Ernest Linwood Part 56

And raising my head, I drew a quick, painful breath, pa.s.sed through the iron door into the narrow cell, where the gloom of eternal twilight darkly hung.

At first I could not distinguish the objects within, for a mist was over my sight, which deepened the shadows of the dungeon walls. But as my eye became accustomed to the dimness, I saw a tall, emaciated figure rising from the bed, which nearly filled the limited s.p.a.ce which inclosed us. A narrow aperture in the deep, ma.s.sy stone, admitted all the light which illumined us after the iron door slowly closed.

The dark, sunken eyes of the prisoner gleamed like the flash of an expiring taper, wild and fitful, on our entering forms. He was dreadfully altered,--I should scarcely have recognized him through the gloomy shade of his long-neglected hair, and thick, unshorn beard.

"Father," said Richard, trying to speak in a cheerful tone, "I have brought you a comforter. A daughter's presence must be more soothing than a son's."

I held out my hand as Richard spoke, and he took it as if it were marble. No tenderness softened his countenance,--he rather seemed to recoil from me than to welcome. I noticed a great difference in his reception of Richard. He grasped his hand, and perused his features as if he could not withdraw his gaze.

"Are you indeed my son?" he asked, in an unsteady tone. "Do you not mock me? Tell me once more, are you Theresa's child?"

"As surely as I believe her an angel in heaven, I am."

"Yes,--yes, you have her brow and smile; but why have you come to me again, when I commanded you to stay away? And why have you brought this pale girl here, when she loathes me as an incarnate fiend?"

"No,--no," I exclaimed, sinking down on the foot of the bed, in hopelessness of spirit, "I pity, forgive, pray for you, weep for you."

"I want neither pity, forgiveness, nor prayers," he sullenly answered.

"I want nothing but freedom, and that you cannot give. Go back to your husband, and tell him I curse him for the riches that tempted me, and you for the jewels that betrayed. You might have given me gold instead of diamonds, and then I would have been safe from the h.e.l.l-hounds of law. Curse on the sordid fear"--

"Stop," cried Richard, seizing the arm he had raised in imprecation, and fixing on him an eye of stem command. "You shall not wound her ears with such foul blasphemy. Utter another word of reproach to her, and I will leave you for ever to the doom you merit. Is this the return you make for her filial devotion? Betrayer of her mother, robber of her husband, coward as well as villain, how dare you blast her with your impious curse?"

Richard forgot at that moment he was speaking to a father, in the intensity of his indignation and scorn. His eye burned, his lip quivered, he looked as if he could have hurled him against the granite walls.

St. James quailed and writhed out of his grasp. His face turned the hue of ashes, and he staggered back like a drunken man.

"I did not mean to curse her," he cried. "I am mad half the time, and know not what I say. Who would not be mad, cut off from communion with their kind, in such a den as this, with fiends whispering, and devils tempting, and know that it is not for a day, a week, a month, nor even a year; but for ten long years! And what will life be then, supposing I drag out its hated length through imprisonment, and horror, and despair?

What is it now? A worn shred, a shivelled scroll, a blasted remnant of humanity!"

He sat down again on the side of the bed, and leaning forward, bent his face downward and buried it in his hands. Groans, that seemed to tear his breast as they forced their pa.s.sage, burst spasmodically from his lips. Oh! if that travailing soul, travailing in sin and sorrow, would cast itself on the bosom of Divine Mercy, would prostrate itself at the foot of the cross, till the scarlet dye of crime was washed white in a Saviour's blood! What were ten years of imprisonment and anguish, to eternal ages burning with the unquenchable fires of remorse!

"O father!" I cried, moved by an irresistible impulse, and approaching him with trembling steps, "these prison walls may become the house of G.o.d, the gate of heaven, dark and dismal as they are. The Saviour will come and dwell with you, if you only look up to him in penitence and faith; and he will make them blissful with his presence. He went into the den of lions. He walked through the fiery furnace. He can rend these iron doors and give you the glorious liberty of the children of G.o.d. If I could only speak as I feel, if I only knew how to convince and persuade;--but alas! my tongue is weak, my words are cold. Richard will you not help me?"

"If he will not listen to you, Gabriella, he would not be persuaded though an angel spoke."

"Why do you care about my soul?" asked the prisoner, lifting his head from his knees, and rolling his bloodshot eyes upon me.

"Because you are my father," I answered,--overcoming my trepidation, and speaking with fervor and energy,--"because my mother prayed for you, and my Saviour died for you."

"Your mother!" he exclaimed; "who was she, that she should pray for me?"

"My mother!" I repeated, fearing his mind was becoming unsettled; "if you have forgotten her, I do not wish to recall her."

"I remember now,--her name was Rosalie," he said, and a strange expression pa.s.sed over his countenance. "I was thinking of my poor Theresa."

He looked at Richard as he spoke, and something like parental tenderness softened his features. Degraded as he was, unworthy as it seemed he must ever have been of woman's love, I could not help a pang of exquisite pain at the thought of my mother's being forgotten, while Theresa was remembered with apparent tenderness. When I met him in the Park, he expressed exceeding love for me for her sake,--he spoke of her as the beloved of his youth, as the being whose loss had driven him to desperation and made him the wretch and outcast he was. And now, no chord of remembrance vibrated at her name, no ray of fondness for her child played upon the sacrifice I was offering. It was a sordid deception then,--his pretended tenderness,--to gain access to my husband's gold; and I turned, heart-sick and loathing away. As I did so, I caught a glimpse of a book that looked like the Bible on a little table, between the bed and the wall. With an involuntary motion I reached forward and opened it.

"I am so glad," I cried, looking at Richard. "I wanted to bring one; but I thought I would ask permission."

"Yes," exclaimed St. James, with a ghastly smile, "we all have Bibles, I believe. Like the priest's blessing, they cost nothing."

"But you read it, father!" said Richard, anxiously. "You cannot fail to find light and comfort in it. You cannot be altogether lonely with such a companion."

"What is the use of reading what one cannot understand?" cried he, in a gloomy tone. "Your mother was a Catholic. She did not read the Bible, and if there is a heaven above, it was made for such as she."

"My mother _did_ read her Bible," answered Richard, with solemnity. "She taught me to read it, making a table of her knees, while her hands toiled for our subsistence. It was a lamp to her path, a balm to her sorrows. She lived according to its precepts. She died, believing in its promises."

The glistening eyes of Richard seemed to magnetize his father, so earnest, so steadfast was his gaze.

"Have you _her_ Bible?" he asked, in a husky voice.

"I have; it was her dying gift."

"Bring it, and read to me the chapters she loved best. Perhaps--who knows? Great G.o.d! I was once a praying child at my mother's knee."

Richard grasped his father's hand with a strong emotion,

"I will bring it, father. We will read it together, and her spirit will breathe into our hearts. The pages are marked by her pencil, blistered by her tears."

"Yes, bring it!" he repeated. "Who knows? Just heaven!--who knows?"

Who, indeed, did know what influence that book, embalmed in such sacred memories, might have on the sinner's blasted heart? The fierceness and sullenness that had repelled and terrified me on our first entrance had pa.s.sed away, and sensibility roused from an awful paralysis, started at the ruins it beheld. There was hope, since he could feel. Richard's filial mission might not be in vain. But _mine_ was. I realized this before I left the cell, and resolved to yield to him the task which I had hoped to share. I could not help feeling grieved and disappointed, not so much on my own account, as for the indifference manifested to my mother's memory,--that mother who had loved him, even to her dying hour.

My heart hardened against him; but when I rose to go, and looked round on the narrow and dismal tomb in which he was inclosed, and then on his hollow cheek and wasted frame, and thought in all human probability those walls would prove his grave, it melted with the tenderest compa.s.sion.

"Is there any thing I can do for your comfort?" I asked, trying in vain to keep back the rushing tears. "Can I send you any thing to do you good? If you wish to see me again, tell Richard, and I will come; but I do not wish to be in the way. He, I see, can do every thing I could do, and far more. I thought a daughter could draw so near a father's heart!"

I stopped, choked with emotion which seemed contagious, for Richard turned aside and took up his handkerchief, which had dropped upon the bed. St. James was agitated. He gave the hand which I extended a spasmodic pressure, and looked from me to Richard, and then back again, with a peculiar, hesitating expression.

"Forgive me," said he, in a gentler accent than I had yet heard him use, "my harsh, fierce words; as I told you, it was a demon's utterance, not mine. You would have saved me, I know you would. I made you unhappy, and plunged into perdition myself. No, you had better not come again. You are too lovely, too tender for this grim place. My boy will come; and you, you, my child, may pray for me, if you do not think it mockery to ask G.o.d to pardon a wretch like me."

I looked in his face, inexpressibly affected by the unexpected gentleness of his words and manner. Surely the spirit of G.o.d was beginning to move over the stagnant waters of sin and despair. I was about to leave him,--the lonely,--the doomed. I, too, was lonely and doomed.

"Father!" I cried, and with an impulse of pity and anguish I threw my arms round him and wept as if my heart was breaking; "I would willingly wear out my life in prayer for you, but O, pray for yourself. One prayer from your heart would be worth ten thousand of mine."

I thought not of the haggard form I was embracing; I thought of the immortal soul that inhabited it; and it seemed a sacred ruin. He clasped me convulsively to him one moment, then suddenly withdrawing his arms, he pushed me towards Richard,--not harshly, but as if bidding him take care of me; and throwing himself on the bed, he turned his face downward, so that his long black hair covered it from sight.

"Let us go," said Richard, in a low voice; "we had better leave him now."

As we were pa.s.sing very softly out of the cell, he raised his head partially, and calling to Richard, said,--

"Come back, my son, to-morrow. I have something to tell you. I ought to do it now, while you are both here, but to-morrow will do; and don't forget your mother's Bible."

Again we traversed the stone galleries, the dismal stairs, and our footsteps left behind us a cold, sepulchral sound. Neither of us spoke, for a kind of funeral silence solemnized our hearts. I looked at one of the figures that were gliding along the upper galleries, though there were many of them,--prisoners, who being condemned for lighter offences than murder or forgery, were allowed to walk under the eye of a keeper.

I was conscious of pa.s.sing them, but they only seemed to deepen the gloom, like ravens and bats flapping their wings in a deserted tower.

As we came into the light of day, which, struggling through ma.s.sy ridges of darkness, burst between the grand and gloomy columns that supported the fabric, I felt as if a great stone were rolling from my breast I raised the veil, which I had drawn closely over my face, to inhale the air that flowed from the world without I was coming out of darkness into light, out of imprisonment into freedom, sunshine, and the breath of heaven.