DESPAIR.
She looked how pallid there!
Not starting, sighing, weeping now;
The quiet anguish of her brow
Was written by Despair.
Ah me! despite a governed breast,
Seeming the while in placid rest,
What anguish soul may bear!—_Michell._
When Malcolm had been gone a week, and Eudora’s life was almost worn out
by the long-drawn anguish of hope deferred, she was sitting in the
morning in her cell, in danger of dropping once more into the death-like
torpor of despair, when the door was opened by the governor, who
announced:
“A friend to see Miss Leaton,” and retired.
Eudora sprang forward, expecting to meet Malcolm Montrose, but she found
herself confronted with a stranger—a very young, slight, graceful girl,
dressed in simple but elegant mourning, and deeply veiled; and even when
the stranger threw aside her veil Eudora failed to recognize in this
elegantly-dressed young lady Annella Wilder, the tipsy captain’s
half-starved daughter, whom she had befriended in the poor London
lodgings.
“You do not know me, Miss Miller—I mean Miss Leaton—and I—oh!” began
Annella, but losing her self-command, she burst into tears, and threw
herself in the arms of Eudora, who, weakened by long, intense suffering,
sat down in her chair, and would have drawn the girl to her bosom, but
Annella sank to the floor, and dropped her head on Eudora’s lap, sobbing
violently.
Miss Leaton could not understand this excessive emotion. She recollected
Annella’s unfortunate barrack education, her utter destitution after her
father’s death, and her wild flight from London; and seeing now the
costliness of her attire, and being totally ignorant of the change in
her circumstances, the mind of Eudora was filled with the darkest fears
for Annella. But if she should find that this young, friendless, and
inexperienced girl had really come to grief, Eudora resolved to befriend
her as far as possible by interesting the noble-hearted Malcolm in her
fate to save her from irremediable ruin. While these thoughts coursed
through the young prisoner’s mind, she gently untied her visitor’s
bonnet and laid it on the bed, and softly caressed the bowed head, while
she inquired, in a low voice:
“What is the matter, dear Annella? I am not so utterly bewildered by my
own woe but that I may be able to comfort you. Tell me what trouble you
are in, and if I cannot help you very long myself, because I may have to
die next Wednesday, I can leave you to one who will be a brother to you
for my sake.”
“Oh, Miss Leaton, Miss Leaton, say no more! Every word you speak goes
through my heart like a spear!” cried Annella, breaking into harder
sobs.
“No, no, don’t say so! I wish only to do you good. Tell me the nature of
the difficulty you are in,” said Eudora, gently caressing the weeping
girl.
“Oh! I am in no difficulty myself; it is all right enough with me
personally, and far better than I deserve, Heaven forgive me! And even
if it were not, how could I think of my good-for-nothing self while you
are in such terrible straits!” cried Annella, wildly sobbing.
“Then do not weep for me, kind girl; it can do no good, you see.”
“Oh, but you don’t know how much reason I have to weep—yes, tears of
blood, Eudora; for it was I that did it! I! I!”
“_You!_—did what?” asked Eudora, in astonishment.
“Betrayed you, as Judas did his master, wretch that I am! I wish I was
hung!” cried Annella, amid choking sobs.
“You?—betrayed me? I do not understand you in the least.”
“I set the police on your track, mean scamp, that I am! I told them
where to find you! I gave you up! Oh! if there is any marrying down
below, they ought to wed me to Judas Iscariot!”
“But—how could you have known that I was Eudora Leaton of whom they were
in pursuit?” inquired the deeply-shocked girl.
“I _didn’t_ know it! I was not so irredeemably bad as _that_ either!
Perhaps even Judas did not know all the evil he was doing when he
betrayed his Master. If I had known it I would have bit my own tongue
off rather than told it. But I had to chatter about you and describe
you, and tell all I knew of you, until I raised suspicion, and they went
and arrested you; and that was the return you got for your kindness to
me! Oh, I wish somebody would strangle me, for I am too wicked and
unlucky to live!” exclaimed Annella, with streaming tears and
suffocating gasps.
“But, poor girl, if you did not know what you were doing you have
nothing to reproach yourself with,” said Eudora, kindly stroking her
bowed hair; for all this time Annella’s head lay in the lap of the
prisoner.
“Yes, yes, I have; conscience is the true judge, and it assures me that
ignorance is no excuse; and that instinct should have taught me silence.
I came here to confess this to you, Miss Leaton; to let you know how
wicked I have been; but not to ask you to pardon me. I do not want you
to do that; I do not wish even the Lord to do it—I would much rather be
punished,” exclaimed Annella, hysterically.
“Dear girl, do not talk so wildly. You have done nothing to require
pardon. If you were unconsciously the means of my arrest, it was not
your fault.”
“But if you should perish, I should feel as if I were your murderer. But
you shall not perish! I hear that Mr. Montrose is in London, petitioning
the Crown for a respite. I hope he will succeed; but even if he should
not, mind, Miss Leaton, you shall not perish! I swear it before High
Heaven!” exclaimed Annella, wiping her eyes, and looking up.
“You must believe me innocent, or you would never speak with such
confidence.”
“Believe! I _know_ you are; and if everyone else fails, _I_ will save
you—I _will_, if I die for it! I pledge my soul’s salvation to that!”
“Alas! poor child, look at these thick walls and heavy locks; how could
you help me?”
“I do not know yet _how_, but I _do_ know that I _will_ somehow!—as the
Lord hears me, I will!”
“I take the disposition for the deed, and thank you as much as if you
were able to keep your word; and above all, I bless you that you do me
the justice to believe me guiltless. Ah, dear girl, I have been so
tortured by the chaplain of this prison, who thinks me guilty, and urges
me to confess. It is so distressing to be thought such a monster by so
good a man.”
“Good, is he, and yet believes you guilty? Then he does not know a white
dove from a black crow, which is tantamount to saying that his reverence
is a fool, begging his pardon. But indeed most of the good people I know
_are_ fools. It seems as if nature were so impartial in the distribution
of her gifts, that she seldom endows the same individual with both
wisdom and goodness at the same time. There’s my three grannies, I mean
the male granny and the two female grannies, all with such good hearts,
but la! such weak heads. Anybody can whirl their minds round and round
as the wind does the weathercocks. La! you shall judge for yourself. At
the trial, when the prosecuting attorney-general was abusing you, he
carried them along with himself until they believed you to be a perfect
demon of iniquity. Then, when your counsel was defending you, he carried
them along with himself, until they believed you to be a persecuted
cherub. Then, when the judge summed up both sides, they were equally
drawn by opposite opinions, and could not make up their minds whether
you were an angel or a devil. Finally, when the jury brought in their
verdict, they comfortably decided that you were the latter, and so went
home happy to supper and bed. La! and we are requested _always_ to
respect our elders!”
“Certainly, dear Annella,” said Eudora, gravely.
“Wish they were always respectable, then.”
“Annella, you shock me, dear; old age must be reverenced.”
“Can’t help it. I haven’t got a particle of reverence in my composition;
it is all owing to my barrack bringing up, I suppose.”
“I suppose it is, poor girl; but, Annella, you seem to have found
friends.”
“Reckon I have; three grannies, I told you.”
“Whom?”
“I’ll tell you. As I was trying to make out Allworth Abbey, what do I do
but fall over an old servant, half-sailor, half-valet, who caught me
trespassing on private grounds, and hauled me up before his master, like
a vagrant before a magistrate; and when I told my story, who does the
old gent turn up to be but my own granny, who was living in that fine
house the Anchorage, with two other old ladies, also my grannies.”
“The Anchorage; then you must speak of Sir Ira Brunton and his family?”
said Eudora in astonishment.
“Just. He quarrelled with my mother and father, and cast them off, but
he took me in when he found me dragged over his threshold. Shall I tell
you all the particulars? Would it interest you?”
“Very much, indeed,” said Eudora, forgetting for the moment her own
awful situation in her interest in Annella’s fortunes.
The girl began and related her adventures as they are already known to
the reader.
The narrative won the prisoner from the contemplation of her own
sorrows, and at its close she put out her hand and took that of Annella,
saying:
“I am very glad for your sake, dear.”
“_But I am not_,” exclaimed Annella, recurring to her cause of grief and
remorse. “I had rather remained in London, and have met all that I most
dreaded—the union, a vulgar task-mistress, beggary, anything, rather
than have come down here to betray you. But I did not mean it, Eudora;
oh, indeed I did not! I would have died rather than have brought you to
this. But I did not even suspect your identity until I recognized you in
the court-room, and even then I did not know that I had had any hand in
your arrest until I got home that evening, and Tabitha Tabs, the
lady’s-maid, told me it was all my doings; that it was from my talk that
they had gained the clue to your hiding-place; and oh, Eudora, I felt
that she was telling the truth, and I felt as if I had been knocked down
with a club, and I have been ill ever since. If I had been well, do you
think I would have stayed away from you so long?”
“No, dear Annella; but I wonder you got leave to visit me at all.”
“I believe you; it was very difficult. First I asked my grandfather to
bring me, but he refused and blowed me up in the bargain; then I watched
my opportunity and put on my bonnet and walked straight here, and the
governor refused to admit me without an order from the sheriff; then I
went and hunted up the sheriff, and asked him if he would give me an
order to see you, and he roared out ‘No,’ as if he would have bit my
head off for asking him, and then I went to the prison chaplain, and
told him what a kind friend you had been to me, and what a traitor I had
been to you, and how broken my heart was, and I cried, and begged and
prayed him to get an order for me, and he got it from the sheriff and
gave it to me, and so here I am. But I did not come for nothing, Eudora,
I said you should not perish, and you shall not, as Heaven hears me,”
added Annella, in a low whisper, as she glanced jealously over her
shoulder at Mrs. Barton, who was squeezing herself tightly into the
farthest corner of the little cell, to be as far off as her office would
permit.
“What is that woman waiting here for? It is very rude. Why does she not
go away and leave us together?” inquired Annella, in a whisper.
“Dear, it is her duty to remain. I am not permitted to be left alone for
an instant.”
“Well, I suppose that is meant kindly, as you are in such deep trouble;
but you are not alone now; I am with you, so she can go. Tell her to
go.”
“Dear, you mistake; it is not in kindness, but for security, that I am
guarded in this way, and Mrs. Barton dares not leave me, even at my
request.”
“But I wish to talk to you privately; I don’t want her to hear every
word we say,” exclaimed Annella, in a vehement whisper.
“But no one can be allowed to talk to me so; and she is here for the
very purpose of hearing all that we have to say,” replied Eudora,
sorrowfully.
“But that is very hard.”
“It is the invariable rule; and as it is a wise precaution, used in all
cases such as mine, I cannot complain of it.”
“But why is it used?”
“Because, Annella, if the friends of the condemned were allowed to visit
them in private, they might bring them the means of escape.”
At this moment Annella became very pale, and gave an hysterical sob.
“Or,” continued Eudora, “what is worse, they might bring them some
instrument of self-destruction, for many a prisoner would gladly seek
death in the cell rather than meet the shame and anguish of—”
Her voice choked, and she shuddered throughout her frame.
“But, would you—would you, Eudora?” questioned the girl, in an eager
whisper.
“I should not dread death so much if I could meet it here in my bed—even
here in prison, and alone—but I would not seek it, Annella. I would
never commit crime to escape suffering.”
“_Hish!_ can that woman hear me when I speak as low as this?” whispered
Annella, close to the ear of Eudora.
“Yes, every syllable. The round stone walls of this little cell seem
formed to echo every sound. She hears even this reply.”
“I wish she was hung, and I don’t care if she hears that.”
“Hush, she is very good to me; you must not offend her, because she only
does her duty.”
“Please, miss, I am not offended; I would take a’most anything from any
friend of yours; it’s quite nat’ral as they should hate and despise me
for sitting here a-keeping guard over an innocent creetur like you; sure
I often hates and despises myself, and I wonder _you_ don’t too,” said
Mrs. Barton, putting her apron to her eyes and beginning to cry.
Annella wheeled around and took a good look at the woman; then suddenly
putting out her hand, she said:
“I beg your pardon—I do indeed, sincerely. I ought not to have spoken as
I did; but you see I am not good, and never was, nor shall be; and when
my heart bleeds, my temper burns and my tongue raves.”
“No offence, Miss, as I said afore; I only wonders as _she_ don’t
mortally hate and despise me,” said Mrs. Barton, wiping her eyes and
sighing.
Annella, who had been gazing at Mrs. Barton with intense interest, arose
with a pale face, trembling limbs, and quick and gasping breath, and
approaching her, whispered:
“You called Miss Leaton innocent. You believe her to be so?”
“Yes, I do; and I would not believe otherwise if all the archbishops and
all the bishops, priests, and deacons in the kingdom was to swear she is
guilty, and take the sacrament on it,” said the woman, earnestly.
“And therefore you must see that it is very cruel she should be doomed
to suffer,” said Annella, eagerly.
“It’s martyr’om; that’s what it is.”
“Hush! listen!” continued Annella, bending low; “you would like to see
her free of this place, would you not?”
“Oh, wouldn’t I though! Sure, I pray for her deliverance every night and
morning on my knees,” sobbed Mrs. Barton.
“And—you would help her to escape, if a good plan was laid, and it was
all safe for you?” inquired Annella, in a low, breathless whisper.
“Eh?”
“If you could do it safely, without endangering yourself, you would
connive at her escape, would you not?”
“Eh? What? I don’t understand you; but I would do anything in the world
I could for her. Sure, she knows that without my telling her.”
“Well, then, listen! But stop—what hours do you watch with her?”
“From six to twelve in the morning, and then from six to twelve at
night.”
“Very well; no, if I were to come again to-morrow morning while you have
the watch, couldn’t you contrive to turn your back and shut your eyes
and pretend to drop asleep while I change clothes with her, and let her
walk out closely veiled in my place?”
“Eh! What! No, Miss.”
“But why?”
“Lawk, Miss, I dar’n’t.”
“Oh, you need not be afraid of consequences; there would be no danger to
you. You might be suspected, but you could not be convicted, for no one
on earth could prove that, overcome by fatigue you didn’t fall asleep;
and so the worse that could befall you would be the loss of your
place—for I do suppose they would not keep a female warder who was
addicted to falling asleep on her watch. But, Mrs. Barton, any loss you
might sustain, should be made up to you a hundred-fold.”
“’Taint that, Miss; I ain’t afeared of nothink but doing wrong. I
dar’n’t let her escape.”
“But it would be a meritorious act, helping the innocent to evade
unmerited death.”
“So it would, Miss, under some circumstances; but, you see, when I took
this place, I pledged myself to obey the laws, and to watch over the
safe custody of the prisoners under my charge. And so I dar’n’t break my
word, or betray my trust, Miss—no, not even to save her precious life,
as it melts my heart to see her suffer so,” said Mrs. Barton, putting
her apron up to her face, and beginning to cry again.
“Not if I was to offer you five hundred pounds—a thousand pounds?”
“Not if so be as you were to offer me ten thousand, Miss,” sobbed the
woman.
“Look at Eudora, then; if you won’t let her go, only look at her,” said
Annella, artfully.
Mrs. Barton dropped her apron, and turned her eyes towards the prisoner,
who sat upon the side of her bed, with her head bent forward, her cheeks
flushed, her lips apart, her eyes strained outward, and her hands
clasped and extended in mute, eloquent appeal for freedom.
“I can’t look at her; it cleaves my heart in two, it does!” sobbed Mrs.
Barton, covering her face again.
With a sudden impulse, Eudora started forward, and clasped the hand of
her warder, exclaiming:
“Oh, listen to her! Listen to my friend! Give me leave to get away if I
can; give me this one _little_ chance of life. Think—I have got but one
week to live; one short week, and then I am to die such a horrible
death! Oh, pity me! let me go!”
“Oh, this is dreadful—dreadful! I would do anything in the world for
you, poor child; but I dar’n’t do this—I dar’n’t betray my trust,”
replied Mrs. Barton, wildly weeping.
“Suppose I was your own child, you would let me go—you would risk your
soul’s salvation to free me; or, if I had a mother, she would move
heaven and earth to save me—but I am motherless. Oh, pity me as if I
were your child, and let me go!”
“I darn’t; Lord help me, I darn’t. And even if I did, poor dear, it
wouldn’t save you; you’d be known and tuk up again afore you got outside
of the prison gates. Lawk, yes; afore you even got to the head o’ the
stairs o’ this very ward; and then your case would be worse nor it is
now.”
“It _could not_ be worse; and if the chance is ever so small, still it
_is_ one. Oh, give me this little, little chance of life! I do not
deserve to die this horrible death.”
“I’d rather die this minute myself than refuse you. I mustn’t be a
traitor. Sure, you wouldn’t have me go agin my conscience?”
Without another word Eudora turned and sat down on the bed, dropped her
clasped hands upon her lap, her pale face upon her breast, and sat in an
attitude and expression of blended shame and resignation.
“How could you be so hard-hearted and cruel?” exclaimed Annella.
“I’m not so, Miss; contrariwise, it a’most breaks my heart to refuse
her, but even so I must do my duty,” sobbed Mrs. Barton, with her apron
once more at her eyes.
“Oh, bother your duty,” exclaimed Annella, with indignant vehemence.
“That word is as good as a dose of tartar-emetic to me, for I do believe
there is more sin committed in the name of duty than ever has been
perpetrated at the instigation of any devil in Pandemonium from Moloch
down. I am not as old as the north star, but even I have noticed all my
life, when anyone is going to do anything so abominably wicked or
shamefully mean that Satan himself would blush to own it, they father it
upon duty.”
“Well, duty is not the less sacred nor incumbent upon us on that
account. Many ill deeds have been done in the name of the Most High, but
we do not, for that, worship the Divine name the less,” said Eudora,
reverently.
“Oh, Miss, I hopes you do not think as I am a hypocrite as acts wicked
an’ mean in the presence of duty?” asked Mrs. Barton, still sobbing.
“No, I am sure you acted conscientiously in refusing to aid my escape.
It was I who did wrong. I ought not to have made such an appeal to you,
or worked upon your feelings, or tempted your fidelity. But I was
carried away by my emotions—I forgot myself—I acted upon the impulse of
the moment. The temptation was so strong—death seemed so bitter, life so
sweet,” said Eudora, with a deep sigh.
“Oh, how can you be so cruel as still to refuse to let her go? Even
supposing it would be wrong, you might do a _little_ wrong for mercy’s
sake, and to save her from perishing,” pleaded Annella.
“Do not tempt her farther, dear. God is omnipotent; if He wills He can
deliver me, but to tempt His creatures is no way to gain His favor,”
said Eudora.
“That’s it, Miss; do right, and trust in Him as can save even at the
eleventh hour,” commented Mrs. Barton, wiping her eyes. “And now listen;
I hear the other warder coming. Don’t attempt to talk to her as you have
to me, for _she_ would think it _her_ place to report the conversation
to the governor.”
At this moment, without an instant’s warning, the door was unlocked,
Mrs. Barton peremptorily called out, and her substitute admitted.
The new comer was a stern, “grim-visaged” woman, who took her seat with
the stolid indifference of one long hardened to her cruel office.
Annella, not daring, for Eudora’s sake, to speak freely before this
she-dragon, yet had not the heart to take leave of her unhappy friend.
She sat down beside her on the cot, and silently took and held her hand.
She remained as long as she possibly could do so, and then, in parting,
promised to re-visit Eudora, if permitted, the next day.
With the departure of the wild, though true-hearted girl, a sunbeam
seemed to have been withdrawn from the cell.
During her visit, Eudora’s agonizing consciousness of her situation had
been suspended, or modified.
Nature, indeed, the most tender of mothers, never permits her children
to endure a long continued strain of suffering, whether of mind or body.
She makes the tortured victim faint upon the rack, and in
unconsciousness lose the sense of physical agony. She gives the mourner
long intervals of stupor, distraction of hope, to alleviate the effect
of mental anguish.
Such a blessing had come to Eudora with the entrance of Annella, but had
gone with her exit. After the departure of her visitor, all the full
realization of her dreadful position rushed back upon the mind of Eudora
and overwhelmed her, and she sank upon the bed in the collapse of
despair.
She had not remained thus many minutes before the door was once more
unlocked, another “friend to see Miss Leaton” announced, and Malcolm
Montrose entered the cell.
Forgetting everything else, Eudora started up and sprang towards him,
exclaiming:
“Oh, Malcolm, have you come at last? What a weary, weary time you have
been away! God bless you, I am so glad to see you! But, oh, Malcolm!
will they let me live? Quick, tell me if you will!”
He could not answer her; he pressed her hand with an unconsciously cruel
force, while he turned away his face in silent misery.
She looked at him in sudden terror, and in the written agony of his brow
she read the truth. Her beating heart grew still as death; her flushed
cheek turned pale as marble, and she sank upon her seat and covered her
face with her hands.
He sat down by her side, took one of her hands in his own, and essayed
to speak; but his voice refused its office.
Then with that wonderful strength which comes even to the weakest woman
in the direst distress, she controlled her own agitation, and wishing to
save him the pain of announcing the fatal intelligence, she quietly
said:
“I am to die.”
He pressed her hand in mute despair, and not another word was spoken
between them. They sat with clasped hands side by side, until the hour
of closing the prison separated them. Then, in taking leave, Malcolm,
with a broken voice, faltered forth:
“I will see you again, to-morrow.”
She answered:
“Come.”
And so they parted.
That evening it was known throughout the town that the petition for a
respite or commutation of Eudora Leaton’s sentence had been rejected;
that all hope of saving her life was abandoned, and that the execution
appointed for Wednesday morning would certainly proceed.