THE PARENTS, THE CHILD AND GRANDCHILD.
Nor sin, nor shame, nor sense of wrong
Can yet a mother's love control;
It waiteth, watcheth, hopeth long,
And grows immortal with the soul.
The next morning, a carriage, one of the few superb equipages that give
an air of elegance to Broadway, equal to that of any public drive I have
yet seen, stopped at the corner of Franklin street. The grey horses and
deep green of the carriage were well known in that thoroughfare, and it
had been too often seen before Stewart's, and Ball & Black's, for any
one to remark the time during which it remained in that unusual place.
Had any one seen Ada Leicester as she descended from the carriage and
walked hurriedly toward the City Prison, it might have been a matter of
wonder, how a creature so elegant and so fastidious had forced herself
to enter a neighborhood which few women visit, except from force or
objects of philanthropy.
Jacob Strong walked by the side of his mistress. Few words passed
between them, for both seemed painfully preoccupied. Jacob betrayed this
state of mind by a more decided stoop of the shoulders, and by knocking
his great feet against every loose brick in the sidewalk, as he stumbled
along. The lady moved on as one walks in a dream, her eyes bent upon the
pavement, her ungloved hand grasping the purple velvet of her cloak and
holding it against her bosom. The people who passed her thought it a
pretty piece of coquetry, by which she might reveal the jewels that
flashed upon the snow of that beautiful hand. Alas, how little we can
judge of one another! The delicate primrose gloves had dropped from her
grasp unheeded, and lay trampled in the mud close by her own door. The
maid had placed them in her palsied hand, as she had performed all other
duties of the toilet that morning, but the wretched woman was quite
unconscious of it all.
They entered the prison. A few words passed between Jacob and the warden
in an outer office; then a door was flung open, and they entered an open
court within the walls; stone buildings ranged all around, casting gaunt
shadows athwart them. They crossed the court, passed through a low door,
and entered the hall where male prisoners are kept. Ada was scarcely
conscious that a score of eyes were bent on her from the galleries
overhead, along which prisoners charged with lighter offences were
allowed to range. At that moment a regiment of soldiers might have stood
in her way, and she would have passed through their midst, unconscious
of the obstruction. She mounted to the third gallery, following after
Jacob, until he paused at one of the heavy iron doors which pierced the
whole wall at equal distances from pavement to ceiling. An officer, who
had preceded them, turned the key in the lock, and flung the door open,
with a clang that made Ada start, as if some one had struck her.
"Shall I go in with you?" said Jacob.
She did not answer, save by a short breath, that seemed to tear her own
bosom without yielding a sound, and entered the cell. Jacob leaned
forward, and closing the door after her, began to walk up and down the
gallery, but never passing more than six or eight paces from the cell.
Ada Leicester stood face to face with her father. He had been reading,
and had laid the old Bible on the bed by his side as the noise of her
approach disturbed him. His steel-mounted spectacles were still before
his eyes, dimmed, it may be, by traces of tears, shed unconsciously, for
he could not distinguish clearly through them, and with a motion so
familiar that it made her tremble, he folded them up and placed them
within the pages of the book.
She paused, motionless, after taking one step into the room, and but for
the shiver of her silk dress, which the trembling of her limbs
disturbed, as the leaves are shaken in autumn, she might have been a
draped statue, her face and hands were so marble-like.
The old man looked at her, and she at him. He did not attempt to speak,
and a single word died on her lip again and again, without giving forth
a sound. At length that one word broke forth, and rushed like an arrow
from her heart to his--
"Father!"
It was the first word that her infant lips had ever uttered. The old man
was blinded by it. He saw nothing of the stately pale woman, the
gleaming eyes, the rich drapery; but a little girl, some twelve months
old, seemed to have crept to his knees. He saw the ringlet of soft
golden hair, the large blue eyes, the little dimpled shoulder peeping
out from its calico dress; he reached forth his hands to press them down
upon these pretty shoulders, for the vision was palpable as life. They
descended upon the bowed head of the woman, for she had fallen crouching
to his feet. He drew those hands back with a moan. The innocent child
had vanished; the prostrate woman was there.
"Father!"
He held his hands one instant, quivering like withered leaves, over her
head, and then dropped them gently down upon her shoulders.
"My daughter!"
Then came a rush of tears, a wild clinging of arms, a shaking of silken
garments, and deep sobs, that seemed like the parting of soul and body.
Ada clung to her father. She laid her cold face upon his knees, and drew
herself up to his bosom.
"Forgive me! forgive me!--oh, my father, forgive me!"
The old man lifted her gently in his arms, and seated her upon the bed.
He took off her bonnet, and smoothed the rich hair it had concealed
between his hands.
"And so you have come home again, my child!"
"Home!"
She looked around the cell, and then into the eyes of her father.
"I have given you this home--I, who have sought for you--prayed--prayed,
father, not as you pray, but madly, wildly prayed for one look, one
word--pardon, pardon! I have got it--I see it--you pardon me with your
eyes, my father; but oh, how wretched I am--I, who gave you a home like
this!"
"No, not you, but God!" answered the old man. "I knew from the first
that our Father who is in heaven had not afflicted his servant for
nothing. All will be well at last, Ada."
"But you will die! Even to-day will they sentence you!"
"I know it, and am ready; for now I begin to see how wisely God has
willed that the last remnant of an old man's life shall be the
restoration of his child."
"But you are innocent, and they will kill you!"
"They cannot kill more than this old body, my child. Even now it feels
the breath of eternity. What though the withered leaf is shaken a moment
earlier from its bough!"
Ada held her breath, and gazed upon her father, filled with strange awe.
The quiet tone, the gentle resignation in his words, tranquillized her
like music. She could not realize that he was to die. Her soul was
flooded with love; her eyes answered back the holy affection that
beamed in his. For that moment she was happy. Her childhood came softly
back. She forgot her own sin alike with her father's danger.
"Now," said the old man, "tell me all that I do not know. By what means
has God sent you here?"
At these words Ada half arose; all the joy went out from her face; her
eyes drooped; the lines about her mouth hardened again; she attempted to
look up, failed, and with both hands shrouded her guilty features.
"How much do you know?" she inquired, in a hoarse voice.
"I know," said the old man, "that you left an unworthy husband and a
happy child, to follow a stranger to a strange land."
"But you did not know," said Ada, still veiling her face, "you did not
know how cruelly, how dreadfully I was treated; how I was left days and
weeks together in hotels and boarding houses, without money, without
friends, exposed to all sorts of temptation. You cannot know all the
circumstances that combined to drive me mad. Still do not say I
abandoned the child. Did I not send her to you? Did I not give her up
when she was dear as the pulses of my own heart, rather than cast the
stain of my example upon her? Oh, father, was this nothing?"
"We took the child, and strove to forget the mother," said the old man
sadly.
"But could not--oh, you could not! This thought was the one anchor which
kept me from utter shipwreck, you could not curse an only child--wicked,
erring, cruel though she was!"
"No, we did not curse her--we had no power to forget."
"I came back--Jacob Strong will bear me witness--I lost no time in
searching for you at the homestead. Strangers were there. Had we met
then--had I found the old place as it was--you, my mother, my daughter
there--how different all this might have been!"
"God disposes all things," muttered the prisoner. "We left our home when
disgrace fell upon us. We who had been sinfully proud of you, Ada, went
forth burdened by your shame to hide ourselves among strangers; we could
not look our old neighbors in the face, and so left them and gave up the
name our child had disgraced."
"Father--father, spare me--I am wretched--I am punished--spare me, spare
me!"
"Ada," said the old man solemnly, "do you heartily repent and forsake
your sin?"
"I do repent--I have forsaken--he is dead for whom I left you; it was a
solitary fault, bitterly, oh, bitterly atoned for."
The old man looked at her earnestly--at the glowing purple of her
garments--at the delicate veil she had gathered up to her face with one
hand. The other had fallen nervelessly down. The old man took it from
her lap and gazed sadly on the jewels that sparkled on her fingers. She
felt the touch, and the trembling hand became crimson in his clasp.
"And yet you wear these things!"
She shrunk away, and the glow of her shame spread and burned over every
visible part of her person.
"Cast them from you, daughter--come to me in the pretty calico dress
that became you so well--give up these wages of shame--become poor,
honest and humble, as we are; then will your mother receive you; then
your child may know that she has a mother living; then your old father
can die in peace, knowing that his life has not been sacrificed in
vain."
The old man looked wistfully at her, as he spoke. He saw the struggle in
her face--the reluctance with which she understood him, and tightened
his grasp on her hand.
"What--what would you have me do?" she said.
"Cast aside all that you possess, save that which comes of honest labor,
and earn the forgiveness you ask."
"Father, I cannot do this; the wealth that I possess is vast; it was
devised to me by will upon his death-bed; it was an atonement upon his
part."
"The wages of sin are death."
"Death, father, death! Surely you are right. Leicester is dead; they
will murder you. Nothing but this money, this very wealth that I am
ordered to cast aside, can save you."
"And that never shall save me!" answered the old man with grave dignity;
"the price of my daughter's sin, let it be millions, shall never buy an
hour of life for me, were it possible thus to bribe the law."
"Oh father, father, do not say this; it crushes my last hope."
"Daughter," and the old man stood up, while his face glowed as with the
light of prophecy, "it is not this ill-gotten wealth that shall purchase
my life; but it is the death I shall suffer, which will purchase the
salvation of my child. The way of providence is made clear to me now; I
see it plainly, as if written upon the wall that has seemed so blank to
my eyes till now."
The hand fell from her face. She gazed upon him with awe, for the solemn
faith that beamed in his eyes held her breathless. That moment the cell
door was opened, and Mrs. Warren came in, followed by her
grand-daughter. The old woman paused motionless upon the threshold,
hesitating and pallid. Ada stood up trembling and afraid in the presence
of her mother. A moment the two stood face to face, gazing at each
other; then the old woman stretched forth her arms, and tears rolled
down her cheeks. Ada would have thrown herself forward, but the old
prisoner interposed.
"No, wife, not yet; the time is at hand when our child shall come back
to your bosom, like the lamb that was lost; but God has a work to
accomplish first; have patience and let her depart."
"Patience, patience! Oh, Wilcox, she is our child Ada, Ada!"
He was not strong enough to keep them apart. Their arms were interwoven;
they clung together, filling the cell with soft murmurs and smothered
sobs. Broken syllables of endearment--all the pathetic language with
which heart speaks to heart in defiance of words, gave power to the
scene. Remember, reader, it was a mother meeting her only child--her
sinful, erring child--for the first time in years. They met in a
prison, with death shadows all around. Was it wonderful that, forgiving,
forgetting, they clung together? Or that the turnkey, as he looked in,
felt the tears bathing his cheek?
It is a mercy that intense feeling has its limits, else a scene like
this might have broken the two hearts that rushed together, as torrents
meet in a storm. Their arms unlocked at length, and the two women only
held by each other from weakness.
"And this is my child, my little Julia," said Ada, turning her eyes upon
the young girl who stood by, troubled and amazed by all she saw.
She bent forward, and would have kissed the girl, but the old man
interposed again solemnly, almost sternly.
"Not yet--the lip must be purified, the kiss made holy, which touches
the forehead of this innocent one."
"I will go, father, I will go--this is bitter, but perhaps just. I will
go while I have the strength."
Ada left the cell. We will not follow her to the scene of her solitary
and splendid anguish. We will not remain in the prisoner's cell. The
scene passing there was too holy and too pathetic for description; yet
was there more happiness that day in the prison, than Ada Leicester
found in her palace-home. Truly it is much better to suffer wrong, than
to do wrong!