Into the Highways and Hedges Part 51

All at once she understood how it had impressed Barnabas.

"He thinks London so terrible, and overpowering!" she said. "And I never knew what he meant! Now, I see----"

"Mind where ye are walkin'," said Tom. "Good Lord! If either o' ye had had one quarter o' a grain o' common-sense, ye'd ha' kept clear of a place where there's a many too many without ye, an' not room to hear one's own voice in! There! that's where he is!"

And Meg looked up at the gateway of the great prison, "the worst managed prison in England,"[1] where the sc.u.m and refuse of that human tide flowed constantly, and where, evil being most rampant, that cross that was originally raised between outragers of the public safety, was being raised again now by the hand of the Quaker lady, whom many yet unborn should call "blessed".

[Footnote 1: See Report of 1850, made three years later, and just before the erection of the new prison at Holloway.]

They pa.s.sed under the fortress-like entrance, which Meg was to know well, in rain and snow, as well as in the autumn suns.h.i.+ne, which first softened its gloom to her, and stood among the crowd of prisoners'

friends, who, on the whole, were a much more cheerful, not to say jovial set, than might have been expected.

The gatekeeper was exchanging jokes and winks with a noisy band of unbonneted girls, who were linked together arm in arm, and had "pals"

inside.

Meg's soft heart warmed to one of them, who looked little more than a child, and who demanded permission to see her husband, Bill Jenkins, convicted of shop-lifting, and under sentence of death.

"I hope he will be reprieved," Meg said aloud. "She looks so very young to have a husband," she added apologetically to Tom, who was not over-pleased at her speaking to the girl.

There was a shout of laughter when some one who had overheard it repeated the remark.

"Bless your innocence, we've _all_ got 'usbands, my dear," said one of the band. But it was not till later that the preacher's wife understood the meaning of their merriment.

The convicted were supposed to see only their wives, and that but once a week. "So I've never known a single man among 'em," the gatekeeper remarked with a grin. "Even the boys is all married,--every one on 'em!"

Meg could hardly have told what she had expected to encounter;--long stone pa.s.sages, and a miserable cell, and Barnabas in heavy irons, and darkness, perhaps! She had been prepared to cheer and encourage him; but this noisy crew she was not prepared for, and her heart sank when she found that she was not admitted into the interior of the building; but could only take her place with the others on one side of a double row of iron railings, which interposed grimly between the prisoners and their friends.

Her strongest earliest impressions of a place she was to become familiar with during three long months were beer and bad language. The smell of the former a.s.sailed her nostrils; the sound of the latter, her ears; the place seemed reeking with both combined. She looked rather wistfully at the vendor of beer, who, coming straight from the public-house, fortunate enough to have secured Newgate's patronage, was greeted with acclamations, and allowed instant entrance to the wards.

"Eh, my la.s.s, how are ye?" said the well-known voice, whose very familiarity sounded strange behind those bars. Margaret pressed her face against the iron, she was not able to reach him--the s.p.a.ce between was too wide for that.

Prison uniform had not been inst.i.tuted then, and the preacher was still in his blue jersey, which, however, showed a good many rents,--a fact which struck Meg at once; for Barnabas kept his clothes carefully mended as a rule. He looked ill, too, and his hair and beard were untrimmed; but his hands were unshackled, which was something of a relief to her.

He devoured her with his eyes hungrily, and asked question after question as to how she was, and how she had been, with an eagerness and insistence that left her little time to question _him_.

"I wish I could see ye better!" he cried impatiently. "Turn your head to the light, Margaret. I can't half see you in that thing!"

The straight side of her straw bonnet threw her face into shade, and she untied the strings, meaning to take it off to please him, remembering, with a slight tightening of the throat, how her father had proffered the same request; but Barnabas stopped her hastily.

"No, no. Not here!" he said. "Ye can't uncover your head for all those fellows to see. Ye hadn't ought to be here at all, wi' me not free to take care of ye. Where's Tom?"

"He is waiting for me, in the outer yard," said Meg. "Oh, Barnabas, I _ought_ to have been here before; but I never heard till last night; indeed, if I had known, I would have come."

"I wasn't blamin' ye," he answered. "But look 'ee here, my la.s.s; time's nearly up, and I've a deal to say that'll hardly get said now. I'm thinking this must be my last sight of ye till I'm free, or till----"

"There is no 'or,'" said Meg cheerfully. "Of course, they must set you free."

But she clung tighter to the rails; her knees felt weak with the long walk.

The preacher, looking at her, checked the reply that had almost risen to his lips.

"Till I am free then," he said. "But it's no place for you. Will 'ee go home wi' Tom? they'll be glad enough to have ye; or, if ye'd rayther, ye can stay wi' your sister. It's as ye like."

Then, with a sudden burst of longing, that seemed to cut through the heavy atmosphere, making Meg's heart give a bound; "To think that _I_ can't give ye a roof!" he cried. "It warn't i' the bond that ye should follow me to Newgate! Ye must forgi'e me this, Margaret!"

Meg lifted her head and looked straight at him.

"I'm not going back to Laura," she said. "What should I do there? Nor to the farm; what business has your wife in L----s.h.i.+re, when you are here?

Father has left me some money; it will be just enough to keep us together. I will take a room close to the prison, and come as often as they will let me. There is a great deal to talk of; there is your defence to be considered; there is a great deal to be done; and you have told me nothing yet. I will live on very little--as little as possible; we shall want every penny, but----"

He shook his head, and her voice changed from would-be cheerful a.s.surance to entreaty.

"But let me stay!" she cried. "You will find it worth while. No one will work so hard for you as I will. If _I_ were in prison should you go comfortably away with Tom to the farm? It is absurd to ask! You don't need to answer; for, of course, you wouldn't. Don't you want to see me?

I could come three times a week; on all the visiting days--don't you think that would be something?"

"Something!" said the preacher. He put his hand before his eyes to hide the sight of her, who, he knew, was only too precious to him.

"The look of ye is more nor meat or drink to me," he said. "An' ye know it! An' it's just because o' that that there's no reason in comparing what I'd do wi' what I'd have ye do. Go back wi' Tom, la.s.s. Ay, I knew ye'd be willin' to bide; I knew ye'd offer to; but I couldn't bear to see ye standin' here day after day, nor to think o' ye alone in this h.e.l.l of a city. I'll do well enough, an' I won't forget ye begged to stop. Just say 'good-bye' to me, my dear, an' go. Go, my la.s.s!"

Her hands dropped from the bars and she turned away. She was in the habit of obeying him, and his stronger will nearly always overpowered hers; but, as she turned she looked back, and, though she did not understand how or why, something in his weary att.i.tude made her return quickly, with a little low cry that brought him close to the bars again.

"I want to stay," she said. "Barnabas, don't you see that I want to? You think I am saying this because I ought--for your sake. It is for my own.

Ah, don't send me away; I _want_ to stay."

He stood a moment silent; then: "Stay then," he said; "and G.o.d keep ye safe. Happen, after all, He knows how to as well as I do."

There was no time for more; she had to go, but the preacher drew a deep breath, as one amazed; the bolts and bars that divided them had also brought Margaret nearer to him. He had had need of some consolation.

The Gaol Acts laid down many most excellent rules, which the governors of Newgate seemed to consider were, like dreams, "to be read by contraries". Barnabas had found himself flung into an a.s.sembly where tried and untried--the boy accused of stealing a loaf, and the hardened old vagabond in for the tenth time--were all mixed up together, making a fine forcing bed for crime.

In the pursuit of his calling the preacher had been oftenest and most deeply attracted to places where evil was most prevalent; but it was one thing to attack the foul fiend of his own free will (and it must be owned Barnabas was seldom backward at a.s.sault), and another to be allowed no escape from the unclean presence by day or by night; no breathing s.p.a.ce alone, even for a moment.

The unbearable sense of eyes always on him, the longing for fresh air, and, still more, for solitude, if only for five minutes, grew with a force that took all his strength to keep in bounds.

There had always been something gipsy-like in his restless impatience of walls and roofs. As a boy he had many a time crept out in order to sleep by preference with nothing between him and the sky. He held his very thoughts in check now, and durst not let them dwell on downs or sea, lest a mad pa.s.sion for these should seize on him; but he ate with difficulty, forcing himself to swallow, loathing food, like some wild animal held in captivity; and sleep forsook him.

It was not till he had been in the gaol for a week that he began to discover a method in the madness of the prison arrangements; and the method roused him to protest so vigorous and unpopular as nearly to cost him his life.

To run atilt against established privileges, to refuse to let sleeping dogs lie, had always been main characteristics of the preacher; they never came out more strongly than in Newgate.

There are disadvantages in preaching righteousness while under accusation of attempted murder, and in attempting to right other people's grievances while a prisoner oneself; but such considerations never weighed with Barnabas. Where he saw his enemy, there he would "go"

for him, whatever the situation might be.

On the women's side of the prison, Elizabeth Fry was already bringing order into disorder, light into the midst of darkness; but, on the men's side, misrule still ruled supreme.

The old prisoners levied a kind of blackmail on the others; they sold food, they winked at evil practices, they pa.s.sed in tobacco and snuff, and, as wardsmen, their power was despotic.

In their hands was the placing of new arrivals, in their hands the drawing of briefs; they, practically, could feed or starve, bind or unbind; and one of the first things Barnabas did was to protest against the orders of a wardsman!