THE SOUL MAY GAIN STRENGTH IN A DREARY CELL.
It is Bulwer, the prince of modern novelists, who says: “There is in
calumny a rank poison that, even when the character throws off the
slander, the heart remains diseased beneath the effect.” And this is
the exact condition in which Maria finds herself. The knaves who have
sought her ruin would seem to have triumphed; the ears of the
charitable are closed to her; her judgment seems sealed. And yet when
all is dark and still; when her companions sleep in undisturbed
tranquillity; when her agitated feelings become calmed; when there
seems speaking to her, through the hushed air of midnight, the voice of
a merciful providence-her soul quickens, and she counsels her
self-command, which has not yet deserted her. Woman’s nature is indeed
strung in delicate threads, but her power of endurance not unfrequently
puts the sterner sex to the blush. “Slander has truly left my heart
diseased, but I am innocent, and to-morrow, perhaps, my star will
brighten. These dark struggles cannot last forever!” she muses, as her
self-command strengthens, and gives her new hopes. Her betrothed may
return to-morrow, and his generous nature will not refuse her an
opportunity to assert her innocence.
And while she thus muses in the cell of the guard-house, the steamer in
which Tom proceeds to Charleston is dashing through the waves, speeding
on, like a thing of life, leaving a long train of phosphoric brine
behind her. As might naturally have been expected, Tom learns from a
fellow-passenger all that has befallen the old Antiquary. This filled
his mind with gloomy forebodings concerning the fate of Maria. There
was, too, something evasive in the manner of the man who conveyed to
him this intelligence, and this excited his apprehensions, and prompted
him to make further inquiries. His confidence in her faith animated and
encouraged his heart. But when he remembered that the old man was, even
when he left, in the clutches of Snivel and Keepum (men whose wealth
and influence gave them power to crush the poor into the dust), an
abyss, terrible and dark, opened to him, his whole nature seemed
changed, and his emotions became turbulent. He again sought the
passenger, and begging him to throw off all restraint, assured him that
it would relieve his feelings to know what had become of Maria. The man
hesitated for a few moments, then, with reluctant lips, disclosed to
him that she had fallen a victim of necessity-more, that she was
leading the life of an outcast. Tom listened attentively to the story,
which lost nothing in the recital; then, with passions excited to
frenzy, sought his state-room. At first it seemed like a sentence of
eternal separation ringing through his burning brain. All the dark
struggles of his life rose up before him, and seemed hastening him back
into that stream of dissipation in which his mind had found relief when
his mother forsook him. But no! something-he knew not what-whispered in
his ear, “Do not reject her. Faith and hope remains to you; let truth
be the judge.” He stretched himself in his berth, but not to sleep.
On the following morning Maria, with the frail companions of her cell,
is brought into court, and arraigned before His Honor, Judge
Sleepyhorn, who, be it said to his credit, though terrible in his
dealings with the harder sex, and whose love of hanging negroes is not
to be outdone, is exceedingly lenient with female cases, as he is
pleased to style them. Though her virtue is as chaste as the falling
snow, Maria is compelled to suffer, for nearly an hour, the jeers and
ribald insinuations of a coarse crowd, while the fact of her being in
the guard-house is winged over the city by exultant scandal-mongers.
Nevertheless, she remains calm and resolute. She sees the last struggle
of an eventful life before her, and is resolved to meet it with womanly
fortitude.
The Judge smiles, casts a glance over his assembly, and takes his seat,
as Mr. Sergeant Stubble commences to read over the charges against the
accused. “Business,” says the Judge, “will proceed.”
“Now, Judge!” speaks up one of the frail women, coming forward in a
bold, off-hand manner to speak for her companions, “I don’t exactly see
what we have done so much out of the way. No ladies of our standing
have been up here before. The law’s comin’ very nice all at once.
There’s a heap, as you know, Judge—”
“No, no, no! I know nothing about such places!” quickly interrupts the
Judge, his face full of virtuous indignation, and his hands raised in
horror.
“Then I may be pardoned for not wearing spectacles,” resumes the woman,
with a curtsy. Finding the judgment-seat becoming a little too warm for
his nerves, the Judge very prudently dismisses the damsels, with an
admonition to go and do better-in fine, to tighten their tongues as
well as their morality.
With the aid of Mr. Sergeant Stubble, Maria is brought forward, pale
and trembling, and struggling with the war of grief waging in her
heart. Calmly she looks up at the Judge for a moment, then hangs down
her head in silence. “There is a Judge above who knows the
circumstances, gives me now His hand, and will judge me in the balance
of truth and mercy, when my enemies are at my feet,” flashes through
her thoughts, and strengthens the inner nature. But her tongue has lost
its power; her feelings unbend to the thought that she is in a criminal
court, arraigned before a Judge. She has no answer to make to the
Judge’s questions, but gives way to her emotions, and breaks out into
loud sobs. Several minutes, during which a sympathizing silence is
manifest, pass, when she raises slowly her head, and makes an attempt
to mutter a few words in her defence. But her voice chokes, and the
words hang, inarticulate, upon her lips. She buries her face in her
hands, and shakes her head, as if saying, “I have said all.”
His Honor seems moved to mercy by the touching spectacle before him. He
whispers in the ear of Mr. Sergeant Stubble, and that functionary
brightens up, and with an attempt to be kind, says: “Pray, Miss
McArthur—it’s a duty we have to perform, you see—where is your father?
the Judge says.”
Ah! That question has touched the fountain-spring of all her troubles,
and the waters come gushing forth, as if to engulph the last faint
shadow of hope in darkness. Almost simultaneously she falls to the
floor in a fit of violent hysterics. The Judge orders the court-room
cleared of its spectators, and if the reader has ever witnessed the
painful sight of a female suffering such paroxysms, he may picture more
forcibly in his imagination than we can describe, the scene that
follows. For some fifteen minutes the sufferer struggles, and when her
mind resumes its calm, she casts a wild, despairing look round the
room, then fixes her eyes upon those who are gathered about her.
There was a kind impulse yet left in the Judge. He discovers a sympathy
for her condition, holds her weak, trembling hand in his own, and
bathes her temples with cologne. “You are free to go home-there is no
charge against you,” he whispers in her ear. “I have ordered a
carriage, and will send you to your home-where is it?” This is, indeed,
cruel kindness.
“If I had a home,” responds Maria, in a low voice, as she rises, and
rests herself on her elbow, “it would shelter me from this distress.
Yes, I would then be happy once more.”
A carriage soon arrives, she is put into it, and with a few consoling
words from the Judge, is driven back, as hastily as possible, to the
house from which she was dragged only last night. She has nowhere else
to go to-day, but resolves to-morrow to seek a shelter elsewhere.
Through the whisperings of that unaccountable human telegraph, the news
of her shame, made great and terrible with a thousand additions, is
flown into the family secrets of the city. How strange and yet how true
of human nature is it, that we stand ever ready to point the finger of
scorn at those we fancy in the downward path, while refusing ourselves
to receive the moralist’s lessons.