And now George Fielding is gone to Australia to make a thousand pounds
by farming and cattle-feeding, so that he may marry Susan. Susan, at
home, is often pensive and always anxious, but not despondent. Meadows
is falling deeper and deeper in love, but keeping it jealously secret;
on his guard against Isaac Levi, and on his guard against William;
hoping everything from time and accidents, and from George's incapacity
to make money; and watching with keen eye and working with subtle
threads to draw everybody into his power who could assist or thwart him
in his object. William Fielding is going down the hill, Meadows was
mounting; getting the better of his passion, and gradually substituting
a brother-in-law's regard. Within eighteen months William was happily
married to another farmer's daughter in the neighbourhood.
_II.--In Gaol_
Under Governor Hawes the separate and silent system flourished in ----
gaol, and the local justices entirely approved the system. In the view
of Hawes and the justices severe punishment of mind and body was the
essential object of a gaol.
Now Tom Robinson had not been in gaol these four years, and though he
had heard much of the changes in gaol treatment, they had not yet come
home to him. When, therefore, instead of being greeted with the
boisterous acclamations of other spirits as bad as himself, he was
ushered into a cell white as driven snow, and his duties explained to
him, the heavy penalty he was under should a speck of dirt ever be
discovered on the walls or floor, Thomas looked blank and had a
misgiving. To his dismay he found that the silent cellular system was
even carried out in the chapel, where each prisoner had a sort of
sentry-box to himself, and that the hour's promenade for exercise
conversation was equally impossible.
The turnkeys were surly and forbidding, and the hours dragged wearily to
this active-minded prisoner. Robinson was driven to appeal to the
governor to put him on hard labour.
"We'll choose the time for that," said the governor, with a knowing
smile. "You'll be worse before you are better, my man."
On the tenth day Robinson tried to exchange a word with a prisoner in
chapel, and for this he was taken to the black-hole.
Now Robinson was a man of rare capacity, full of talent and the courage
and energy that show in action, but not rich in the fortitude that bears
much. When they took him out of the black-hole, after six hours'
confinement, he was observed to be white as a sheet, and to tremble
violently all over.
The day after this the doctor reported No. 19--this was Robinson--to be
sinking, and on this Hawes put him to garden work. The man's life and
reason were saved by that little bit of labour. Then for a day or two he
was employed in washing the corridors, and in making brushes; after
that, came the crank. This was a machine consisting of a vertical post
with an iron handle, and it was worked as villagers draw a bucket up
from a well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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