All things now assumed an anxious aspect; all was hurrying to a
conclusion. _To-morrow the trial was to come on._ "Security" is not a
word for mortal man to use, more especially when the issue of an event
depends on the opinions and actions of his fellow-creatures. Falkner's
acquittal was probable, but not certain; even if the impression went in
general in his favour, a single juryman might hold out, and
perverseness, added to obstinacy, would turn the scale against him.
Sickening fears crept over Elizabeth's heart; she endeavoured to conceal
them; she endeavoured to smile and repeat, "This is our last day of
bondage."
Falkner cast no thought upon the worst--innocence shut out fear. He
could not look forward to the ignominy of such a trial without acute
suffering; yet there was an austere composure in his countenance, that
spoke of fortitude and reliance on a power beyond the limit of human
influence. His turn had come to encourage Elizabeth. There was a
nobleness and simplicity of character, common to both, that made them
very intelligible to each other. Falkner, however, had long been
nourishing secret thoughts and plans, of which he had made no mention,
till now, the crisis impending, he thought it best to lift a portion of
the veil that covered the future.
"Yes," he said, in reply to Elizabeth, "to-morrow will be the last day
of slavery; I regain my human privileges after to-morrow, and I shall
not be slow to avail myself of them. My first act will be to quit this
country. I have never trod its soil but to find misery; after to-morrow
I leave it for ever."
Elizabeth started, and looked inquiringly: were her wishes, her destiny
to have no influence over his plans? he knew of the hope, the affection,
that rendered England dear to her. Falkner took her hand. "You will join
me hereafter, dearest; but you will in the first instance yield to my
request, and consent to a separation for a time."
"Never!" said Elizabeth; "you cannot deceive me; you act thus for my
purposes, and not your own, and you misconceive everything. We will
never part."
"Daughters when they marry," observed Falkner, "leave father, mother,
all, and follow the fortunes of their husbands. You must submit to the
common law of human society."
"Do not ask me to reason with you and refute your arguments," replied
Elizabeth; "our position is different from that of any other parent and
child. I will not say I owe you more than daughter ever owed
father--perhaps the sacred tie of blood may stand in place of the
obligations you have heaped on me; but I will not reason; I cannot leave
you. Right or wrong in the eyes of others, my own heart would
perpetually reproach me. I should image your solitary wanderings, your
lonely hours of sickness and suffering, and my peace of mind would be
destroyed."
"It is true," said Falkner, "that I am more friendless than most men;
yet I am not so weak and womanish that I need perpetual support. Your
society is dear to me, dearer, God, who reads my heart, knows, than
liberty or life; I shall return to that society, and again enjoy it;
but, for a time, do not fear but that I can form such transitory ties as
will prevent solitary suffering. Men and women abound who will feel
benevolently towards the lonely stranger; money purchases respect;
blameless manners win kindness. I shall find friends in my need if I
desire it, and I shall return at last to you."
"My dearest father," said Elizabeth, "you cannot deceive me. I penetrate
your motives, but you wholly mistake. You would force me also to mistake
your character, but I know you too well. You never form transitory
friendships; you take no pleasure in the ordinary run of human
intercourse. You inquire; you seek for instruction; you endeavour to
confer benefits; but you have no happiness except such as you derive
from your heart, and that is not easily impressed. Did you not for many
long years continue faithful to one idea--adhere to one image--devote
yourself to one, one only, despite all that separated you? Did not the
impediment you found to the fulfilment of your visions blight your whole
life, and bring you here? Pardon me if I allude to these things. I
cannot be to you what she was, but you can no more banish me from your
heart and imagination than you could her. I know that you cannot. We are
not parent and child," she continued, playfully, "but we have a strong
resemblance on one point--fidelity is our characteristic; we will not
speak of this to others, they might think that we boasted. I am not
quite sure that it is not a defect; at least in some cases, as with you
it proved a misfortune. To me it can never be such: it repays itself. I
cannot leave you, whatever befalls. If Gerard Neville is hereafter lost
to me, I cannot help it; it would kill me to fall off from you. I must
follow the natural, the irresistible bent of my character.
"To-morrow, the day after to-morrow, we will speak more of this. What is
necessary for your happiness, be assured, I will fulfil without
repining; but now, dearest father, let us not speak of the future now;
my heart is too full of the present--the future appears to me a dream
never to be arrived at. Oh, how more than blessed I shall be when the
future, the long future, shall grow into interest and importance!"
They were interrupted. One person came in, and then another, and the
appalling details of the morrow effectually banished all thoughts of
plans, the necessity of which Falkner wished to impress on his young
companion. He also was obliged to give himself up to present cares. He
received all, he talked to all, with a serious but unembarrassed air:
while Elizabeth sat shuddering by, wiping away her tears unseen, and
turning her dimmed eyes from one to the other, pale and miserable. We
have fortitude and resignation for ourselves; but when those beloved are
in peril we can only weep and pray. Sheltered in a dusky corner, a
little retreated behind Falkner, she watched, she listened to all, and
her heart almost broke. "Leave him! after this leave him!" she thought,
"a prey to such memories? Oh, may all good angels desert me when I
become so vile a wretch!"
The hour came when they must part. She was not to see him on the morrow,
until the trial was over; for her presence during the preliminary scenes
was neither fitting nor practicable. Already great indulgences had been
granted to the prisoner, arising from his peculiar position, the great
length of time since the supposed crime had been committed, and the
impression, now become general, that he was innocent. But this had
limits--the morrow was to decide all, and send him forth free and
guiltless, or doom him to all the horrors of condemnation and final
suffering.
Their parting was solemn. Neither indulged in grief. Falkner felt
composed--Elizabeth endeavoured to assume tranquillity; but her lips
quivered, and she could not speak; it was like separating not to meet
for years; a few short hours, and she would look again upon his
face--but how much would happen in the interval! how mighty a change
have occurred! What agony would both have gone through! the one
picturing, the other enduring the scene of the morrow; the gaze of
thousands--the accusation--the evidence--the defence--the verdict--each
of these bearing with it to the well-born and refined a barbed dart,
pregnant with thrilling poison; ignominy added to danger. How Elizabeth
longed to express to the assembled world the honour in which she held
him, whom all looked on as overwhelmed with disgrace; how she yearned to
declare the glory she took in the ties that bound them, and the
affection that she bore! She must be mute--but she felt all this to
bursting; and her last words, "Best of men! excellent, upright, noble,
generous, God will preserve you and restore you to me!" expressed in
some degree the swelling emotions of her soul. They parted. Night and
silence gathered round Falkner's pillow. With stoical firmness he
banished retrospect--he banished care. He laid his hopes and fears at
the feet of that Almighty power, who holds earth and all it contains in
the hollow of his hand, and he would trouble himself no more concerning
the inevitable though unknown decree. His thoughts were at first solemn
and calm; and then, as the human mind can never, even in torture, fix
itself unalterably on one point, milder and more pleasing reveries
presented themselves. He thought of himself as a wild yet not worthless
schoolboy--he remembered the cottage porch clustered over with
odoriferous parasites, under whose shadow sat--the sick, pale lady, with
her starry eyes and wise lessons, and her radiant daughter, whose soft
hand he held as they both nestled close at her feet. He recalled his
wanderings with that daughter over hill and dale, when their steps were
light, and their hearts unburdened with a care, soared to that heaven
which her blessed spirit had already reached. Oh, what is life, that
these dreams of youth and innocence should have conducted her to an
untimely grave--him to a felon's cell! The thought came with a sharp
pang; again he banished it, and the land of Greece, his perils, and his
wanderings with Elizabeth on the shores of Zante, now replaced his other
memories. He then bore a burden on his heart, which veiled with dark
crape the glories of a sunny climate, the heart-cheering tenderness of
his adopted child--this was less bitter, this meeting of fate, this
atonement. Sleep crept over him at last; and such is the force of
innocence, that though a cloud of agony hung over his awakening, yet he
slept peacefully on the eve of his trial.
Towards morning his sleep became less tranquil. He moved--he
groaned--then, opening his eyes, he started up, struggling to attain
full consciousness of where he was, and wherefore. He had been
dreaming--and he asked himself what had been the subject of his dreams.
Was it Greece--or the dreary waste shores of Cumberland? And why did
that fair lingering shape beckon him? Was it Alithea or Elizabeth?
Before these confused doubts could be solved, he recognised the walls of
the cell, and saw the shadow of the bars of his windows on the curtain
spread before it. It was morning--_the morning_--where would another sun
find him?
He rose and drew aside the curtain--and there were the dark, high
walls--weather-stained and huge; clear, but sunless daylight was spread
over each object--it penetrated every nook, and yet was devoid of cheer.
There is indeed something inexpressibly desolate in the sight of the
early, gray, chill dawn dissipating the shadows of night, when the day
which it harbingers is to bring misery. Night is a cloak--a shelter--a
defence--all men sleep at night--the law sleeps, and its dread
ministrants are harmless in their beds, hushed like cradled children.
"Even now they sleep," thought Falkner, "pillowed and curtained in
luxury--but day is come, and they will soon resume their offices--and
drag me before them--and wherefore?--because it is day--because it is
Wednesday--because names have been given to portions of time, which
otherwise might be passed over and forgotten."
To the surgeon's eye a human body sometimes presents itself merely as a
mass of bones, muscles, and arteries--though that human body may contain
a soul to emulate Shakspeare--and thus there are moments when the
wretched dissect the forms of life--and contemplating only the outward
semblance of events, wonder how so much power of misery, or the reverse,
resides in what is after all but sleeping or waking--walking here or
walking there--seeing one fellow-creature instead of another. Such were
the morbid sensations that absorbed Falkner as day grew clearer and
clearer--the narrow court more gloomy as compared with the sky, and the
objects in his cell assumed their natural colour and appearances. "All
asleep," he again thought, "except I, the sufferer; and does my own
Elizabeth sleep? Heaven grant it, and guard her slumbers! May those dear
eyes long remain closed in peace upon this miserable day!"
He dressed himself long before any one in the prison (and jailers are
early risers) was awake; at last there were steps in the passage--bolts
were drawn and voices heard. These familiar sounds recalled him to
actual life, and approaching, inevitable events. His haughty soul awoke
again--a dogged pride steeled his heart--he remembered the
accusation--the execration in which he believed him--self to be
held--and his innocence. "Retribution or atonement--I am ready to pay it
as it is demanded of me for Alithea's sake--but the injustice of man is
not lessened on this account; henceforth I am to be stamped with
ignominy--and yet in what am I worse than my fellows? at least they
shall not see that my spirit bends before them."
He assumed cheerfulness, and bore all the preliminaries of preparation
with apparent carelessness; sometimes his eagle eye flashed
fire--sometimes fixed on vacancy, a whole life of memories passed across
his mental vision; but there was no haste, no trepidation, no
faltering--he never thought of danger or of death--innocence sustained
him. The ignominy of the present was all that he felt that he had to
endure and master--that, and the desolation beyond, when branded through
life as he believed he should be, even by acquittal, he was henceforth
to be looked on as an outcast.
At length he was led forth to trial--pride in his heart--resolution in
his eye; he passed out of the gloomy portal of the prison, and entered
the sunlit street--houses were around; but through an opening he caught
a glimpse of the country--uplands, and lawny fields, and tree-crested
hills--the work of God himself. Sunshine rested on the scene--one used
to liberty had regarded with contempt the restricted view presented by
the opening; but to the prisoner, who for months had only seen his
prison-walls, it seemed as if the creation lay unrolled in its majesty
before him. What was man in comparison with the power that upheld the
earth and bade the sun to shine? And man was to judge him? What mockery!
Man and all his works were but a plaything in the hands of Omnipotence,
and to that Falkner submitted his destiny. He rose above the degrading
circumstances around him; he looked down upon his fate--a real, a lofty
calm at last possessed his soul; he felt that naught said or done that
day by his fellow-creatures could move him; his reliance was
elsewhere--it rested on his own innocence, and his intimate sense that
he was in no more danger now than if sheltered in the farthest, darkest
retreat, unknown to man; he walked as if surrounded by an atmosphere
which no storms from without could penetrate.
He entered the court with a serene brow, and so much dignity added to a
look that expressed such entire peace of conscience, that every one who
beheld him became prepossessed in his favour. His distinct, calm voice
declaring himself "Not Guilty;" the confidence, untinged by vaunting,
with which he uttered the customary appeal to God and his country,
excited admiration at first, and then, when a second sentiment could be
felt, the most heart-moving pity. Such a man, so unstained by vice, so
raised above crime, had never stood there before; accustomed to the
sight of vulgar rogues or hardened ruffians, wonder was mingled with a
certain self-examination, which made each man feel that, if justice were
done, he probably deserved more to be in that dock than the prisoner.
And then they remembered that he stood there to be consigned to life or
death, as the jury should decide. A breathless interest was awakened,
not only in the spectators, but even in those hardened by habit to
scenes like this. Every customary act of the court was accompanied by a
solemnity unfelt before. The feeling, indeed, that reigned was something
more than solemn; thirsting curiosity and eager wonder gave way before
thrilling awe, to think that man might be condemned to an ignominious
end.
When once the trial had begun, and his preliminary part had been played,
Falkner sat down. He became, to all appearance, abstracted. He was,
indeed, thinking of things more painful than even the present scene; the
screams and struggles of the agonized Alithea--her last sad sleep in the
hut upon the shore--the strangling, turbid waves--her wet, lifeless
form--her low, unnamed grave dug by him; had these been atoned for by
long years of remorse and misery, or was the present ignominy, and worse
that might ensue, fitting punishment? Be it as it might, he was equal to
the severest blows, and ready to lay down a life in compensation for
that of which he, most unintentionally, and yet most cruelly, had
deprived her. His thoughts were not recalled to the present scene till a
voice struck his ear, so like hers--did the dead speak? Knit up as he
was to the endurance of all, he trembled from head to foot; he had been
so far away from that place, till the echo, as it were, of Alithea's
voice recalled him; in a moment he recovered himself, and found that it
was her child, Gerard Neville, who was giving his evidence.
He heard the son of his victim speak of him as innocent, and a thrill of
thankfulness entered his soul; he smiled, and hope and sympathy with his
fellow-creatures, and natural softening feelings, replaced the gloomy
bitterness and harshness of his past reflections. He felt that he should
be acquitted, and that it became him to impress all present favourably;
it became him to conduct himself so as to show his confidence in the
justice of those on whom his fate depended, and at once to assert the
dignity of innocence. From that time he gave himself entirely up to the
details of the trial; he became attentive, and not the less calm and
resolute, because he believed that his own exertions would crown the
hour with success. The spectators saw the change in him, and were roused
to double interest. The court clock, meanwhile, kept measure of the time
that passed; the hands travelled silently on--another turn, and all
would be over--and what would then be?