Dorothy Eden Read Online Free

here. They drink it good, bad or indifferent. Convicts make it illicitly. Heaven knows what they put in it. I shall educate them to drink wine.’
    Eugenia thought it wiser not to comment that that human relic in the gutter scarcely looked educable as far as wine was concerned. One could hardly imagine that dirty hand lovingly holding the stem of a wine glass. But it would be pleasant if it could be done, of course. She agreed with Gilbert on the principle of his argument.
    A moment later she was diverted from that sordid spectacle by an infinitely more distressing one, a line of men shuffling along the street with chains clanking. They were dressed in shabby grey clothes liberally daubed with arrows. Most of them kept their eyes on the ground, but one looked straight at Eugenia. No, not at her, through her, for the strange melancholy light eyes were seeing nothing but some unrealizable dream.
    In spite of the heat, a violent shiver went over her. Her fingers tightened on Gilbert’s arm.
    ‘A chain gang,’ Gilbert said briefly, answering her unspoken question. ‘They’re on their way to the stone quarries.’
    ‘How perfectly dreadful!’
    ‘It’s a sight you will have to get used to, my dear. You must remember that these men have all committed some crime.’
    ‘But surely not one to merit that treatment!’ She had turned to look back at the shuffling line, the drooping heads, the unkempt hair, the general air of degradation. Her dismay was intense. She had never been able to bear witnessing the humiliation of a human being, but this was much worse than humiliation, it was barbarism.
    ‘There are cases of injustice, I agree,’ Gilbert said judicially. ‘But usually in those the man’s natural honesty allows him to rehabilitate himself when he gets his freedom. There are plenty of ex-convicts in the colony leading honest lives. Come, my love, don’t look so shocked. If one is ill one takes a dose of medicine and recovers. That’s what those fellows are doing.’
    ‘Medicine doesn’t always cure.’
    ‘No, I admit some cases are irreclaimable. They become permanently degraded.’
    ‘And what about their keepers?’
    Gilbert looked at her with suddenly sharp eyes.
    ‘You think administering punishment is debasing?’
    ‘I am sure it could be.’
    ‘Do I looked debased? I have several convicts in my employ. I often have to administer punishment. But I think I remain a decent enough fellow.’
    ‘What sort of punishment?’ Eugenia asked apprehensively.
    ‘The lash. A couple of dozen strokes. That’s light punishment compared to what the courts mete out. I don’t care for it, but order must be kept. I narrowly avoided a mutiny last summer. You get one bad element among these fellows and then there’s trouble.’
    ‘You—do this—yourself?’
    ‘My love, it’s nothing you must worry your head about. Of course it must be a shock to you at first. You’ve lived a sheltered life. I hope to go on keeping it sheltered and protected. But this is a phase of colonial existence which you will have to accept.’
    ‘You would expect me to accept seeing a man whipped!’ Eugenia said incredulously.
    ‘You don’t have to witness it. Heaven forbid! But you must accept it as a necessary part of our society at present. When England stops treating us as a dumping ground for human rubbish, then we will have other laws.’
    ‘But you said in England that you found the convicts a blessing,’ Eugenia said stubbornly. ‘Or words to that effect.’
    ‘For cheap labour. Yarrabee could not have been built without them.’
    Yarrabee. The walls rising as the men in the arrow-daubed clothes built stone on stone. The men with the hate-filled minds, the despairing eyes, the scarred backs.
    I am not going to be able to bear to live in it, Eugenia thought. It is going to be a house haunted by these ragged unhappy ghosts…
    Gilbert pressed her arm against his side. He said tolerantly, ‘At your age I also was shocked. One