My Fire Opal, and Other Tales Part 3

Slight iron bars cross the window; he is strong; he wrenches at them manfully. They yield! They are displaced, and now only this paltry sash and a bit of gla.s.s between him and Will! These are soon demolished. The window is low, and, noiselessly dropping into the yard beneath, he calls softly, "Will! Will!" No response. Strange! A moment ago he was there! It is cool and quiet out here beneath the summer moon, and Will cannot be far off,--over that wall, perhaps. He scales it. "Not here? Well, he will run on a bit, and come up with him." And run on he does. On and on, through that long summer night. Across dewy-scented garden-plots, over trim cut lawns, whose tender gra.s.s is as velvet to his bare, fleeting feet. Through moist, wide meadows, and across low, babbling brooks, till, at last, he is upon the long, white road. Fleet as a hound upon the flying scent, pausing but to listen, and whisper, huskily, to the heedless night, "Will! Will! Will!" he hurries on. A half-clad, phantom-like form, breathlessly pursuing a phantom. The moon sets. The stars are paling in the still, sweet dawn, when, in the purlieu of a tangled wood, pale and spent, foam gathering on his lips, blood trickling from his torn feet, he pauses; and, tottering feebly into an odorous covert of blossoming underwood, falls p.r.o.ne upon the earth. An angel, with broad and kindly wing, the gentlest of all G.o.d's ministering host, descends to brood tenderly this desolate creature,--_Sleep_, messenger of peace, forerunner of that eternal quietude that somewhere stays for all earth's life-worn children!

On the ensuing morning, sensation craving readers of the Boston _Morning Chronicle_ read, with characteristic relish, the following:

GREAT EXCITEMENT!!!

A Murderer Pretends Insanity and Escapes!

The citizens of Taunton and its vicinity were this morning startled by tidings of the escape of a patient from our State Lunatic Hospital. The man was entered, for treatment, from Charles Street Jail, and his name is John Gravesend.

Our readers will, no doubt, recall him to memory as the abandoned wretch who, not long since, was arrested in this city for the murder of young Ferguson, a mere lad, whom he enticed into one of the North Street dens, and there, after robbing his victim of a large sum of money, butchered the ill-fated boy.

The mother of Ferguson, as will be remembered, died soon after of a broken heart. While awaiting the award of his crime, Gravesend--having successfully feigned insanity--was consigned to the State asylum. On the night of the 15th, the asylum watchman making his round at ten o'clock, found Gravesend, as he supposed, in a sound sleep. At two, the rascal was gone.

Being a man of great muscular power, he had displaced the grating of his window, and thus made good his escape. The wretch has been tracked for several miles, and we are informed that two efficient detectives, a.s.sisted by hospital _employes_, are now in full pursuit. Other outrages are imputed to this daring villain, and it is hinted that he is concerned in a certain mysterious murder, that yet thrills our community with horror. Great alarm prevails in the vicinity, and it is hoped that the fugitive will be speedily secured.

This "bloodthirsty" monster was, on the afternoon succeeding his escape, found slumbering as placidly as the leaf-strewn "Babes in the Wood," in that flowery covert to which we have already tracked him.

From this long trance-like slumber--the crisis of his mental malady--John Gravesend awoke, with strained, aching limbs, and brain yet hazy from delirium. Restored to the asylum and treated for his malady, he gradually returned from that labyrinthian world in which, for more than two months, his mind had wearily wandered.

Mind and body in their normal condition, he was remanded to jail, and subsequently arraigned for the wilful destruction of a life dearer to him than his own. Pleading guilty, and legally condemned for manslaughter, he was sentenced to confinement for life in the State Prison. Unmoved, he hears the terrible mandate that dooms him to life-long banishment from G.o.d's wide, beautiful world. With him, the fatal Rubicon is already pa.s.sed. He has slain the beloved one. Life holds in reserve no heavier woe; and death has not in store a pang more terrible.

A BUNCH OF VIOLETS.

"There's Neilson, takin' his afternoon walk," said the good-natured turnkey, making a casual survey of the prison yard from the grated window near the guard-room door, which he was about to open for my exit. Neilson! and in the yard? At last, I must encounter that bad man! I was, be it known, on my way to the prison hospital, carrying a basket of Parma violets for distribution among a score or so of my fellow-sinners, now stretched upon hard beds, or wearily sitting on harder chairs, in that mildly penal department of the inst.i.tution; and, no doubt, not eminently deserving of agreeable sniffs at Parma violets. At this unlooked-for announcement of the turnkey, a cold shiver ran down my back, for Neilson, even in prison circles, was accounted a desperate man. He was both robber and murderer; and for the last fifteen years had been serving out a life sentence of solitary confinement in one of the dreary cells of the "Upper Arch."

Five of these awful years had he pa.s.sed in uninterrupted solitude, but, since the advent of the present humane prison warden, Neilson had been permitted to take, daily, an hour's exercise in the prison yard, a sunny enclosure, opening on the workshops, the hospital wing, and indirectly on the "Upper Arch." In the centre of this court, "the new warden" had caused a cheery flower plot to be made, and now, in April, many-hued crocuses already brightened its borders.

It was just before the establishment of the beautiful and helpful Flower Mission that I undertook, not without some discouragement, to try the gracious effect of violets, roses, pinks, and heartsease, behind the bars. In my _then_ limited experience, to be locked out of the friendly guard-room, and sent alone across the prison yard, had not been agreeable to me; and, in deference to my groundless fears, an officer had been detailed to accompany me from the main prison to the hospital wing. As the years went on, my social popularity in the State Prison became well a.s.sured, and some surprise at this needless precaution was expressed to me by the convicts; and one attached prison friend (a highway robber) had even a.s.sured me that "if anybody in that prison should lay a finger on me, he'd be torn to pieces by the men, afore you could say Jack Robinson."

Though scarcely convinced that the entire demolition of a fellow-being would indemnify me for such "scaith and scart" as might in the _melee_ accrue to my own poor person, it was on this a.s.surance that I decided to dispense with official escort to the wing. Thus far, my visits had been so happily timed that the dreaded "Solitary" had never once crossed my path. Looking anxiously from the window, I made a hasty survey of the yard. An officer was just stepping from the door of a distant workshop. Two or three convicts were, at various points of observation, shuffling across the yard. Well, it was too late to show the white feather. The turnkey had already unlocked the door, and stood waiting. I handed him a tiny nosegay (the good man adored flowers, and I never omitted this pretty "Sop to Cerberus"); and now, grasping tightly the handle of my flower basket, "with my heart in my mouth," I thanked him as he held back the heavy door for me, and pa.s.sed trembling out.

With a hard iron clang, the door closed behind me. Descending a roomy flight of steps, I found myself in the prison yard, and, at the same moment, confronted by,--yes, it must be that dreadful fellow, Neilson, himself! And a sinister-visaged wretch he was, with his small, ferrety eyes, his coa.r.s.e mouth, and heavy chin. He shuffled as he went, and, with an evil look, stared boldly in my face.

"A tough subject," I mentally determined; but "total depravity" is not an article of my creed, and I _do_ believe in humanity. In a moment, I had dismissed all fear of Neilson, in my zeal for his reformation, and, stepping up to him with a friendly good-afternoon, into which I insinuated all the approval I could conscientiously bestow upon so forbidding a creature, I handed him, from my basket, a bunch of violets. He took them, and, with a clumsy nod, but not a word of thanks, pa.s.sed on, leaving me with a lightened heart. And, now, I stopped a moment to exchange civilities with the officer whom I had descried from the guard-room window. We were fast friends, and I was indebted to him for many a kind turn. He glanced disparagingly at my flowers, and, as a relief to my chagrin, I said, "Well, I have just given Neilson a bunch of violets; do you imagine that he cares at all for them?"

"Neilson?" he questioned, in evident perplexity.

"Yes, Neilson," I replied, "that short, stout man yonder, there he is _now_! going into that door!"

"Bless your heart, my good lady," exclaimed the officer, "that ain't Neilson! There _he_ is; can't you see him, the tall fellow with his nose in the air, standing there by the crocus bed? If there's any flowers in the yard, Neilson's about sure to fetch up near 'em."

"Is he?" I said; and from that moment "a fellow-feeling made me kind."

I felt sure of the ultimate good-will of Neilson. Meantime, having exhausted the attraction of the crocus bed, he was moving in my direction, but so slowly that I had time to make a critical survey of this famous personage,--a grave, quiet man of slender but firm build, and, even in his coa.r.s.e prison uniform, bearing himself with a certain air of (if I may so express it) scholarly elegance.

Suitably clothed, he might have been taken for a clergyman, or a Harvard professor. Selecting the very choicest nosegay from my basket, I bade him, as we met, a cheerful good-afternoon, and, offering the flowers, said timidly (for I found this grave, lordly being somewhat unapproachable), "Would you like a bunch of violets to-day?" Absorbed in his own reflections, he had not, until now, observed me. He stopped, came out of his reverie, and, lifting his worn prison cap with a highly ceremonious bow, took the flowers from my hand, composedly smelt them, and said, slowly: "Thank you, madam, they _would_ be very refreshing." Though Neilson's demeanour was eminently stoical, his face was pitiably wan and thin, and in his faded blue eye there was a world of patient pathos that went straight to my heart.

As he was about to pa.s.s on, I detained him for a moment, and said, eagerly, "If you like flowers--if you--if you think they would _help_ you, I might bring you a few every Monday, as I come to the hospital."

"Flowers," he replied sententiously, "_are_ refreshing; and if it will not be putting you to too much inconvenience, madam, I would be glad to receive a few from you every week." After this it was arranged with the obliging guard-room turnkey, that every Monday afternoon, along with his own b.u.t.tonhole posy, a bouquet of "seasonable flowers" should be left on his desk, and should be sent by him to Neilson's cell. And, moreover, ascertaining that Neilson had no "visitor," I obtained permission of the warden to put his name on my visiting list, among those of some forty other unvisited convicts, who, in lieu of dearer company, received _me_ once in three months, in the big guard-room. On these occasions, I was allowed to bring my sorry acquaintances flowers, fruit, drawing and writing materials, books, tracts and magazines, together with such sound moral advice as could be,--like the "sheep in the Vicar's family picture,"--"thrown in for nothing."

In their turn, my friends confided to me such pa.s.sages in their lives as might properly be told to a lady; acquainted me with their desires and aspirations, and, almost invariably, craved my intercession with the governor. (For, whatever his crime, each prison convict hopes that, with some friendly go-between to present his case, that mild-hearted executive will promptly "pardon him out.") But of this service I was conscientiously chary. Gladly it was, however, that I undertook the sale of such inlaid boxes, photograph frames, and other articles as the men found time and material to fashion, the proceeds of which enabled them to subscribe for "Harper's," to own a book or two, or, better still, to make an occasional remittance to some dependent mother, wife or child, left in want by their own wicked folly. Of all the convicts on my list, none proved more satisfactory than Neilson. Our conversation, carried on, according to the prison rules, within earshot of an officer, related chiefly to literature; for this sometime robber and murderer was a man of no mean intellect; and his mental energies, now necessarily diverted from more deplorable channels, had, in these years of solitary leisure, been so well applied to self-improvement, that from almost utter ignorance he had come to be, after his own fashion, an educated man.

Before his last sentence (as he told me) he had been scarcely able to read, and could not even write his name. During his residence in the "Upper Arch," he had, single-handed, mastered reading and writing, and had made fair headway in grammar, geography, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and various other branches of education. For general reading he had a decided relish, and a correct appreciation of literary excellence. Fiction he held in supreme contempt, and could have had but a slight acquaintance with it, as he a.s.sured me that, in his whole life (he was now fifty years old), he had read but a single story, "The Vicar of Wakefield." As the prison library could not always supply Neilson's favourite mental food, I undertook to furnish him with such reading as he lacked; and his careful use, and prompt return of a book, with his fine appreciation of its contents, made this work a pleasure.

Neilson's story, part of which I had from his own lips and the remainder from the warden himself, runs thus:

An Englishman, born in a London slum, and growing up, as any ill weed must, at haphazard, he had, even in his first trousers, gravitated naturally to crime. A childhood of vagrancy and petty thieving ill-pa.s.sed, in his early manhood he became a professional house-breaker. He had been made acquainted with many of the prisons of his native country, and had twice made his escape from "durance vile," when he was transported to Botany Bay, from whence he also escaped, along with another notorious burglar and robber, who had been his partner in the crime, for which they had both been expatriated.

On regaining their liberty, the pair had come to this country, and, in Boston, had together undertaken the robbery of a bank. For this crime, they were duly convicted, and sentenced to seven years in the State Prison. Before the removal from jail to prison, one of them managed to escape. The other, Neilson, had divided his booty with his accomplice.

Neilson was the soul of honour, that very questionable honour, which, according to the adage, _may_ exist among thieves, and, though he obligingly informed the officers of the "bank," where _his_ share of the plunder was buried (which they recovered), and, in a subsequent interview with them in prison, slipped off his shoe, and took from his stocking, and further restored to them, a sum of about seven hundred dollars, which he had retained as pocket-money, and thus ingeniously smuggled into prison, neither entreaty nor bribe could induce him to reveal anything in regard to the plunder of his accomplice.

It was affirmed of Neilson that, in the bad days above referred to, he never countenanced violence, but carried on his profession, for the most part, without personal injury to his victims, accomplishing his ends rather by strategy, than by brutality. And yet, strange as it was, this very man, on one fatal morning,--and, oddly enough, it was that of the very day when his sentence for the bank robbery had expired, and within a few hours he would have been discharged from the prison,--as the convicts were marching in file from the prison to the workshop, made a brutal and fatal attack upon an unoffending fellow convict. Reaching over the shoulder of the man next him in the ranks, he stabbed the unfortunate prisoner in the neck, with a shoe-knife, severing the jugular vein, and causing immediate death. There was no quarrel between the two, and no cause could be a.s.signed for the murder, for which Neilson was, in due time, tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged.

All the arrangements for carrying out the sentence had been made, the gallows erected, the rope in its place, and the chaplain rendering the last service of his office, when a reprieve for thirty days was received from the governor.

On consideration, it was believed that Neilson must have been labouring under temporary insanity, and, as he was known to be a man of pacific character, and could a.s.sign no cause for the attack, though he had never shown _other_ symptoms of mental disturbance, he was given the benefit of a doubt, and his sentence commuted to solitary imprisonment for life. Thus he escaped the grave, only to be consigned to a living tomb. At the time of our first acquaintance, Neilson, all told, had been about twenty years in the ---- State Prison. For the first years of his sentence, he was not once permitted to leave his cell, and but for the praiseworthy humanity of the new warden, he would never again have seen the sun.

The cells of the "Upper Arch" are not, like those in general use, on exhibition; but, one day, in consideration of my having never abused the privileges granted me by the authorities of the ---- State Prison, I was kindly permitted to visit Neilson in his own apartment.

Following my guide, I pa.s.sed through a damp, narrow corridor, gloomy to oppressiveness, and lined with grim iron doors, each stoutly secured with bar and padlock. Many of these cells are temporarily inhabited by refractory prisoners, and, as I went, a discordant chorus of groans, yells, and oaths, mingled with the dissonance of maniacal mirth from some ill-balanced wretch, gone mad in this horrible solitude, saluted my unwilling ear. On the extreme end of the doleful corridor, a narrow, cobwebbed window shed its feeble light. Pausing at the left-hand corner cell, my conductor fitted his key to the padlock, turned it, removed the heavy bar, and, throwing back the door, ushered me into Neilson's presence.

I found the cell somewhat larger than the ordinary private compartment of the prison, but indescribably damp, fetid, and dismal. A narrow loophole, glazed, grated and "hermetically sealed," admitted a dim glimmer of day. A small aperture, or wicket, near the bottom of its door, and evidently made for the double purpose of admitting air and food, was now tightly closed.

For furniture, the place contained a rude bed, with mattress of straw, grimy sheets, and a meagre allowance of coa.r.s.e gray blankets, with a pillow of husks, or straw, a rough table of pine, a shelf for books, and a stool. On the table stood a rusty tin cup, a bottle of vinegar, a pepper-box, and a cup of dingy salt. It also held two iron spoons, a horn-handled knife and fork, and a Bible. The shelf was well filled with books, and among them stood a gla.s.s pickle jar, now sacred to Neilson's bouquets, and still holding a few withered flowers.

Neilson, himself, was half reclined upon his bed, and intent upon a book. As I entered, he arose in some confusion. A call, with Neilson, was scarce a possible occurrence. His composure, however, was soon regained, and, bowing ceremoniously, he bade me good-day, and, with cordial dignity, did the honours of his cell.

He exhibited, with pride, his small library, and called my especial attention to the excellence of the shelf, which he had made for his precious volumes, about fifteen or twenty in number. I had brought Neilson a modic.u.m of that June, whose sunshine comes alike for G.o.d's good and evil children, in the shape of a great bunch of damask roses.

Filling his jar from the rusty tin cup, he arranged them with tender care, and their grateful odour soon pervaded this dreary place. A box of ripe, red strawberries June had also, on this occasion, donated to her indifferent pensioner; and now, glad to leave behind me even this poor bit of summer, I took a last sad survey of the sorry place, and bade Neilson adieu. As I went gratefully back to G.o.d's daylight, musing upon the man and his dismal, lifelong abode, it seemed no wonder that, moping for fifteen years in this cheerless cell, his brain should, at times, have succ.u.mbed to the horrors of the situation, for the warden had told me that sometimes Neilson "went out of his head." It was then that, pursued by the avenging shade of "Morris," the man whom he had murdered, his shrieks aroused the night patrol, who must call the warden from his bed, to lay the poor phantom, as Neilson fancied that the warden--and _only he_--could.

For six kindly years, it was permitted me to make life a little less dreary for Neilson, and to exhort him to bear with becoming fort.i.tude the long penance justly accorded him, and, in my blundering, imperfect way, to suggest to him _divine_ compa.s.sion by my _own_.

Though undoubtedly of plebeian parentage, some tiny runlet of gentle blood must have found its indirect way to Neilson's c.o.c.kney veins.

Never once, in all our intercourse, did he shock me by a coa.r.s.e expression, or an ill-bred action. In his choice of words he was even finical, and his taste in the arrangement of flowers could scarcely have been impeached by the most fastidious person. He had, invariably, the bearing and instincts of a gentleman. His dietetic predilections, I grieve to record, were sometimes inelegant. Though eminently reticent in regard to his wants, he had made bold to solicit a bit of cheese as an accompaniment to the mince pie which on each State holiday (the legal pie-time in the prison) I gladly provided for him, and I was instructed that the _stronger_ the cheese was, the better.

He also preferred raw onions to Bartlett pears, and many a little basket of that pungent vegetable have I conveyed to him, to the sore disquiet of my own vexed olfactories. Pepper-gra.s.s, artichokes, and raw turnips, he held in high esteem.

Ordinarily peaceful and placid, Neilson could, at times, be aroused to extreme anger; and I well remember his furious protest against the prison chaplain, when that worthy had confiscated a work of James Freeman Clarke's, which he found in the possession of a theologically-minded convict, on the ground that it was "an infidel book," and improper reading for the prison.

As the slow years went on with Neilson, he became, gradually, a broken-down man. The "Arch" had well done its destructive work, and, about five years after I made his acquaintance, he was forever removed from its deleterious atmosphere, and permanently quartered in the prison hospital, where, in common with his fellow patients, he enjoyed all the legal immunities accorded to the invalid prisoner.

He could now get s.p.a.ce for his cramped limbs, had some fellowship, _sub rosa_, with his kind, and leave to sun himself in the yard _ad libitum_. Poor Neilson! this comparative freedom had come too late. He was now far gone in consumption, had Bright's disease, and the doctor had also discovered some serious disturbance with his heart. His brain, too, shared in this breaking up, and he had now abandoned reading, and employed his leisure, when free from pain, in dainty wood-carving or inlaying. His work, often fantastic in design, was always exquisite in finish, and sometimes absurdly elaborate where elaboration was quite unnecessary (for with Neilson, "the G.o.ds saw everywhere"). Hours of patient labour were devoted to the finish of the "unseen."

The unanimous good-will of instructors in the prison shops made the daintiest materials easily attainable to the poor fellow, and his ivory charms, his mother-of-pearl crosses, and inlaid satin-wood boxes, found, outside the prison, a ready market, and a price which enabled him, probably for the first time in his whole life, to become the possessor of money honestly earned. In the hospital it was that Neilson evolved, with fanciful ingenuity, for my poor self, the most remarkable of inkstands. The design embraced a camel standing on a platform wreathed with carven forget-me-nots, and inscribed with a Latin motto, having some enigmatical reference to the foresighted habit of the creature. Unfortunately, the platform, the camel, with his two humps, the motto, and the forget-me-nots, made so large a figure in Neilson's design, that its main feature, the inkstand, had, virtually, to be omitted; and could only be hinted at by a shallow vessel, holding about one good thimbleful, and perched perilously upon the camel's irregular back. From time to time I was permitted to watch the progress of this remarkable creation, and was called upon for a pictured camel and some real forget-me-nots, as models.

The somewhat crotchety custodian of the hospital, from day to day, contemptuously taking note of the advancement of my inkstand, on its final completion grimly a.s.sured me that, "If Neilson had been paid by the day for his labour on _that thing_, it would have cost about two hundred dollars!" Poor, patient fellow, it was almost his last work!

He had now become too weak to crawl down the hospital stairs for his daily sun-bath. And by and by his seat in the saloon, where the men, who were able to be about, gathered on Mondays to listen to my reading, was empty. He lay now on his cot informally clad in a faded print shirt and patched trousers, both of which he wore with a dignity peculiarly his own. His head was adorned with a towering cotton nightcap. Whatever else he might lack, Neilson always stood out firmly for a nightcap. It was to him a sort of insignia of respectability. To his last hour he never for a moment lost that superiority of mien which distinguished him even amid the coa.r.s.e and degrading surroundings of a prison. At the last he suffered great pain, but, as the end approached, his mind became wonderfully clear, and he listened intelligently to reading, and enjoyed conversation.

He gave little trouble to his attendants, detailed from among his fellow convicts to nurse him by day, or to watch with him at night, and, to the hour of his death, he was stoically patient.