Into the Highways and Hedges Part 61

"Come here, Thorpe," said the doctor. "You can help." And the preacher, who had also heard a death warrant, came and knelt by the man's side.

"Ay--I thought as much!" he said. "He's about done for." And the gentlemen went away rather silently.

"That big grey-haired chap with the very blue eyes is the one you want to see hang, isn't he?" said the governor, when they got outside. "I saw you watching him while he was helping the doctor."

"I was admiring the steadiness of his hand," said George. "I own mine might have shaken a little in the circ.u.mstances."

It was very dark. A black fog wrapt the city in gloom, and the cheerless cold was intense. Barnabas Thorpe sat on the floor in a corner of the ward, with Jack's head resting against him.

The preacher had seen Death often enough in one guise or another. He believed him to be coming close,--not only to the poor soul he, Barnabas, was doing his best to support, but to himself.

Now he knew what his presentiment had meant; his horror of London was justified.

He sat facing the situation, with his lips set hard. He had always held his life lightly, and had risked it oftener than most men; but, all the same, he had a good healthy love of it, and would have liked to fight hard for it; and the disgrace touched him. The Thorpes had always held their heads high. Poor Tom!--and Margaret! A short sharp sound broke from his lips at that last thought. Could he let Margaret go?

"I say, do you think I'll cheat the hangman?" said Jack.

"I do," said Barnabas. "Do you want some water? How dark it is!"

He could hardly see Jack's face. The man was sinking fast, and the preacher was glad of it! For once, he had no desire to cure. Better that the poor fellow should die in comparative peace here, than watched by a mob outside; and on the gallows. After all, a man can die but once! He held the cup to Jack's lips; lifted him as tenderly as a woman might have, then laid him down again.

After all, a man can only die once! Yes,--and he can live on earth only once, to hold the woman he has chosen in his arms, and to win the sweetness of her love.

In heaven he might, maybe, hear the songs of the just made perfect; but, sinful man that he was, surely his heart would still ache through all their celestial music for what he had never heard,--the sound of his name on her lips with the accent of earthly love in it! Ah, and he had never once so much as kissed her!

His life was worth more than that crime-stained idiot's. If he betrayed him for Margaret's sake! For Margaret's sake! the words shamed him.

If he sinned for her, then he would give the lie to all his life. He would prove his enemy right; he would surely show that it had been for selfish desire, not for the saving of her fair soul, that he had taken her. For Margaret's sake! how durst the devil tempt him with her name?

"Good Lord, deliver me!" he cried. But it seemed to him that the very bitterness of death was upon him. To let her go! before ever he had won her! never more to have part or lot in anything that might befall her!

He had trusted in his G.o.d, and his G.o.d had mocked him; filling his heart with this unsatisfied love. Other men got their desires and----

"Preacher, shall you preach to-day in the yard?" said Jack.

"No; I've no call to preach to-day. I can't," said Barnabas.

Perhaps he had never had a call; perhaps everything was a mistake from beginning to end. If so, then indeed he _had_ been a fool; he might, at least, have eaten and drunk, for to-morrow----

"Then you won't leave me," said Jack. "I say, I can't feel anything below my waist, ain't that queer? The governor did me a good turn; for I hadn't much chance of getting clear off, anyhow, even if there 'adn't been them cursed gratings; and now I've cheated them." And he laughed weakly. "I'd like you to stick close by me at the end; but don't preach too much, 'cos I mean to die game. I meant to do _that_ anyhow. If it 'adn't been for you, I'd have finished myself; but I owed you one. How cold it is!"

Barnabas slipped off his jersey to wrap round the man. He knew well enough that no amount of warm clothing would affect that creeping cold; but, at least, it was a way of expressing human sympathy.

Then the fight in his own soul went on again. The preacher's face looked grey in the darkness--the darkness was dark enough.

Was it all a mistake? The waters were going over him.

"I wish you'd light a match. There's one hidden under the rug," said Jack; "and put it between your teeth and lift me a bit; I want to see you."

"That 'ull do ye no good," said Barnabas; but he did as he was asked.

The match flickered up between the dying man's face and his own; the loneliness that pressed on his soul, as the thick darkness on his eyeb.a.l.l.s, seemed momentarily lightened; then the flame went out.

"Thank 'ee--that will do," said Jack. "It makes a man feel queer to know he's going out, and lonesome like."

"Are you in much pain?" asked Barnabas; he had grown fond of Hopping Jack.

"No; it's the first time it's held off me for weeks," he said. "I say, preacher--I ain't going to whine about my sins, they're past praying for; but I wish I hadn't gone in for that work in the yard when we set on you. When one's always got a kind of grinding pain going on inside one, it kind of drives one to play the fool badly. Dr. Merrill says it's something with a queer name that begins with a 'K' was the matter with me, and it sarved me right. I wish he'd got it! Preaching always riled me, and that day it was bad, and you looked so strong. It were partly that that aggravated me."

"I see. I was very strong," said the preacher, a good deal touched by this odd confession. "Happen it made ye envious. Never mind, Jack, that's past."

"No, it ain't," said Jack. "You're a different sort to me, and don't bear malice; but it's made you another man. It hurt you to lift me with two hands just now; you could have lifted me with one finger before we did that. If the Lord you're so sure about _is_ there, He oughtn't to forget; but without that (for it ain't any good thinking of what's coming), I wish I hadn't had a hand in it."

He paused for breath, looking up wistfully at the preacher, whose face he could no longer make out, and finding it difficult to express penitence without showing the white feather. "Mind you, it ain't nothing to do with heaven or h.e.l.l," he said confusedly. "I'm only sorry 'cos it was _you_."

"Ye've made it up to me, Jack," said the preacher. "Ye told me just now ye wouldn't kill yourself for my sake. I ain't much, G.o.d knows; but my preaching would ha' meant just nothing at all, if I didn't hold that worth some bruises."

He was feeling his feet again; after all, that was worth something.

"It's a precious odd making up," said Jack. "And I can't see why the devil it's any odds to you whether I did or not; but I know it is! I say, when _you_ get to heaven, you might say that, eh?"

"Say what?" said Barnabas.

His brain was confused between the strong love of life, or rather of Margaret, that he was trying to fight down in his own soul (it was like fighting an inflowing tide), and the other strong impulse to help, that had been a ruling habit of years.

"Why, that I had a try to make up. No one else will speak for me, you may bet on that! And even you won't be able to make it amount to much, but--come--say you'll remember me, if there is anything the other side.

Swear you'll not forget. I shouldn't believe any one else, if they swore till they burst; but you'd stick to anything you'd said. I won't funk. I won't have that fat parson pray for me. If G.o.d's alive, He ain't such a soft one as to be squared by a few snivellin' prayers at the end; but I'd like you to remember me. Whatever comes, it seems as if you'd be something to hold to."

And the preacher bowed his grey head on his hands. He had been preached to, to some purpose.

In the midst of the darkness he saw again the figure of his Master crucified, with a thief on the right hand and on the left.

"It's not to _me_ you must say that!" he cried. "Not to me, who am a most cowardly and unprofitable servant. But, oh, my Lord, remember _us_--when Thou comest into Thy kingdom!" And, with that, the darkness in his soul cleared.

Jack's mind wandered after that; he kept spouting bits out of some play that Barnabas had never heard of, and aping feebly all sorts of characters, chiefly kings and princes (the fellow had evidently been a reader at one time). Then the feeble voice grew fainter, and presently he slept. During his sleep he effectually escaped, neither grating nor gaolers having power to stay him this time.

His _role_ was played out, and delivered up to the Author of potentates and beggars; of the few who succeed, and the many who fail. Barnabas closed Hopping Jack's eyes gently--having a weak place in his own composition for failures--then stood upright.

"I must preach this evening," he said. "I ha' much to say, an' th' time is short."

The men were not allowed to go into the yard lest there should be more attempts to get out under cover of the yellow fog. Barnabas preached in the ward, therefore; and Dr. Merrill, coming in at five o'clock, found Jack dead, and the others congregated round the preacher.

The red-haired surgeon watched the scene, with the half admiring irritation that Barnabas Thorpe's proceedings were apt to produce in him.

He glanced round at the degraded types of humanity that surrounded Barnabas, and said to himself (as he had often said before) that one might as well try to make sweet bread with salt water as to make a man of an habitual gaol bird. Yet, there was something fine, though irrational, in a faith that saw possibilities even here!

"I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor princ.i.p.alities, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature can separate us from the love of G.o.d," cried the man, whose intense conviction held this motley throng of rogues.