It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 62

"La! bless you, no. He was harder worked and worse fed than any man in the jail."

"At work last night! Then at what hour did he die? He is stiff and cold.

This is a very sudden death. Did any one see this boy die?"

The men gave no answer, but the last words--"Did any one see this boy die?"--seemed to give Evans a new light.

"No!" he cried. "No one saw him die. Look here, sir. See what is dangling from the window--his handkerchief."

"And this mark round his throat, Evans. He has destroyed himself." And Mr. Eden recoiled from the corpse.

"Oh! you may forgive him, sir," said Evans. "We should all have done the same. No human creature could live the life they led him. Who could live upon bread and water and punishment? It is a sorrowful sight, but it is a happy release for him. Eh! poor lad," said Evans, laying his hand upon the body; "I liked thee well, but I am glad thou art gone. Thou hast escaped away from worse trouble."

"Come, it is no use sniveling, Evans," put in Hawes. "I am as sorry for this job as you are. But who would have thought he was so determined? He gave us no warning."

"Don't you believe that, sir," cried Evans to Mr. Eden. "He gave them plenty of warning. I heard him with my own ears tell you you were killing him; not a day for the last fortnight he did not tell you so, Mr. Hawes."

"Well, I didn't believe him, you see."

"You mean you didn't care."

"Hold your tongue, Evans! You are disrespectful. How dare you speak to me, you insolent dog? Hold your tongue!"

"No, sir, I won't hold my tongue over this dead body."

"Be silent, Evans," said Mr. Eden. "This is no place for disputes.

Evans, my heart is broken. While there is life there is hope; but here, what hope is there? Many in this place live in crime, but this one has died in crime; he of whom I had such good hopes has died in crime--died by his own hand; he has murdered his own soul; my heart is broken!--my heart is broken!" The good man's anguish was terrible.

Evans consoled him. "Don't go on so, sir! pray don't. Josephs is where none of us but you shall ever get to; he is in heaven as sure as we are upon earth. He was the best lad in the place; there wasn't a drop of gall in him; who ever heard a bad word from him? and he did not kill himself till he found he was to die whether or no; so then he shortened his own death-struggle, and he was right."

"I don't understand you."

"I dare say not, sir; but those two understand me. Oh, it is no use to look black at me now, Mr. Hawes; I shall speak my mind though my head was to be cut off. I have been a coward; I thought too much of my wife and children; but I am a man now. Eh! poor lad, thou shan't be maligned now thou art dead, as well as tormented alive. Sir, he that lies here so pale and calm was not guilty of self-destruction. He was driven to death!--don't speak to me, sir, but look at me, and hear the truth, as it will come out the day all of us in this cell are d.a.m.ned, except you--and him!"

The man fell suddenly on his knees, took the dead boy's hand in his left hand and held his right up, and in this strange att.i.tude, which held all his hearers breathless, he poured out a terrible tale.

His boiling heart and the touch of him, whom now too late he defended like a man, gave him simple but real eloquence, and in few words, that scalded as they fell, he told as powerfully as I have feebly by what road Josephs had been goaded to death.

He brought the dark tale down to where he left the sufferer rolled up in the one comfort left him on earth, his bed; and then turning suddenly and leaving Josephs he said sternly:

"And now, sir, ask the governor where is the bed I wrapped the wet boy up in, for it isn't here."

"You know as much as I do!" was Hawes's sulky reply.

But at this moment Hodges came into the cell with the bed in question in his arms.

"There is his bed," cried he, "and what is the use of it now? If you had left it him last night it would be better for him and for me, too," and he flung the bed on the floor.

"Oh! it was you took it from him, was it?" said Evans.

"Well, I am here to obey orders, Jack Evans; do you do nothing but what you like in this place?"

"Let there be no disputing in presence of death!"

"No, sir."

"One thing only is worth knowing or thinking of now; whether there is hope for this our brother in that world to which he has pa.s.sed all unprepared. Hodges, you saw him last alive!"

Hodges groaned. "I saw him last at night, and first in the morning."

"I entreat you to remember all that pa.s.sed at night between you!"

"Then cover up his face--it draws my eyes to it."

Mr. Eden covered the dead face gently with his handkerchief.

"Mr. Hawes met me in the corridor and sent me to take away his bed. I found him dozing, and I took--I did what I was ordered."

Mr. Eden sighed.

"Tell me what _he_ said and did."

"Well, sir! when I showed him the order, 'fourteen days without bed and gas,' he bursts out a laughing--"

"Good heavens!"

"And says he, 'I don't say for gas, but you tell Mr. Hawes I shan't be without bed nothing nigh so long as that.'"

Mr. Eden and Evans exchanged a meaning glance; so did Fry and Hawes.

"Then I said, 'No! I shan't tell Mr. Hawes anything to make him punish you any more, because you are punished too much as it is,' says I--"

"I am glad you said that. But tell me what _he_ said. Did he complain?

did he use angry or bitter words?--you make me drag it out of you."

"No! he didn't! He wasn't one of that sort! The next thing was, he asked me to give him my hand. Well, I was surprised like at his asking for my hand, and I doing him such an ill-turn. So then he said, 'Mr. Hodges,'

says he, 'why not? I never took away your bed from under you, so you can give me your hand, if I can give you mine.'"

"Oh! what a beautiful nature! Ah! these are golden words. I hope for the credit of human nature you gave him your hand?"

"Why, of course I did, sir. I had no malice; it was ignorance, and owing to being so used to obey the governor."

Here Mr. Hawes, who had remained quiet all this time, now absorbed in his own reflections, now listening sullenly to these strange scenes in which the dead boy seemed for a time to have eclipsed his importance, burst angrily in.

"I have listened patiently to you, Mr. Eden, to see how far you would go; but I see if I wait till you leave off undermining me with my servants, I may wait a long while."

Mr. Eden turned round impatiently.

"You! who thinks of you or such as you in presence of such a question as lies here. I am trying to learn the fate of this immortal soul, and I did not see you--or think of you--or notice you were here."