During the earlier part of his imprisonment the idea had pervaded the asylum that as he had been found guilty of committing one murder, he might, very likely, find it necessary to his peculiar state of mind to commit more murders, and would probably find it soothing to his feelings to assassinate anybody who might come in his way any morning before breakfast. The watch kept upon him was therefore for some time very strict. He was rather popular at first in the asylum, as a distinguished public character; and the keepers, though a little shy of attending upon him in their proper persons, were extremely fond of peering in at him through a little oval opening in the upper panel of the door of his cell. They also brought such visitors as came to improve their minds by going over the hospital for the insane to have a special and private view of this maniacal murderer; and they generally received an extra donation from the sight-seers thus gratified. Even the lunatics themselves were interested in the supposed assassin. A gentleman, who claimed to be the Emperor of the German Ocean and the Chelsea Waterworks, was very anxious to see him, as he had received a despatch from his minister of police informing him that Richard Marwood had red hair, and he particularly wished to confirm this intelligence, or to give the minister his congé.
Another highly-respectable person, whose case was before the House of Commons, and who took minutes of it every day on a slate, with a bit of slate pencil which he wore attached to his button-hole by a string, and which also served him as a toothpick — the slate being intrusted to a keeper who forwarded it to the electric telegraph, to be laid on the table of the House, and brought home, washed clean, in half an hour, which was always done to the minute; — this gentleman also sighed for an introduction to poor Dick, for Maria Martin had come to him in a vision all the way from the Red Barn, to tell him that the prisoner was his first cousin, through the marriage of his uncle with the third daughter of Henry the Eighth’s seventh wife; and he considered it only natural and proper that such near relations should become intimately acquainted with each other.
A lady, who pronounced herself to be the only child of the Pope of Rome, by a secret union with a highly-respectable young person, heiress to a gentleman connected with the muffin trade somewhere about Drury Lane, fell in love off-hand with Richard, from description alone; and begged one of the keepers to let him know that she had a clue to a subterranean passage, which led straight from the asylum to a baker’s shop in Little Russell Street, Covent Garden, a distance of some two hundred and fifty miles, and had been originally constructed by William the Conqueror for the convenience of his visits to Fair Rosamond when the weather was bad. The lady begged her messenger to inform Mr. Marwood that if he liked to unite his fortune with hers, they could escape by this passage, and set up in the muffin business — unless, indeed, his Holiness of the triple crown invite them over to the Vatican, which perhaps, under existing circumstances, was hardly likely.
But though a wonder, which elsewhere would only last nine days, may in the dreary monotony of such a place as this, endure for more than nine weeks, it must still die out at last. So at last Richard was forgotten by every one except his heartbroken mother, and the keeper and boy attending upon him.
His peculiar hallucination being his fancy that he was the Emperor Napoleon the First, was, of course, little wonder in a place where every wretched creature fancied himself some one or something which he was not; where men and women walked about in long disjointed dreams, which had no waking but in death; where once bright and gifted human beings found a wild and imbecile happiness in crowns of straw, and decorations of paper and rags; which was more sad to see than the worst misery a consciousness of their state might have brought them. At first, Richard had talked wildly of his fancied greatness, had called his little room the rock of St. Helena, and his keeper, Sir Hudson Lowe. But he grew quieter day by day, and at last never spoke at all, except in answer to a question. And so on, for eight long years.
In the autumn of the eighth year he fell ill. A strange illness. Perhaps scarcely to be called an illness. Rather a dying out of the last light of hope, and an utter abandonment of himself to despair. Yes, that was the name of the disease under which the high and bold spirit of Daredevil Dick sank at last. Despair. A curious disease. Not to be cured by rules and regulations, however salutary those rules might be; not to be cured even by the Board, which was supposed to be in a manner omnipotent, and to be able to cure anything in one sitting; not to be cured certainly by the asylum doctor, who found Richard’s case very difficult to deal with — more especially difficult since there was no positive physical malady to attack. There was a physical malady, because the patient grew every day weaker, lost appetite, and was compelled to take to his bed; but it was the malady of the mind acting on the body, and the cure of the last could only be effected by the cure of the first.
So Richard lay upon his narrow little couch, watching the shadows on the bare wall, and the clouds that passed across the patch of sky which he could see through the barred window opposite his bed, through long sunny days, and moonlight nights, throughout the month of September.
Thus it happened that one dull afternoon, on looking up, he saw a darker cloud than usual hurry by; and in its train another, darker still; then a black troop of ragged followers; and then such a shower of rain came down, as he could not remember having seen throughout the time of his captivity. But this heavy shower was only the beginning of three weeks’ rainy weather; at the end of which time the country round was flooded in every direction, and Richard heard his keeper tell another man that the river outside the prison, which usually ran within twenty feet of the wall on one side off the great yard, was now swollen to such a degree as to wash the stonework of this wall for a considerable height.
The day Richard heard this he heard another dialogue, which took place in the passage outside his room. He was lying on his bed, thinking of the bitterness of his fate, as he had thought so many hundred times, through so many hundred days, till he had become, as it were, the slave of a dreadful habit of his mind, and was obliged to go over the same ground for ever and ever, whether he would or no — he was lying thus, when he heard his keeper say, —
“To think as how the discontented little beast should take and go and better hisself at such a time as this here, when there ain’t a boy to be had for love or money — which three shillings a week is all the Board will give — as will come here to take care of him.”
Richard knew himself to be the “him” alluded to. The doctor had ordered the boy to sit up with him at night during the latter part of his illness, and it had been something of a relief to him, in the blank monotony of his life, to watch this boy’s attempts to keep awake, and his furtive games at marbles under the bed when he thought Richard was not looking, or to listen to his snoring when he slept.
“You see, boys as is as bold as brass many ways — as would run under ‘osses’ heads, and like it; as thinks it fun to run across the railroad when there’s a hexpress hengine a comin’, and as will amuse theirselves for the hour together with twopen’orth of gunpowder and a lighted candle — still feels timersome about sittin’ up alone of nights with him,” said the keeper.
“But he’s harmless enough, ain’t he?” asked the other.
“Harmless! Lord bless his poor hinnercent ‘art! there ain’t no more harm in him nor a baby. But it’s no use a sayin’ that, for there ain’t a boy far or near what’ll come and help to take care of him.”
A minute or two after this, the keeper came into Richard’s room with the regulation basin of broth — a panacea, as it was supposed, for all ills, from water on the brain to rheumatism. As he put the basin down, and was about to go, Richard spoke to him, —
“The boy is going, then?”
“Yes, sir.” The keeper treated him with great respect, for he had been handsomely feed by Mrs. Marwood on every visit throughout the eight years of her son’s imprisonment. “Yes, he’s a-goin’, sir. The place ain’t lively enough for him, if you please. I’d lively hi
m, if I was the Board! Ain’t he had the run of the passages, and half an hour every night to enjoy his self in the yard! He’s a goin’ into a doctor’s service. He says it’ll be jolly, carrying out medicine for other people to take, and gloating over the thought of ’em a-taking it.”
“And you can’t get another boy to come here?”
“Well, you see, sir, the boys about here don’t seem to take kindly to the place. So I’ve got orders from the Board to put an advertisement in one of the Slopperton papers; and I’m a-gone’ to do it this afternoon. So you’ll have a change in your attendance, maybe, sir, before the week’s out.”
Nothing could better prove the utter dreariness and desolation of Richard’s life than that such a thing as the probable arrival of a strange boy to wait upon him seemed an event of importance. He could not help, though he despised himself for his folly, speculating upon the possible appearance of the new boy. Would he be big or little, stout or thin? What would be the colour of his eyes and hair? Would his voice be gruff or squeaky; or would it be that peculiar and uncertain voice, common to over-grown boys, which is gruff one minute and squeaky the next, and always is in one of these extremes when you most expect it to be in the other?
But these speculations were of course a part of his madness; for it is not to be supposed that a long course of solitary confinement could produce any dreadful change in the mind of a sane man; or surely no human justices or lawgivers would ever adjudge so terrible a punishment to any creature, human as themselves, and no more liable to error than themselves.
So Richard, lying on his little bed through the long rainy days, awaits the departure of his old attendant and the coming of a new one; and in the twilight of the third day he still lies looking up at the square grated window, and counting the drops falling from the eaves — for there is at last some cessation in the violence of the rain. He knows it is an autumn evening; but he has not seen the golden red of one fallen leaf, or the subdued colouring of one autumnal flower: he knows it is the end of September, because his keeper has told him so; and when his window is open, he can hear sometimes, far away, deadened by the rainy atmosphere as well as by the distance, the occasional report of some sportsman’s gun. He thinks, as he hears this, of a September many years ago, when he and a scapegrace companion took a fortnight’s shooting in a country where to brush against a bush, or to tread upon the long grass, was to send a feathered creature whirring up in the clear air. He remembers the merry pedestrian journey, the roadside inns, the pretty barmaids, the joint purse; the blue smoke from two short meerschaum pipes curling up to the grey morning sky; the merry laughter from two happy hearts ringing out upon the chill morning air. He remembers encounters with savage gamekeepers, of such ferocious principle and tender consciences as even the administration of a half-crown could not lull to sleep; he remembers jovial evenings in the great kitchens of old inns, where unknown quantities of good old ale were drunk, and comic songs were sung, with such a chorus, that to join in it was to be overcome by such fatigue, or to be reduced from wildest mirth to such a pitch of sudden melancholy, as ultimately to lead to the finishing of the evening in tears, or else under the table. He remembers all these things, and he wonders — as, being a madman, it is natural he should — wonders whether it can be indeed himself, who once was that wittiest, handsomest, most generous, and best of fellows, baptised long ago in a river of sparkling hock, moselle, and burgundy, “Daredevil Dick.”
But something more than these sad memories comes with the deepening twilight, for presently Richard hears the door of his room unlocked, and his keepers voice, saying, —
“There, go in, and tell the gent you’ve come. I’m a-comin’ in with his supper and his lamp presently, and then I’ll tell you what you’ve got to do.”
Naturally Richard looked round in the direction of the door, for he knew this must be the strange boy. Now, his late juvenile attendant had numbered some fifteen summers; to say nothing of the same number of winters, duly chronicled by chilblains and chapped hands. Richard’s eyes therefore looked towards the open door at about that height from the ground which a lad of fifteen has commonly attained; and looking thus, Richard saw nothing. He therefore lowered his glance, and in about the neighbourhood of what would have been the lowest button of his last attendant’s waistcoat, he beheld the small pale thin face of a very small and very thin boy.
This small boy was standing rubbing his right little foot against his left little wizen leg, and looking intently at Richard. To say that his tiny face had a great deal of character in it would not be to say much; what face he had was all character.
Determination, concentration, energy, strength of will, and brightness of intellect, were all written in unmistakable lines upon that pale pinched face. The boy’s features were wonderfully regular, and had nothing in common with the ordinary features of a boy of his age and his class; the tiny nose was a perfect aquiline; the decided mouth might have belonged to a prime minister with the blood of the Plantagenets in his veins. The eyes, of a bluish grey, were small, and a little too near together, but the light in them was the light of an intelligence marvellous in one so young.
Richard, though a wild and reckless fellow, had never been devoid of thought, and in the good days past had dabbled in many a science, and had adopted and abandoned many a creed. He was something of a physiognomist, and he read enough in one glance at this boy’s face to awaken both surprise and interest in him.
“So,” said he, “you are the new boy! Sit down,” he pointed to a little wooden stool near the bed as he spoke. “Sit down, and make yourself at home.”
The boy obeyed, and seated himself firmly by the side of Richard’s pillow; but the stool was so low, and he was so small that Richard had to change his position to look over the edge of the bed at his new attendant. While Daredevil Dick contemplated him the boy’s small grey eyes peered round the four whitewashed walls, and then fixed themselves upon the barred window with such a look of concentration, that it seemed to Richard as if the little lad must be calculating the thickness and power of resistance of each iron bar with the accuracy of a mathematician.
“What’s your name, my lad?” asked Richard. He had been always beloved by all his inferiors for a manner combining the stately reserve of a great king with the friendly condescension of a popular prince.
“Slosh, sir,” answered the boy, bringing his grey eyes with a great effort away from the iron bars and back to Richard.
“Slosh! A curious name. Your Surname, I suppose?”
“Surname and christen name too, sir. Slosh — short for Sloshy.”
“But have you no surname, then?”
“No, sir; fondling, sir.”
“A foundling: dear me, and you are called Sloshy! Why, that is the name of the river that runs through Slopperton.”
“Yes, sir, which I was found in the mud of the river, sir, when I was only three months old, sir.”
“Found in the river — were you? Poor boy — and by whom?”
“By the gent what adopted me, sir.”
“And he is — ?” asked Richard.
“A gent connected with the police force, sir; detective—”
This one word worked a sudden change in Richard’s manner. He raised himself on his elbow, looked intently at the boy, and asked, eagerly, —
“This detective, what is his name? But no,” he muttered, “I did not even know the name of that man. Stay — tell me, you know perhaps some of the men in the Slopperton police force besides your adopted father?”
“I knows every man jack of ‘em, sir; and a fine staff they is — a credit to their country and a happiness to theirselves.”
“Do you happen to know amongst them a dumb man?” asked Richard.
“Lor’, sir, that’s him.”
“Who?”
“Father, Sir. The gent what found me and adopted me. I’ve got a message for you, sir, from father, and I was a-goin’ to give it you, only I thought I’d look about me a li
ttle first; but stay — Oh, dear, the gentleman’s took and fainted. Here,” he said, running to the door and calling out in a shrill voice, “come and unlock this here place, will yer, and look alive with that lamp! The gentleman’s gone off into a dead faint, and there ain’t so much as a drop of water to chuck over his face.”
The prisoner had indeed fallen back insensible on the bed. For eight long years he had nourished in his heart a glimmering though dying hope that he might one day receive some token of remembrance from the man who had taken a strange part in the eventful crisis of his life. This ray of light had lately died out, along with every other ray which had once illuminated his dreary life; but in the very moment when hope was abandoned, the token once eagerly looked for came upon him so suddenly, that the shock was too much for his shattered mind and feeble frame.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 21