Fashion and Famine Part 47

"Like caging a blackbird!" answered the man, racing over the paper with his gold-mounted pen. "Hard, but necessary; bad laws must be kept the same as good ones, my dear fellow! Disgrace to civilization, and all that, but the majesty of the law must be maintained, even though it does shut up nice little girls with the offscourings of the earth."

"It goes against my heart!" answered the sitting magistrate with a sigh.

"It seems like casting newly fallen snow before a herd of wild animals.

I never hated to sign my name so much!"

"Must be done though. You have stretched a point to save her. Just now, the reporters were eyeing you. Another step of leniency, and down comes the press!"

"I shall act rightly according to my own judgment, notwithstanding the press."

"A beautiful sentiment, only don't let those chaps hear it. Would not appreciate the thing at all!"

The sitting magistrate spoke the truth. Never in his life had he signed papers of commitment so reluctantly; but they were made out at length, and handed to the officer. The old man was conducted from the bar one way, and a strange officer took Julia by the hand, forcing her through the crowd in another direction. At first she supposed that they were going with her grandfather. When they were separated in the crowd, she began to struggle; a faint wail broke from her lips, and the officer was compelled to cast his arm around her waist, thus half carrying her through the crowd.

The woman had followed her husband and grandchild mechanically, but when they were separated, the cry that broke from Julia's lips made her turn and rush back; the crowd closed in around her; she cast one wild look after the prisoner, another toward the spot whence the wail came. They both were lost through a door in the dark vistas of the prison. She saw an arm flung wildly up as if beckoning her, and rushed forward, blindly struggling against the crowd. In the press of people, she was hurried forth into the vestibule, and there leaning, in dreary helplessness, against one of the ma.s.sy stone pillars, she stood looking vaguely around for her husband and child. It was a heart-rending sight, but every day those ponderous walls witness scenes equally mournful.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE IMPRISONED WITNESS.

When souls come freshly from their G.o.d, They breathe the very air of Heaven!

To children on this earthly sod, Angelic trusts are sometimes given.

And like bright spirits wandering through The haunted depths of tears and sin, Their gentle words drop down like dew, Where wisdom fails, they charm and win.

It is strange--nay, it is horrible--that so much of barbarism still lingers in the laws and customs of a free land. Without crime or offence of any kind, a person may be taken, here in the city of New York, and confined for months among the most hideous malefactors; his self-respect broken down; his a.s.sociations brutalized; and all, that the law may be fulfilled. What must that law be which requires oppression, that it may render justice?

In New York, the poor witness--a man who has the misfortune to know anything of a crime before the courts, is himself exactly in the place of a criminal. Like the malefactor, he must give bonds for his prompt appearance on the day of trial, or lacking the influence to obtain these, must himself share the prison of the very felon his evidence will condemn. Strangers thus--sea-faring men, and persons dest.i.tute of friends--are often imprisoned for months among the very dregs of humanity; innocent, and yet suffering the severest penalties of guilt.

This injustice, so glaring that a savage would blush to acknowledge it, exists almost unnoticed in a city overrun with benevolent societies, crowded with churches, and inundated with sympathies for the wronged of every nation or city on earth. If ostentatious charity would, for a time, give way to simple justice, New York like all the American cities we know of, would obtain for itself more respect abroad and more real prosperity at home.

It was under this law that Julia Warren, a young creature, just bursting into the first bloom of girlhood, pure, sensitive, and guileless as humanity can be, was dragged like a thief into the city prison. She had known the deepest degradation of poverty, and that is always so closely crowded against crime in cities, that it seems almost impossible to keep the dew upon an innocent nature. But Julia had been guarded in her poverty by principle so firm, by love so holy, that neither the close neighborhood of sin nor the gripe of absolute want had power to stain the sweet bloom of a nature that seemed to fling off evil impressions as the swan casts off waterdrops from its snowy bosom, though its whole form is bathed in them.

This young creature, in all her gentle innocence, without crime, without even the suspicion of a fault, was now the inmate of a prison, the a.s.sociate of felons, hand-in-hand with guilt of a kind and degree that had never entered even her imagination.

At first, when the officer separated the poor girl from her grandparents, she struggled wildly, shrieked for help, and at last fell to imploring the man, with eyes so wild and eloquence so startling, that he paused in one of the dark corridors leading from the court, and strove to soothe her, supposing that she was terrified by the gloom of the place.

"No, no!" she answered. "It is not that. I did not see that it was dark.

I did not look at anything. My grandfather--poor grandma! Let me go with them. I'm not afraid. I don't care for being in prison, only let me stay where they are!"

"Your grandmother is not here!"

"Not here--not here!" answered the poor creature, wildly and aghast.

"Then what has become of her? Let me go--let me go, I say. She will die!"

Julia unlocked the hands that she had clasped, flung back the hair from her face, and fled down the corridor so swiftly, that the keeper, taken by surprise, was left far behind. An officer, coming in from the court, seized her by the arm as she was pa.s.sing him.

"Not so fast, canary bird; not quite so fast. It takes swifter wings than yours to get out of this cage."

Julia looked at the man, breathless with affright.

"What do you hold me for? Why can't I go?" she gasped forth.

"Because you are a prisoner, little one!"

"But I have done nothing!"

"n.o.body ever does anything that comes here," said this man, with a contemptuous smile. "Never were so many innocent people crowded together."

As he spoke, the man tightened his hold on her arm, and moved forward, forcing her along with him.

The poor creature winced under the pain of his grasp.

"You hurt my arm," she said, in a low voice.

"Do I?" replied the man, affected by the despondency of her tone. "I did not mean to do that; but it would be difficult to touch a little, delicate thing like you without leaving a mark. Come, don't cry. I did not hurt you on purpose."

"I know it. It is not that," answered the girl, lifting her eyes, from which the big tears were dropping like rain.

"Well, well, go quietly to the women's department. They will not keep you long, unless you have been stealing, or something of that sort."

"Stealing!" faltered the girl, "stealing!" The color flashed into her pale, wet cheeks; a faint, scornful smile quivered over her lips.

The officer from whom she had fled now came up. "Come," he said, with a shade of impatience, "I cannot be kept waiting in this way."

"I am ready!" answered the poor girl, in a voice of utter despondency, while her head dropped upon her bosom. "If I am a prisoner, take me away. But what--what have I done?"

"Never mind; settle that with the court. I am in a hurry, so come along!"

Julia neither expostulated nor attempted to resist.

She gave her hand to the officer, who led her quickly forward. They threaded the dim, vault-like pa.s.sage, and paused before a grated door, through which the trembling girl could see dark, squalid figures moving about in the dusky twilight that filled the prison. Two or three faces, haggard and fiend like, were pressed up against the bars. One was that of a negro woman, scarred with many a street brawl, whose inflamed eyes glared wickedly upon the innocent creature whom the laws had sent to be her companion.

"Get back--back with you!" commanded the officer, dashing his keys against the grating. "Your hideous faces frighten the poor thing!"

The faces flitted away, grinning defiance, and sending back a burst of hoa.r.s.e laughter that made Julia shiver from head to foot. She drew close to the man, clinging to his garments, while he turned the heavy lock and thrust the door half open. The dim vista of a hall, with cells yawning on one side, and filled with gloomy light, through which wild, impish figures wandered restlessly to and fro, or sat motionless against the walls, met Julia's gaze. She shrank back, clinging desperately to her conductor--

"Oh, mercy, mercy! Not here--not here!" she cried, pallid and shivering.

The man raised her firmly in his arms, and pa.s.sing through the door, set her down. She heard the clank of keys; the shooting of a heavy bolt. She saw the shadow of this, her last friend, fall across the grating; and then, in dreary desolation, she sat down upon a wooden bench, and leaning her cold cheek against the wall, closed her eyes. The tears pressed through those long, dark eyelashes, and rolled, one by one, in heavy drops, over her face. Her arms hung helplessly down; all the energies of her young life seemed utterly prostrated.

The hall was full of women of all ages, and bearing every stamp that vice or sorrow impresses on the countenance. Some, old and hardened in evil, stood aloof looking upon the heart-stricken girl with their stony, pitiless eyes; others, younger, more reckless and fierce in their sympathies, gathered around in a crowd, commenting upon her grief, some mockingly, others with a touch of feeling. Black and white, all huddled around the bench she occupied, pouring their hot breath out, till she sickened and grew faint, as if the boughs of a Upas tree were drooping over her.

"She's sick--she's fainting away!" cried one of the women. "Bring some water!"