Читать книгу At the Mercy of Tiberius - Augusta J. Evans - Страница 11

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In ante bellum days, when States' Rights was a sacred faith, a revered and precious palladium, State pride blossomed under Southern skies, and State coffers overflowed with the abundance wherewith God blessed the land. During that period, when it became necessary to select a site for a new Penitentiary, the salubrity and central location of X—-had so strongly commended it, that the spacious structure was erected within its limits, and regarded as an architectural triumph of which the State might justly boast. Soon after this had been completed, the old county jail, situated on the border of the town, was burned one windy March night; then the red rain of war deluged the land, and when the ghastly sun of "Reconstruction" smiled upon the grave of States' Rights, Municipal money disappeared in subterranean channels. Thus it came to pass, that with the exception of a small "lockup" attached to Police Headquarters, X—had failed to rebuild its jail, and domiciled its dangerous transgressors in the great stone prison; paying therefor to the State an annual amount per capita.

Built of gray granite which darkened with time and weather stains, its massive walls, machicolated roof, and tall arched clock-tower lifted their leaden outlines against the sky, and cast a brooding shadow over the town, lying below; a grim perpetual menace to all who subsequently found themselves locked in its reformatory arms. Separated from the bustling mart and busy traffic, by the winding river that divided the little city into North and South X—, it crested an eminence on the north; and the single lower story flanking the main edifice east and west, resembled the trailing wings of some vast bird of prey, an exaggerated simulacrum of a monstrous gray condor perched on a "coigne of vantage," waiting to swoop upon its victims. Encircled by a tall brick wall, which was surmounted by iron spikes sharp as bayonets, that defied escalade, the grounds extended to the verge of the swift stream in front, and stretched back to the border of a heavily timbered tract of pine land, a bit of primeval forest left to stare at the encroaching armies of Philistinism.

Within the precincts of the yard, the tender conservatism of our great-hearted mother Nature, gently toned the savage stony features; and even under the chill frown of iron barred windows, golden sunshine bravely smiled, soft grasses wove their emerald velvet tapestries starred and flushed with dainty satin petals, which late Autumn roses showered in munificent contribution, to the work of pitying love.

In a comfortably furnished room situated in the second story of the main building, sat a woman apparently thirty-five years old, who was singing to a baby lying face downward on her lap, while with one hand she rocked the wicker cradle beside her, where a boy of four years was tossing. Her hazel eyes were full of kindly light, the whole face eloquent with that patient, limitless tenderness, which is the magic chrism of maternity, wherewith Lucina and Cuba abundantly anoint Motherhood. The blessed and infallible nepenthe for all childhood's ills and aches, mother touch, mother songs, soon held soothing sway; and when the woman laid the sleeping babe on her own bed, and covered her with a shawl, she saw her husband leaning against the partly open door.

"Come here, Susie. The kids are snug and safe for the present, and I want you."

"For shame, Ned! To call our darlings such a beastly name. Kids, indeed! My sweetest, loveliest lambs!"

"There! Hear yourself! If I can see any choice of respectability between kids and lambs, may I turn to a thoroughbred Southdown, and take the blue ribbon at the next Fair. Beasts of the field, all of them. The always-wide-awake-contrariness of womankind is a curious and fearful thing. If I had called our beloved towheads, lambs, you would have sworn through blue ruin that they were the cutest, spryest pair of spotted kids, that ever skipped over a five-railed fence!"

"So much the worse for you, Ned Singleton, that you are such a hopeless heathen; you do not even know where the Elect are appointed to stand, at that great day when the sheep come up on the right hand of the Lord, and the goats go down to the left. If you read your Bible more, I should have less to teach you."

"Oh! but let me tell you, I thought of all that before I made up my mind to marry the daughter of a Presbyterian preacher. I knew your dear little blue-nose would keep the orthodox trail; and being one of the Elect you could not get the points of the celestial compass mixed. Don't you forget, that it is part of the unspoken marriage contract, that the wife must not only keep her own soul white, but bleach her husband's also; and no matter what a reprobate a man may be, he always expects his better-half, by hook or by crook, to steer him into heaven."

He put his hands on his wife's shoulders, shook her, in token of mastery, and kissed her.

"What do you want of my 'always-wide-awake-contrariness'? I have half a mind not to help you out of your scrape; for of course you have mired somewhere. What is the matter now, Ned?"

"Yes—stuck hard and fast; so my dear little woman, don't you go back on your wedding-day promises, but just lend a helping hand. I don't know what is to be done with that poor young woman in No. 19. One of the under-wardens, Jarvis, sleeps this week right under her cell, and he tells me that all night long she tramps up and down, without cessation, like some caged animal. This is her third day in, and she has not touched a morsel; though at Judge Dent's request I ordered some extras given her. Jarvis said she was not sullen, but he thought it proper to report to me that she seemed to act very strangely; so I went up to see after her. When I opened the door she was walking up and down the floor, with her hands locked at the back of her head, and I declare, Susie, she looks five years older than when she came here. There are great dark hollows under her eyes, and two red spots like coals of fire on her cheeks. I said: 'Are you sick, that you reject your meals?' To which she replied: 'Don't trouble yourself to send me food; I cannot eat!' Then I told her I understood that she was restless at night, and I advised her to take a mixture which would quiet her nerves. She shook her head, and I could not bear to look at her; the eyes seemed so like a wounded fawn's, brimful of misery. I asked her if there was anything I could do, to make her more comfortable; or if she needed medicine. All this time she kept up her quick walk to and fro, and she answered: 'Thank you. I need nothing—but death; and that will come soon.' Now what could I say? I felt such a lump in my throat, that if Solomon had whispered to me some kind speech, I could not have uttered it, so I got out of the room just as fast as possible, to dry the tears that somehow would blur my eyes. When they are surly, or snappish, or violent, or insolent, I know exactly what to do, and have no trouble; but hang me, if I can cope with this lady—there it is out! She is a lady every inch, and as much out of place here as I should be in Queen Victoria's drawing-room. Men are clumsy brutes, even in kid gloves, and bruise much oftener than they heal. Whenever I am in that girl's presence, I have a queer feeling that I am walking on eggs, and tip-toe as I may, shall smash things. If something is not done, she will be ill on our hands, and a funeral will balk the bloodhounds."

"O, hush, Ned! You give me the shivers. My heart yearns toward that beautiful young creature, and I believe she is as innocent as my baby. It is a burning shame to send her here, unless there is no doubt of her guilt. Judge Dent is too shrewd an old fox to be baited with chaff, and I am satisfied from what he told you, that he believes her statement. There is nothing I would not do to comfort her, but I would rather have my ears boxed than witness her suffering. The day I carried to her a change of clothes, until her own could be washed, and sewed up her dress sleeve. I did nothing but cry. I could not help it, when she moaned and wrung her hands, and said her mother's heart would break. I have heard all my life that justice is blind; I have learned to believe it, for it stumbles, and gropes, and lays iron claws on the wrong person. As for the lawyers? They are fit pilots: and the courts are little better than blind man's buff. Don't stand chewing your mustache, Ned. Tell me what you want me to do, while baby is asleep. She has a vexatious habit of taking cat naps."

"Little woman, I turn over the case to you. Just let your heart loose, and follow it."

"If I do, will you endorse me?"

"Till the stars fall."

"Can you stay here awhile?"

"Yes, if you will tell Jarvis where he can find me."

"Mind you, Ned, you are not to interfere with me?"

"No—I swear I won't. Hurry up, or there will be much music in this bleating fold; and you know I am as utterly useless with a crying child, as a one-armed man in a concert of fiddlers."

The cell assigned to the new prisoner was in the centre of a line, which rose tier above tier, like the compartments in a pigeon house, or the sombre caves hewn out of rock-ribbed cliffs, in some lonely Laura. Iron stairways conducted the unfortunates to these stone cages, where the dim cold light filtered through the iron lattice-work of the upper part of the door, made a perpetual crepuscular atmosphere within. The bare floor, walls, and low ceiling were spotlessly clean and white; and an iron cot with heavy brown blankets spread smoothly and a wooden bench in one corner, constituted the furniture. Scrupulous neatness reigned everywhere, but the air was burdened with the odor of carbolic acid, and even at mid-day was chill as the breath of a tomb. Where the doors were thrown open, they resembled the yawning jaws of rifled graves; and when closed, the woful inmates peering through the black lattice seemed an incarnation of Dante's hideous Caina tenants.

When Mrs. Singleton stopped in front of No. 19, and looked through the grating, Beryl was standing at the extremity of the cell, with her face turned to the wall, and her hands clasping the back of her neck. The ceiling was so low she could have touched it, had she lifted her arms, and she appeared to have retreated as far in the gloomy den as the barriers allowed. Thinking that perhaps the girl was praying, the warden's wife waited some minutes, but no sound greeted her; and so motionless was the figure, that it might have been only an alto rilievo carved on the wall. Pushing the door open, Mrs. Singleton entered, and deposited on the iron bed a waiter covered with a snowy napkin. At the sound, Beryl turned, and her arms fell to her side, but she shrank back against the wall, as if solitude were her only solace, and human intrusion an added torture.

Mrs. Singleton took both hands, and held them firmly:

"Do you believe it right to commit suicide?"

"I believe in everything but human justice, and Divine mercy."

"Your conscience tells you that—"

"Am I allowed a conscience? What ghastly mockery! Thieves and murderers are not fit tenements for conscience, and I—I—am accused of stealing, and of bloodshed. Justice! What a horrible sham! We—her victims—who adored the beneficent and incorruptible attribute of God Himself—we are undeceived, when Justice—the harpy—tears our hearts out with her hideous, foul, defiling claws."

She spoke through set teeth, and a spasm of shuddering shook her from head to feet.

"Listen to me. Suspicion is one thing, proof something very different. You are accused, but not convicted, and—"

"I shall be. Justice must be appeased, and I am the most convenient and available victim. An awful crime has been committed, and outraged law, screaming for vengeance, pounces like a hungry hawk on an innocent and unsuspecting prey. Does she spare the victim because it quivers, and dies hard?"

"Hush! You must not despair. I believe in your innocence; I believe every word you uttered that day was true, and I believe that our merciful God will protect you. Put yourself in His hands, and His mercy will save, for 'it endureth forever.'"

"I don't ask mercy! I claim justice—from God and man. The wicked grovel, and beg for mercy; but innocence lays hold upon the very throne of God, and clutches His sword, and demands justice!"

"I understand how you feel, and I do not wonder; but for your own sake, in order to keep your mind clear and strong for your vindication, you certainly ought to take care of your health. Starvation is the surest leech for depleting soul and body. Do you want to die here in prison, leaving your name tarnished, and smirched with suspicion of crime, when you can live to proclaim your innocence to the world? Remember that even if you care nothing for your life, you owe something to your mother. You have two chances yet; the Grand Jury may not find a true bill—"

"Yes, that tiger-eyed lawyer will see that they do. He knows that the law is a cunning net for the feet of the innocent and the unwary. He set his snare dexterously, and will not fail to watch it."

"You mean Mr. Dunbar? Yes, you certainly have cause to dread him; but even if you should be indicted, you have twelve human hearts full of compassion to appeal to—and I can't think it possible a jury of sane men could look at you and condemn you. You must fight for your life; and what is far more to you than life, you must fight for your good name, for your character. Suspicion is not proof of crime, and there is no taint on you yet; for sin alone stains, and if you will only be brave and clear yourself as I know you can, what a grand triumph it will be. If you starve yourself you seal your doom. An empty stomach will do you more harm than the Grand Jury and all the lawyers; for it utterly upsets your nerves, and makes your brain whirl like a top. For three days and nights you have not tasted food: now just to please me, since I have taken so much trouble, sit down here by me, and eat what I have brought. I know you would rather not; I know you don't want it; but, my dear child, take it like any other dose, which will strengthen you for your battle. It is very fine to rant about heroism, but starvation is the best factory for turning out cowards: and even the courage of old Caesar would have had the 'dwindles,' if he had been stinted in his rations."

She removed the napkin, and displayed a tempting luncheon, served in pretty, gilt-banded white china. What a contrast it presented, to the steaming tin platter and dull tin quart cups carried daily to the adjoining cell?

Beryl laid her hand on Mrs. Singleton's shoulder, and her mouth trembled.

"I thank you, sincerely, for your sympathy—and for your confidence; and to show my appreciation of your kindness, I wish I could eat that dainty luncheon; but I think it would strangle me—I have such a ceaseless aching here, in my throat. I feel as if I should stifle."

"See here! I brought you some sweet rich milk in my little boy's cup. He was my first-born, and I lost him. This was his christening present from my mother. It is very precious, very sacred to me. If you will only drink what is in it, I shall be satisfied. Don't slight my angel baby's cup. That would hurt me."

She raised the pretty "Bo-Peep" silver cup to the prisoner's lips, and seeing the kind hazel eyes swimming in tears, Beryl stooped her head and drank the milk.

The warden's wife lifted the cup, looked wistfully at it, and kissed the name engraved on the metal:

"You know now I must think you pure and worthy. I have given you the strongest possible proof; for only the good could be allowed to touch what my dead boy's lips have consecrated. Now come out with me, and get some pure fresh air."

Beryl shrank back.

"These close walls seem a friendly shelter from the horrible faces that cluster outside. You can form no idea how I dread contact with the vile creatures, whose crimes have brought them here for expiation. The thought of breathing the same atmosphere pollutes me. I think the loathsomeness of perdition must consist in association with the depraved and wicked. Not the undying flames would affright me, but the doom of eternal companionship with outcast criminals. No! No! I would sooner freeze here, than wander in the sunshine with those hideous wretches I saw the day I was thrust among them."

"Trust me, and I will expose you to nothing unpleasant. Take your hat and shawl; I shall not bring you back here. There is time enough for cells when you have been convicted and sentenced; and please God, you shall never stay in this one again. Come."

"Stay, madam. What is your purpose? I have been so hunted down, I am growing suspicious of the appearance of kindness. What are you going to do?"

Mrs. Singleton took her hand and pressed it gently.

"I am going to trust, and help, and love you, if you will let me; and for the present, I intend to keep you in a room adjoining mine, where you will have no fear of wicked neighbors."

"That will be merciful indeed. May God bless you for the thought."

Down iron staircases, and through dim corridors bordered with dark cells, gloomy as the lairs of wild beasts whom the besotted inmates resembled, the two women walked; and once, when a clank of chains and a hoarse human cry broke the dismal silence, Beryl clutched her companion's arm, and her teeth chattered with horror.

"Yes, it is awful! That poor woman is the saddest case we have. She waylaid and stabbed her husband to death, and poisoned his mother. We think she is really insane, and as she is dangerous at times, it is necessary to keep her chained, until arrangements can be made to remove her to the insane asylum."

"I don't wonder she is mad! People cannot dwell here and retain their reason; and madness is a mercy that blesses them with forgetfulness."

Beryl shivered, and her eyes glittered with an unnatural and ominous brilliance.

The warden's wife paused before a large door with solid iron panels, and rang a bell. Some one on the other side asked:

"What is the order? Who rang?"

"Mrs. Singleton; I want to get into the chapel. Let me out, Jasper."

The door swung slowly back, and the guard touched his hat respectfully.

Through an open arcade, where the sunlight streamed, Mrs. Singleton led her companion; then up a short flight of stone steps, and they found themselves in a long room, with an altar railing and pulpit at one end, and rows of wooden benches crossing the floor from wall to wall. Even here, the narrow windows were iron barred, but sunshine and the sweet, pure breath of the outside world entered freely. Within the altar railing, and at the right of the reading desk where a Bible lay, stood a cabinet organ. Leaving the prisoner to walk up and down the aisle, Mrs. Singleton opened the organ, drew out the stops, and after waiting a few moments, began to play.

At first, only a solemn prelude rolled its waves of harmony through the peaceful sunny room, but soon the strains of the beautiful Motet "Cast thy burden on the Lord," swelled like the voice of some divine consoler. Watching the stately figure of the prisoner who wandered to and fro, the warden's wife noticed that like a magnet the music drew her nearer and nearer each time she approached the chancel, and at last she stood with one hand on the railing. The beautiful face, sharpened and drawn by mental agony, was piteously wan save where two scarlet spots burned on her cheeks, and the rigid lips were gray as some granite Statue's, but the eyes glowed with a strange splendor that almost transfigured her countenance.

On and on glided the soft, subtle variations of the Motet, and gradually the strained expression of the shining eyes relaxed, as if the soul of the listener were drifting back from a far-off realm; the white lids quivered, the stern lines of the pale lips unbent. At that moment, the face of her father seemed floating on the sunbeams that gilded the pulpit, and the tones of her mother's voice rang in her ears. The terrible tension of many days and nights of torture gave way suddenly, like a silver thread long taut, which snaps with one last vibration. She raised her hands:

"My God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?"

The cry ended in a wail. Into her burning eyes merciful tears rushed, and sinking on her knees she rested against the railing, shaken by a storm of passionate weeping.

Mrs. Singleton felt her own tears falling fast, but she played for a while longer; then stole out of the chapel, and sat down on the steps.

Across the grass plot before the door, burnished pigeons cooed, and trod their stately minuet, their iridescent plumage showing every opaline splendor as the sunlight smote them; and on a buttress of the clock tower, a lonely hedge-sparrow poured his heart out in that peculiarly pathetic threnody which no other feathered throat contributes to the varied volume of bird lays. Poised on the point of an iron spike in the line that bristled along the wall, a mocking bird preened, then spread his wings, soared and finally swept downward, thrilling the air with the bravura of the "tumbling song"; and over the rampart that shut out the world, drifted the refrain of a paean to peace:

"Bob White!" "Peas ripe?" "Not quite!"

In the vast epic of the Cosmos, evoked when the "Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters"—an epic printed in stars on blue abysses of illimitable space; in illuminated type of rose leaf, primrose petal, scarlet berry on the great greenery of field and forest; in the rainbows that glow on tropical humming birds, on Himalayan pheasants, on dying dolphins in purple seas; and in all the riotous carnival of color on Nature's palette, from shifting glory of summer clouds, to the steady fires of red autumn skies—we find no blot, no break, no blurred abortive passages, until man stepped into creation's story. In the material, physical Universe, the divine rhythm flows on, majestic, serene as when the "morning stars sing together" in the choral of praise to Him, unto whom "all seemed good"; but in the moral and spiritual realm evolved by humanity, what hideous pandemonium of discords drowns the heavenly harmony? What grim havoc marks the swath, when the dripping scythe of human sin and crime swings madly, where the lilies of eternal "Peace on earth, good will to man," should lift their silver chalices to meet the smile of God?

A vague conception of this vexing problem, which like a huge carnivorous spectre, flaps its dusky wings along the sky of sociology, now saddened Mrs. Singleton's meditations, as she watched the lengthening shadow cast by the tower upon the court-yard; but she was not addicted to abstract speculation, and the words of her favorite hymn epitomized her thoughts: "Though every prospect pleases, and only man is vile."

The brazen clang of the deep-throated bell rang out on the quiet air, and a moment later, the piercing treble of a child's cry made her spring to her feet. She peeped into the chapel all was still.

On tiptoe she passed swiftly down the aisle to the chancel, and saw the figure crouched at the altar, with one arm twined through the railing. For many days and nights the tortured woman had not known an instant of repose; nervous dread had scourged her to the verge of frenzy, but when the flow of long-pent tears partly extinguished the fire in her brain, overtaxed Nature claimed restitution, and the prisoner yielded to overwhelming prostration. Death might be hovering near, but her twin sister sleep intervened, and compassionately laid her poppies on the snowy eyelids.

Stooping close, Mrs. Singleton saw that tears yet hung on the black lashes which swept the flushed cheeks, but the parted lips were at rest, and the deep regularly drawn breath told her that at last the weary soul reposed in the peaceful domain of dreams. Deftly, and softly as thistledown falls, she spread her own shawl over the drooping shoulders, then noiselessly hurried back to the door. Locking it, she took the key, ran across the grass, into the arcade, and up to the great iron barrier, which the guard opened as she approached. With flying feet she neared her own apartments, whence issued the indignant wail of her implacable baby girl. As she opened the door, her husband held the disconsolate child toward her.

"You are in time for your share of the fun; I have had enough and to spare. How you stand this diabolical din day in, day out, passes my comprehension. You had not been gone fifteen minutes when Missy tuned up. I patted and, 'She-e-d' her, but she got her head above cover, squinted around the room, and not finding you, set up a squall that would have scared a wildcat. The more I patted, the worse she screamed, and her feet and hands flew around like a wind-mill. I took her up, and trotted her on my knee, but bless you! she squirmed like an eel, and her little bald head bobbed up and down faster than a di-dapper. Then I walked her, but I would as soon try to swing to a greased snake. She wriggled and bucked, and tied herself up into a bow knot, and yelled—. Oh! a Comanche papoose is a dummy to her. As if I had not hands full, arms full, and ears full, Dick must needs wake up and pitch head foremost out of the cradle, and turn a double summerset before he landed upside down on the floor, whereupon he lifted up his voice, and the concert grew lively. I took him under one arm, so, and laid Missy over my shoulder, and it struck me I would join the chorus in self defence, so I opened with all my might on 'Hold the Fort'; but great Tecumseh! I only insulted them both, and finding my fifth fiddle was nowhere in the fray, I feared Jarvis would hear the howling and ring the alarm bell, so I just sat down. I spread out Dick in a soft place, where he could not bump his brains out, and laying my lady across my lap, I held her down by main force, while she screamed till she was black in the face. If you had not come just when you did, I should have turned gray and cross-eyed. Hello, Missy! If she is not cooing and laughing! Little vixen! Oh! but—'lambs'!—I believe they are! Hereafter tend your own flock; and in preference I will herd young panthers."

He wiped his forehead where the perspiration stood in drops, and watched with amazement the sudden lull in the tempest.

Clasped in her mother's arms, the baby smiled and gurgled, and Dick, drying his eyes on the maternal bosom, showed the exact spot where she must kiss his bruised head.

"Ned, what have you done? This baby's hair is dripping wet, and so is the neck of her dress."

"Serves her right, too. I sprinkled her, that's all."

"Sprinkled her! Have you lost your senses?"

"Shouldn't wonder if I had; people in bedlam are apt to be crazy. Yes, I sprinkled Missy, because she turned so black in the face, I thought she was strangling; and my step-mother always sprinkled me when I had a fit of tantrums. But let me tell you, Missy will never be a zealous Baptist, she doesn't take to water kindly."

"When I want my children step-mothered I will let you know. Give me that towel, and baby's woollen cap hanging on the knob of the bureau. Bless her precious heart! if she does not keep you up all night, with the croup, you may thank your stars."

"Susie, just tell me how you tame them, so that next time—"

"Next time, sir, I shall not trust you. I just love them, and they know it; that is what tames the whole world."

Edward Singleton stooped over his wife, and kissed her rosy cheek.

"Little woman, what luck had you in No. 19?"

"The best I could wish. I have saved that poor girl from brain-fever, I hope."

"How did you manage it?"

"Just simply because I am a flesh and blood woman, and not a blundering, cast-iron man."

"How does she seem now?"

"She has had a good, hearty spell of wholesome crying; no hysterics, mind you, but floods of tears; and now she is sound asleep with her head on the altar railing, in the chapel. I locked her up there, and here is the key. When she wakes, I want her brought up here, put in that room yonder, and left entirely to me, until her trial is over. I never do things half way, Ned, and you need not pucker your eyebrows, for I will be responsible for her. I have put my hand to the plough, and you are not to meddle with the lines, till I finish my furrow."