The Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the woman
appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw the Minister
start. The face that confronted him would, in my opinion, have taken any
man by surprise, if he had first happened to see it within the walls of
a prison.
Visitors to the picture-galleries of Italy, growing weary of Holy
Families in endless succession, observe that the idea of the Madonna,
among the rank and file of Italian Painters, is limited to one
changeless and familiar type. I can hardly hope to be believed when I
say that the personal appearance of the murderess recalled that type.
She presented the delicate light hair, the quiet eyes, the finely-shaped
lower features and the correctly oval form of face, repeated in hundreds
on hundreds of the conventional works of Art to which I have ventured to
allude. To those who doubt me, I can only declare that what I have
here written is undisguised and absolute truth. Let me add that daily
observation of all classes of criminals, extending over many years, has
considerably diminished my faith in physiognomy as a safe guide to the
discovery of character. Nervous trepidation looks like guilt. Guilt,
firmly sustained by insensibility, looks like innocence. One of the
vilest wretches ever placed under my charge won the sympathies (while he
was waiting for his trial) of every person who saw him, including even
the persons employed in the prison. Only the other day, ladies and
gentlemen coming to visit me passed a body of men at work on the road.
Judges of physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity
betrayed in every face that they noticed. They condoled with me on the
near neighborhood of so many convicts to my official place of residence.
I looked out of the window and saw a group of honest laborers (whose
only crime was poverty) employed by the parish!
Having instructed the female warder to leave the room--but to take care
that she waited within call--I looked again at the Minister.
Confronted by the serious responsibility that he had undertaken, he
justified what he had said to me. Still pale, still distressed, he was
now nevertheless master of himself. I turned to the door to leave him
alone with the Prisoner. She called me back.
“Before this gentleman tries to convert me,” she said, “I want you to
wait here and be a witness.”
Finding that we were both willing to comply with this request, she
addressed herself directly to the Minister. “Suppose I promise to listen
to your exhortations,” she began, “what do you promise to do for me in
return?”
The voice in which she spoke to him was steady and clear; a marked
contrast to the tremulous earnestness with which he answered her.
“I promise to urge you to repentance and the confession of your crime. I
promise to implore the divine blessing on me in the effort to save your
poor guilty soul.”
She looked at him, and listened to him, as if he was speaking to her in
an unknown tongue, and went on with what she had to say as quietly as
ever.
“When I am hanged to-morrow, suppose I die without confessing, without
repenting--are you one of those who believe I shall be doomed to eternal
punishment in another life?”
“I believe in the mercy of God.”
“Answer my question, if you please. Is an impenitent sinner eternally
punished? Do you believe that?”
“My Bible leaves me no other alternative.”
She paused for a while, evidently considering with special attention
what she was about to say next.
“As a religious man,” she resumed, “would you be willing to make some
sacrifice, rather than let a fellow-creature go--after a disgraceful
death--to everlasting torment?”
“I know of no sacrifice in my power,” he said, fervently, “to which I
would not rather submit than let you die in the present dreadful state
of your mind.”
The Prisoner turned to me. “Is the person who watches me waiting
outside?”
“Yes.”
“Will you be so kind as to call her in? I have a message for her.”
It was plain that she had been leading the way to the delivery of
that message, whatever it might be, in all that she had said up to the
present time. So far my poor powers of penetration helped me, and no
further.
The warder appeared, and received her message. “Tell the woman who has
come here with my little girl that I want to see the child.”
Taken completely by surprise, I signed to the attendant to wait for
further instructions.
In a moment more I had sufficiently recovered myself to see the
impropriety of permitting any obstacle to interpose between the Minister
and his errand of mercy. I gently reminded the Prisoner that she would
have a later opportunity of seeing her child. “Your first duty,” I told
her, “is to hear and to take to heart what the clergyman has to say to
you.”
For the second time I attempted to leave the cell. For the second time
this impenetrable woman called me back.
“Take the parson away with you,” she said. “I refuse to listen to him.”
The patient Minister yielded, and appealed to me to follow his example.
I reluctantly sanctioned the delivery of the message.
After a brief interval the child was brought to us, tired and sleepy.
For a while the nurse roused her by setting her on her feet. She
happened to notice the Minister first. Her bright eyes rested on him,
gravely wondering. He kissed her, and, after a momentary hesitation,
gave her to her mother. The horror of the situation overpowered him:
he turned his face away from us. I understood what he felt; he almost
overthrew my own self-command.
The Prisoner spoke to the nurse in no friendly tone: “You can go.”
The nurse turned to me, ostentatiously ignoring the words that had been
addressed to her. “Am I to go, sir, or to stay?” I suggested that she
should return to the waiting-room. She returned at once in silence. The
Prisoner looked after her as she went out, with such an expression of
hatred in her eyes that the Minister noticed it.
“What has that person done to offend you?” he asked.
“She is the last person in the whole world whom I should have chosen
to take care of my child, if the power of choosing had been mine. But
I have been in prison, without a living creature to represent me or to
take my part. No more of that; my troubles will be over in a few hours
more. I want you to look at my little girl, whose troubles are all to
come. Do you call her pretty? Do you feel interested in her?”
The sorrow and pity in his face answered for him.
Quietly sleeping, the poor baby rested on her mother’s bosom. Was the
heart of the murderess softened by the divine influence of maternal
love? The hands that held the child trembled a little. For the first
time it seemed to cost her an effort to compose herself, before she
could speak to the Minister again.
“When I die to-morrow,” she said, “I leave my child helpless and
friendless--disgraced by her mother’s shameful death. The workhouse
may take her--or a charitable asylum may take her.” She paused; a first
tinge of color rose on her pale face; she broke into an outburst of
rage. “Think of _my_ daughter being brought up by charity! She may
suffer poverty, she may be treated with contempt, she may be employed by
brutal people in menial work. I can’t endure it; it maddens me. If she
is not saved from that wretched fate, I shall die despairing, I shall
die cursing--”
The Minister sternly stopped her before she could say the next word.
To my astonishment she appeared to be humbled, to be even ashamed: she
asked his pardon: “Forgive me; I won’t forget myself again. They tell
me you have no children of your own. Is that a sorrow to you and your
wife?”
Her altered tone touched him. He answered sadly and kindly: “It is the
one sorrow of our lives.”
The purpose which she had been keeping in view from the moment when
the Minister entered her cell was no mystery now. Ought I to have
interfered? Let me confess a weakness, unworthy perhaps of my office. I
was so sorry for the child--I hesitated.
My silence encouraged the mother. She advanced to the Minister with the
sleeping infant in her arms.
“I daresay you have sometimes thought of adopting a child?” she said.
“Perhaps you can guess now what I had in my mind, when I asked if you
would consent to a sacrifice? Will you take this wretched innocent
little creature home with you?” She lost her self-possession once more.
“A motherless creature to-morrow,” she burst out. “Think of that.”
God knows how I still shrunk from it! But there was no alternative now;
I was bound to remember my duty to the excellent man, whose critical
position at that moment was, in some degree at least, due to my
hesitation in asserting my authority. Could I allow the Prisoner to
presume on his compassionate nature, and to hurry him into a decision
which, in his calmer moments, he might find reason to regret? I spoke
to _him_. Does the man live who--having to say what I had to say--could
have spoken to the doomed mother?
“I am sorry to have allowed this to go on,” I said. “In justice to
yourself, sir, don’t answer!”
She turned on me with a look of fury.
“He shall answer,” she cried.
I saw, or thought I saw, signs of yielding in his face. “Take time,” I
persisted--“take time to consider before you decide.”
She stepped up to me.
“Take time?” she repeated. “Are you inhuman enough to talk of time, in
my presence?”
She laid the sleeping child on her bed, and fell on her knees before the
Minister: “I promise to hear your exhortations--I promise to do all
a woman can to believe and repent. Oh, I know myself! My heart, once
hardened, is a heart that no human creature can touch. The one way to
my better nature--if I have a better nature--is through that poor babe.
Save her from the workhouse! Don’t let them make a pauper of her!” She
sank prostrate at his feet, and beat her hands in frenzy on the floor.
“You want to save my guilty soul,” she reminded him furiously. “There’s
but one way of doing it. Save my child!”
He raised her. Her fierce tearless eyes questioned his face in a mute
expectation dreadful to see. Suddenly, a foretaste of death--the death
that was so near now!--struck her with a shivering fit: her head dropped
on the Minister’s shoulder. Other men might have shrunk from the contact
of it. That true Christian let it rest.
Under the maddening sting of suspense, her sinking energies rallied for
an instant. In a whisper, she was just able to put the supreme question
to him.
“Yes? or No?”
He answered: “Yes.”
A faint breath of relief, just audible in the silence, told me that she
had heard him. It was her last effort. He laid her, insensible, on the
bed, by the side of her sleeping child. “Look at them,” was all he said
to me; “how could I refuse?”