MOTHER AND SON.
When Mrs. Laurence heard this wild cry from her boy, she turned suddenly
and held out her arms. The poor little fellow rushed into them, and
clung to her, trembling under a fierce effort to be brave and choke back
the tears that rushed, hot and painful, to his eyes.
Up to this moment the old woman had been too indignant for sorrow. The
grey of her eyes shone out hard and cold as steel; but now a mist stole
over them and her whole frame shook visibly.
“James! James! there, there, hush! These men must not see you cry. You
have done nothing. I have done nothing. Be brave then, as your mother
is.”
James drew his head back, and looked in the old woman’s face, shaking
the tears away from his own vision that he might comfort her with an
effort to obey and be strong. But the sight of that pale, shocked
countenance brought them back with a rush.
“Oh, mother! mother! what will they do to you?”
“How can we tell, my child?”
“And the girls, Ruthy and Eva, will they bring them too?”
The old woman shook her head.
“I don’t know. How can I?”
“Where are they—oh! where are they, mother?” cried the boy, startled
with a new fear.
“At home. I left them safe—don’t, don’t tremble so, Jimmy.”
“Did I tremble? Mother, don’t mind, I didn’t mean to; only I was so
frightened about the girls. Do they mean to kill us all?”
“Come, come, little chap. Don’t you see that we’re waiting? A little of
this sort of thing is well enough; but you’re wanted up yonder, you
know.”
The policeman who said this took James by the arm, not altogether
unkindly, and moved toward a flight of stairs that led into the front of
the most gloomy building that civilization ever invented.
Through dark corridors, narrow passages, and sparsely furnished rooms,
the officers led mother and son, who, quite unconscious of crime, felt
all the shame and bitter humiliation of guilt. Through those vast
Egyptian pillars that seemed strong enough to bear up mountains, and
whose very shadows lay like overthrown granite upon the paved floor,
they went, growing more and more heavy-hearted into that stone
wilderness, till, at last, they stood in a square room, with a desk
running across one end, and some wooden benches along the opposite side.
The woman and her son sat down on the nearest bench, while the officer
leaned his back against the wall and waited.
The widow looked around with a vague feeling of curiosity. The bare
room, in another place, would hardly have challenged notice; but here,
in the heart of that gloomy prison, thoughts of crime and its gloomy
train of sorrows made the place desolate indeed. The Judge, who sat
wearily on his bench, scarcely looked that way when the door opened to
admit these two prisoners. He had become so accustomed to human
suffering, so familiar with every aspect of crime, that both had ceased
to shock him.
After a little, he beckoned to the officer, who came forward and
answered a brief question put to him.
“It is,” said he, “an old woman and her son, charged with a heavy crime,
the boy with grand larceny, the woman with receiving the goods he had
stolen, probably at her own suggestion.”
The Judge cast a severe glance at the woman, and went on with some
business that had occupied him before the officer’s entrance.
But few persons were in the court-room, for scenes like this were
commonplace affairs, and men had scarcely the curiosity to look twice,
when the mother and son seated themselves on the same bench with some
half dozen other persons, gloomy, hardened and evil-looking, who awaited
examination.
After awhile, the Judge leaned back in his leathern chair, and the
officer was ordered to come forward with his charge. He spoke kindly to
the old woman, who arose, tall, rigid and tearless, to obey. This woman
knew herself to be innocent, and felt the wrong that had dragged her
before that tribunal with bitter, even fierce resentment. When her hand
clutched the railing before the Judge, it was with a grasp of iron, and
the eyes she bent upon him burned with smouldering fire which he took
for defiance.
When the judge called Mrs. Laurence by name, the lad clung to her dress,
and followed her up to the bar, with some wild idea of protecting her
from the harm that threatened them both.
But there was nothing for him to do. He understood that some wrong was
intended, but had no idea of the form in which it was to come upon them.
Thus he stood close to his mother, pale and bewildered.
They had given him no chance to speak to his mother, nor did he know of
what she was accused. All was gloom and distrust around him; his proud
young heart swelled with a sense of infinite degradation, which seemed
to close in his life with sudden darkness. He turned his eyes upon the
judge with thrills of dread, then lifted them to his mother, from whose
face they fell away, heavy with tears.
As the mother and her boy stood before this, to them mysterious
tribunal, two men came into the court-room, and James gave a start as he
saw them, and uttered a faint cry, which drew his mother’s attention.
The first man who presented himself was Jared Boyce, who came forward
with a studied swagger, though his usually florid face was almost ashen
pale, and his cowardly eyes wandered away from any look fixed upon them.
The other man was Smith; he too was pale and greatly agitated; he only
cast one glance at the lad, whose face brightened at the sight of him,
and turned utterly away from the woman, who searched his countenance
keenly with her eyes.
“Oh, sir! oh, Mr. Smith! what does it mean? What will they do with her?”
half sobbed, half whispered the boy, who still considered Smith his
friend, and drew closer to him in an agony of hope.
Smith turned away with a frown; his course was taken; justice should be
done; why then should he permit himself to be disturbed by the woman’s
stern glance, or the large, pleading eyes of the boy. Now and then, he
glanced toward the door, as if apprehending something from that quarter.
But the fixed resolve of his face did not change. He waved the poor lad
back with his hand, but made no other reply to his pathetic appeal.
“Oh, mother, what can I do for you—what can I do?” cried the boy,
creeping back to the old woman’s side. “Everybody turns against us.”
“Hush! be a man!” was the answer; but the old woman’s voice was broken
and her mouth quivered.
“Do they mean to send us back to prison, mother?” This time the boy
addressed the policeman who had all along betrayed extraordinary pity
for him. But another person heard it and answered,
“Not as long as I live to say that it sha’nt be done, Jimmy dear!”
James sprang forward and caught Mrs. Smith by the gown.
“Oh, ma’am, you will take her away, you will—” Mrs. Smith interrupted
him.
“Yes, I will, if it kills me I will!”
Here the good woman released her dress from the boy’s grasp and went up
to the judge.
“Sir,” said she, “now may it please your honor, I have come down here
all alone to see that justice is done to these two people who are
innocent as milk, yes sir, as skim milk. They are my friends, neither of
them ever touched the value of a pin that I didn’t give them with my own
hand. They——”
The judge here interrupted an argument that would have been effective
before a jury, and in its honest intensity interested him.
“Who are you, Madam? I do not understand.”
“Who am I? Yesterday I should have been proud to say I was that man’s
wife, but now!”
Here poor Mrs. Smith cast a reproachful glance on her husband; burst
into a passion of tears, and only answered the judge with her sobs.
“She is my wife,” said Smith, in a troubled voice, “and won’t believe in
their guilt, though the goods were found in that woman’s wood-house.
Some of them was in the cellar. The officers can testify to that, but
she won’t believe a word of it.”
“No, I won’t, there!” cried the woman, brushing away a fresh burst of
tears, and turning upon her husband, “not if I’d seen them a doing it
with my own eyes. There are things, Mr. Judge, that human nature won’t
take in, and this is one of them.”
“Do you know anything about this charge of your own knowledge?”
questioned the Judge kindly, for the woman’s generous recklessness had
made its impression on him.
“Know, Mr. Judge. Yes, I know that it’s a shame and a disgrace that we
shall never get over as long as my name is Smith. Why, sir, if you could
have seen that boy tending my Jerusha Maria, his innocence would be
clear as clear to you. No paid nurse was ever so careful or so handy—the
way he used to hold up her two feet in them red morocco shoes for her to
crow over, was a sight in itself. He steal. He rob a store—nothing but a
heathen would think of it.”
Here Mrs. Smith turned upon her husband, and flashed a storm of wrathful
glances on him from her yet tearful eyes.
“You’re a pretty man, ain’t you—an honor to the name of Smith, oh yes!
It would make you happy to see these two innocent creatures in States
Prison, with balls and chains on their ankles. I can see you now a
gloating over it, and those two girls breaking their hearts. Oh, Smith!
Smith! I wouldn’t have believed it of you!”
“There, there, my good lady, I can honor your feelings, but you
interrupt the case. Pray step down and let me take the evidence of these
persons,” said the Judge.
“But you won’t believe them, just promise that you won’t believe them,
and I’ll be still enough.”
“Believe me, they shall have justice,” answered the judge, kindly.
“That is all any of us want,” said Mrs. Smith, and stepping down, she
took her place by Mrs. Laurence, resolute to stand by her to the last.
“Young man, step this way.”
Jared Boyce obeyed this order from the magistrate, and mounted the step
which ran in front of the judge’s seat. His face was flushed to a bricky
red now, and his eyes wandered away from any one who attempted to look
into them. They were turned furtively aside from the judge while Boyce
told his story in a hard, cruel voice, which never faltered or softened
in its tone from beginning to end. We know what that story was, and how
the wicked plot to ruin this brave, innocent lad had grown and perfected
itself in the craft and greed of a few base creatures, who at first
thought only of throwing their own guilt on him, but afterwards
broadened their plot in hopes of great future gain.
It was impossible for Boyce to keep the blood from receding now and then
from his face. When that stern woman’s eyes were bent on him, he seemed
to feel their searching fire, and grew deadly pale, though his glance
never rested on her once. Two or three times the accused lad made a step
or two forward, with his hand clenched, tempted to strike his fellow
clerk for the slander he was uttering; but a touch of the old woman’s
hand brought him back to her side, and the perjured wretch told his
story to the end, without interruption of any kind.