THE MOTHER AND SON.
Rice did not speak--he did not move--a weight of blood fell back on his
heart, turning it to stone. He felt like a drowning man, with the
billows of a turbulent ocean heaving around him.
The old woman left her support against the timbers of the gallows, and
rested against him. Unconsciously he circled her with one arm. She
looked up in his face, and the slow relief of tears gathered in her
eyes.
All this had passed very quietly. No one saw it, for but few had heeded
the old woman who crept silently after the cortege when it left the
jail. As the sheriff led his charge up to the scaffold, a stifled moan
had made him pause, and he saw a thin hand steal forth from the crowd
and touch that of the prisoner, without seeming to heed the act; for he
was a kind man, and guessed who the woman was. Then the strong, brave
son came up, and the old woman recognized him with sorrowful gladness;
but the crowd was eager for the spectacle of human shame, and cared
nothing for that.
Oh, how differently the half brother looked on that scaffold now! He saw
the delicate form drooping in the presence of a great multitude. The
sunlight fell around her with a soft, mocking radiance. Not even a cloud
crept mercifully into the heavens to vail her with shadows. Her eyes
were bent on the rough, unjoined boards beneath her feet. The tumult of
popular curiosity rose and swelled around her, but she never moved or
looked up. Coarse words and harsh revilings passed by her, but save a
quiver of the eyelids, you would not have known that she heard them.
As she sat thus meek and still while the minutes of her punishment
dropped into eternity, carrying her shame with them, the great multitude
around her grew turbulent. After all, what was it to walk so far and
stay so long only to see a young girl sitting upon a platform of boards,
without giving a sign or lifting her eyes? They had come to see a
murderess--something wild and exciting--a scene to frighten their
children with in after times, and talk over with the neighbors when
subjects of gossip ran low. Why did not the sheriff make her stand up
and confess her crime before them all? That would be something to
satisfy the law!
As the hour wore on these expressions of discontent grew strong. Men
shouted for her to stand up, while the mocking voices of disappointed
females scoffed at her with unwomanly fierceness.
All feelings are contagious when humanity crowds itself into masses.
Lashed by these jibes the people grew coarse and cruel--the meek silence
of the prisoner seemed like obstinacy to them. Her drooping face, half
hidden from their eager glances, had no right to evade them thus.
These murmurs of discontent grew turbulent and surged through the crowd
like the dashing of spent waves upon a rocky bank--a sea of human faces
waved to and fro, white and terrified with conflicting emotions. In all
that throng there was, perhaps, not one countenance which expressed
indifference; a great painter might have made his name immortal could he
have pictured that dense multitude as it really appeared. Men and women
looked cruel and hard, as if they longed to drag the miserable young
creature down from her place of shame with their own hands and put her
to death. Here and there a visage appeared which seemed to express
something akin to pity; but the most tender-hearted would hardly have
ventured, amid that excited populace, to have expressed a word of
sympathy.
In the midst of this tumult Rice heard a voice close to his elbow, which
hissed in his ear like a serpent. A rough looking man stood by him with
a face full of cruel mockery uplifted to the gallows. He stooped down
and spoke to a lad who stood near:
"Go and give the halter a jerk, my little fellow, and I'll pay ye a
ninepence the minute it's done. If you pull her off so much the better;
I'll make the ninepence a shilling!"
These were the words which made Rice start, and look fiercely around.
He saw the boy, an evil-visaged imp, skulking away toward the gallows.
Looking back over his shoulder, with a sly, cunning smile.
"Mother, stand alone one minute," he said, in a hoarse whisper.
The old woman could not stand without support, but she fell back against
the gallows timbers, looking wildly in his face. He waited for nothing,
but sprang into the crowd with the bound of a panther, grappled the lad
by the throat, just as his hand touched an end of the rope which had
fallen over the scaffold. With the strength of a giant he lifted the boy
high in the air with both hands, and pitched him far over the heads of
the multitude. Here the urchin fluttered and turned, like some uncouth
bird, till he was engulfed by the crowd, amid shouts of laughter and
wild exclamations of astonishment.
Pale and trembling with rage, Rice turned upon the man who had
instigated this dastardly act, but the craven took prompt warning, and
plunged into the crowd, which, closing upon him, left Rice with his hand
clenched and specks of foam trembling on his lips. A hand was laid
heavily on his shoulder. Thinking it was some constable ready to arrest
him, Rice turned, but only to meet a mild and elderly face, whose placid
eyes looked gently into his. It was old Mr. Thrasher.
"Stop, stop, my friend. Let the laws be fulfilled without tumult. God
may be doing a great work here."
"But what is man now doing, I should like to know?" cried the angry
sailor. "Can your God look down on such work as this and not hate the
people He has made? Look at this girl! look at the old woman yonder! My
mother and my sister!"
"Your mother--sister! Then you are David Rice?"
"Yes, I am Dave Rice, that old woman's son. I hadn't seen her for nigh
upon eight years, and this is how I find her!" cried Dave, shaking all
over with a burst of grief; "and that's how I find my half sister, the
sweetest little child that man ever sat eyes on."
Great tears trembled in his eyes and dropped down his cheeks, he wiped
them away with the cuff of his sailor's jacket, dashing his hand down in
a passion of self-contempt.
"What has the girl done? What does this all mean? If you know, tell
me--do tell me!"
"Be calm--be still!" answered Thrasher, in a voice that carried soothing
in its very tones. "She is innocent as a lamb."
"Innocent, and there?"
"Yes, I say it again, in spite of her trial--in spite of her sentence,
just now commenced. Your sister is innocent of the murder."
"The murder! God help us!"
"The murder of her child!"
"Her child! My little sister's child!"
"Wait--wait till you see her. She has bound me by a promise, but you are
her brother, and have rights. I am glad you have come. With your
knowledge of sea-life he may be found. My son, Nelson Thrasher, I mean."
"Nelson Thrasher! And what has he to do with her and this?"
"Nothing with this. It would distress him as it does us, but he is
away--knows nothing about it, and she----But, hush! the time is up. The
sheriff tells her to come down."
The two men moved closer to the scaffold. At the voice of the sheriff
Katharine lifted her head slowly, and cast a frightened look at the
crowd, which became more and more riotous as the hour closed. For the
first time that day a faint flush stole to her forehead, and her eyes
quailed with affright from all the eager faces uplifted toward her. The
sheriff spoke again before she attempted to arise. Then a voice followed
his, saying:
"Take courage, Katharine, we are here!"
She knew the voice well, arose, unsteadily, to her feet, and staggered,
in a blind way, across the scaffold, with her arms held out. The
changeable mob began to pity her then, for the sight of her face might
have moved the very stones to compassion. More kindly murmurs reached
her; you could see it by the quiver of her features and the pathetic
helplessness with which she looked toward the spot whence the voices
came.
David Rice could bear the scene no longer; he rushed by the sheriff,
sprang upon the scaffold, and took the unhappy girl in his arms, crying
out:
"Katy, Katy! God forgive them, for they are killing you! My sister, my
little sister!"
She may have heard his voice, and the name by which he called her; if
so, it smote the remaining strength from her frame, for she fell away in
his arms, limp and dead, like a lily broken at the stalk.
The sheriff would have taken her from those strong arms, but Rice waved
him back.
"Don't be afeared, don't be afeared," he said, hoarse with grief; "I
shan't run away with the poor lamb; but she's dead, and no one but her
brother shall touch her. Keep as close as you like. Show me the way to
her prison. I aint a going to break any law; but she's my sister, and
that poor old soul there is my mother. Help her along, if you've got a
heart, and leave this poor lamb to me."
The sheriff had no heart to separate the prisoner from her newly-found
brother; he would even have aided old Mrs. Allen, as Rice had desired,
but Mr. Thrasher and his good wife were by her side, supporting her with
such kindly help that any offers of assistance would have been
intrusive. Thus surrounded by constables, the little group gathered in a
close knot, carrying Katharine Allen from her place of shame.
The crowd fell back reverently before Rice, who followed the sheriff
with the tread of a lion, while that white face rested on his shoulder.
This last anguish had left her like a corpse before the crowd had
changed all its impatient revilings into compassion. The children looked
frightened or began to cry when they saw terror or tears upon their
mother's cheeks. The men grew pale, and looked at each other
upbraidingly, as the Jews must have done when the great sacrifice was
urged forward by their hands.
Thus the little group passed away from the crowd and into the dark
shadows of a prison, which seemed like heaven to this poor girl when she
came to life, with the remembrance of all those glaring eyes and
scowling faces turning their hate upon her.