THE CONVICT
It was a sad morning at Spring Bank, that morning of Adah's leaving, and
many a tear was shed as the last good-by was spoken. Mrs. Worthington,
Alice and Hugh accompanied Adah to Frankfort, and Alice had never seemed
in better spirits than on that winter's morning. She would be gay; it
was a duty she owed Hugh, and Adah, too. So she talked and laughed as if
there was no load upon her heart, and no cloud on Adah's spirits.
Outwardly Mrs. Worthington suffered most, wondering why she should cling
so to Adah, and why this parting was so painful. All the farewell words
had been spoken, for Adah would not leave them to the chance of a last
moment. She seemed almost too pretty to send on that long journey alone,
and Hugh felt that he might be doing wrong in suffering her to depart
without an escort. But Adah only laughed at his fears. Willie was her
protector, she said, and then, as the train came up she turned to Mrs.
Worthington, who, haunted with the dread lest something should happen to
prevent 'Lina's marriage, said softly:
"You'll be careful about 'Lina?"
Yes, Adah would be careful, and to Alice she whispered:
"I'll write after I get there, but you must not answer it at least not
till I say you may. Good-by."
* * * * *
"Come, mother, we are waiting for you," Hugh said.
At the sound of Hugh's voice she started and replied:
"Oh, yes, I remember--we are to visit the penitentiary. Dear me," and in
a kind of absent way, Mrs. Worthington took Hugh's arm, and the party
proceeded on their way to the huge building known as the Frankfort
Penitentiary. Hugh was well acquainted with the keeper, who admitted
them cheerfully, and ushered them at once into the spacious yard.
Pleased with Alice's enthusiastic interest in everything he said, the
keeper was quite communicative, pointing out the cells of any noted
felons, repeating little incidents of daring attempts to escape, and
making the visit far more entertaining than the party had expected.
"This," he said, opening a narrow door, "this belongs to the negro
stealer, Sullivan. You know him, Mrs. Worthington. He ran off the old
darky you now own, old Sam, I mean."
"I'd like to see Mr. Sullivan," Alice said. "I saw old Sam when he was
in Virginia."
"We'll find him on the ropewalk. We put our hardest customers there. Not
that he gives us trouble, for he does not, and I rather like the chap,
but we have a spite against these Yankee negro stealers," was the
keeper's reply, as he led the way to the long low room, where groups of
men walked up and down--up and down--holding the long line of hemp,
which, as far as they were concerned, would never come to an end until
the day of their release.
"That's he," the keeper whispered to Alice, who had fallen behind Hugh
and his mother. "That's he, just turning this way--the one to the
right."
Alice nodded in token that she understood, and then stood watching while
he came up. Mrs. Worthington and Hugh were watching too, not him
particularly, for they did not even know which was Sullivan, but stood
waiting for the whole long line advancing slowly toward them, their eyes
cast down with conscious shame, as if they shrank from being seen. One
of them, however, was wholly unabashed. He thought it probable the
keeper would point him out; he knew they used to do so when he first
came there, but he did not care; he rather liked the notoriety, and when
he saw that Alice seemed waiting for him, he fixed his keen eyes on her,
starting at the sight of so much beauty, end never even glancing at the
other visitors, at Mrs. Worthington and Hugh, who, a little apart from
each other, saw him at the same moment, both turning cold and faint, the
one with surprise, and the other with a horrid, terrible fear.
It needed but a glance to assure Hugh that he stood in the presence of
the man who with strangely winning powers had tempted him to sin--the
villain who had planned poor Adah's marriage--Monroe, her guardian,
whose sudden disappearance had been so mysterious. Hugh never knew how
he controlled himself from leaping into that walk and compelling the
bold wretch to tell if he knew aught of the base deserter, Willie
Hastings' father. He did, indeed, take one forward step while his fist
clinched involuntarily, but the next moment fell powerless at his side
as a low wail of pain reached his ear and he turned in time to save his
fainting mother from falling to the floor.
She, too, had seen the ropemaker, glancing at him twice ere sure she saw
aright, and then, as if a corpse buried years ago had arisen to her
view, the blood curdled about her heart which after one mighty throe lay
heavy and still as lead. He was not dead; that paragraph in the paper
telling her so was false; he did not die, such as he could not die; he
was alive--alive--a convict within those prison walls; a living,
breathing man with that same look she remembered so well, shuddering as
she remembered it, 'Lina's father and her own husband!
"It was the heat, or the smell, or the parting with Adah, or something,"
she said, when she came back to consciousness, eagerly scanning Hugh's
face to see if he knew too, and then glancing timidly around as if in
quest of the phantom which had so affected her.
"Let's go home, I'm sorry I came to Frankfort," she whispered, while her
teeth chattered and her eyes wore a look of terror for which Hugh could
not account.
He never thought of associating her illness with the man who had so
affected himself. It was overexertion, he said. His mother could not
bear much, and with all the tenderness of an affectionate son he wrapped
her shawl about her and led her gantry from the spot which held for her
so great a terror. It was not physical fear; she had never been afraid
of bodily harm, even when fully in his power. It was rather the olden
horror stealing back upon her, the pain which comes from the slow
grinding out of one's entire will and spirit. She had forgotten the
feeling, it was so long since it had been experienced, but one sight of
him brought it back, and all the way from Frankfort to Spring Bank she
lay upon Hugh's shoulder quiet, but sick and faint, with a shrinking
from what the future might possibly have in store for her.
In this state of mind she reached Spring Bank, where by some strange
coincidence, if coincidence it can be called, old Densie Densmore was
the first to greet her, asking, with much concern, what was the matter.
It was a rare thing for Densie to be at all demonstrative, but in the
suffering expression of Mrs. Worthington's face she recognized something
familiar, and attached herself at once to the weak, nervous woman, who
sought her bed, and burying her face in the pillow cried herself to
sleep, while Densie, like some white-haired ghost, sat watching her
silently.
"The poor thing has had trouble," she whispered, "trouble in her day,
and it has left deep furrows in her forehead, but it cannot have been
like mine. She surely, was never betrayed, or deserted, or had her only
child stolen from her. The wretch! I cursed him once, when my heart was
harder than it is now. I have forgiven him since, for well as I could, I
loved him."
There was a moaning sound in the winter wind howling about Spring Bank
that night, but it suited Densie's mood, and helped to quiet her
spirits, as, until a late hour, she sat by Mrs. Worthington, who aroused
up at intervals, saying, in answer to Densie's inquiries, she was not
sick, she was only tired--that sleep would do her good.
And while they were thus together a convict sought his darkened cell and
laid him down to rest upon the narrow couch which had been his bed so
long. Drearily to him the morning broke, and with the struggling in of
the daylight he found upon his floor the handkerchief dropped
inadvertently by Mrs. Worthington, and unseen till now. He knew it was
not unusual for strangers to visit the cells, and so he readily guessed
how it came there, holding it a little more to the light to see the name
written so plainly upon it.
"Eliza Worthington." That was what the convict read, a blur before his
eyes, and a strange sensation at his heart. "Eliza Worthington."
How came she there, and when? Suddenly he remembered the event of
yesterday, the woman who fainted, the tall man who carried her out, the
beautiful girl who had looked at him so pityingly, and then, while every
nerve quivered with intense excitement, he whispered:
"That was my wife! I did not see her face, but she saw me, fainting at
the sight."
Hard, and villainous, and sinful as that man had been, there was a
tender chord beneath the villain exterior, and it quivered painfully as
he said "fainted at the sight." This was the keenest pang of the whole,
for as Densie Densmore had moaned the previous night, "I loved him
once," so he now, rocking to and fro on his narrow bed, with that
handkerchief pressed to his throbbing heart, murmured hoarsely:
"I loved Eliza once, though she would not believe it."
Then the image of the young man and the girl came up before him, making
him start again, for he guessed that man was Hugh, his stepson, while
the girl--oh, could that beautiful creature--be--his--daughter!
"Not Adaline, assuredly," he whispered, "nor Adah, my poor darling Adah.
Oh, where is she this morning? I did love Adah," and the convict
moistened Eliza Worthington's handkerchief with the tears he shed for
sweet Adah Hastings.
Outwardly, that day the so-called Sullivan was the same, as he paced up
and down the walk, but never since first he began the weary march, had
his brain been the seat of thoughts so tumultuous as those stirring
within him, the day succeeding Mrs. Worthington's visit. Where were his
victims now? Were they all alive? And would he meet them yet? Would
Eliza Worthington ever come there again, or Hugh, and would he see them
if they did? Perhaps not, but some time, a few months hence, he would
find them, would find Hugh at least, and ask if he knew aught of
Adah--Adah, more terribly wronged than even the wife had been.
And while he thus resolved, poor Mrs. Worthington at home moved
nervously around the house, casting uneasy glances backward, forward,
and sideways, as if she were expecting some goblin shape to rise
suddenly before her and claim her for its own. They were wretched,
uneasy days which followed that visit to Frankfort--days of racking
headache to Mrs. Worthington, and days of anxious thought to Hugh, who
thus was led in a measure to forget the pain he would otherwise have
felt at the memory of Alice's refusal.