He sprang up, with his bamboo cane, and rushed to the door, as a sudden outcry arose in the yard. At the door, however, even Dr. Sullivan paused aghast.
“Strachan — Strachan!” he cried. “Good heavens! You were right! Look here!”
What had happened will be the better understood when it is explained that the court-house was not a house at all, but a mere ring of weather-board huts, of which the justice-room was one, the lock-up another, the constables’ quarters a third, and a store and a stable a fourth and fifth. The yard thus formed was furthermore enclosed by a brushwood fence, broken only between the stables and the justice-room, where there was a gate instead; and, in the very centre of this open space, blotting the edge of the deep sky, and scoring the dazzling earth with shadows like scars, stood that worse than gallows, at which men were beaten into brutes, and brutes into devils, week after week throughout the year.
A sergeant and two constables formed the garrison of this lodge of law and order in the wilderness. The sergeant was an emancipist; and of the trio, only one had come to the country on his own account. The third was actually a convict at this very time, and a glaring ruffian into the bargain. Originally a butcher-boy (who had robbed his master in the City Road), he still smacked of the slaughter-house, with his raw red face and cruel eye; and on this young felon devolved the congenial task of administering the lash.
In such hands was Tom led to the triangles, with a white face, but quickened eyes. The ticket-of-leave overseer was also of the party, filling his pipe and grinning to himself between his flaming whiskers, like a man prepared to enjoy the thing thoroughly. The sergeant, however, made him stand back a little, though with a wink, as he touched the culprit on the shoulder.
“Come, my lad,” said the sergeant, confidentially, “it needn’t hurt you, when all’s said and done!”
Tom looked at him in faint astonishment.
“We ain’t obliged to lay it on that thick,” pursued the sergeant, in the same confidential tone. “It’s all left to us. It needn’t hurt him, need it, mates?”
“Not if he comes up to the mark; but he won’t — no fear!” said the ex-butcher, who had got the cat, and was practising with it upon the woodwork of the whipping-frame.
“We’ll ask him,” said the sergeant. “We’ll give him the chance. Will you come up to the mark, my son, or will you take it hot?”
Tom looked at his inquisitors with a sullen, puzzled expression, and chanced to see the overseer, at a little distance, shaking his head and touching his pockets.
“Not got any?” cried the sergeant.
“You ask him,” returned Ginger.
“Gut no money?” said the sergeant. “That’s what we mean by coming up to the mark, you know.”
“A pound apiece,” suggested the free constable. “That’d soften the job.”
He stared at them in dogged defiance.
“I told you so,” said the butcher, throwing down the cat. “Let’s truss him up.”
“Even a pound between us—” the sergeant had said, when the butcher began to grumble, and Tom’s lip to curl; and this settled it.
“Up with him!” cried the sergeant. “We’ll teach you to sneer at us, my game-cock! Stop a bit, though. His legs won’t stretch in these here irons. Who the blazes put them on?” And the zealous officer knelt himself to unfasten a pair of anklets, coupled by a short but massive chain, and employed quite illegally by Dr. Sullivan on his farm.
A pair of figure-eight handcuffs had been locked upon Tom’s wrists at the same time; but both his wrists and his hands were small, and during the night he had found that he could slip out of these at any moment. He was out of them now before a soul dreamt of it — so slyly did he stand to have the shackles off his feet.
The heavy-handled scourge lay on the ground; its rawfaced wielder was half-way out of his coat; the other constable was talking to Ginger in the shade; the sergeant had undone the second anklet, and was just rising from his knees with the pair.
Next moment he was on his back in the dust: and Tom was planted before the triangles, with the scourge caught up by the thongs in his two hands, and the heavy handle whirling round his head.
The butcher rushed at him with one sleeve still in his coat; and received the butt-end of his pet instrument full upon the forehead, where a great green wart sprang out as if by magic, even as he reeled away. It was at this there arose the outcry which brought Dr. Sullivan to the justice-room door; and the sight that staggered even him was the sight of his groom, with the blood all flown from his face to his eyes, gnashing his white teeth, and whirling that thick oak handle round a head of wavy yellow hair. Tom had not improved in looks since his arrival in New South Wales. But at that moment there was a fineness in his ferocity, a sublimity in his despair, which, were not lost upon both the gentlemen now watching from the door. Mr. Strachan, for one, beheld a fellow-man fighting for a manhood that was more to him than life, against a degradation worse than death; and he wished himself back at his farm.
Not so Dr. Sullivan, whose consternation lasted but a moment. The next, he was in the thick of it, rallying the constables, flourishing his cane, and leading a rush which made the rebel slip beneath the triangles and take to his heels. The pack followed, all but Dr. Sullivan, who now fell back, with the sun glistening on his white hair, and a gnarled hand shading his eyes.
Tom plunged between the lock-up and the store, and ran round the fence to the left, like a rat in a ring, but it was too high for him at every point. The pack doubled, and had hemmed him in, when he swerved and was through them, leaving Ginger on the ground with redder whiskers than before. The Anglo-Indian, at the justice-room door, was irresistibly reminded of his youth at Rugby, and had an old cry in his throat, when he recollected himself and gulped it down in time. The convict was rushing straight for the outlet between stables and justice-room. The pack were at his heels; in front of him the gaunt old doctor stood his ground like a grenadier, with his bamboo cane, and the open gate and a tethered horse beyond.
Mr. Strachan stood petrified by sheer curiosity as to what would happen next; it never occurred to him to interfere.
He thought the doctor must give way. The doctor did no such thing; he stood fast with his cane as though it had been a sabre; and Tom, whirling his weapon still, whirled it high into the sky, and bowed to the doctor because he could not strike him down. As he bowed, the bamboo slashed his shoulder, and would have cloven him to the ribs had it been steel; next instant he was overpowered; and they dragged him back to the triangles, as Dr. Sullivan turned to his brother-magistrate with a heightened colour and sparkling eyes.
“A hundred!” cried the doctor, in his most dictatorial voice.
“A hundred what?” asked Mr. Strachan.
“Lashes!” said the doctor, wiping his forehead with a red silk handkerchief. “You can’t give him less after this. I’d like to make it two! But we needn’t haul him in again to hear it. Just give the order out here.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Strachan, nervously. “I decline to give it at all.”
“Decline to order him another fifty for a bloodthirsty outrage like this?”
“Yes, I do.”
“You must have taken leave of your senses!” cried the domineering doctor. “Or is it that you sympathise with the man who felled my son?”
Mr. Strachan turned a deeper yellow.
“You know me better than that, Dr. Sullivan!” he cried hotly. “Sympathise with a convict! It’s not that at all. It’s because it’s irregular. I doubted whether it was a case for summary jurisdiction in the beginning. I know it isn’t now. And I’ll have no more to do with it.”
“You won’t? Then I will!” said Dr. Sullivan. “I’ll take the responsibility upon myself!”
“I won’t be a party to any further irregularity,” said Strachan, “and it’s a clear case for quarter sessions, if ever there was one. That’s my only point. The man deserves it, of course.”
Yet he retir
ed into the justice-room and shut the door, but failed to shut out the rasping sound of Dr. Sullivan’s voice, exultantly doubling the sentence, and crying to the ex-butcher to lay on the whip-cord as he had never laid it on before.
“Trust me!” came the reply through the open window. “Look at my forehead, sir. I’ll cut his bowels out for that!”
Mr. Strachan sprang up and shut the window with a bang. He was strangely shaken. Many were the floggings he had ordered, or inspired, and even witnessed, without a qualm. There was a something in this man’s face that had appealed to him and troubled him from the first. As he shut the window there was a something else in the white sheen of the doomed nude back over yonder that made him feel instinctively there was the remnant of a gentleman, tied up for whipping like a cur. And this conviction made the Anglo-Indian, who was the remnant of a gentleman himself, more uncomfortable than he had felt for years.
He turned his back on the window and sat down, listening against his will, in the very chair from which he had delivered pre-arranged judgment. He heard it once, and winced and twitched his shoulders, as though the stroke had fallen on them. He heard it again. He began mumbling the end of a new cheroot and listening to the flies on the window-pane, whose buzzing had suddenly become very loud. But louder yet were those horrible sounds outside; and even more horrible was the exultant croak of the old doctor at regular intervals between the sounds.
“Comb your lashes, my good man!” his rasping voice kept crying. “Comb those lashes — comb those lashes!”
Strachan found himself counting them, with that striking face still before him, and those desperate eyes waiting upon his as they had waited here while he was delivering his mealy-mouthed address; and looking at him as they had looked for one moment when he was done. A white stare of incredulity, a flash of reproach, another of contempt, and a back turned disdainfully with a shrug. That was all — but it had burnt the magistrate at the time — it would burn him in the retrospect ever after.
To stop counting he put his thumbs in his ears (always with an eye on the door so that none should surprise him in that position), but “Comb those lashes!” came to them still, and then he began listening for another voice and a different cry. He listened for these in positive terror, with the perspiration dripping from his nose, and his ears moaning like the sea beneath both thumbs. However, no voice reached them but that of the savage old doctor, crying out about the lashes up to the end. Then came a pause. Mr. Strachan made sure it was a pause, dried his face, put his thumbs in his arm-holes, and tilted back his chair. His features were sufficiently composed when Dr. Sullivan strode into the room with a deeply dissatisfied air.
“Well?” drawled Mr. Strachan.
“Not a sound!” growled the doctor. “Not a moan; but I’ll break his spirit yet! I’ll break him, or I’ll know the reason why!” And he ground what teeth he had, and wiped his wrinkled forehead with the red silk handkerchief.
“Bravo!” cried Mr. Strachan.
Dr. Sullivan looked up sharply, but took this expression of enthusiasm to himself, as a tribute to that indomitable and ferocious will which was his pride.
“You know me, Strachan,” said he. “What I say I mean; and if you’d backed me up just now, and stopped outside, you’d know why I say it. Not — one — solitary — groan! But I’ll break him yet; upon my soul I believe I could have done it with this cane! The fool of a fellow didn’t half lay on. He said he’d give it him all the harder for that nice thing on his forehead, but it’s my opinion—”
The sergeant rushed into the room.
“He’s gone, sir! He’s gone!”
The doctor whipped a leather case from his pocket, and went out hurriedly. In five minutes he was back. His colleague was sitting like a yellow ghost.
“Gone?” chuckled the doctor. “A little faint, nothing more, and as stubborn as a mule the moment I brought him to. But I’ll break him yet, Strachan, I’ll break him yet!”
“He had his full hundred?”
“Every lash.”
“His — his skin—”
“Like tissue paper! Drew at the fourth — but not a sound — not a syllable all through.”
“And he’s fit to go back to the farm?”
“Fit enough, if I let him,” the doctor declared. “But I prefer to keep him where he is till to-morrow. Here in the lock-up he can do no mischief — and they know how to look after them here. But what’s the matter with you, Strachan? You look used up. The heat, eh?”
“The climate altogether!” cried the other, rising. “I’m sick of this country, Sullivan. India was a fool to it. I’d give all I’ve got to be going back there to-morrow!”
CHAPTER XXV
THE LOCK-UP
THE sergeant had looked into the lock-up for the last time that night. He had made his last overture to the prisoner, had cursed and cuffed him for a sulky dog, and so taken leave of him for the night. Not a word had Erichsen uttered in all these hours. He had answered no question, replied to no taunt, nor yet once raised his eyes from the ground: there he sat, with a damp blanket about his torn body, and his rough yellow head between his hands. Food had been put before him, and remained there still. A pannikin of tea stood cold, and sour, and black with drowned flies, upon the ground. The flies were the worst of all his outward ills. But the shocking torments of a brain cruelly cleared by pain and weakness were worse than the flies.
And now he was alone for the night; the key had been turned in the padlock, and put in its place on the beam above; the sergeant’s bluster had died away, and the sergeant’s footsteps followed suit. Across the yard there came a laugh, an oath, a good-night ironically shouted, then a throwing-off of boots that jingled, and a shutting of doors. Now all was still, and in the lock-up the stillness was as unbroken as elsewhere. He never stirred but to shrug away a fly. The moon shone in through holes in the tin-lid roof, through crevices in the matchwood walls; and in the soft, sifted light he sat immovable. It was such a prison as a man of spirit could have broken with preposterous ease. But this one had no spirit left; he was no longer a man. His precious manhood had been beaten out of him like dust from a carpet. And the sense of that irrevocable loss bit deeper than the glutted flies.
Was it a horse outside against the brushwood fence? The sound was the first Tom seemed to have heard for many years. In his blackened brain it struck a first inappreciable spark of interest. He listened. Then came another and a nearer sound, as of something torn. He listened eagerly. What could it be? Minutes passed; there were no more sounds until the padlock was tried, and a hand went feeling for the key. Tom raised his head for the first time as the moon streamed in through the open door, when he perceived that it was Peggy’s bare feet, which had made no noise. With that he lowered his head again, for there was no place in it even for surprise. But unconsciously he gave a moan.
She went upon her knees beside him, and flung out her arms, but drew them back with a shiver from that loose-spread blanket. “Tom!” she whispered. “Speak to me, darlin’. It’s Peggy come to see how y’are.”
He never spoke, never looked up, nor gave any sign that he heard her words — unless it was that his bowed head hung more heavily than before.
“It’s Peggy O’Brine,” the girl pursued, with a sob in her throat. “Sure an’ ye’ve not forgotten Peggy the cook? It’s to comfort ye I’ve come, dearie, an’ haven’t I the right? Ah then, an’ wasn’t it all through me it was?”
The sob got loose, and she was wringing her hands and gazing at Tom through her tears as though her heart would break for him. In return he stared heavily at her, but shook his head as her meaning came home to him.
“Indeed an’ it was,” persisted Peggy. “Only for me you niver would have struck’m at all. An’ to think it was meself that warned ye in the beginning, an’ went an’ drove ye to it in the ind! If only you had let’m strike me dead at his feet! It’d have been betther than that — an’ this!”
Still he looked at her without a wo
rd; and still there was no light, no life, no feeling in the look; but only dumb and dead despair.
“You thought I liked’m!” exclaimed Peggy wildly. “They’ve been tellin’ ye their black lies in the huts. It’s little they know how it’s been between us from the shtart. I’ll tell ye this, Tom, betther a hundhred times be the man he’s a spite agin than the girrl he’s his wicked eye upon. That’s Mr. Nat for ye; an’I hate’m — I loathe ‘m— ’tis God’s truth I’m tellin’ ye. Tom, dear, he cot me out there last night — I niver wint out wid’m. He cot me prowlin’ about, as he said, an’ that’s the truth, too, though he tould it. I couldn’t sleep for thinkin’ o’ the two o’ yez. It’s well I knew he was up to some divil’s work at last. I’d seen’m talkin’ — an’ what do you suppose he’s up to now?” asked Peggy, going off at a tangent. “What do you suppose he’s do’n’ at this moment? Lyin’ dhrunk on his bed — lyin’ ded dhrunk for the shame of ‘t! You knocked’m down. You knocked’m down. He won’t get over’t till his dyin’ day. Nobody ilse iver so much as lifted a han’ agin’m on the farm. But glory be to God! you knocked’m down!”
There was more than unthinking exultation in her tone; there was a very singular sort of pride also, and this as unthinking as the other, it was so ingenuous and plain. But Tom saw nothing with those dreadful eyes, and heard but little beyond her soothing brogue. And then she did think, and saw a mark on the blanket in a rod of moon-light (for she had shut the door), and cried out to God to forgive the most selfish woman in all the world.
She had thought of herself, and not of Tom. She had talked about herself, and not about Tom. In her selfishness she had forgotten what she had brought him; and a medicine-bottle of pilfered milk and rum was at his parched lips in an instant. She made him drink of it, and drink deep; and mutton sandwiches, deliciously cut and salted, she put between his teeth with her own fingers, bite after bite, as though he had been her infant. And all the time she was railing at herself for forgetting this and being the most selfish woman in the world; while he ate and drank from her tender hand and never said a word.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 95