reproach from his wife. “He drank half a bottle of brandy to steady his nerves before he went home, and swung out of the house like one possessed.”

But Sylvia, occupied with her own thoughts, did not reply.

CHAPTER VII. BREAKING A MAN'S SPIRIT.

The insubordination of which Rufus Dawes had been guilty was, in this instance, insignificant. It was the custom of the newly-fledged constables of Captain Frere to enter the wards at night, armed with cutlasses, tramping about, and making a great noise. Mindful of the report of Pounce, they pulled the men roughly from their hammocks, examined their persons for concealed tobacco, and compelled them to open their mouths to see if any was inside. The men in Dawes's gang—to which Mr. Troke had an especial objection—were often searched more than once in a night, searched going to work, searched at meals, searched going to prayers, searched coming out, and this in the roughest manner. Their sleep broken, and what little self-respect they might yet presume to retain harried out of them, the objects of this incessant persecution were ready to turn upon and kill their tormentors.

The great aim of Troke was to catch Dawes tripping, but the leader of the “Ring” was far too wary. In vain had Troke, eager to sustain his reputation for sharpness, burst in upon the convict at all times and seasons. He had found nothing. In vain had he laid traps for him; in vain had he “planted” figs of tobacco, and attached long threads to them, waited in a bush hard by, until the pluck at the end of his line should give token that the fish had bitten. The experienced “old hand” was too acute for him. Filled with disgust and ambition, he determined upon an ingenious little trick. He was certain that Dawes possessed tobacco; the thing was to find it upon him. Now, Rufus Dawes, holding aloof, as was his custom, from the majority of his companions, had made one friend—if so mindless and battered an old wreck could be called a friend—Blind Mooney. Perhaps this oddly-assorted friendship was brought about by two causes—one, that Mooney was the only man on the island who knew more of the horrors of convictism than the leader of the Ring; the other, that Mooney was blind, and, to a moody, sullen man, subject to violent fits of passion and a constant suspicion of all his fellow-creatures, a blind companion was more congenial than a sharp-eyed one.

Mooney was one of the “First Fleeters”. He had arrived in Sydney fifty-seven years before, in the year 1789, and when he was transported he was fourteen years old. He had been through the whole round of servitude, had worked as a bondsman, had married, and been “up country”, had been again sentenced, and was a sort of dismal patriarch of Norfolk Island, having been there at its former settlement. He had no friends. His wife was long since dead, and he stated, without contradiction, that his master, having taken a fancy to her, had despatched the uncomplaisant husband to imprisonment. Such cases were not uncommon.

One of the many ways in which Rufus Dawes had obtained the affection of the old blind man was a gift of such fragments of tobacco as he had himself from time to time secured. Troke knew this; and on the evening in question hit upon an excellent plan. Admitting himself noiselessly into the boat-shed, where the gang slept, he crept close to the sleeping Dawes, and counterfeiting Mooney's mumbling utterance asked for “some tobacco”. Rufus Dawes was but half awake, and on repeating his request, Troke felt something put into his hand. He grasped Dawes's arm, and struck a light. He had got his man this time. Dawes had conveyed to his fancied friend a piece of tobacco almost as big as the top joint of his little finger. One can understand the feelings of a man entrapped by such base means. Rufus Dawes no sooner saw the hated face of Warder Troke peering over his hammock, then he sprang out, and exerting to the utmost his powerful muscles, knocked Mr. Troke fairly off his legs into the arms of the in-coming constables. A desperate struggle took place, at the end of which the convict, overpowered by numbers, was borne senseless to the cells, gagged, and chained to the ring-bolt on the bare flags. While in this condition he was savagely beaten by five or six constables.

To this maimed and manacled rebel was the Commandant ushered by Troke the next morning.

“Ha! ha! my man,” said the Commandant. “Here you are again, you see. How do you like this sort of thing?”

Dawes, glaring, makes no answer.

“You shall have fifty lashes, my man,” said Frere. “We'll see how you feel then!” The fifty were duly administered, and the Commandant called the next day. The rebel was still mute.

“Give him fifty more, Mr. Troke. We'll see what he's made of.”

One hundred and twenty lashes were inflicted in the course of the morning, but still the sullen convict refused to speak. He was then treated to fourteen days' solitary confinement in one of the new cells. On being brought out and confronted with his tormentor, he merely laughed. For this he was sent back for another fourteen days; and still remaining obdurate, was flogged again, and got fourteen days more. Had the chaplain then visited him, he might have found him open to consolation, but the chaplain—so it was stated—was sick. When brought out at the conclusion of his third confinement, he was found to be in so exhausted a condition that the doctor ordered him to hospital. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, Frere visited him, and finding his “spirit” not yet “broken”, ordered that he should be put to grind maize. Dawes declined to work. So they chained his hand to one arm of the grindstone and placed another prisoner at the other arm. As the second prisoner turned, the hand of Dawes of course revolved.

“You're not such a pebble as folks seemed to think,” grinned Frere, pointing to the turning wheel.

Upon which the indomitable poor devil straightened his sorely-tried muscles, and prevented the wheel from turning at all. Frere gave him fifty more lashes, and sent him the next day to grind cayenne pepper. This was a punishment more dreaded by the convicts than any other. The pungent dust filled their eyes and lungs, causing them the most excruciating torments. For a man with a raw back the work was one continued agony. In four days Rufus Dawes, emaciated, blistered, blinded, broke down.

“For God's sake, Captain Frere, kill me at once!” he said.

“No fear,” said the other, rejoiced at this proof of his power. “You've given in; that's all I wanted. Troke, take him off to the hospital.”

When he was in hospital, North visited him.

“I would have come to see you before,” said the clergyman, “but I have been very ill.”

In truth he looked so. He had had a fever, it seemed, and they had shaved his beard, and cropped his hair. Dawes could see that the haggard, wasted man had passed through some agony almost as great as his own. The next day Frere visited him, complimented him on his courage, and offered to make him a constable. Dawes turned his scarred back to his torturer, and resolutely declined to answer.

“I am afraid you have made an enemy of the Commandant,” said North, the next day. “Why not accept his offer?”

Dawes cast on him a glance of quiet scorn. “And betray my mates? I'm not one of that sort.”

The clergyman spoke to him of hope, of release, of repentance, and redemption. The prisoner laughed. “Who's to redeem me?” he said, expressing his thoughts in phraseology that to ordinary folks might seem blasphemous. “It would take a Christ to die again to save such as I.”

North spoke to him of immortality. “There is another life,” said he. “Do not risk your chance of happiness in it. You have a future to live for, man.”

“I hope not,” said the victim of the “system”. “I want to rest—to rest, and never to be disturbed again.”

His “spirit” was broken enough by this time. Yet he had resolution enough to refuse Frere's repeated offers. “I'll never 'jump' it,” he said to North, “if they cut me in half first.”

North pityingly implored the stubborn mind to have mercy on the lacerated body, but without effect. His own wayward heart gave him the key to read the cipher of this man's life. “A noble nature ruined,” said he to himself. “What is the secret of his history?”

Dawes, on his part, seeing how different from other black coats was this priest—at once so ardent and so gloomy, so stern and so tender—began to speculate on the cause of his monitor's sunken cheeks, fiery eyes, and pre-occupied manner, to wonder what grief inspired those agonized prayers, those eloquent and daring supplications, which were daily poured out over his rude bed. So between these two—the priest and the sinner—was a sort of sympathetic bond.

One day this bond was drawn so close as to tug at both their heart-strings. The chaplain had a flower in his coat. Dawes eyed it with hungry looks, and, as the clergyman was about to quit the room, said, “Mr. North, will you give me that rosebud?” North paused irresolutely, and finally, as if after a struggle with himself, took it carefully from his button-hole, and placed it in the prisoner's brown, scarred hand. In another instant Dawes, believing himself alone, pressed the gift to his lips. North returned abruptly, and the eyes of the pair met. Dawes flushed crimson, but North turned white as death. Neither spoke, but each was drawn close to the other, since both had kissed the rosebud plucked by Sylvia's fingers.