CHAPTER XXIV.DESPAIR.
She looked how pallid there!Not starting, sighing, weeping now;The quiet anguish of her browWas written by Despair.Ah me! despite a governed breast,Seeming the while in placid rest,What anguish soul may bear!—Michell.
She looked how pallid there!Not starting, sighing, weeping now;The quiet anguish of her browWas written by Despair.Ah me! despite a governed breast,Seeming the while in placid rest,What anguish soul may bear!—Michell.
She looked how pallid there!Not starting, sighing, weeping now;The quiet anguish of her browWas written by Despair.Ah me! despite a governed breast,Seeming the while in placid rest,What anguish soul may bear!—Michell.
She looked how pallid there!
Not starting, sighing, weeping now;
The quiet anguish of her brow
Was written by Despair.
Ah me! despite a governed breast,
Seeming the while in placid rest,
What anguish soul may bear!—Michell.
When Malcolm had been gone a week, and Eudora’s life was almost worn out by the long-drawn anguish of hope deferred, she was sitting in the morning in her cell, in danger of dropping once more into the death-like torpor of despair, when the door was opened by the governor, who announced:
“A friend to see Miss Leaton,” and retired.
Eudora sprang forward, expecting to meet Malcolm Montrose, but she found herself confronted with a stranger—a very young, slight, graceful girl, dressed in simple but elegant mourning, and deeply veiled; and even when the stranger threw aside her veil Eudora failed to recognize in this elegantly-dressed young lady Annella Wilder, the tipsy captain’s half-starved daughter, whom she had befriended in the poor London lodgings.
“You do not know me, Miss Miller—I mean Miss Leaton—and I—oh!” began Annella, but losing her self-command, she burst into tears, and threw herself in the arms of Eudora, who, weakened by long, intense suffering, sat down in her chair, and would have drawn the girl to her bosom, but Annella sank to the floor, and dropped her head on Eudora’s lap, sobbing violently.
Miss Leaton could not understand this excessive emotion. She recollected Annella’s unfortunate barrack education,her utter destitution after her father’s death, and her wild flight from London; and seeing now the costliness of her attire, and being totally ignorant of the change in her circumstances, the mind of Eudora was filled with the darkest fears for Annella. But if she should find that this young, friendless, and inexperienced girl had really come to grief, Eudora resolved to befriend her as far as possible by interesting the noble-hearted Malcolm in her fate to save her from irremediable ruin. While these thoughts coursed through the young prisoner’s mind, she gently untied her visitor’s bonnet and laid it on the bed, and softly caressed the bowed head, while she inquired, in a low voice:
“What is the matter, dear Annella? I am not so utterly bewildered by my own woe but that I may be able to comfort you. Tell me what trouble you are in, and if I cannot help you very long myself, because I may have to die next Wednesday, I can leave you to one who will be a brother to you for my sake.”
“Oh, Miss Leaton, Miss Leaton, say no more! Every word you speak goes through my heart like a spear!” cried Annella, breaking into harder sobs.
“No, no, don’t say so! I wish only to do you good. Tell me the nature of the difficulty you are in,” said Eudora, gently caressing the weeping girl.
“Oh! I am in no difficulty myself; it is all right enough with me personally, and far better than I deserve, Heaven forgive me! And even if it were not, how could I think of my good-for-nothing self while you are in such terrible straits!” cried Annella, wildly sobbing.
“Then do not weep for me, kind girl; it can do no good, you see.”
“Oh, but you don’t know how much reason I have to weep—yes, tears of blood, Eudora; for it was I that did it! I! I!”
“You!—did what?” asked Eudora, in astonishment.
“Betrayed you, as Judas did his master, wretch that I am! I wish I was hung!” cried Annella, amid choking sobs.
“You?—betrayed me? I do not understand you in the least.”
“I set the police on your track, mean scamp, that I am! I told them where to find you! I gave you up! Oh! if there is any marrying down below, they ought to wed me to Judas Iscariot!”
“But—how could you have known that I was Eudora Leaton of whom they were in pursuit?” inquired the deeply-shocked girl.
“Ididn’tknow it! I was not so irredeemably bad asthateither! Perhaps even Judas did not know all the evil he was doing when he betrayed his Master. If I had known it I would have bit my own tongue off rather than told it. But I had to chatter about you and describe you, and tell all I knew of you, until I raised suspicion, and they went and arrested you; and that was the return you got for your kindness to me! Oh, I wish somebody would strangle me, for I am too wicked and unlucky to live!” exclaimed Annella, with streaming tears and suffocating gasps.
“But, poor girl, if you did not know what you were doing you have nothing to reproach yourself with,” said Eudora, kindly stroking her bowed hair; for all this time Annella’s head lay in the lap of the prisoner.
“Yes, yes, I have; conscience is the true judge, and it assures me that ignorance is no excuse; and that instinct should have taught me silence. I came here to confess this to you, Miss Leaton; to let you know how wicked I have been; but not to ask you to pardon me. I do not want you to do that; I do not wish even the Lord to do it—I would much rather be punished,” exclaimed Annella, hysterically.
“Dear girl, do not talk so wildly. You have donenothing to require pardon. If you were unconsciously the means of my arrest, it was not your fault.”
“But if you should perish, I should feel as if I were your murderer. But you shall not perish! I hear that Mr. Montrose is in London, petitioning the Crown for a respite. I hope he will succeed; but even if he should not, mind, Miss Leaton, you shall not perish! I swear it before High Heaven!” exclaimed Annella, wiping her eyes, and looking up.
“You must believe me innocent, or you would never speak with such confidence.”
“Believe! Iknowyou are; and if everyone else fails,Iwill save you—Iwill, if I die for it! I pledge my soul’s salvation to that!”
“Alas! poor child, look at these thick walls and heavy locks; how could you help me?”
“I do not know yethow, but Idoknow that Iwillsomehow!—as the Lord hears me, I will!”
“I take the disposition for the deed, and thank you as much as if you were able to keep your word; and above all, I bless you that you do me the justice to believe me guiltless. Ah, dear girl, I have been so tortured by the chaplain of this prison, who thinks me guilty, and urges me to confess. It is so distressing to be thought such a monster by so good a man.”
“Good, is he, and yet believes you guilty? Then he does not know a white dove from a black crow, which is tantamount to saying that his reverence is a fool, begging his pardon. But indeed most of the good people I knowarefools. It seems as if nature were so impartial in the distribution of her gifts, that she seldom endows the same individual with both wisdom and goodness at the same time. There’s my three grannies, I mean the male granny and the two female grannies, all with such good hearts, but la! such weak heads. Anybody can whirl their minds round and round as the wind does the weathercocks. La!you shall judge for yourself. At the trial, when the prosecuting attorney-general was abusing you, he carried them along with himself until they believed you to be a perfect demon of iniquity. Then, when your counsel was defending you, he carried them along with himself, until they believed you to be a persecuted cherub. Then, when the judge summed up both sides, they were equally drawn by opposite opinions, and could not make up their minds whether you were an angel or a devil. Finally, when the jury brought in their verdict, they comfortably decided that you were the latter, and so went home happy to supper and bed. La! and we are requestedalwaysto respect our elders!”
“Certainly, dear Annella,” said Eudora, gravely.
“Wish they were always respectable, then.”
“Annella, you shock me, dear; old age must be reverenced.”
“Can’t help it. I haven’t got a particle of reverence in my composition; it is all owing to my barrack bringing up, I suppose.”
“I suppose it is, poor girl; but, Annella, you seem to have found friends.”
“Reckon I have; three grannies, I told you.”
“Whom?”
“I’ll tell you. As I was trying to make out Allworth Abbey, what do I do but fall over an old servant, half-sailor, half-valet, who caught me trespassing on private grounds, and hauled me up before his master, like a vagrant before a magistrate; and when I told my story, who does the old gent turn up to be but my own granny, who was living in that fine house the Anchorage, with two other old ladies, also my grannies.”
“The Anchorage; then you must speak of Sir Ira Brunton and his family?” said Eudora in astonishment.
“Just. He quarrelled with my mother and father, and cast them off, but he took me in when he found me draggedover his threshold. Shall I tell you all the particulars? Would it interest you?”
“Very much, indeed,” said Eudora, forgetting for the moment her own awful situation in her interest in Annella’s fortunes.
The girl began and related her adventures as they are already known to the reader.
The narrative won the prisoner from the contemplation of her own sorrows, and at its close she put out her hand and took that of Annella, saying:
“I am very glad for your sake, dear.”
“But I am not,” exclaimed Annella, recurring to her cause of grief and remorse. “I had rather remained in London, and have met all that I most dreaded—the union, a vulgar task-mistress, beggary, anything, rather than have come down here to betray you. But I did not mean it, Eudora; oh, indeed I did not! I would have died rather than have brought you to this. But I did not even suspect your identity until I recognized you in the court-room, and even then I did not know that I had had any hand in your arrest until I got home that evening, and Tabitha Tabs, the lady’s-maid, told me it was all my doings; that it was from my talk that they had gained the clue to your hiding-place; and oh, Eudora, I felt that she was telling the truth, and I felt as if I had been knocked down with a club, and I have been ill ever since. If I had been well, do you think I would have stayed away from you so long?”
“No, dear Annella; but I wonder you got leave to visit me at all.”
“I believe you; it was very difficult. First I asked my grandfather to bring me, but he refused and blowed me up in the bargain; then I watched my opportunity and put on my bonnet and walked straight here, and the governor refused to admit me without an order from the sheriff; then I went and hunted up the sheriff, and asked him if hewould give me an order to see you, and he roared out ‘No,’ as if he would have bit my head off for asking him, and then I went to the prison chaplain, and told him what a kind friend you had been to me, and what a traitor I had been to you, and how broken my heart was, and I cried, and begged and prayed him to get an order for me, and he got it from the sheriff and gave it to me, and so here I am. But I did not come for nothing, Eudora, I said you should not perish, and you shall not, as Heaven hears me,” added Annella, in a low whisper, as she glanced jealously over her shoulder at Mrs. Barton, who was squeezing herself tightly into the farthest corner of the little cell, to be as far off as her office would permit.
“What is that woman waiting here for? It is very rude. Why does she not go away and leave us together?” inquired Annella, in a whisper.
“Dear, it is her duty to remain. I am not permitted to be left alone for an instant.”
“Well, I suppose that is meant kindly, as you are in such deep trouble; but you are not alone now; I am with you, so she can go. Tell her to go.”
“Dear, you mistake; it is not in kindness, but for security, that I am guarded in this way, and Mrs. Barton dares not leave me, even at my request.”
“But I wish to talk to you privately; I don’t want her to hear every word we say,” exclaimed Annella, in a vehement whisper.
“But no one can be allowed to talk to me so; and she is here for the very purpose of hearing all that we have to say,” replied Eudora, sorrowfully.
“But that is very hard.”
“It is the invariable rule; and as it is a wise precaution, used in all cases such as mine, I cannot complain of it.”
“But why is it used?”
“Because, Annella, if the friends of the condemned wereallowed to visit them in private, they might bring them the means of escape.”
At this moment Annella became very pale, and gave an hysterical sob.
“Or,” continued Eudora, “what is worse, they might bring them some instrument of self-destruction, for many a prisoner would gladly seek death in the cell rather than meet the shame and anguish of—”
Her voice choked, and she shuddered throughout her frame.
“But, would you—would you, Eudora?” questioned the girl, in an eager whisper.
“I should not dread death so much if I could meet it here in my bed—even here in prison, and alone—but I would not seek it, Annella. I would never commit crime to escape suffering.”
“Hish!can that woman hear me when I speak as low as this?” whispered Annella, close to the ear of Eudora.
“Yes, every syllable. The round stone walls of this little cell seem formed to echo every sound. She hears even this reply.”
“I wish she was hung, and I don’t care if she hears that.”
“Hush, she is very good to me; you must not offend her, because she only does her duty.”
“Please, miss, I am not offended; I would take a’most anything from any friend of yours; it’s quite nat’ral as they should hate and despise me for sitting here a-keeping guard over an innocent creetur like you; sure I often hates and despises myself, and I wonderyoudon’t too,” said Mrs. Barton, putting her apron to her eyes and beginning to cry.
Annella wheeled around and took a good look at the woman; then suddenly putting out her hand, she said:
“I beg your pardon—I do indeed, sincerely. I ought not to have spoken as I did; but you see I am not good, and never was, nor shall be; and when my heart bleeds, my temper burns and my tongue raves.”
“No offence, Miss, as I said afore; I only wonders asshedon’t mortally hate and despise me,” said Mrs. Barton, wiping her eyes and sighing.
Annella, who had been gazing at Mrs. Barton with intense interest, arose with a pale face, trembling limbs, and quick and gasping breath, and approaching her, whispered:
“You called Miss Leaton innocent. You believe her to be so?”
“Yes, I do; and I would not believe otherwise if all the archbishops and all the bishops, priests, and deacons in the kingdom was to swear she is guilty, and take the sacrament on it,” said the woman, earnestly.
“And therefore you must see that it is very cruel she should be doomed to suffer,” said Annella, eagerly.
“It’s martyr’om; that’s what it is.”
“Hush! listen!” continued Annella, bending low; “you would like to see her free of this place, would you not?”
“Oh, wouldn’t I though! Sure, I pray for her deliverance every night and morning on my knees,” sobbed Mrs. Barton.
“And—you would help her to escape, if a good plan was laid, and it was all safe for you?” inquired Annella, in a low, breathless whisper.
“Eh?”
“If you could do it safely, without endangering yourself, you would connive at her escape, would you not?”
“Eh? What? I don’t understand you; but I would do anything in the world I could for her. Sure, she knows that without my telling her.”
“Well, then, listen! But stop—what hours do you watch with her?”
“From six to twelve in the morning, and then from six to twelve at night.”
“Very well; no, if I were to come again to-morrow morning while you have the watch, couldn’t you contrive to turn your back and shut your eyes and pretend to dropasleep while I change clothes with her, and let her walk out closely veiled in my place?”
“Eh! What! No, Miss.”
“But why?”
“Lawk, Miss, I dar’n’t.”
“Oh, you need not be afraid of consequences; there would be no danger to you. You might be suspected, but you could not be convicted, for no one on earth could prove that, overcome by fatigue you didn’t fall asleep; and so the worse that could befall you would be the loss of your place—for I do suppose they would not keep a female warder who was addicted to falling asleep on her watch. But, Mrs. Barton, any loss you might sustain, should be made up to you a hundred-fold.”
“’Taint that, Miss; I ain’t afeared of nothink but doing wrong. I dar’n’t let her escape.”
“But it would be a meritorious act, helping the innocent to evade unmerited death.”
“So it would, Miss, under some circumstances; but, you see, when I took this place, I pledged myself to obey the laws, and to watch over the safe custody of the prisoners under my charge. And so I dar’n’t break my word, or betray my trust, Miss—no, not even to save her precious life, as it melts my heart to see her suffer so,” said Mrs. Barton, putting her apron up to her face, and beginning to cry again.
“Not if I was to offer you five hundred pounds—a thousand pounds?”
“Not if so be as you were to offer me ten thousand, Miss,” sobbed the woman.
“Look at Eudora, then; if you won’t let her go, only look at her,” said Annella, artfully.
Mrs. Barton dropped her apron, and turned her eyes towards the prisoner, who sat upon the side of her bed, with her head bent forward, her cheeks flushed, her lips apart, her eyes strained outward, and her hands clasped and extended in mute, eloquent appeal for freedom.
“I can’t look at her; it cleaves my heart in two, it does!” sobbed Mrs. Barton, covering her face again.
With a sudden impulse, Eudora started forward, and clasped the hand of her warder, exclaiming:
“Oh, listen to her! Listen to my friend! Give me leave to get away if I can; give me this onelittlechance of life. Think—I have got but one week to live; one short week, and then I am to die such a horrible death! Oh, pity me! let me go!”
“Oh, this is dreadful—dreadful! I would do anything in the world for you, poor child; but I dar’n’t do this—I dar’n’t betray my trust,” replied Mrs. Barton, wildly weeping.
“Suppose I was your own child, you would let me go—you would risk your soul’s salvation to free me; or, if I had a mother, she would move heaven and earth to save me—but I am motherless. Oh, pity me as if I were your child, and let me go!”
“I darn’t; Lord help me, I darn’t. And even if I did, poor dear, it wouldn’t save you; you’d be known and tuk up again afore you got outside of the prison gates. Lawk, yes; afore you even got to the head o’ the stairs o’ this very ward; and then your case would be worse nor it is now.”
“Itcould notbe worse; and if the chance is ever so small, still itisone. Oh, give me this little, little chance of life! I do not deserve to die this horrible death.”
“I’d rather die this minute myself than refuse you. I mustn’t be a traitor. Sure, you wouldn’t have me go agin my conscience?”
Without another word Eudora turned and sat down on the bed, dropped her clasped hands upon her lap, her pale face upon her breast, and sat in an attitude and expression of blended shame and resignation.
“How could you be so hard-hearted and cruel?” exclaimed Annella.
“I’m not so, Miss; contrariwise, it a’most breaks my heart to refuse her, but even so I must do my duty,” sobbed Mrs. Barton, with her apron once more at her eyes.
“Oh, bother your duty,” exclaimed Annella, with indignant vehemence. “That word is as good as a dose of tartar-emetic to me, for I do believe there is more sin committed in the name of duty than ever has been perpetrated at the instigation of any devil in Pandemonium from Moloch down. I am not as old as the north star, but even I have noticed all my life, when anyone is going to do anything so abominably wicked or shamefully mean that Satan himself would blush to own it, they father it upon duty.”
“Well, duty is not the less sacred nor incumbent upon us on that account. Many ill deeds have been done in the name of the Most High, but we do not, for that, worship the Divine name the less,” said Eudora, reverently.
“Oh, Miss, I hopes you do not think as I am a hypocrite as acts wicked an’ mean in the presence of duty?” asked Mrs. Barton, still sobbing.
“No, I am sure you acted conscientiously in refusing to aid my escape. It was I who did wrong. I ought not to have made such an appeal to you, or worked upon your feelings, or tempted your fidelity. But I was carried away by my emotions—I forgot myself—I acted upon the impulse of the moment. The temptation was so strong—death seemed so bitter, life so sweet,” said Eudora, with a deep sigh.
“Oh, how can you be so cruel as still to refuse to let her go? Even supposing it would be wrong, you might do alittlewrong for mercy’s sake, and to save her from perishing,” pleaded Annella.
“Do not tempt her farther, dear. God is omnipotent; if He wills He can deliver me, but to tempt His creatures is no way to gain His favor,” said Eudora.
“That’s it, Miss; do right, and trust in Him as can save even at the eleventh hour,” commented Mrs. Barton,wiping her eyes. “And now listen; I hear the other warder coming. Don’t attempt to talk to her as you have to me, forshewould think itherplace to report the conversation to the governor.”
At this moment, without an instant’s warning, the door was unlocked, Mrs. Barton peremptorily called out, and her substitute admitted.
The new comer was a stern, “grim-visaged” woman, who took her seat with the stolid indifference of one long hardened to her cruel office.
Annella, not daring, for Eudora’s sake, to speak freely before this she-dragon, yet had not the heart to take leave of her unhappy friend. She sat down beside her on the cot, and silently took and held her hand. She remained as long as she possibly could do so, and then, in parting, promised to re-visit Eudora, if permitted, the next day.
With the departure of the wild, though true-hearted girl, a sunbeam seemed to have been withdrawn from the cell.
During her visit, Eudora’s agonizing consciousness of her situation had been suspended, or modified.
Nature, indeed, the most tender of mothers, never permits her children to endure a long continued strain of suffering, whether of mind or body. She makes the tortured victim faint upon the rack, and in unconsciousness lose the sense of physical agony. She gives the mourner long intervals of stupor, distraction of hope, to alleviate the effect of mental anguish.
Such a blessing had come to Eudora with the entrance of Annella, but had gone with her exit. After the departure of her visitor, all the full realization of her dreadful position rushed back upon the mind of Eudora and overwhelmed her, and she sank upon the bed in the collapse of despair.
She had not remained thus many minutes before the door was once more unlocked, another “friend to see Miss Leaton” announced, and Malcolm Montrose entered the cell.
Forgetting everything else, Eudora started up and sprang towards him, exclaiming:
“Oh, Malcolm, have you come at last? What a weary, weary time you have been away! God bless you, I am so glad to see you! But, oh, Malcolm! will they let me live? Quick, tell me if you will!”
He could not answer her; he pressed her hand with an unconsciously cruel force, while he turned away his face in silent misery.
She looked at him in sudden terror, and in the written agony of his brow she read the truth. Her beating heart grew still as death; her flushed cheek turned pale as marble, and she sank upon her seat and covered her face with her hands.
He sat down by her side, took one of her hands in his own, and essayed to speak; but his voice refused its office.
Then with that wonderful strength which comes even to the weakest woman in the direst distress, she controlled her own agitation, and wishing to save him the pain of announcing the fatal intelligence, she quietly said:
“I am to die.”
He pressed her hand in mute despair, and not another word was spoken between them. They sat with clasped hands side by side, until the hour of closing the prison separated them. Then, in taking leave, Malcolm, with a broken voice, faltered forth:
“I will see you again, to-morrow.”
She answered:
“Come.”
And so they parted.
That evening it was known throughout the town that the petition for a respite or commutation of Eudora Leaton’s sentence had been rejected; that all hope of saving her life was abandoned, and that the execution appointed for Wednesday morning would certainly proceed.