At a Winter's Fire Part 27

"We went straight away down corridor B, and at cell 47 we stopped.

"'We will begin our inspection here,' said the Governor. 'Johnson, open the door.'

"I had the keys of the row; fitted in the right one, and pushed open the door.

"'After you, sir,' said the Major; and the creature walked in, and he shut the door on him.

"I think he smelt a rat at once, for he began beating on the wood and calling out to us. But the Major only turned round to me with his face like a stone.

"'Take that key from the bunch,' he said, 'and give it to me.'

"I obeyed, all in a tremble, and he took and put it in his pocket.

"'My G.o.d, Major!' I whispered, 'what are you going to do with him?'

"'Silence, sir!' he said. 'How dare you question your superior officer!'

"And the noise inside grew louder.

"The Governor, he listened to it a moment like music; then he unbolted and flung open the trap, and the creature's face came at it like a wild beast's.

"'Sir,' said the Major to it, 'you can't better understand my system than by experiencing it. What an article for your paper you could write already--almost as pungint a one as that in which you ruined the hopes and prospects of a young c.o.c.kney poet.'

"The man mouthed at the bars. He was half-mad, I think, in that one minute.

"'Let me out!' he screamed. 'This is a hideous joke! Let me out!'

"'When you are quite quiet--deathly quiet,' said the Major, 'you shall come out. Not before;' and he shut the trap in its face very softly.

"'Come, Johnson, march!' he said, and took the lead, and we walked out of the prison.

"I was like to faint, but I dared not disobey, and the man's screeching followed us all down the empty corridors and halls, until we shut the first great door on it.

"It may have gone on for hours, alone in that awful emptiness. The creature was a reptile, but the thought sickened my heart.

"And from that hour till his death, five months later, he rotted and maddened in his dreadful tomb."

There was more, but I pushed the ghastly confession from me at this point in uncontrollable loathing and terror. Was it possible--possible, that injured vanity could so falsify its victim's every tradition of decency?

"Oh!" I muttered, "what a disease is ambition! Who takes one step towards it puts his foot on Alsirat!"

It was minutes before my shocked nerves were equal to a resumption of the task; but at last I took it up again, with a groan.

"I don't think at first I realized the full mischief the Governor intended to do. At least, I hoped he only meant to give the man a good fright and then let him go. I might have known better. How could he ever release him without ruining himself?

"The next morning he summoned me to attend him. There was a strange new look of triumph in his face, and in his hand he held a heavy hunting-crop. I pray to G.o.d he acted in madness, but my duty and obedience was to him.

"'There is sport toward, Johnson,' he said. 'My dervish has got to dance.'

"I followed him quiet. We listened when I opened the jail door, but the place was silent as the grave. But from the cell, when we reached it, came a low, whispering sound.

"The Governor slipped the trap and looked through.

"'All right,' he said, and put the key in the door and flung it open.

"He were sittin' crouched on the ground, and he looked up at us vacant-like. His face were all fallen down, as it were, and his mouth never ceased to shake and whisper.

"The Major shut the door and posted me in a corner. Then he moved to the creature with his whip.

"'Up!' he cried. 'Up, you dervish, and dance to us!' and he brought the thong with a smack across his shoulders.

"The creature leapt under the blow, and then to his feet with a cry, and the Major whipped him till he danced. All round the cell he drove him, las.h.i.+ng and cutting--and again, and many times again, until the poor thing rolled on the floor whimpering and sobbing. I shall have to give an account of this some day. I shall have to whip my master with a red-hot serpent round the blazing furnace of the pit, and I shall do it with agony, because here my love and my obedience was to him.

"When it was finished, he bade me put down food and drink that I had brought with me, and come away with him; and we went, leaving him rolling on the floor of the cell, and shut him alone in the empty prison until we should come again at the same time to-morrow.

"So day by day this went on, and the dancing three or four times a week, until at last the whip could be left behind, for the man would scream and begin to dance at the mere turning of the key in the lock. And he danced for four months, but not the fifth.

"n.o.body official came near us all this time. The prison stood lonely as a deserted ruin where dark things have been done.

"Once, with fear and trembling, I asked my master how he would account for the inmate of 47 if he was suddenly called upon by authority to open the cell; and he answered, smiling,--

"I should say it was my mad brother. By his own account, he showed me a brother's love, you know. It would be thought a liberty; but the authorities, I think, would stretch a point for me. But if I got sufficient notice, I should clear out the cell.'

"I asked him how, with my eyes rather than my lips, and he answered me only with a look.

"And all this time he was, outside the prison, living the life of a good man--helping the needy, ministering to the poor. He even entertained occasionally, and had more than one noisy party in his house.

"But the fifth month the creature danced no more. He was a dumb, silent animal then, with matted hair and beard; and when one entered he would only look up at one pitifully, as if he said, 'My long punishment is nearly ended'. How it came that no inquiry was ever made about him I know not, but none ever was. Perhaps he was one of the wandering gentry that n.o.body ever knows where they are next. He was unmarried, and had apparently not told of his intended journey to a soul.

"And at the last he died in the night. We found him lying stiff and stark in the morning, and scratched with a piece of black crust on a stone of the wall these strange words: 'An Eddy on the Floor'. Just that--nothing else.

"Then the Governor came and looked down, and was silent. Suddenly he caught me by the shoulder.

"'Johnson', he cried, 'if it was to do again, I would do it! I repent of nothing. But he has paid the penalty, and we call quits. May he rest in peace!'

"'Amen!' I answered low. Yet I knew our turn must come for this.

"We buried him in quicklime under the wall where the murderers lie, and I made the cell trim and rubbed out the writing, and the Governor locked all up and took away the key. But he locked in more than he bargained for.

"For months the place was left to itself, and neither of us went anigh 47. Then one day the workmen was to be put in, and the Major he took me round with him for a last examination of the place before they come.

"He hesitated a bit outside a particular cell; but at last he drove in the key and kicked open the door.

"'My G.o.d!' he says, 'he's dancing still!'