In the best room that could be allotted to him consistently with safe
imprisonment, and with such comforts around as money might obtain,
Falkner passed the lingering days. What so forlorn as the comforts of a
prison! the wigwam of the Indian is more pleasing to the
imagination--that is in close contiguity with Nature, and partakes her
charm--no barrier exists between it and freedom--and Nature and freedom
are the stanch friends of unsophisticated man. But a jail's best room
sickens the heart in its very show of accommodation. The strongly-barred
windows, looking out on the narrow court, surrounded by high frowning
walls; the appalling sounds that reach the ear, in such close
neighbourhood to crime and wo; the squalid appearance given to each
inhabitant by the confined air--the surly, authoritative manners of the
attendants--not dependant on the prisoner, but on the state--the
knowledge that all may come in, while he cannot get out--and the
conviction that the very unshackled state of his limbs depends upon his
tame submission and apparent apathy; there is no one circumstance that
does not wound the free spirit of man, and make him envy the meanest
animal that breathes the free air, and is at liberty.
Falkner, by that strange law of our nature which makes us conceive the
future, without being aware of our foreknowledge, had acquainted his
imagination with these things--and while writing his history amid the
far-stretched mountains of Greece, had shrunk and trembled before such
an aspect of slavery; and yet now that it had fallen on him, he felt in
the first instance more satisfied, more truly free, than for many a long
day before.
There is no tyranny so hard as fear; no prison so abhorrent as
apprehension; Falkner was not a coward, yet he feared. He feared
discovery--he feared ignominy, and had eagerly sought death to free him
from the terror of such evils, with which, perhaps--so strangely are we
formed--Osborne had infected him. It had come--it was here--it was his
life, his daily bread; and he rose above the infliction calmly, and
almost proudly. It is with pride that we say that we endure the
worst--there is a very freedom in the thought, that the animosity of all
mankind is roused against us--and every engine set at work for our
injury--no more can be done--the gulf is passed--the claw of the wild
beast is on our heart--but the spirit soars more freely still. To this
was added the singular relief which confession brings to the human
heart. Guilt hidden in the recesses of the conscience assumes gigantic
and distorted dimensions. When the secret is shared by another, it falls
back at once into its natural proportion.
Much had this man of wo endured--the feeling against him throughout the
part of the country where he now was was vehement. The discovery of poor
Alithea's remains--the inquest, and its verdict--the unhappy lady's
funeral--had spread far and wide his accusation. It had been found
necessary to take him into Carlisle by night; and even then, some few
remained in waiting, and roused their fellows, and the hootings of
execration were raised against him. "I end as I began," thought Falkner;
"amid revilings and injustice--I can surely suffer now that which was so
often my lot in the first dawn of boyhood."
His examination before the magistrates was a more painful proceeding.
There was no glaring injustice, no vindictive hatred here, and yet he
was accused of the foulest crime in nature, and saw in many faces the
belief that he was a murderer. The murderer of Alithea! He could have
laughed in scorn, to think that such an idea had entered a man's mind.
She, an angel whom he worshipped--whom to save he would have met ten
thousand deaths--how mad a world--how insane a system must it be, where
such a thought was not scouted as soon as conceived!
Falkner had no vulgar mind. In early youth he experienced those
aspirations after excellence which betoken the finely moulded among our
fellow-creatures. There was a type of virtue engraved in his heart,
after which he desired to model himself. Since the hour when the
consequences of his guilt revealed its true form to him, he had striven,
like an eagle in an iron-bound cage, to free himself from the trammels
of conscience. He felt within how much better he might be than anything
he was. But all this was unacknowledged and uncared for in the present
scene--it was not the heroism of his soul that was inquired into, but
the facts of his whereabouts; not the sacred nature of his worship for
Alithea, but whether he had had opportunity to perpetrate crime. When we
are conscious of innocence, what so heart-sickening as to combat
circumstances that accuse us of guilt which we abhor. His prison-room
was a welcome refuge after such an ordeal.
His spirit could not be cowed by misfortune, and he felt unnaturally
glad to be where he was; he felt glad to be the victim of injustice, the
mark of unspeakable adversity; but his body's strength failed to keep
pace with the lofty disdain of his soul--and Elizabeth, where was she?
He rejoiced that she was absent when torn from his home; he had directed
the servants to say nothing to Miss Falkner--he would write; and he had
meant to fulfil this promise, but each time he thought to do so he
shrunk repugnant. He would not for worlds call her to his side, to share
the horrors of his lot; and feeling sure that she would be visited by
some member of her father's family, he thought it best to let things
take their course--unprotected and alone, she would gladly accept refuge
there where it was offered--and the tie snapped between them--happiness
and love would alike smile on her.
He had it deeply at heart that she should not be mingled in the
frightful details of his present situation, and yet drearily he missed
her, for he loved her with a feeling which, though not paternal, was as
warm as ever filled a father's breast. His passions were ardent, and all
that could be spared from remorse were centred in his adopted child. He
had looked on her, as the prophet might on the angel who ministered to
his wants in the desert: in the abandonment of all mankind, in the
desolation to which his crime had led him, she had brought love and
cheer. She had been his sweet household companion, his familiar friend,
his patient nurse--his soul had grown to her image, and when the place
was vacant that she had filled, he was excited by eager longings for her
presence, that even made his man's heart soft as a woman's with very
desire.
By degrees, as he thought of her and the past, the heroism of his soul
was undermined and weakened. To every eye he continued composed, and
even cheerful, as before. None could read in his impassive countenance
the misery that dwelt, within. He spent his time in reading and writing,
and in necessary communications with the lawyers who were to conduct his
defence; and all this was done with a calm eye and unmoved voice. No
token of complaint or impatience ever escaped; he seemed equal to the
fortune that attacked him. He grew, indeed, paler and thinner--till his
handsome features stood out in their own expressive beauty; he might
have served for a model of Prometheus--the vulture at his heart
producing pangs and spasms of physical suffering; but his will
unconquered--his mind refusing to acknowledge the bondage to which his
body was the prey. It was an unnatural combat; for the tenderness which
was blended with his fiercer passions, and made the charm of his
character, sided with his enemies, and made him less able to bear, than
one more roughly and hardly framed.
He loved nature--he had spent his life among her scenes. Nothing of her
visited him now, save a star or two that rose above the prison wall into
the slip of sky his window commanded; they were the faintest stars in
heaven, and often were shrouded by clouds and mist. Thus doubly
imprisoned, his body barred by physical impediments--his soul shut up in
itself--he became, in the energetic language of genius, the cannibal of
his own heart. Without a vent for any, thoughts revolved in his brain
with the velocity and action of a thousand mill-wheels, and would not be
stopped. Now a spasm of painful emotion covered his brow with a cold
dew--now self-contempt made every portion of himself detestable in his
own eyes--now he felt the curse of God upon him, weighing him down with
heavy, relentless burden; and then again he was assailed by images of
freedom, and keen longings for the free air. "If even, like Mazeppa, I
might seek the wilds, and career along, though death was the bourn in
view, I were happy!" These wild thoughts crossed him, exaggerated into
gasping desire to achieve such a fate, when the sights and sounds of a
prison gathered thick around, and made the very thought of his
fellow-creatures one of disgust and abhorrence.
Thus sunk in gloom, far deeper internally than in outward show--warring
with remorse and the sense of unmerited injury--vanquished by fate, yet
refusing to yield, nature had reached the acme of suffering. He grew to
be careless of the result of his trial, and to neglect the means of
safety. He pondered on self-destruction--though that were giving the
victory to his enemies. He looked round him; his cell appeared a tomb.
He felt as if he had passed out of life into death; strange thoughts and
images flitted through his mind, and the mortal struggle drew to a
close--when, on a day, his prison-door opened, and Elizabeth stepped
within the threshold.
To see the beloved being we long for inexpressibly, and believe to be so
far--to hear the dear voice, whose sweet accent we imagined to be mute
to us for ever--to feel the creature's very soul in real communion with
us, and the person we dote on visible to our eyes, such are moments of
bliss, which the very imperfections of our finite nature render
immeasurably dear. Falkner saw his child, and felt no longer imprisoned.
She was freedom and security. Looking on her sweet face, he could not
believe in the existence of evil. Wrongs and wo, and a torturing
conscience, melted and fled away before her; while fresh-springing
happiness filled every portion of his being.