leaned forward, caught his head in her hands, dragged it into her lap,
and covered it with kisses and tears. “Ah, my love, you are too good.
I cannot accept such a sacrifice. When I am cleared publicly of this
horrible charge, then I will ask you once more if you dare be my wife.”
“Dare! O, how can you say such things!” she sobbed. “Don’t you know that
you are more to me than the whole universe? Don’t you know that I would
marry you, even if I knew you were guilty?”
There is no reasoning with this sublime passion of love, when it is truly
itself. There is no reasoning with it; and Heaven be thanked that it is
so! It is well to have one impulse in the world which has no egoism,
which rejoices in self-immolation for the sake of its object, which is
among emotions what a martyr is among men.
Foster’s response was worthy of the girl’s declaration. “My love,” he
whispered, “I have been bemoaning my ruined life, but I must bemoan it
no more. It is success enough for any man to be loved by you, and as you
love me.”
“No, no!” protested Bessie. “It is not success enough for you. No success
is enough for you. You deserve everything that ever man did deserve. And
here you are insulted, trampled upon, and threatened. O, it is shameful
and horrible!”
“My child, you must not help to break me down,” implored Foster, feeling
that he was turning weak under the thought of his calamity.
She started towards him in a spasm of remorse; it was as if she had
suddenly become aware that she had stabbed him; her face and her attitude
were full of self-reproach.
“O my darling, do I make you more wretched?” she asked, “when I would die
for you! when you are my all! O, there is not a minute when I am worthy
of you!”
These interviews left Foster possessed of a few minutes of consolation
and peace, which would soon change into an increased poverty of despair
and rage. For the first few days of his imprisonment his prevalent
feeling was anger. He could not in the least accept his position; he
would not look upon himself as one who was suspected with justice, or
even with the slightest show of probability; he would not admit that
society was pardonable for its doubts of him. He was not satisfied
with mere hope of escape; on the contrary, he considered his accusers
shamefully and wickedly blameworthy; he was angry at them, and wanted to
wreak upon them a stern vengeance.
As the imprisonment dragged on, however, and his mind lost its tension
under the pressure of trouble, there came moments when he did not
quite know himself. It seemed to him that this man, who was charged
with murder, was some one else, for whose character he could not stand
security, and who might be guilty. He almost looked upon him with
suspicion; he half joined the public in condemning him unheard. Perhaps
this mental confusion was the foreshadowing of that insane state of mind
in which prisoners have confessed themselves guilty of murders which they
had not committed, and which have been eventually brought home to others.
There are twilights between reason and unreason. The descent from the one
condition to the other is oftener a slope than a precipice.
Meanwhile Bessie had, as a matter of course, plans for saving her
lover; and these plans, almost as a matter of course too, were mainly
impracticable. As with all young people and almost all women, she
rebelled against the fixed procedures of society when they seemed likely
to trample on the dictates of her affections. Now that it was her lover
who was under suspicion of murder, it did not seem a necessity to her
that the law should take its course, and, on the contrary, it seemed to
her an atrocity. She knew that he was guiltless; she knew that he was
suffering; why should he be tried? When told that he must have every
legal advantage, she assented to it eagerly, and drove at once to see
Mr. Patterson, and overwhelmed him with tearful implorations “to do
everything,—to do everything that could be done,—yes, in short, to do
everything.” But still she could not feel that anything ought to be done,
except to release at once this beautiful and blameless victim, and to
make him every conceivable apology. As for bringing him before a court,
to answer with his life whether he were innocent or guilty, it was an
injustice and an outrage which she rebelled against with all the energy
of her ardent nature.
Who could prevent this infamy? In her ignorance of the machinery of
justice, it seemed to her that her grandfather might. Notwithstanding
the little sympathy that there had been between them, she went to the
grim old man with her sorrows and her plans, proposing to him to arrest
the trial. In her love and her simplicity she would have appealed to a
mountain or to a tiger.
“What!” roared the Squire. “Stop the trial? Can’t do it. I’m not the
prosecutor. The State’s attorney is the prosecutor.”
“But can’t you say that you think the proof against him is insufficient?”
urged Bessie. “Can’t you go to them and say that? Won’t that do it?”
“Lord bless you!” replied Squire Lauson, staring in wonder at such
ignorance, and dimly conscious of the love and sorrow which made it utter
its simplicities.
“O grandfather! do have pity on him and on me!” pleaded Bessie.
He gave her a kinder glance than she had ever received from him before
in her life. It occurred to him, as if it were for the first time, that
she was very sweet and helpless, and that she was his own grandchild. He
had hated her father. O, how he had hated the conceited city upstart,
with his pert, positive ways! how he had rejoiced over his bankruptcy,
if not over his death! The girl he had taken to his home, because, after
all, she was a Lauson by blood, and it would be a family shame to let
her go begging her bread of strangers. But she had not won upon him; she
looked too much like that “damn jackanapes,” her father; moreover, she
had contemptible city accomplishments, and she moped in the seclusion
of Barham. He had been glad when she became engaged to that other “damn
jackanapes,” Foster; and it had been agreeable to think that her marriage
would take her out of his sight. Mercy had made a will in her favor; he
had sniffed and hooted at Mercy for her folly; but, after all, he had in
his heart consented to the will; it saved him from leaving any of his
money to a Barron.
Of late, however, there had been a softening in the Squire; he could
himself hardly believe that it was in his heart; he half suspected at
times that it was in his brain. A man who lives to ninety-three is
exposed to this danger, that he may survive all his children. The Squire
had walked to one grave after another, until he had buried his last son
and his last daughter. After Mercy Lauson, there were no more children
for him to see under ground; and that fact, coupled with the shocking
nature of her death, had strangely shaken him; it had produced that
singular softening which we have mentioned, and which seemed to him like
a malady. Now, a little shattered, no longer the man that he so long had
been, he was face to face with his only living descendant.
He reached out his gray, hard hand, and laid it on her glossy, curly
hair. She started with surprise at the unaccustomed touch, and looked up
in his face with a tearful sparkle of hope.
“Be quiet, Bessie,” he said, in a voice which was less like a _caw_ than
usual.
“O grandfather! what do you mean?” she sobbed, guessing that deliverance
might be nigh, and yet fearing to fall back into despair.
“Don’t cry,” was the only response of this close-mouthed, imperturbable
old man.
“O, was it any one else?” she demanded. “Who do you think did it?”
“I have an idea,” he admitted, after staring at her steadily, as if to
impress caution. “But keep quiet. We’ll see.”
“You know it couldn’t be he that did it,” urged Bessie. “Don’t you know
it couldn’t? He’s too good.”
The Squire laughed. “Why, some folks laid it to you,” he said. “If he
should be cleared, they might lay it to you again. There’s no telling
who’ll do such things, and there’s no telling who’ll be suspected.”
“And you _will_ do something?” she resumed. “You _will_ follow it up? You
_will_ save him?”
“Keep quiet,” grimly answered the Squire. “I’m watching. But keep quiet.
Not a word to a living soul.”
Close on this scene came another, which proved to be the unravelling of
the drama. That evening Bessie went early, as usual, to her solitary
room, and prepared for one of those nights which are not a rest to the
weary. She had become very religious since her trouble had come upon her;
she read several chapters in the Bible, and then she prayed long and
fervently; and, after a sob or two over her own shortcomings, the prayer
was all for Foster. Such is human devotion: the voice of distress is far
more fervent than the voice of worship; the weak and sorrowful are the
true suppliants.
Her prayer ended, if ever it could be said to end while she waked, she
strove anew to disentangle the mystery which threatened her lover,
meanwhile hearing, half unawares, the noises of the night. Darkness has
its speech, its still small whisperings and mutterings, a language which
cannot be heard during the clamor of day, but which to those who must
listen to it is painfully audible, and which rarely has pleasant things
to say, but threatens rather, or warns. For a long time, disturbed by
fingers that tapped at her window, by hands that stole along her wall, by
feet that glided through the dark halls, Bessie could not sleep. She lost
herself; then she came back to consciousness with the start of a swimmer
struggling toward the surface; then she recommenced praying for Foster,
and once more lost herself.
At last, half dozing, and yet half aware that she was weeping, she was
suddenly and sharply roused by a distinct creak in the floor of her room.
Bessie had in one respect inherited somewhat of her grandfather’s iron
nature, being so far from habitually timorous that she was noted among
her girlish acquaintance for courage. But her nerves had been seriously
shaken by the late tragedy, by anxiety, and by sleeplessness; it seemed
to her that there was in the air a warning of great danger; she was half
paralyzed by fright.
Struggling against her terror, she sprang out of bed and made a rush
toward her door, meaning to close and lock it. Instantly there was a
collision; she had thrown herself against some advancing form; in the
next breath she was engaged in a struggle. Half out of her senses, she
did not scream, did not query whether her assailant were man or woman,
did not indeed use her intelligence in any distinct fashion, but only
pushed and pulled in blind instinct of escape.
Once she had a sensation of being cut with some sharp instrument. Then
she struck; the blow told, and her antagonist fell heavily; the fall was
succeeded by a short shriek in a woman’s voice. Bessie did not stop to
wonder that any one engaged in an attempt at assassination should utter
an outcry which would almost necessarily insure discovery and seizure.
The shock of the sound seemed to restore her own powers of speech, and
she burst into a succession of loud screams, calling on her grandfather
for help.
In the same moment the hope which abides in light fell under her hand.
Reeling against her dressing-table, her fingers touched a box of waxen
matches, and she quickly drew one of them against the wood, sending a
faint glimmer through the chamber. She was not horror-stricken, she did
not grasp a comprehension of the true nature of the scene; she simply
stared in trembling wonder when she recognized Mrs. Lauson.
“You there, grandmother!” gasped Bessie. “What has happened?”
Mrs. Lauson, attired in an old morning-gown, was sitting on the floor,
partially supported by one hand, while the other was moving about as if
in search of some object. The object was a carving-knife; she saw it,
clutched it, and rose to her feet; then for the first time she looked at
Bessie. “What do you lie awake and pray for?” she demanded, in a furious
mutter. “You lie awake and pray every night. I’ve listened in the hall
time and again, and heard you. I won’t have it. I’ll give you just three
minutes to get to sleep.”
Bessie did not think; it did not occur to her, at least not in any clear
manner, that this was lunacy; she instinctively sprang behind a large
chair and uttered another scream.
“I say, will you go to sleep?” insisted Mrs. Lauson, advancing and
raising her knife.
Just in the moment of need there were steps in the hall; the still
vigorous and courageous old Squire appeared upon the scene; after
a violent struggle the maniac was disarmed and bound. She lay upon
Bessie’s bed, staring at her husband with bloodshot, watery eyes, and
seemingly unconscious of anything but a sense of ill-treatment. The girl,
meanwhile, had discovered a slight gash on her left arm, and had shown it
to the Squire.
“Sallie,” demanded the cold-blooded old man, “what have you been trying
to knife Bessie for?”
“Because she lay awake and prayed,” was the ready and firm response of
downright mania.
“Look here, Sallie, what did you kill Mercy for?” continued the Squire,
without changing a muscle of his countenance.
“Because she sat up and prayed,” responded Mrs. Lauson. “She sat up in
the garden and prayed against me. Ever so many people sit up and lie
awake to pray against me. I won’t have it.”
“Ah!” said the old man. “Do you hear that, Bessie? Remember it, so as to
say it upon your oath.”
After a second or two he added, with something like a twinkle of his
characteristic humor in his hard gray eyes, “So I saved my life by not
praying!”
Thus ended the extraordinary scene which brought to light the murderer of
Miss Mercy Lauson. It is almost needless to add that on the day following
the maniac was conveyed to the State Lunatic Asylum, and that shortly
afterward Bessie opened the prison gates of Henry Foster, and told him of
his absolution from charge of crime.
“And now I want the whole world to get on its knees and ask your pardon,”
she said, after a long scene of tenderer words than must be reported.
“If the world should ask pardon for all its blunders,” he said, with
a smile, “it would pass its whole time in penance, and wouldn’t make
its living. Human life is like science, a sequence of mistakes, with
generally a true direction.”
One must stick to one’s character. A philosopher is nothing if not
philosophical.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE IRON SHROUD.
BY WILLIAM MUDFORD.
The castle of the Prince of Tolfi was built on the summit of the towering
and precipitous rock of Scylla, and commanded a magnificent view of
Sicily in all its grandeur. Here, during the wars of the Middle Ages,
when the fertile plains of Italy were devastated by hostile factions,
those prisoners were confined, for whose ransom a costly price was
demanded. Here, too, in a dungeon excavated deep in the solid rock, the
miserable victim was immured, whom revenge pursued,—the dark, fierce, and
unpitying revenge of an Italian heart.
VIVENZIO,—the noble and the generous, the fearless in battle, and the
pride of Naples in her sunny hours of peace,—the young, the brave, the
proud Vivenzio,—fell beneath this subtle and remorseless spirit. He was
the prisoner of Tolfi; and he languished in that rock-encircled dungeon,
which stood alone, and whose portals never opened twice upon a living
captive.
It had the semblance of a vast cage; for the roof and floor and sides
were of iron, solidly wrought and spaciously constructed. High above
ran a range of seven grated windows, guarded with massy bars of the
same metal, which admitted light and air. Save these, and the tall
folding-doors beneath them, which occupied the centre, no chink or chasm
or projection broke the smooth, black surface of the walls. An iron
bedstead, littered with straw, stood in one corner, and, beside it, a
vessel of water, and a coarse dish filled with coarser food.
Even the intrepid soul of Vivenzio shrunk with dismay as he entered
this abode, and heard the ponderous doors triple-locked by the silent
ruffians who conducted him to it. Their silence seemed prophetic of his
fate, of the living grave that had been prepared for him. His menaces
and his entreaties, his indignant appeals for justice, and his impatient
questioning of their intentions, were alike vain. They listened but spoke
not. Fit ministers of a crime that should have no tongue!
How dismal was the sound of their retiring steps! And, as their faint
echoes died along the winding passages, a fearful presage grew within
him, that nevermore the face or voice or tread of man would greet his
senses. He had seen human beings for the last time! And he had looked
his last upon the bright sky and upon the smiling earth and upon a
beautiful world he loved, and whose minion he had been! Here he was to
end his life,—a life he had just begun to revel in! And by what means?
By secret poison? or by murderous assault? No; for then it had been
needless to bring him thither. Famine, perhaps,—a thousand deaths in one!
It was terrible to think of it; but it was yet more terrible to picture
long, long years of captivity in a solitude so appalling, a loneliness
so dreary, that thought, for want of fellowship, would lose itself in
madness, or stagnate into idiocy.
He could not hope to escape, unless he had the power, with his bare
hands, of rending asunder the solid iron walls of his prison. He could
not hope for liberty from the relenting mercies of his enemy. His
instant death, under any form of refined cruelty, was not the object
of Tolfi; for he might have inflicted it, and he had not. It was too
evident, therefore, he was reserved for some premeditated scheme of
subtle vengeance; and what vengeance could transcend in fiendish malice,
either the slow death of famine, or the still slower one of solitary
incarceration till the last lingering spark of life expired, or till
reason fled, and nothing should remain to perish but the brute functions
of the body?
It was evening when Vivenzio entered his dungeon; and the approaching
shades of night wrapped it in total darkness, as he paced up and down,
revolving in his mind these horrible forebodings. No tolling bell from
the castle, or from any neighboring church or convent, struck upon his
ears to tell how the hours passed. Frequently he would stop and listen
for some sound that might betoken the vicinity of man; but the solitude
of the desert, the silence of the tomb, are not so still and deep as the
oppressive desolation by which he was encompassed. His heart sunk within
him, and he threw himself dejectedly upon his couch of straw. Here sleep
gradually obliterated the consciousness of misery; and bland dreams
wafted his delighted spirit to scenes which were once glowing realities
for him, in whose ravishing illusions he soon lost the remembrance that
he was Tolfi’s prisoner.
When he awoke, it was daylight; but how long he had slept he knew not. It
might be early morning, or it might be sultry noon; for he could measure
time by no other note of its progress than light and darkness. He had
been so happy in his sleep, amid friends who loved him, and the sweeter
endearments of those who loved him as friends could not, that, in the
first moments of waking, his startled mind seemed to admit the knowledge
of his situation, as if it had burst upon it for the first time, fresh
in all its appalling horrors. He gazed round with an air of doubt and
amazement, and took up a handful of the straw upon which he lay, as
though he would ask himself what it meant. But memory, too faithful to
her office, soon unveiled the melancholy past, while reason, shuddering
at the task, flashed before his eyes the tremendous future. The contrast
overpowered him. He remained for some time lamenting, like a truth, the
bright visions that had vanished, and recoiling from the present, which
clung to him as a poisoned garment.
When he grew more calm, he surveyed his gloomy dungeon. Alas!
the stronger light of day only served to confirm what the gloomy
indistinctness of the preceding evening had partially disclosed,—the
utter impossibility of escape. As, however, his eyes wandered round
and round, and from place to place, he noticed two circumstances which
excited his surprise and curiosity. The one, he thought, might be fancy;
but the other was positive. His pitcher of water, and the dish which
contained his food, had been removed from his side while he slept,
and now stood near the door. Were he even inclined to doubt this, by
supposing he had mistaken the spot where he saw them over night, he could
not; for the pitcher now in his dungeon was neither of the same form nor
color as the other, while the food was changed for some other of better
quality. He had been visited therefore during the night. But how had
the person obtained entrance? Could he have slept so soundly that the
unlocking and opening of those ponderous portals were effected without
waking him? He would have said this was not possible, but that, in doing
so, he must admit a greater difficulty, an entrance by other means, of
which, he was convinced, none existed. It was not intended, then, that
he should be left to perish from hunger; but the secret and mysterious
mode of supplying him with food seemed to indicate he was to have no
opportunity of communicating with a human being.
The other circumstance which had attracted his notice was the
disappearance, as he believed, of one of the seven grated windows that
ran along the top of his prison. He felt confident that he had observed
and counted them; for he was rather surprised at their number, and there
was something peculiar in their form, as well as in the manner of their
arrangement, at unequal distances. It was so much easier, however, to
suppose he was mistaken, than that a portion of the solid iron, which
formed the walls, could have escaped from its position, that he soon
dismissed the thought from his mind.
Vivenzio partook of the food that was before him without apprehension. It
might be poisoned; but, if it were, he knew he could not escape death,
should such be the design of Tolfi; and the quickest death would be the
speediest relief.
The day passed wearily and gloomily, though not without a faint hope
that, by keeping watch at night, he might observe when the person came
again to bring him food, which he supposed he would do in the same way
as before. The mere thought of being approached by a living creature,
and the opportunity it might present of learning the doom prepared or
preparing for him, imparted some comfort. Besides, if he came alone,
might he not in a furious onset overpower him? Or he might be accessible
to pity, or the influence of such munificent rewards as he could bestow
if once more at liberty, and master of himself. Say he were armed. The
worst that could befall, if nor bribe nor prayers nor force prevailed,
was a faithful blow, which, though dealt in a damned cause, might work
a desired end. There was no chance so desperate but it looked lovely in
Vivenzio’s eyes, compared with the idea of being totally abandoned.
The night came, and Vivenzio watched. Morning came, and Vivenzio was
confounded! He must have slumbered without knowing it. Sleep must have
stolen over him when exhausted by fatigue; and, in that interval of
feverish repose, he had been baffled: for there stood his replenished
pitcher of water, and there his day’s meal! Nor was this all. Casting
his looks toward the windows of his dungeon, he counted but FIVE! _Here_
was no deception; and he was now convinced there had been none the day
before. But what did all this portend? Into what strange and mysterious
den had he been cast? He gazed till his eyes ached; he could discover
nothing to explain the mystery. That it was so, he knew. Why it was so,
he racked his imagination in vain to conjecture. He examined the doors. A
simple circumstance convinced him they had not been opened.