ON THE SCAFFOLD.
“The last hour of my life!” said Nina Strangemore, solemnly, and with
an awful shudder.
It was the morning of the 25th of July and already the merciless hands
of time were pointing to the seventh hour. She stood trembling among
the little group of beloved friends who thronged the narrow cell to bid
a last good-by to the lovely girl going forth to meet ignominious death
at the strong arm of the law.
She had chosen for her dress this morning a long clinging black velvet
gown from which her pale face gleamed with marble whiteness and
delicacy. Her rippling, waving, golden hair had been gathered into a
gleaming braid at the back of her small head, and the unusual style
of coiffure, while it lent added dignity and gravity to her youthful
beauty, also showed a new charm in the stately grace of the white neck
and delicate shell-like ears. She was changed greatly, but none the
less beautiful for the cruel tragedy and the waves of anguish that had
swept across her life. Sorrow and suffering had etherealized her beauty
until it was almost unearthly.
She lifted her great dark eyes heavy with despair, and looked into the
blanched faces of her friends.
“The last hour of my life!” she repeated, solemnly, and with something
like awe in her quivering voice.
It was terrible to her, so young, so lovely, so loving, with such a
beautiful life lying before her, to be cut off abruptly from it all, to
be standing there face to face with death and the other world. They all
felt the full force of the fact, and for a moment no one could answer
her. Only the silver haired minister said with a quiver in his reverent
voice:
“The last of earthly life, dear daughter, but the beginning of a more
blessed one eternal in the heavens.”
Then he knelt down and prayed for the young soul about to be torn from
its earthly tabernacle, for the husband who was an exile in foreign
lands knowing nothing of the terrible doom hanging over his wife, for
the friends who were rendered desolate by her loss, and lastly for the
judge and jury who had ordered this judicial murder, and for all those
concerned in it, and when he had again commended Nina’s soul to heaven
and uttered in a quivering voice the last amen, the sheriff came in to
conduct his prisoner to the scaffold.
Then there ensued a scene of bitter grief and excitement.
Minnie Fielding and Virgie Mason fell fainting to the floor. Helen
Starr went into strong hysterics, Kitty, the maid, sobbed from the
depths of a breaking heart, while Miss Drusilla with a heart as sore
as any repressed her emotion with an iron will, and stood gravely and
tenderly by the side of the girl who was the only creature upon earth
she loved and cared for.
“And when they have killed my innocent white lamb I shall die of
grief,” she said to herself. “But now I will be calm for my poor Nina’s
sake. I will not be fainting and shrieking like these poor hysterical
women, and disturbing the child when she is trying to fix her thoughts
on heaven.” So she walked to the foot of the scaffold with her arms
around the poor trembling child, who whispered forlornly in her ear:
“Dear Aunt Drusilla, I wonder how long it will be after I am dead
before Talbot learns the terrible truth? Do you think he will come back
soon?”
“He did not talk as if he would ever come back, dear, I believe he will
be an exile all his life,” Miss Drusilla answered.
“I hope so. I hope he will never come back after I am dead. I should
not like for him to know that I died--like this!” moaned the girl. “I
hope he will never know the dreadful truth, never, until he comes to
heaven and finds me there waiting.”
“But if he should come home, Nina, and have to hear the cruel truth?
What can I say to him, darling? Will you leave him one last word?”
She looked anxiously into the beautiful agitated young face, wondering
if in this last terrible hour the young wife’s love and tenderness for
the husband who had brought her such sorrow would fail her.
“For myself I shall always hate my nephew, Talbot Strangemore,” the
spinster vowed, grimly to herself.
Nina clung to her convulsively, and sobbed through bitter tears:
“Tell him that I loved him and forgave him!”
And then she suddenly lifted her eyes and saw the great black scaffold
looming in horrible menace above her head.
* * * * *
A faint cry of mortal agony came from Nina’s lips. Her head drooped a
moment on her breast.
* * * * *
A low murmur of pity and sorrow rose upon the soft air of the summer
morning from the lips of those who had sought the court yard of the
jail to witness the execution that was the theme of every tongue and
the topic of every newspaper. Although popular opinion adjudged her
guilty of the murder, there was a great amount of pity and sympathy
felt for her. She was so young and lovely, and she had had such
terrible provocation, they said.
But pity and sorrow and sympathy and even the most faithful love had
proved futile to save her from her dreadful fate. Doctor Fielding and
her lawyer had done all that lay in human power to secure her pardon,
but Governor Steele had steadily refused even a reprieve. He believed
that she was guilty, and his stern sense of duty forbade him to temper
justice with mercy.
So, on this golden summer morning when the world was at its fairest,
when the roses and lillies were blooming, when the birds were singing
and the tiniest little brooks were laughing with delight, they had come
here to see her die.
And all said to each other that they were sorry for her--that she was
too young and beautiful to have been such a sinner and to have to die
for her sin. When that low moan of agony issued from her lips and her
fair head dropped for a moment on her breast every heart was shaken
to its center--every heart save the one that beat in the breast of
a slender, blue-eyed lad who had pressed almost to the foot of the
scaffold in his eagerness to see and hear all. On the half-averted face
of this handsome fair-haired lad there was a glittering smile of almost
demoniac triumph. His eyes laughed with delight. He appeared like a
human vampire delighting in the scent of blood.
But he took care that no one should catch the expression of evil joy
upon his face. He held his white handkerchief over his face, and peered
above it with those wicked, laughing blue eyes at the tall scaffold and
the shrinking victim whom they were now leading up the steps.
She stood there before them all, a sight to make the angels weep for
pity, with that horrible rope about that beautiful white neck that they
were about to break, and her face shining above it like a tender white
flower crowned with gold, while Kitty May’s loud wails of despair rose
up from the foot of the gallows and almost drowned the broken prayer of
the aged minister.
From the street outside there suddenly arose a hubbub of noise and
confusion. The clatter of a vehicle driven at break-neck pace grated on
the flinty pavement, and loud, excited voices were distinctly heard.
No one paid much heed to it. All thought that there were some more
people clamoring to get in at the iron-barred gate for a peep at the
terrible show.
The official advanced shrinkingly to place the black cap over Nina’s
face and cover its marvelous beauty, so soon to be blighted, from the
view of the curious crowd.
A piercing shriek broke from those death white lips at that awful
moment. She tried to lift her poor pinioned hands and wave him off. He
retreated a step, full of grief and repugnance at his dreadful task.
“Oh, not yet,” she cried to him, lifting to his her imploring eyes
shining like black jewels through a rain of terrified tears, “Oh, not
yet! Give me just one minute more of life that I may gaze upon the
beautiful world I am going to leave!”
The time was up but he could not refuse that thrilling prayer. He had
a daughter of his own at home--a gentle dark-eyed girl no older than
this one who pleaded with him so frantically for just one minute more
of life. He thought of that child, and his heart swelled within him at
the exigencies of his terrible duty.
“One moment, then, my poor girl,” he said, huskily, and stood waiting
while she looked with straining, tear-dimmed gaze upon the earth and
sky.
In that moment while she gazed the air was rent by a shout from myriad
throats outside the prison walls--a shout of triumph and exultation.
The iron gates flew open, and three men rushed into the enclosure
pushing aside the crowd, and making their way to the scaffold. The
prison official and many others recognized the tall form and stern face
of Governor Steele in the foremost figure. As he ran he waved a white
paper in his upraised hand, and shouted in clarion tones:
“_For God’s sake, hold! The prisoner is pardoned!_”
At that wild shout outside, and the hubbub that arose within the prison
yard, Nina’s dark eyes came back in bewilderment from the clear blue
heaven where they had yearningly fixed themselves. Her glance fell
on the men who were rushing toward her and then for an instant of
delirious joy she believed that the longing wish of her heart had
embodied itself in a ghostly shape, for she was gazing once more upon
the face of her husband, Talbot Strangemore, and he looked more like
a dead than a living man, so worn was he with grief and woe, and so
pallid with fear and horror.
He gained the scaffold, he ran up the steps, and with a muttered
malediction he tore the dreadful rope from her white neck.
“Nina, my darling, I have saved you!” he cried, encircling her frail
form with his tender arms, and, dizzy with joy, she fell forward
unconscious on his breast.
* * * * *
No one noticed at first in the terrible excitement of the whole
affair that Kitty May had suddenly turned around and grappled with a
slim, dandy looking youth who had been looking at the prisoner on the
scaffold almost over the maid’s shoulder. She had suddenly whirled
herself about and grasped the elegant youth by the waist, and despite
the frantic efforts he made to escape, Kitty held him tightly in her
strong young arms and they rolled upon the ground together, while
Kitty shouted, frantically. “Help! help! Don’t let him get away. It’s
Sibyl St. Alban, that she-devil dressed up in boy’s clothes! She isn’t
dead, but alive, and as wicked as ever!”