Page 452 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER XVIII. IN

THE HOSPITAL.

he hospital of Port Arthur was not a cheerful place, but
Tto the tortured and unnerved Rufus Dawes it seemed
a paradise. There at least—despite the roughness and con-
tempt with which his gaolers ministered to him— he felt
that he was considered. There at least he was free from the
enforced companionship of the men whom he loathed, and
to whose level he felt, with mental agony unspeakable, that
he was daily sinking. Throughout his long term of degrada-
tion he had, as yet, aided by the memory of his sacrifice and
his love, preserved something of his self-respect, but he felt
that he could not preserve it long. Little by little he had come
to regard himself as one out of the pale of love and mercy, as
one tormented of fortune, plunged into a deep into which
the eye of Heaven did not penetrate. Since his capture in the
garden of Hobart Town, he had given loose rein to his rage
and his despair. ‘I am forgotten or despised; I have no name
in the world; what matter if I become like one of these?’ It
was under the influence of this feeling that he had picked up
the cat at the command of Captain Burgess. As the unhappy
Kirkland had said, ‘As well you as another”; and truly, what
was he that he should cherish sentiments of honour or hu-
manity? But he had miscalculated his own capacity for evil.

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