Deterred by the din of oaths and laughter, Tom lingered without; but curiosity at length conquered aversion, and he entered a den of gamblers who never looked at him, so intent were they upon their petty play. Crowded round the table, upon which lighted candles had now been stuck in their own grease, were some thirty men of every age and type, save that the latter was in most cases one of obvious criminality. Lust of gain was on every face, the scum of every soul had risen to the surface. And in the forefront facing Tom, lean elbows like tent-poles in their sleeves, wet white hands, and the face of the consumptive like a painted corpse. A little heap of silver lay before him on the board; each minute left it less; and this was he who had declared to Tom that his friends had won his last coin.
Instinctively Tom’s hand felt in the pocket in which he had carried his pound of silver loose. Not a sixpence remained.
His fist doubled, but relaxed at sight of the hectic pickpocket and his pale, perspiring hands; the hair clung rank to his low forehead; the eyeballs burnt in their receding sockets; and even as Tom watched, his own last sixpence was lost before his eyes.
“So it ain’t done you that much good, arter all,” said the man who won it.
“Stop a bit!” cried the pickpocket. “I forked the flat’s wipe as well. I’ll put it on for a brown!” And he spat blood on it for luck.
“My handkerchief,” said Tom, calmly, from the rear.
“Is that the flat?”
“That’s him,” said the pickpocket, laughing hysterically; but Tom’s grudge was not against the thief.
“Shame on you,” said he, “to rook that dying man and bring him to this! Are you Englishmen or what? You ought to be nursing him among you, instead of exciting him to his death.”
A roar of laughter greeted these words; at an instructive interval, however; and eight or ten eyes looked down.
“A proper flat!” cried one.
“Parson come to rake in the churchyard deserter!”
“The Ordinary’ll give him a job. What the blazes did he do to get here?”
Suggestions followed, beast capping beast with bestial humour. Tom’s eyes, filled with pity, never travelled from the pickpocket’s poor face. Suddenly a new voice chimed in, “You’re all wrong, boys; it’s Erichsen himself!” —
The handkerchief was marked, and one had read the name.
The effect of its announcement was something incredible: all rose, save the pickpocket, who was unable. A hushed awe fell, but it was the awe inspired by sudden contact with a master hand. Tom shrank before their vile, admiring looks; they admired him all the more; the tainted air hummed with compliments, condolences, criticisms and cross-questions. One or two said he deserved to die for a clumsy workman. A thick-set young fellow, with a sleek face and his hair in his eyes, elbowed his way to the front and wanted to shake hands because they were in the same boat.
“Sling us your mauley, old cock!” cried he.
Tom declined the honour.
“Then double them, you cuckoo!”
Tom declined again; a ring was formed, but he refused to enter it, and turned a deaf ear to their taunts. It was notable, however, that only the tongues interfered with him; not a single hand; and the shrewder men saw it was not cowardice. Tom’s sad eyes would not leave the dying thief, who was now sprawling across the table, with his death’s head on one skinny arm, fast asleep.
To keep an eye on this poor fellow, Tom remained in Number Ten Ward, arranging the matter with the new wardsman, who seemed a well-disposed, weak vessel. At supper-time there came the turnkey who had conducted him to the yard, to whisper that a hot meal had been sent in from outside by his friends, and he might have it in the Bread Room if he liked to make it worth a man’s while. “Friends!” thought Tom. “It is my one true friend, who doesn’t disbelieve in me, and whose very name I don’t know.”
He noted the impression that he was one who could pay for things, and its effect upon the small official fry. But he said he would take his supper where he was. When it came he put it before the sleeping consumptive, gently woke him, saw him finish every morsel, and himself supped on gruel from a pail. He was directly annoyed no more that evening, but his challenger talked at him after locking-up time, when they were all upon their mats. And this was in other ways an odious interval.
Tom had never been too particular among his own associates in the little matter of his conversation. At school, at college, in the stable-yard at home, his language had been more than free at times, and never studiously considered. This is stated as a fact, not a merit. Tom was not without refinement, but his spiritual armour was full of joints, or this his ruin had never come about. To-night, however, he first tossed on his mat — then clenched his fists and sprang up in the dark — but lay down again, recollecting his own footing in that foul place — and finally dug his thumbs in his ears and remained supine and ashamed. Hitherto he had held that he knew everything and could stand much. He altered his opinion in Number Ten Ward of the Chapel Yard at Newgate.
At last they tired of their talk and began to snore. Tom was himself dropping off when the poor fellow at his side woke up groaning.
“The sweat! — the sweat!” he whimpered. “Now I’ll have to lie in it, cold, till morning.”
“That you won’t,” said Tom, cheerily. He bad taken the next mat to the pickpocket’s from no unmixed sense of duty. The tragedy of this poor ebbing life had come with incredibly grateful effect between his own mind and his own woes. Besides, there was a fellow-feeling: they were both unquestionably cast for death; the only question was as to which would go first. So Tom was glad to have this comrade in hopeless case; he was thankful for the very glow it gave him to do what he could.
He stripped his companion, he stripped himself, and, by a moon-ray breaking obliquely through grimy glass and iron bars, he got the sufferer into his own dry things. Tom then lay down, half-naked, between the rugs supplied with each mat; having first tucked up his charge with all the care and gentleness he could command.
And the pickpocket said hardly a word; but in the succeeding stillness Tom felt the feeble clasp of a clammy hand; and that was all.
He went to sleep with tears in his eyes, and dreamt of Claire at Winwood, on a bluff October day, with the wind in her ringlets, its glow on her cheek, but her little hand so white and innocent that he wasted all the time in longing to take it in his, but not daring for very shame. And from this sweet delusion he woke with a howl of pain. One had tied a cord to his toe, and was pulling it so hard that his very body had budged some inches. He had the cord between his fingers next instant, when it was at once let go at the other end.
But Tom was implacable when his blood was up, and it was boiling now. Trembling with rage, he found and struck a lucifer, and espied a rug shaking across the floor. He sprang up and dealt the carcase beneath as heavy a kick as naked foot could give; then snatched off the rug and caught one glimpse, as the match burnt his fingers, of the sleek, low, infuriate face of his fellow-prisoner on a capital charge.
“You little beast!” said Tom. “Yes, I’ll fight you now!”
The fellow had him by the legs that instant, and head over heels they went, upon men lying so close together they trod upon two at once. These started up, screaming blasphemies, while on the pair went struggling, the brute’s teeth in Tom’s leg, and Tom’s thumbs at his windpipe: until the place was in an uproar, lights struck, and the belligerents at last torn asunder.
Every man was awake and cursing — some in a passion, some with glee. —
“Bedad, boys,” yelled the wildest voice of all, “it’s the Kilkhinny cats; let ‘em chaw each other up, for the love av God!”
“That’s it. A ring — a ring!”
“They’ll save Jack Ketch his trouble.”
“A bonny brace!”
And that they were — Tom stripped to the waist, his nankeen trousers flecked with blood — his enemy foaming at the mouth, and struggling still in half-a-dozen brawny hands. Dips wer
e lighted, the ring formed. Silence was then called, and something like it obtained, save for the innocent laughter of the lunatic in his corner, and the plaintive voice of the consumptive shut out on his mat.
“Let me see,” it quavered. “That’s no flat. That’s the best man above earth. Lend a mauley, old pals, and let a beggar see!”
So they dragged him out upon his mat, and made roor for it and him, because he was too weak to rise. Ant in what ensued, his recumbent figure was the one that ought to have been watched, with eyeballs starting from their sunken sockets, and livid lips that tried so hard to cheer — when Tom spilt his man in the first round — and that failed so pitiably. But only Tom kept an eye on him; and so had it blacked through dropping his hands and darting to the pickpocket, who had fallen forward with the blood gushing from his mouth.
Tom got him in his arms, and pillowed the deat’ head upon his naked chest. “Stand aside, lads,” cried. “The excitement — he’s going! Let the war man fetch help of some kind.”
The wardsman had been a weakly protesting part all that had happened; he was glad to get away. —
The shrieking pandemonium was now silent as church. The worst man there looked on in awe at Tom with his closing eye and tender hands, and the gasping white face upon his bosom. Unheeded in his corner, the lunatic still chuckled at intervals; there was but one other sound....
A brief rally preceded the end; and a thing happened that might have chilled the coldest heart. Five nerveless white fingers, all skin and knuckles, were seen to steal into the pocket of him in whose arms the poor soul lay dying; and the member, but not the mind, following its vile trade to the end, so he died in the unconscious act.
The grey May morning came creeping through the prison bars. One in the background broke down in sudden sobs. The bell of St. Sepulchre’s tolled four; and as Tom laid his burden gently down, he awoke to his own bitter case, and longed for even that hideous night to begin again.
CHAPTER XV
INTERIM
CLAIRE HARDING had now adventured upon a narrow ledge. On the one hand she was bound to show a proper Appreciation of Daintree’s exertions, which she herself had inspired; on the other, to feign a purely impersonal or benevolent interest in the unhappy youth on whose behalf those exertions were being made. So all day long he must be ready with a smile as false as any other summer’s, even though she spent the night in prayer for Tom and for her own forgiveness. Yet praying did not bring her peace of mind. She could not convince herself that she was in the right, that even her great end justified means of downright hypocrisy and deceit. There were two ways of looking at her conduct, and Claire, with a breadth of view which was her bane, saw it both ways from the beginning. She was acting a lie to save a life: that was one side of the matter. She was screening the guilty at the expense of the innocent: that was the other side. And if Claire was in any respect singular among women, it was in this inherent and not invariably convenient faculty of seeing the other side whether she would or no.
All her love could not blind her to the terrible strength of the case against Tom, and all her prayers could not unsay what Tom had said to her about the murdered man on the very night of the murder. “I’d hang for the hound, and think the satisfaction cheap at the price!” Those had been his actual words; they were for ever tolling, tolling in her ears; and strong though the case was, would they not have strengthened it still more? And good reason as all the world had to think him guilty, had not she, God help her, better reason than any living man or woman? But oh! she could not and she never would believe it of him; not murder; and even with that cry in her heart she did believe it, but fought to deceive herself a little longer. Her first theory, however, that of self-defence, was virtually shattered by his reported wholesale denials. Then what more was to be said for the desperate hero of a guilty flight, taken at last with the dead man’s possessions upon his person?
Claire could not imagine, but a clever barrister might; nay, would; and she set her teeth, and vowed that Tom should have the finest brain at the Bar to defend him, guilty or not guilty, and though she perjured her soul for the price. But this was not necessary; it was only necessary to act the lie; and Claire scorned herself for the slight comfort that mean distinction gave her against her will. The honest lie was unnecessary because she was dealing with a man of extremes, who neglected many things but did nothing by halves, and whom every passing breath left cold or burning. A breath from Claire could have but one effect, and Daintree was already white-hot for the defence. He had caught fire at a word, and from that moment made it the business of his life to rescue that of an obscure homicide. He could talk of nothing else; his passionate zeal chilled Claire with the thought of what it might turn to should he learn the truth.
Within twenty-four hours of the committal he came in brimful of news and self-importance. Claire was discovered in the garden, and informed who had been retained for the defence in a meaning voice which conveyed no special meaning to her; the name was a big one, but the girl was not a great reader of the newspaper, and she had never heard it before. She looked grateful therefore, but not grateful enough for Daintree, whose greed for her admiration was such that in the next breath he must needs tell her with what figure the big man’s brief had been marked. And then he beamed, for the girl stood thunder-struck at his words.
“Five hundred guineas!” she repeated, slowly. “You are never going to find five — hundred — guineas?”
“And why not?” said he, with ready pique. “Do you think that that colossal sum is beyond my means?”
“For a man of whom you know nothing — who has no claim upon you? Yes, I do!”
“Pardon me,” replied Daintree in his most elaborate manner. “I know at least as much of the young man as does Miss Harding; his case has already excited her sympathy; he has therefore the very strongest claim upon mine.” —
“Oh, but you must not do it!” cried Claire, impulsively. “It is too much for you to dream of doing! I am sorry I ever said a word about it! You are too noble, too generous, too good!”
He hung his head a moment, and then exclaimed, with the extraordinary passion of the man, that there was nothing he would not do to win such words from her lips; that she had repaid him already a hundred-fold.
“And remember, it is all for you,” he added, suddenly, as though he had caught her candour. “Let there be no mistake about that between you and me. Whatever I may do is not done for yonder prisoner, but for you and you alone!”
“For me!” whispered Claire; and she could say no more, thinking her voice had already bewrayed her.
“Yes; every bit for you!”
“But how can that be? He is nothing to us either. We did not know the family — you heard of the quarrel? And the young man was very seldom there, never once in our house.” So she still swerved instinctively at the lie direct, and despised herself more than if she had told a dozen. The situation was intolerable to her. She was on the brink of a rash confession, and such an appeal to Daintree’s magnanimity as should move a stone, when he took the last word and left her time to think.
“Miss Harding,” said he, earnestly, “I care not a jot what you may think of this case on mature consideration. I know how it appealed to you the other night, before your great heart pulled you two ways, as it is doing now. But that’s not the point. No, the point is that you asked something of me, and I mean you to know that what you ask of me that you shall receive, if it is in the power of mortal man to give. If I do not rescue this young fellow from the rope, then it is not in the power of mortal man to do so. But I shall, never fear; and then you will perhaps see that your lightest whim is more to me than the commands of God or man! And that’s all the reward I ask.”
She knew his flowery speeches, and what to allow for his habitual rhetoric; on this occasion, however, he rang only too true. Yet as she looked at him pensively, his eyes fell, as they had sometimes fallen before; it was as though, with all his passion for her, there was a s
omething sinister and dishonest underneath, and he felt it when he looked long enough in her eyes. Claire did not connect honesty with herself at present, nor did she view the question at all from this point; but she found herself speculating upon the origin of the quarrel between Daintree and his people; and she thought of the flowers that had come back to him from his mother’s grave.
Later in the evening she worked out her own position, shuddered at the passing impulse to confess (which had long since passed), put Tom’s life before her self-respect and determined to act better from that hour. So the play went on before an audience of one, who had been taken behind the scenes, but who now looked on with eyes that saw not, so absorbing were his own affairs. In very truth, however, there was an audience of two; and but little was lost upon the unseen onlooker.
Daintree meanwhile spent hours every day with Mr. Bassett, the solicitor, or in waiting for him at his office; in the evening he would return to Avenue Lodge with the latest news of the prisoner Erichsen.
One day he had been removed to the prison infirmary; not that there was much the matter with him, but the surgeon was credited with a desire to reward Erichsen’s humanity towards a fellow-prisoner, who was said to have died in his arms.
But another fellow-prisoner he had fought tooth-and-nail the night before; and Mr. Bassett had a shrewd suspicion that the real object of the removal was to isolate a desperate man.
However that might be, he was doing pretty well in the infirmary; was said to be depressed, but not unable to eat or sleep. Daintree reminded Claire that the prisoner was having all his meals sent in from a neighbouring chop-house, and who it was that had ordered them. It was himself.
Erichsen was inundated with letters. Most were from religious strangers, who took his guilt for granted, and indicated several only ways to that mercy in another world which was neither to be expected nor desired in is. But the one that had given him the greatest annoyance was thought to have come from a near relative, for it was very long and he had torn it in many pieces, and then retorted in three lines and given it to the surgeon to post.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 85