For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

  The hospital of Port Arthur was not a cheerful place, but to thetortured and unnerved Rufus Dawes it seemed a paradise. There atleast--despite the roughness and contempt with which his gaolersministered to him--he felt that he was considered. There at least he wasfree from the enforced companionship of the men whom he loathed, and towhose level he felt, with mental agony unspeakable, that he was dailysinking. Throughout his long term of degradation he had, as yet, aidedby the memory of his sacrifice and his love, preserved something of hisself-respect, but he felt that he could not preserve it long. Little bylittle he had come to regard himself as one out of the pale of love andmercy, as one tormented of fortune, plunged into a deep into which theeye of Heaven did not penetrate. Since his capture in the garden ofHobart Town, he had given loose rein to his rage and his despair. "Iam forgotten or despised; I have no name in the world; what matter ifI become like one of these?" It was under the influence of this feelingthat he had picked up the cat at the command of Captain Burgess. As theunhappy Kirkland had said, "As well you as another"; and truly, what washe that he should cherish sentiments of honour or humanity? But he hadmiscalculated his own capacity for evil. As he flogged, he blushed; andwhen he flung down the cat and stripped his own back for punishment, hefelt a fierce joy in the thought that his baseness would be atoned forin his own blood. Even when, unnerved and faint from the hideous ordeal,he flung himself upon his knees in the cell, he regretted only theimpotent ravings that the torture had forced from him. He could havebitten out his tongue for his blasphemous utterings--not because theywere blasphemous, but because their utterance, by revealing his agony,gave their triumph to his tormentors. When North found him, he was inthe very depth of this abasement, and he repulsed his comforter--not somuch because he had seen him flogged, as because he had heard him cry.The self-reliance and force of will which had hitherto sustained himthrough his self-imposed trial had failed him--he felt--at the momentwhen he needed it most; and the man who had with unflinched front facedthe gallows, the desert, and the sea, confessed his debased humanitybeneath the physical torture of the lash. He had been flogged before,and had wept in secret at his degradation, but he now for the firsttime comprehended how terrible that degradation might be made, for herealized how the agony of the wretched body can force the soul toquit its last poor refuge of assumed indifference, and confess itselfconquered.

  Not many months before, one of the companions of the chain, sufferingunder Burgess's tender mercies, had killed his mate when at workwith him, and, carrying the body on his back to the nearest gang, hadsurrendered himself--going to his death thanking God he had at lastfound a way of escape from his miseries, which no one would envyhim--save his comrades. The heart of Dawes had been filled with horrorat a deed so bloody, and he had, with others, commented on the cowardiceof the man that would thus shirk the responsibility of that state oflife in which it had pleased man and the devil to place him. Now heunderstood how and why the crime had been committed, and felt only pity.Lying awake with back that burned beneath its lotioned rags, when lightswere low, in the breathful silence of the hospital, he registered in hisheart a terrible oath that he would die ere he would again be made suchhideous sport for his enemies. In this frame of mind, with such shredsof honour and worth as had formerly clung to him blown away in thewhirlwind of his passion, he bethought him of the strange man who haddeigned to clasp his hand and call him "brother". He had wept no unmanlytears at this sudden flow of tenderness in one whom he had thought ascallous as the rest. He had been touched with wondrous sympathy at theconfession of weakness made to him, in a moment when his own weaknesshad overcome him to his shame. Soothed by the brief rest that hisfortnight of hospital seclusion had afforded him, he had begun, in alanguid and speculative way, to turn his thoughts to religion. He hadread of martyrs who had borne agonies unspeakable, upheld by theirconfidence in Heaven and God. In his old wild youth he had scoffed atprayers and priests; in the hate to his kind that had grown upon himwith his later years he had despised a creed that told men to love oneanother. "God is love, my brethren," said the chaplain on Sundays, andall the week the thongs of the overseer cracked, and the cat hissed andswung. Of what practical value was a piety that preached but did notpractise? It was admirable for the "religious instructor" to tell aprisoner that he must not give way to evil passions, but must bear hispunishment with meekness. It was only right that he should advise him to"put his trust in God". But as a hardened prisoner, convicted of gettingdrunk in an unlicensed house of entertainment, had said, "God's terriblefar from Port Arthur."

  Rufus Dawes had smiled at the spectacle of priests admonishing men, whoknew what he knew and had seen what he had seen, for the trivialities oflying and stealing. He had believed all priests impostors or fools,all religion a mockery and a lie. But now, finding how utterly his ownstrength had failed him when tried by the rude test of physical pain, hebegan to think that this Religion which was talked of so largely wasnot a mere bundle of legend and formulae, but must have in it somethingvital and sustaining. Broken in spirit and weakened in body, withfaith in his own will shaken, he longed for something to lean upon, andturned--as all men turn when in such case--to the Unknown. Had now therebeen at hand some Christian priest, some Christian-spirited man even, nomatter of what faith, to pour into the ears of this poor wretch words ofcomfort and grace; to rend away from him the garment of sullenness anddespair in which he had wrapped himself; to drag from him a confessionof his unworthiness, his obstinacy, and his hasty judgment, and to cheerhis fainting soul with promise of immortality and justice, he might havebeen saved from his after fate; but there was no such man. He askedfor the chaplain. North was fighting the Convict Department, seekingvengeance for Kirkland, and (victim of "clerks with the cold spurt ofthe pen") was pushed hither and thither, referred here, snubbed there,bowed out in another place. Rufus Dawes, half ashamed of himself for hisrequest, waited a long morning, and then saw, respectfully ushered intohis cell as his soul's physician--Meekin.

  CHAPTER XIX. THE CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION.