Fashion and Famine Part 68

They entered the prison. A few words pa.s.sed between Jacob and the warden in an outer office; then a door was flung open, and they entered an open court within the walls; stone buildings ranged all around, casting gaunt shadows athwart them. They crossed the court, pa.s.sed through a low door, and entered the hall where male prisoners are kept. Ada was scarcely conscious that a score of eyes were bent on her from the galleries overhead, along which prisoners charged with lighter offences were allowed to range. At that moment a regiment of soldiers might have stood in her way, and she would have pa.s.sed through their midst, unconscious of the obstruction. She mounted to the third gallery, following after Jacob, until he paused at one of the heavy iron doors which pierced the whole wall at equal distances from pavement to ceiling. An officer, who had preceded them, turned the key in the lock, and flung the door open, with a clang that made Ada start, as if some one had struck her.

"Shall I go in with you?" said Jacob.

She did not answer, save by a short breath, that seemed to tear her own bosom without yielding a sound, and entered the cell. Jacob leaned forward, and closing the door after her, began to walk up and down the gallery, but never pa.s.sing more than six or eight paces from the cell.

Ada Leicester stood face to face with her father. He had been reading, and had laid the old Bible on the bed by his side as the noise of her approach disturbed him. His steel-mounted spectacles were still before his eyes, dimmed, it may be, by traces of tears, shed unconsciously, for he could not distinguish clearly through them, and with a motion so familiar that it made her tremble, he folded them up and placed them within the pages of the book.

She paused, motionless, after taking one step into the room, and but for the shiver of her silk dress, which the trembling of her limbs disturbed, as the leaves are shaken in autumn, she might have been a draped statue, her face and hands were so marble-like.

The old man looked at her, and she at him. He did not attempt to speak, and a single word died on her lip again and again, without giving forth a sound. At length that one word broke forth, and rushed like an arrow from her heart to his--

"Father!"

It was the first word that her infant lips had ever uttered. The old man was blinded by it. He saw nothing of the stately pale woman, the gleaming eyes, the rich drapery; but a little girl, some twelve months old, seemed to have crept to his knees. He saw the ringlet of soft golden hair, the large blue eyes, the little dimpled shoulder peeping out from its calico dress; he reached forth his hands to press them down upon these pretty shoulders, for the vision was palpable as life. They descended upon the bowed head of the woman, for she had fallen crouching to his feet. He drew those hands back with a moan. The innocent child had vanished; the prostrate woman was there.

"Father!"

He held his hands one instant, quivering like withered leaves, over her head, and then dropped them gently down upon her shoulders.

"My daughter!"

Then came a rush of tears, a wild clinging of arms, a shaking of silken garments, and deep sobs, that seemed like the parting of soul and body.

Ada clung to her father. She laid her cold face upon his knees, and drew herself up to his bosom.

"Forgive me! forgive me!--oh, my father, forgive me!"

The old man lifted her gently in his arms, and seated her upon the bed.

He took off her bonnet, and smoothed the rich hair it had concealed between his hands.

"And so you have come home again, my child!"

"Home!"

She looked around the cell, and then into the eyes of her father.

"I have given you this home--I, who have sought for you--prayed--prayed, father, not as you pray, but madly, wildly prayed for one look, one word--pardon, pardon! I have got it--I see it--you pardon me with your eyes, my father; but oh, how wretched I am--I, who gave you a home like this!"

"No, not you, but G.o.d!" answered the old man. "I knew from the first that our Father who is in heaven had not afflicted his servant for nothing. All will be well at last, Ada."

"But you will die! Even to-day will they sentence you!"

"I know it, and am ready; for now I begin to see how wisely G.o.d has willed that the last remnant of an old man's life shall be the restoration of his child."

"But you are innocent, and they will kill you!"

"They cannot kill more than this old body, my child. Even now it feels the breath of eternity. What though the withered leaf is shaken a moment earlier from its bough!"

Ada held her breath, and gazed upon her father, filled with strange awe.

The quiet tone, the gentle resignation in his words, tranquillized her like music. She could not realize that he was to die. Her soul was flooded with love; her eyes answered back the holy affection that beamed in his. For that moment she was happy. Her childhood came softly back. She forgot her own sin alike with her father's danger.

"Now," said the old man, "tell me all that I do not know. By what means has G.o.d sent you here?"

At these words Ada half arose; all the joy went out from her face; her eyes drooped; the lines about her mouth hardened again; she attempted to look up, failed, and with both hands shrouded her guilty features.

"How much do you know?" she inquired, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

"I know," said the old man, "that you left an unworthy husband and a happy child, to follow a stranger to a strange land."

"But you did not know," said Ada, still veiling her face, "you did not know how cruelly, how dreadfully I was treated; how I was left days and weeks together in hotels and boarding houses, without money, without friends, exposed to all sorts of temptation. You cannot know all the circ.u.mstances that combined to drive me mad. Still do not say I abandoned the child. Did I not send her to you? Did I not give her up when she was dear as the pulses of my own heart, rather than cast the stain of my example upon her? Oh, father, was this nothing?"

"We took the child, and strove to forget the mother," said the old man sadly.

"But could not--oh, you could not! This thought was the one anchor which kept me from utter shipwreck, you could not curse an only child--wicked, erring, cruel though she was!"

"No, we did not curse her--we had no power to forget."

"I came back--Jacob Strong will bear me witness--I lost no time in searching for you at the homestead. Strangers were there. Had we met then--had I found the old place as it was--you, my mother, my daughter there--how different all this might have been!"

"G.o.d disposes all things," muttered the prisoner. "We left our home when disgrace fell upon us. We who had been sinfully proud of you, Ada, went forth burdened by your shame to hide ourselves among strangers; we could not look our old neighbors in the face, and so left them and gave up the name our child had disgraced."

"Father--father, spare me--I am wretched--I am punished--spare me, spare me!"

"Ada," said the old man solemnly, "do you heartily repent and forsake your sin?"

"I do repent--I have forsaken--he is dead for whom I left you; it was a solitary fault, bitterly, oh, bitterly atoned for."

The old man looked at her earnestly--at the glowing purple of her garments--at the delicate veil she had gathered up to her face with one hand. The other had fallen nervelessly down. The old man took it from her lap and gazed sadly on the jewels that sparkled on her fingers. She felt the touch, and the trembling hand became crimson in his clasp.

"And yet you wear these things!"

She shrunk away, and the glow of her shame spread and burned over every visible part of her person.

"Cast them from you, daughter--come to me in the pretty calico dress that became you so well--give up these wages of shame--become poor, honest and humble, as we are; then will your mother receive you; then your child may know that she has a mother living; then your old father can die in peace, knowing that his life has not been sacrificed in vain."

The old man looked wistfully at her, as he spoke. He saw the struggle in her face--the reluctance with which she understood him, and tightened his grasp on her hand.

"What--what would you have me do?" she said.

"Cast aside all that you possess, save that which comes of honest labor, and earn the forgiveness you ask."

"Father, I cannot do this; the wealth that I possess is vast; it was devised to me by will upon his death-bed; it was an atonement upon his part."

"The wages of sin are death."

"Death, father, death! Surely you are right. Leicester is dead; they will murder you. Nothing but this money, this very wealth that I am ordered to cast aside, can save you."

"And that never shall save me!" answered the old man with grave dignity; "the price of my daughter's sin, let it be millions, shall never buy an hour of life for me, were it possible thus to bribe the law."

"Oh father, father, do not say this; it crushes my last hope."