Fashion and Famine Part 44

That withered hand shook like a leaf.

Julia and her grandmother went out, but not beyond the hall. There they stood, distant as the s.p.a.ce would permit, but still within hearing of the voices within. Now and then a word rose high, and old Mrs. Wilc.o.x would draw Julia's head against her side, and press a hand upon her ear, as if she dreaded that even those indistinct murmurs should reach her.

While these poor creatures stood trembling in the hall, a strange, fierce scene was going on over that miserable breakfast-table. Leicester had been persevering and plausible at first; with promises of wealth, and protestations of kindness, he had endeavored to induce the poor old man to render up the child. When this failed, he became irritated, and, with fiercer pa.s.sions, attempted to intimidate the feeble being whom he had already wronged almost beyond all hopes of human forgiveness. The old man said little, for he was terrified, and weak as a child; but his refusal to yield up the little girl was decided. "If the law takes her away, I cannot help it," he said, "but nothing else ever shall." Tears rolled down the old man's face as he spoke, but his will had been expressed, and the man who came to despoil him saw that it was immovable.

Despairing at last, and fiercely desperate, Leicester rushed from the bas.e.m.e.nt. Julia and her grandmother shrunk against the wall, for the palor of his face was frightful. He did not appear to see them, but went quickly through the outer door and up to the side-walk. Here stood the two men, arm-in-arm, ready to follow him. He turned back, and retraced his steps, with a dull, heavy footfall, utterly unlike the elasticity of his usual tread. Further and further back crowded the frightened females. The old man was so exhausted that he could not arise from the chair to which he had fallen. He looked up when Leicester entered the room, and said, beseechingly, "Oh, let me alone! See how miserable you have made us! Do let us alone!"

"Once more--once more I ask, will you give up the child?"

"No--no."

A knife lay upon the table, long and sharp, one that Mrs. Wilc.o.x had been using in her household work. Leicester's eye had been fixed on the knife while he was speaking. His hand was outstretched toward it before the old man could find voice to answer. Simultaneous with the brief "no," the knife flashed upward, down again, and Leicester fell dead at the old man's feet. Mr. Wilc.o.x dropped on his knees, seized the knife, and tore it from the wound. Over his withered hands, over the white vest, down to his feet, gushed the warm blood. It paralyzed the old man; he tried to cry aloud, but had no power. A frightful stillness reigned over him; then many persons came rushing into the room.

A light shone in that pretty cottage--a single light from the chamber where Julia had robed Florence Nelson in her bridal dress. A bed was there, shrouded in drapery, that hung motionless, like marble, and as coldly white; glossy linen swept over the bed, frozen, as it were, over the outline of a human form. Death--death--the very atmosphere was full of death. On one corner of the bed, crushing the cold linen, wrinkled with her weight, Florence Nelson had seated herself, and with her black ringlets falling over the dead, sung to him as no human being ever sung before. Sometimes she laughed--sometimes wept. Every variation of her madness was full of pathos, sweet with tenderness, save when there came from the opposite room a pallid and grief-stricken creature, with drooping hands, and eyes heavy with unshed tears.

If this unhappy woman attempted to approach the bed, or even enter the room, Florence would spring up with the fierce cry of a wounded eagle; the song rose to a wail, then, with her waxen hands, she would gather up the linen in waves, over the dead, and if Ada came nearer, shriek after shriek rose through the cottage. Thus poor Ada Leicester, driven from the death-couch of her husband, would creep back to where his mother knelt in her calm, still grief. There, with her stately head bowed down, her limbs p.r.o.ne upon the floor, she would murmur, "Oh, G.o.d help me! It is just--but help me, help me! Oh, my G.o.d!"

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CITY PRISON.

He was a man of simple heart, Patient and meek, the Christian part Came to his soul as came the air That heaved his bosom; hope, despair, Were chastened by a holy faith!-- Meek in his life he feared not death.

Perhaps in the whole world there is not a building where all the horror, the wild poetry of sin and grief is so forcibly written out in black shadows and hard stone, as in the city prison of New York. A stranger pa.s.sing that ma.s.sive pile would unconsciously feel saddened, though entirely ignorant of its painful uses, for the very atmosphere fills him with a vague sensation of alarm. The Egyptian architecture, so heavy and imposing; the thick walls which no sunshine can penetrate, and against which cries of anguish might, unheard, exhaust themselves forever, chill the very heart. The ponderous columns, lost in a perspective of black shadows in the front entrance--piles of granite sweeping toward Broadway, and interlocking with the black prison that rises up, like a solid wall, gloomy, windowless, and penetrated only with loop-holes, like a fort which has nothing but misery to protect--fills the imagination with gloom.

The moment you come in sight of the building, your breath draws heavily; the atmosphere seems humid with tears--oppressive with sighs--a storm of human suffering appears gathering around. The air seems eddying with curses which have exhausted their sound against those walls; you feel as if sin, shame, and grief were palpable spirits, walking behind and around you; and all this is the more terrible, because the waves of life gather close up to the building, swelling against its walls on every side.

The prison sits like a monster, crouching in the very heart of a great city; the veins and arteries of social evil weave and coil close around it, like serpents born in the same foul atmosphere with itself. Placed on foundations lower than the graded walks, nestled in a dried up swamp that has exchanged the miasma of decayed nature for the miasma of human guilt; the neighborhood close at hand sunk, like this building, deep in the grade of human existence; is there on earth another spot so eloquent of suffering, so populous with sin?

"The Tombs," this name was given to the prison years ago, when its foundations were first sunk in the swampy moisture of the soil. Then you could see the vast structure sinking, day by day, into its murky foundations, and enveloped in clouds of palpable miasma. There the poor wretches huddled within its walls, died like herds of poisoned cattle; pine coffins were constantly pa.s.sing in and out of those ponderous doors. Pauper death-carts might be seen every day lumbering up Centre street, on their road to Potter's Field. The man, innocent or guilty, who entered those walls, breathed his death warrant as he pa.s.sed in.

This only continued for a season; it was not long before the tramp of human feet, and the weight of that ponderous ma.s.s of stone crushed the poisonous moisture from the earth, but the name which death had left still remained--a name deeply and solemnly significant of the place to all who deem moral evil and moral death as mournful as the physical suffering which had baptized it.

The main building, which fronts on Centre street, opens to a dusky and pillared vestibule, that leads to various rooms, occupied by the courts and officials connected with the prison. At the right, as you enter, is the police court, a s.p.a.cious apartment, with deep cas.e.m.e.nts. A raised platform, railed in from the people, upon which the magistrates sit, contains a desk or two, and beyond are several smaller rooms, used for private examinations.

In one of these rooms, the smallest and most remote, sat a mournful group, early one morning, before the magistrates had taken their seats upon the bench. One was an old man, thin, haggard and care-worn, but with a placid and even exalted cast of countenance, such as a stricken man wears when he has learned "to suffer and be strong." He sat near a round table covered with worn baize, upon which one elbow rested rather heavily, for he had tasted little food for several days; and the languor of habitual privation, joined to strong nervous reaction, after a scene of horror, impressed his person even more than his face. That, as I have said, was pale and worn, but tranquil and composed to a degree that startled those who looked upon him, for the old man was waiting there to be examined on a charge of murder, and men shuddered to see the calmness upon his features. It seemed to them nothing but hardened indifference, the composure of guilt that had ceased to feel its own enormity.

Close by this man sat two females, an old woman and a girl, not weeping, they had no tears left, but they sat with heavy, mournful eyes gazing upon the floor. Marks of terrible suffering were visible in their faces, and in the dull, hopeless apathy of their motionless silence. Now and then a low sigh rose and died upon the pale lips of the girl, but it was faint as that which exhales from a flower which has been trodden to death, and the poor girl was only conscious that the pain at her heart was a little sharper that instant than it had been.

The woman, pale, still, and grief-stricken in every feature and limb, did not even sigh. It seemed as if the breath must have frozen upon her cold lips, she seemed so utterly chilled, body and soul.

An officer of the police stood just within the room, not one of those burly, white-coated characters we find always in English novels, but a tall, slender and gentlemanly person, who regarded the group it had been his duty to arrest with a grave and compa.s.sionate glance. True, he searched the old man's face as those who have studied the human lineaments strive to read the secrets of a soul in their expression--but there was nothing rude either in his look or manner.

After awhile the officer remembered that his prisoners had not tasted food since the day previous, and, with a pang of self-reproach, he addressed them.

"You are worn out for want of food--I should have remembered this!" he said, approaching the table; "I will order some coffee."

The old man raised his head, and turned his grateful eyes upon the officer.

"Yes," he said, with a gentle smile, "they are hungry; a little coffee will do them good."

The young female looked up and softly waved her head; but the other continued motionless, she had heard nothing.

The officer whispered to a person outside the door, and then began to pace up and down the room like a sentinel, but treading very lightly, as if subdued by the silent grief over which he kept guard.

Directly the coffee was brought in, with bread and fragments of cold meat.

"Come now," said the officer, cheerfully, "take something to give you strength. The examination may be a long one, and I have seen powerful men sink under a first examination--take something to keep you up, or you will get nervous, and admit more than a wise man should."

"Yes," said the old man, meekly, "you are right, they will want strength--so shall I." He took one of the tin-cups which had been brought half full of coffee, and reached it toward the woman.

"Wife!" he said, bending toward her.

The poor woman started, and looked at him through her wild, heavy eyes.

"What is it, Wilc.o.x? What is it you want of me?"

"You observe she is almost beside herself," said the old man addressing the officer, and his face grew troubled--"what can I do?"

"Oh! these things are very common. She must be roused!" answered the man, kindly. "Speak to her again."

The old man stooped over his wife, and laid his hand gently upon hers.

She did not move. He grasped her thin fingers, and tears stood in his eyes; still she did not move. He stood a moment gazing in her face, the tears running down his cheeks. He hesitated, looked at the officer half timidly, and bending down, kissed the old woman on the forehead.

That kiss broke up the ice in her heart. She stood up and began to weep.

"You spoke to me, Wilc.o.x--what was it you wanted? I am better now--quite well. What is it you wanted me to do?"

"He only wishes you to eat and drink something," said the officer, deeply moved.

"Eat and drink--have we got anything to eat and drink? That is always his way when we are short, urging us, and hungry himself."

"But there is enough for all," said the old man. "See, I too will eat, and Julia!"

"Why, if there is enough we will all eat, why not," said the poor woman, with a dim smile.

She took the coffee, tasted it, and looked around the room with vague curiosity.

"What is all this?--where are we now, Wilc.o.x?" she said, in a low, frightened voice.

The old man kept his eyes bent on hers, they were full of trouble, and this stimulated her to question him again.

"Where are we? I remember walking, wading, it seemed to me, neck deep through a crowd, trying to keep up with you. Some one said they were taking us to prison; that I had done nothing, and they would not keep me. That you and Julia would stay, but I must go into the street, because a wife could not bear witness against her husband, but a grandchild could. Have I been crazy, or walking in my sleep, Wilc.o.x?"