Squire Lauson was immense; you might travel over him for a week without discovering half his wonders; he was a continent, and he must remain for the most part an unknown continent. Bringing to a close our explorations into his character and past life, we will follow him up simply as one of the personages of this tragedy. He was at the present time very active, but also to a certain extent inexplicable. It was known that he had interviews with various officials of justice, that he furnished them with his plaster cast of the strange footprint which had been found in the garden, and that he earnestly impressed upon them the value of this object for the purpose of tracking out the murderer. But he had otherlines of investigation in his steady old hands, as was discoverable later.
His manner towards his granddaughter and his wife changed noticeably. Instead of treating the first with neglect, and the second with persistent hostility or derision, he became assiduously attentive to them, addressed them frequently in conversation, and sought to win their confidence. With Bessie this task was easy, for she was one of those natural, unspoiled women, who long for sympathy, and she inclined toward her grandfather the moment she saw any kindness in his eyes. They had long talks about the murdered relative, about every event or suspicion which seemed to relate to her death, about the property which she had left to Bessie, and about the girl’s prospects in life.
Not so with Mrs. Lauson. Even the horror which had entered the family life could not open the hard crust which disease and disappointment had formed over her nature, and she met the old man’s attempts to make her communicative with her usual sulky or pettish reticence. There never was such an unreasonable creature as this wretched wife, who, while she remained unmarried, had striven so hard to be agreeable to the other sex. It was not with her husband alone that she fought, but with every one, whether man or woman, who came near her. Whoever entered the house, whether it were some gossiping neighbor or the clergyman or the doctor, she flew out of it on discovering their approach, and wandered alone about the fields until they departed. This absence she would perhaps employ in eating green fruit, hoping, as she said, to make herself sick and die, or, at least, tomake herself sick enough to plague her husband. At meals she generally sat in glum silence, although once or twice she burst out in violent tirades, scoffing at the Squire’s management of the place, defying him to strike her, etc.
Her appearance at this time was miserable and little less than disgusting. Her skin was thick and yellow; her eyes were bloodshot and watery; her nose was reddened with frequent crying; her form was of an almost skeleton thinness; her manner was full of strange starts and gaspings. It was curious to note the contrast between her perfect wretchedness of aspect and the unfeeling coolness with which the Squire watched and studied her.
In this woful way was the Lauson family getting on when the country around was electrified by an event which almost threw the murder itself into the shade. Henry Foster, the accepted lover of Bessie Barron, a professor in the Scientific College of Hampstead, was suddenly arrested as the assassin of Miss Mercy Lauson.
“What does this mean!” was his perfectly natural exclamation, when seized by the officers of justice; but it was uttered with a sudden pallor which awakened in the bystanders a strong suspicion of his guilt. No definite answer was made to his question until he was closeted with the lawyer whom he immediately retained in his defence.
“I should like to get at the whole of your case, Mr. Foster,” said the legal gentleman. “I must beg you, for your own sake, to be entirely frank with me.”
“I assure you that I know nothing about the murder,”was the firm reply. “I don’t so much as understand why I should be suspected of the horrible business.”
The lawyer, Mr. Adams Patterson, after studying Foster in a furtive way, as if doubtful whether there had been perfect honesty in his assertion of innocence, went on to state what he supposed would be the case of the prosecution.
“The evidence against you,” he said, “so far at least as I can now discover, will all be circumstantial. They will endeavor to prove your presence at the scene of the tragedy by your tracks. Footmarks, said to correspond to yours, were found passing the door of the arbor, returning to it and going away from it.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Foster. “I remember,—I did pass there. I will tell you how. It was in the afternoon. I was in the house during a thunder-storm which happened that day, and left it shortly after the shower ended. I went out through the garden because that was the nearest way to the rivulet at the bottom of the hill, and I wished to make some examinations into the structure of the water-bed. A part of the garden walk is gravelled, and on that I suppose my tracks did not show. But near the arbor the gravel ceases, and there I remember stepping into the damp mould. I did pass the arbor, and I did return to it. I returned to it because it had been a heavenly place to me. It was there that I proposed to Miss Barron, and that she accepted me. The moment that I had passed it I reproached myself for doing so. I went back, looked at the little spot for a moment, and left a kiss on the table. It was on that table that her hand had rested when I first dared to take it in mine.”
His voice broke for an instant with an emotion which every one who has ever loved can at least partially understand.
“Good Heavens! to think that such an impulse should entangle me in such a charge!” he added, when he could speak again.
“Well,” he resumed, after a long sigh, “I left the arbor,—my heart as innocent and happy as any heart in the world,—I climbed over the fence and went down the hill. That is the last time that I was in those grounds that day. That is the whole truth, so help me God!”
The lawyer seemed touched. Even then, however, he was saying to himself, “They always keep back something, if not everything.” After meditating for a few seconds, he resumed his interrogatory.
“Did any one see you? did Miss Barron see you, as you passed through the garden?”
“I think not. Some one called her just as I left her, and she went, I believe, up stairs.”
“Did you see the person who called? Did you see any one?”
“No one. But the voice was a woman’s voice. I took it to be that of a servant.”
Mr. Patterson fell into a thoughtful silence, his arms resting on the elbows of his chair, and his anxious eyes wandering over the floor.
“But what motive?” broke out Foster, addressing the lawyer as if he were an accuser and an enemy,—“what sufficient motive had I for such a hideous crime?”
“Ah! that is just it. The motive! They will make a great deal of that. Why, you must be able to guesswhat is alleged. Miss Lauson had made a will in her niece’s favor, but had threatened to disinherit her if she married you. This fact,—as has been made known by an incautious admission of Miss Bessie Barron,—this fact you were aware of. The death came just in time to prevent a change in the will. Don’t you see the obvious inference of the prosecution?”
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Foster, springing up and pacing his cell. “I murder a woman,—murder my wife’s aunt,—for money,—for twenty thousand dollars! Am I held so low as that? Why, it is a sum that any clever man can earn in this country in a few years. We could have done without it. I would not have asked for it, much less murdered for it. Tell me, Mr. Patterson, do you suppose me capable of such degrading as well as such horrible guilt?”
“Mr. Foster,” replied the lawyer, with impressive deliberation, “I shall go into this case with a confidence that you are absolutely innocent.”
“Thank you,” murmured the young man, grasping Patterson’s hand violently, and then turning away to wipe a tear, which had been too quick for him.
“Excuse my weakness,” he said, presently. “But I don’t believe any worthy man is strong enough to bear the insult that the world has put upon me, without showing his suffering.”
Certainly, Foster’s bearing and the sentiments which he expressed had the nobility and pathos of injured innocence. Were it not that innocencecan becounterfeited, as also that a fine demeanor and touching utterance are not points in law, no alarming doubt would seem toovershadow the result of the trial. And yet, strange as it must seem to those whom my narrative may have impressed in favor of Foster, the sedate, Puritanic population of Barham and its vicinity inclined more and more toward the presumption of his guilt.
For this there were two reasons. In the first place, who but he had any cause of spite against Mercy Lauson, or could hope to draw any profit from her death? There had been no robbery; there was not a sign that the victim’s clothing had been searched; the murder had clearly not been the work of a burglar or a thief. But Foster, if he indeed assassinated this woman, had thereby removed an obstacle to his marriage, and had secured to his future wife a considerable fortune.
In the second place, Foster was such a man as the narrowly scrupulous and orthodox world of Barham would naturally regard with suspicion. Graduate of a German university, he had brought back to America, not only a superb scientific education, but also what passed, in the region where he had settled, for a laxity of morals. Professor as he was in the austere college of Hampstead, and expected, therefore, to set a luminously correct example in both theoretical and practical ethics, he held theological opinions which were too modern to be considered sound, and he even neglected church to an extent which his position rendered scandalous. In spite of the strict prohibitory law of Massachusetts, he made use of lager-beer and other still stronger fluids; and, although he was never known to drink to excess, the mere fact of breaking the statute was a sufficient offence to rouse prejudice. It was also reported of him, to the honest horror of many seriousminds, that he had been detected in geologizing on Sunday, and that he was fond of whist.
How apt we are to infer that a man who violatesourcode of morals will also violate his own code! Of course this Germanized American could not believe that murder was right; but then he played cards and drank beer, which we of Barham knew to be wrong; and if he would do one wrong thing, why not another?
Meantime how was it with Bessie? How is it always with women when those whom they love are charged with unworthiness? Do they exhibit the “judicial mind”? Do they cautiously weigh the evidence and decide according to it? The girl did not entertain the faintest supposition that her lover could be guilty; she was no more capable of blackening his character than she was capable of taking his life. She would not speak to people who showed by word or look that they doubted his innocence. She raged at a world which could be so stupid, so unjust, and so wicked as to slander the good fame and threaten the life of one whom her heart had crowned with more than human perfections.
But what availed all her confidence in his purity? There was the finger of public suspicion pointed at him, and there was the hangman lying in wait for his precious life. She was almost mad with shame, indignation, grief, and terror. She rose as pale as a ghost from sleepless nights, during which she had striven in vain to unravel this terrible mystery, and prayed in vain that Heaven would revoke this unbearable calamity. Day by day she visited her betrothed in his cell, and cheered him with the sympathy of her trusting and loving soul.The conversations which took place on these occasions were so naïve and childlike in their honest utterance of emotion that I almost dread to record them, lest the deliberate, unpalpitating sense of criticism should pronounce them sickening, and mark them for ridicule.
“Darling,” she once said to him, “we must be married. Whether you are to live or to die, I must be your wife.”
He knelt down and kissed the hem of her dress in adoration of such self-sacrifice.
“Ah, my love, I never before knew what you were,” he whispered, as she leaned forward, caught his head in her hands, dragged it into her lap, and covered it with kisses and tears. “Ah, my love, you are too good. I cannot accept such a sacrifice. When I am cleared publicly of this horrible charge, then I will ask you once more if you dare be my wife.”
“Dare! O, how can you say such things!” she sobbed. “Don’t you know that you are more to me than the whole universe? Don’t you know that I would marry you, even if I knew you were guilty?”
There is no reasoning with this sublime passion of love, when it is truly itself. There is no reasoning with it; and Heaven be thanked that it is so! It is well to have one impulse in the world which has no egoism, which rejoices in self-immolation for the sake of its object, which is among emotions what a martyr is among men.
Foster’s response was worthy of the girl’s declaration. “My love,” he whispered, “I have been bemoaning my ruined life, but I must bemoan it no more. It is success enough for any man to be loved by you, and as you love me.”
“No, no!” protested Bessie. “It is not success enough for you. No success is enough for you. You deserve everything that ever man did deserve. And here you are insulted, trampled upon, and threatened. O, it is shameful and horrible!”
“My child, you must not help to break me down,” implored Foster, feeling that he was turning weak under the thought of his calamity.
She started towards him in a spasm of remorse; it was as if she had suddenly become aware that she had stabbed him; her face and her attitude were full of self-reproach.
“O my darling, do I make you more wretched?” she asked, “when I would die for you! when you are my all! O, there is not a minute when I am worthy of you!”
These interviews left Foster possessed of a few minutes of consolation and peace, which would soon change into an increased poverty of despair and rage. For the first few days of his imprisonment his prevalent feeling was anger. He could not in the least accept his position; he would not look upon himself as one who was suspected with justice, or even with the slightest show of probability; he would not admit that society was pardonable for its doubts of him. He was not satisfied with mere hope of escape; on the contrary, he considered his accusers shamefully and wickedly blameworthy; he was angry at them, and wanted to wreak upon them a stern vengeance.
As the imprisonment dragged on, however, and his mind lost its tension under the pressure of trouble, there came moments when he did not quite know himself.It seemed to him that this man, who was charged with murder, was some one else, for whose character he could not stand security, and who might be guilty. He almost looked upon him with suspicion; he half joined the public in condemning him unheard. Perhaps this mental confusion was the foreshadowing of that insane state of mind in which prisoners have confessed themselves guilty of murders which they had not committed, and which have been eventually brought home to others. There are twilights between reason and unreason. The descent from the one condition to the other is oftener a slope than a precipice.
Meanwhile Bessie had, as a matter of course, plans for saving her lover; and these plans, almost as a matter of course too, were mainly impracticable. As with all young people and almost all women, she rebelled against the fixed procedures of society when they seemed likely to trample on the dictates of her affections. Now that it was her lover who was under suspicion of murder, it did not seem a necessity to her that the law should take its course, and, on the contrary, it seemed to her an atrocity. She knew that he was guiltless; she knew that he was suffering; why should he be tried? When told that he must have every legal advantage, she assented to it eagerly, and drove at once to see Mr. Patterson, and overwhelmed him with tearful implorations “to do everything,—to do everything that could be done,—yes, in short, to do everything.” But still she could not feel that anything ought to be done, except to release at once this beautiful and blameless victim, and to make him every conceivable apology. As for bringinghim before a court, to answer with his life whether he were innocent or guilty, it was an injustice and an outrage which she rebelled against with all the energy of her ardent nature.
Who could prevent this infamy? In her ignorance of the machinery of justice, it seemed to her that her grandfather might. Notwithstanding the little sympathy that there had been between them, she went to the grim old man with her sorrows and her plans, proposing to him to arrest the trial. In her love and her simplicity she would have appealed to a mountain or to a tiger.
“What!” roared the Squire. “Stop the trial? Can’t do it. I’m not the prosecutor. The State’s attorney is the prosecutor.”
“But can’t you say that you think the proof against him is insufficient?” urged Bessie. “Can’t you go to them and say that? Won’t that do it?”
“Lord bless you!” replied Squire Lauson, staring in wonder at such ignorance, and dimly conscious of the love and sorrow which made it utter its simplicities.
“O grandfather! do have pity on him and on me!” pleaded Bessie.
He gave her a kinder glance than she had ever received from him before in her life. It occurred to him, as if it were for the first time, that she was very sweet and helpless, and that she was his own grandchild. He had hated her father. O, how he had hated the conceited city upstart, with his pert, positive ways! how he had rejoiced over his bankruptcy, if not over his death! The girl he had taken to his home, because, after all, she was a Lauson by blood, and it would be a family shameto let her go begging her bread of strangers. But she had not won upon him; she looked too much like that “damn jackanapes,” her father; moreover, she had contemptible city accomplishments, and she moped in the seclusion of Barham. He had been glad when she became engaged to that other “damn jackanapes,” Foster; and it had been agreeable to think that her marriage would take her out of his sight. Mercy had made a will in her favor; he had sniffed and hooted at Mercy for her folly; but, after all, he had in his heart consented to the will; it saved him from leaving any of his money to a Barron.
Of late, however, there had been a softening in the Squire; he could himself hardly believe that it was in his heart; he half suspected at times that it was in his brain. A man who lives to ninety-three is exposed to this danger, that he may survive all his children. The Squire had walked to one grave after another, until he had buried his last son and his last daughter. After Mercy Lauson, there were no more children for him to see under ground; and that fact, coupled with the shocking nature of her death, had strangely shaken him; it had produced that singular softening which we have mentioned, and which seemed to him like a malady. Now, a little shattered, no longer the man that he so long had been, he was face to face with his only living descendant.
He reached out his gray, hard hand, and laid it on her glossy, curly hair. She started with surprise at the unaccustomed touch, and looked up in his face with a tearful sparkle of hope.
“Be quiet, Bessie,” he said, in a voice which was less like acawthan usual.
“O grandfather! what do you mean?” she sobbed, guessing that deliverance might be nigh, and yet fearing to fall back into despair.
“Don’t cry,” was the only response of this close-mouthed, imperturbable old man.
“O, was it any one else?” she demanded. “Who do you think did it?”
“I have an idea,” he admitted, after staring at her steadily, as if to impress caution. “But keep quiet. We’ll see.”
“You know it couldn’t be he that did it,” urged Bessie. “Don’t you know it couldn’t? He’s too good.”
The Squire laughed. “Why, some folks laid it to you,” he said. “If he should be cleared, they might lay it to you again. There’s no telling who’ll do such things, and there’s no telling who’ll be suspected.”
“And youwilldo something?” she resumed. “Youwillfollow it up? Youwillsave him?”
“Keep quiet,” grimly answered the Squire. “I’m watching. But keep quiet. Not a word to a living soul.”
Close on this scene came another, which proved to be the unravelling of the drama. That evening Bessie went early, as usual, to her solitary room, and prepared for one of those nights which are not a rest to the weary. She had become very religious since her trouble had come upon her; she read several chapters in the Bible, and then she prayed long and fervently; and, after a sob or two over her own shortcomings, the prayer was all forFoster. Such is human devotion: the voice of distress is far more fervent than the voice of worship; the weak and sorrowful are the true suppliants.
Her prayer ended, if ever it could be said to end while she waked, she strove anew to disentangle the mystery which threatened her lover, meanwhile hearing, half unawares, the noises of the night. Darkness has its speech, its still small whisperings and mutterings, a language which cannot be heard during the clamor of day, but which to those who must listen to it is painfully audible, and which rarely has pleasant things to say, but threatens rather, or warns. For a long time, disturbed by fingers that tapped at her window, by hands that stole along her wall, by feet that glided through the dark halls, Bessie could not sleep. She lost herself; then she came back to consciousness with the start of a swimmer struggling toward the surface; then she recommenced praying for Foster, and once more lost herself.
At last, half dozing, and yet half aware that she was weeping, she was suddenly and sharply roused by a distinct creak in the floor of her room. Bessie had in one respect inherited somewhat of her grandfather’s iron nature, being so far from habitually timorous that she was noted among her girlish acquaintance for courage. But her nerves had been seriously shaken by the late tragedy, by anxiety, and by sleeplessness; it seemed to her that there was in the air a warning of great danger; she was half paralyzed by fright.
Struggling against her terror, she sprang out of bed and made a rush toward her door, meaning to close and lock it. Instantly there was a collision; she had thrownherself against some advancing form; in the next breath she was engaged in a struggle. Half out of her senses, she did not scream, did not query whether her assailant were man or woman, did not indeed use her intelligence in any distinct fashion, but only pushed and pulled in blind instinct of escape.
Once she had a sensation of being cut with some sharp instrument. Then she struck; the blow told, and her antagonist fell heavily; the fall was succeeded by a short shriek in a woman’s voice. Bessie did not stop to wonder that any one engaged in an attempt at assassination should utter an outcry which would almost necessarily insure discovery and seizure. The shock of the sound seemed to restore her own powers of speech, and she burst into a succession of loud screams, calling on her grandfather for help.
In the same moment the hope which abides in light fell under her hand. Reeling against her dressing-table, her fingers touched a box of waxen matches, and she quickly drew one of them against the wood, sending a faint glimmer through the chamber. She was not horror-stricken, she did not grasp a comprehension of the true nature of the scene; she simply stared in trembling wonder when she recognized Mrs. Lauson.
“You there, grandmother!” gasped Bessie. “What has happened?”
Mrs. Lauson, attired in an old morning-gown, was sitting on the floor, partially supported by one hand, while the other was moving about as if in search of some object. The object was a carving-knife; she saw it, clutched it, and rose to her feet; then for the first timeshe looked at Bessie. “What do you lie awake and pray for?” she demanded, in a furious mutter. “You lie awake and pray every night. I’ve listened in the hall time and again, and heard you. I won’t have it. I’ll give you just three minutes to get to sleep.”
Bessie did not think; it did not occur to her, at least not in any clear manner, that this was lunacy; she instinctively sprang behind a large chair and uttered another scream.
“I say, will you go to sleep?” insisted Mrs. Lauson, advancing and raising her knife.
Just in the moment of need there were steps in the hall; the still vigorous and courageous old Squire appeared upon the scene; after a violent struggle the maniac was disarmed and bound. She lay upon Bessie’s bed, staring at her husband with bloodshot, watery eyes, and seemingly unconscious of anything but a sense of ill-treatment. The girl, meanwhile, had discovered a slight gash on her left arm, and had shown it to the Squire.
“Sallie,” demanded the cold-blooded old man, “what have you been trying to knife Bessie for?”
“Because she lay awake and prayed,” was the ready and firm response of downright mania.
“Look here, Sallie, what did you kill Mercy for?” continued the Squire, without changing a muscle of his countenance.
“Because she sat up and prayed,” responded Mrs. Lauson. “She sat up in the garden and prayed against me. Ever so many people sit up and lie awake to pray against me. I won’t have it.”
“Ah!” said the old man. “Do you hear that, Bessie? Remember it, so as to say it upon your oath.”
After a second or two he added, with something like a twinkle of his characteristic humor in his hard gray eyes, “So I saved my life by not praying!”
Thus ended the extraordinary scene which brought to light the murderer of Miss Mercy Lauson. It is almost needless to add that on the day following the maniac was conveyed to the State Lunatic Asylum, and that shortly afterward Bessie opened the prison gates of Henry Foster, and told him of his absolution from charge of crime.
“And now I want the whole world to get on its knees and ask your pardon,” she said, after a long scene of tenderer words than must be reported.
“If the world should ask pardon for all its blunders,” he said, with a smile, “it would pass its whole time in penance, and wouldn’t make its living. Human life is like science, a sequence of mistakes, with generally a true direction.”
One must stick to one’s character. A philosopher is nothing if not philosophical.
BY WILLIAM MUDFORD.
The castle of the Prince of Tolfi was built on the summit of the towering and precipitous rock of Scylla, and commanded a magnificent view of Sicily in all its grandeur. Here, during the wars of the Middle Ages, when the fertile plains of Italy were devastated by hostile factions, those prisoners were confined, for whose ransom a costly price was demanded. Here, too, in a dungeon excavated deep in the solid rock, the miserable victim was immured, whom revenge pursued,—the dark, fierce, and unpitying revenge of an Italian heart.
Vivenzio,—the noble and the generous, the fearless in battle, and the pride of Naples in her sunny hours of peace,—the young, the brave, the proud Vivenzio,—fell beneath this subtle and remorseless spirit. He was the prisoner of Tolfi; and he languished in that rock-encircled dungeon, which stood alone, and whose portals never opened twice upon a living captive.
It had the semblance of a vast cage; for the roof and floor and sides were of iron, solidly wrought and spaciouslyconstructed. High above ran a range of seven grated windows, guarded with massy bars of the same metal, which admitted light and air. Save these, and the tall folding-doors beneath them, which occupied the centre, no chink or chasm or projection broke the smooth, black surface of the walls. An iron bedstead, littered with straw, stood in one corner, and, beside it, a vessel of water, and a coarse dish filled with coarser food.
Even the intrepid soul of Vivenzio shrunk with dismay as he entered this abode, and heard the ponderous doors triple-locked by the silent ruffians who conducted him to it. Their silence seemed prophetic of his fate, of the living grave that had been prepared for him. His menaces and his entreaties, his indignant appeals for justice, and his impatient questioning of their intentions, were alike vain. They listened but spoke not. Fit ministers of a crime that should have no tongue!
How dismal was the sound of their retiring steps! And, as their faint echoes died along the winding passages, a fearful presage grew within him, that nevermore the face or voice or tread of man would greet his senses. He had seen human beings for the last time! And he had looked his last upon the bright sky and upon the smiling earth and upon a beautiful world he loved, and whose minion he had been! Here he was to end his life,—a life he had just begun to revel in! And by what means? By secret poison? or by murderous assault? No; for then it had been needless to bring him thither. Famine, perhaps,—a thousand deaths in one! It was terrible to think of it; but it was yet more terribleto picture long, long years of captivity in a solitude so appalling, a loneliness so dreary, that thought, for want of fellowship, would lose itself in madness, or stagnate into idiocy.
He could not hope to escape, unless he had the power, with his bare hands, of rending asunder the solid iron walls of his prison. He could not hope for liberty from the relenting mercies of his enemy. His instant death, under any form of refined cruelty, was not the object of Tolfi; for he might have inflicted it, and he had not. It was too evident, therefore, he was reserved for some premeditated scheme of subtle vengeance; and what vengeance could transcend in fiendish malice, either the slow death of famine, or the still slower one of solitary incarceration till the last lingering spark of life expired, or till reason fled, and nothing should remain to perish but the brute functions of the body?
It was evening when Vivenzio entered his dungeon; and the approaching shades of night wrapped it in total darkness, as he paced up and down, revolving in his mind these horrible forebodings. No tolling bell from the castle, or from any neighboring church or convent, struck upon his ears to tell how the hours passed. Frequently he would stop and listen for some sound that might betoken the vicinity of man; but the solitude of the desert, the silence of the tomb, are not so still and deep as the oppressive desolation by which he was encompassed. His heart sunk within him, and he threw himself dejectedly upon his couch of straw. Here sleep gradually obliterated the consciousness of misery; and bland dreams wafted his delighted spirit to scenes which wereonce glowing realities for him, in whose ravishing illusions he soon lost the remembrance that he was Tolfi’s prisoner.
When he awoke, it was daylight; but how long he had slept he knew not. It might be early morning, or it might be sultry noon; for he could measure time by no other note of its progress than light and darkness. He had been so happy in his sleep, amid friends who loved him, and the sweeter endearments of those who loved him as friends could not, that, in the first moments of waking, his startled mind seemed to admit the knowledge of his situation, as if it had burst upon it for the first time, fresh in all its appalling horrors. He gazed round with an air of doubt and amazement, and took up a handful of the straw upon which he lay, as though he would ask himself what it meant. But memory, too faithful to her office, soon unveiled the melancholy past, while reason, shuddering at the task, flashed before his eyes the tremendous future. The contrast overpowered him. He remained for some time lamenting, like a truth, the bright visions that had vanished, and recoiling from the present, which clung to him as a poisoned garment.
When he grew more calm, he surveyed his gloomy dungeon. Alas! the stronger light of day only served to confirm what the gloomy indistinctness of the preceding evening had partially disclosed,—the utter impossibility of escape. As, however, his eyes wandered round and round, and from place to place, he noticed two circumstances which excited his surprise and curiosity. The one, he thought, might be fancy; but theother was positive. His pitcher of water, and the dish which contained his food, had been removed from his side while he slept, and now stood near the door. Were he even inclined to doubt this, by supposing he had mistaken the spot where he saw them over night, he could not; for the pitcher now in his dungeon was neither of the same form nor color as the other, while the food was changed for some other of better quality. He had been visited therefore during the night. But how had the person obtained entrance? Could he have slept so soundly that the unlocking and opening of those ponderous portals were effected without waking him? He would have said this was not possible, but that, in doing so, he must admit a greater difficulty, an entrance by other means, of which, he was convinced, none existed. It was not intended, then, that he should be left to perish from hunger; but the secret and mysterious mode of supplying him with food seemed to indicate he was to have no opportunity of communicating with a human being.
The other circumstance which had attracted his notice was the disappearance, as he believed, of one of the seven grated windows that ran along the top of his prison. He felt confident that he had observed and counted them; for he was rather surprised at their number, and there was something peculiar in their form, as well as in the manner of their arrangement, at unequal distances. It was so much easier, however, to suppose he was mistaken, than that a portion of the solid iron, which formed the walls, could have escaped from its position, that he soon dismissed the thought from his mind.
Vivenzio partook of the food that was before him without apprehension. It might be poisoned; but, if it were, he knew he could not escape death, should such be the design of Tolfi; and the quickest death would be the speediest relief.
The day passed wearily and gloomily, though not without a faint hope that, by keeping watch at night, he might observe when the person came again to bring him food, which he supposed he would do in the same way as before. The mere thought of being approached by a living creature, and the opportunity it might present of learning the doom prepared or preparing for him, imparted some comfort. Besides, if he came alone, might he not in a furious onset overpower him? Or he might be accessible to pity, or the influence of such munificent rewards as he could bestow if once more at liberty, and master of himself. Say he were armed. The worst that could befall, if nor bribe nor prayers nor force prevailed, was a faithful blow, which, though dealt in a damned cause, might work a desired end. There was no chance so desperate but it looked lovely in Vivenzio’s eyes, compared with the idea of being totally abandoned.
The night came, and Vivenzio watched. Morning came, and Vivenzio was confounded! He must have slumbered without knowing it. Sleep must have stolen over him when exhausted by fatigue; and, in that interval of feverish repose, he had been baffled: for there stood his replenished pitcher of water, and there his day’s meal! Nor was this all. Casting his looks toward the windows of his dungeon, he counted butfive!Herewas no deception; and he was now convinced therehad been none the day before. But what did all this portend? Into what strange and mysterious den had he been cast? He gazed till his eyes ached; he could discover nothing to explain the mystery. That it was so, he knew. Why it was so, he racked his imagination in vain to conjecture. He examined the doors. A simple circumstance convinced him they had not been opened.
A wisp of straw, which he had carelessly thrown against them the preceding day, as he paced to and fro, remained where he had cast it, though it must have been displaced by the slightest motion of either of the doors. This was evidence that could not be disputed; and it followed there must be some secret machinery in the walls by which a person could enter. He inspected them closely. They appeared to him one solid and compact mass of iron; or joined, if joined they were, with such nice art that no mark of division was perceptible. Again and again he surveyed them, and the floor and the roof, and that range of visionary windows, as he was now almost tempted to consider them: he could discover nothing, absolutely nothing, to relieve his doubts or satisfy his curiosity. Sometimes he fancied that altogether the dungeon had a more contracted appearance,—that it looked smaller; but this he ascribed to fancy, and the impression naturally produced upon his mind by the undeniable disappearance of two of the windows.
With intense anxiety, Vivenzio looked forward to the return of night; and, as it approached, he resolved that no treacherous sleep should again betray him. Instead of seeking his bed of straw, he continued to walk up anddown his dungeon till daylight, straining his eyes in every direction through the darkness, to watch for any appearances that might explain these mysteries. While thus engaged, and, as nearly as he could judge (by the time that afterward elapsed before the morning came in), about two o’clock, there was a slight, tremulous motion of the floors. He stooped. The motion lasted nearly a minute: but it was so extremely gentle that he almost doubted whether it was real, or only imaginary. He listened. Not a sound could be heard. Presently, however, he felt a rush of cold air blow upon him; and, dashing toward the quarter whence it seemed to proceed, he stumbled over something which he judged to be the water ewer. The rush of cold air was no longer perceptible; and, as Vivenzio stretched out his hands, he found himself close to the walls. He remained motionless for a considerable time; but nothing occurred during the remainder of the night to excite his attention, though he continued to watch with unabated vigilance.
The first approaches of the morning were visible through the grated windows, breaking, with faint divisions of light, the darkness that still pervaded every other part, long before Vivenzio was enabled to distinguish any object in his dungeon. Instinctively and fearfully he turned his eyes, hot and inflamed with watching, toward them. There werefour! He couldseeonly four: but it might be that some intervening object prevented the fifth from becoming perceptible; and he waited impatiently to ascertain if it were so. As the light strengthened, however, and penetrated every corner of the cell, other objects of amazement struck his sight. On theground lay the broken fragments of the pitcher he had used the day before, and, at a small distance from them, nearer to the wall, stood the one he had noticed the first night. It was filled with water, and beside it was his food. He was now certain, that, by some mechanical contrivance, an opening was obtained through the iron wall, and that through this opening the current of air had found entrance. But how noiseless! for, had a feather even waved at the time, he must have heard it. Again he examined that part of the wall; but both to sight and touch it appeared one even and uniform surface, while, to repeated and violent blows, there was no reverberating sound indicative of hollowness.
This perplexing mystery had for a time withdrawn his thoughts from the windows; but now, directing his eyes again toward them, he saw that the fifth had disappeared in the same manner as the preceding two, without the least distinguishable alteration of external appearances. The remaining four looked as the seven had originally looked; that is, occupying at irregular distances the top of the wall on that side of the dungeon. The tall folding-door, too, still seemed to stand beneath, in the centre of these four, as it had first stood in the centre of the seven. But he could no longer doubt what, on the preceding day, he fancied might be the effect of visual deception. The dungeonwassmaller. The roof had lowered; and the opposite ends had contracted the intermediate distance by a space equal, he thought, to that over which the three windows had extended. He was bewildered in vain imaginings to account for these things. Some frightful purpose, some devilish torture of mind or body,some unheard-of device for producing exquisite misery, lurked, he was sure, in what had taken place.
Oppressed with this belief, and distracted more by the dreadful uncertainty of whatever fate impended than he could be dismayed, he thought, by the knowledge of the worst, he sat ruminating, hour after hour, yielding his fears in succession to every haggard fancy. At last a horrible suspicion flashed suddenly across his mind, and he started up with a frantic air. “Yes!” he exclaimed, looking wildly round his dungeon, and shuddering as he spoke,—“yes! it must be so! I see it! I feel the maddening truth like scorching flames upon my brain! Eternal God! support me! it must be so! Yes, yes,thatis to be my fate! Yon roof will descend! these walls will hem me round, and slowly, slowly, crush me in their iron arms! Lord God! look down upon me, and in mercy strike me with instant death! O fiend! O devil!—is this your revenge?”
He dashed himself upon the ground in agony, tears burst from him, and the sweat stood in large drops upon his face: he sobbed aloud, he tore his hair, he rolled about like one suffering intolerable anguish of body, and would have bitten the iron floor beneath him; he breathed fearful curses upon Tolfi, and the next moment passionate prayers to Heaven for immediate death. Then the violence of his grief became exhausted; and he lay still, weeping as a child would weep. The twilight of departing day shed its gloom around him ere he arose from that posture of utter and hopeless sorrow. He had taken no food. Not one drop of water had cooled the fever of his parched lips. Sleep had not visited his eyesfor six-and-thirty hours. He was faint with hunger; weary with watching, and with the excess of his emotions. He tasted of his food; he drank with avidity of the water, and reeling, like a drunken man, to his straw, cast himself upon it to brood again over the appalling image that had fastened itself upon his almost frenzied thoughts.
He slept; but his slumbers were not tranquil. He resisted, as long as he could, their approach; and when, at last, enfeebled nature yielded to their influence, he found no oblivion from his cares. Terrible dreams haunted him; ghastly visions harrowed up his imagination; he shouted and screamed, as if he already felt the dungeon’s ponderous roof descending on him; he breathed hard and thick, as though writhing between its iron walls. Then would he spring up, stare wildly about him, stretch forth his hands to be sure he yet had space enough to live, and, muttering some incoherent words, sink down again, to pass through the same fierce vicissitudes of delirious sleep.
The morning of the fourth day dawned upon Vivenzio; but it was high noon before his mind shook off its stupor, or he awoke to a full consciousness of his situation. And what a fixed energy of despair sat upon his pale features as he cast his eyes upwards, and gazed upon thethreewindows that now alone remained! The three!—there were no more! and they seemed to number his own allotted days. Slowly and calmly he next surveyed the top and sides, and comprehended all the meaning of the diminished height of the former, as well as of the gradual approximation of the latter. The contracted dimensionsof his mysterious prison were now too gross and palpable to be the juggle of his heated imagination.
Still lost in wonder at the means, Vivenzio could put no cheat upon his reason as to the end. By what horrible ingenuity it was contrived, that walls and roofs and windows should thus silently and imperceptibly, without noise and without motion, almost fold, as it were, within each other, he knew not. He only knew they did so; and he vainly strove to persuade himself it was the intention of the contriver to rack the miserable wretch who might be immured there with anticipation merely of a fate from which, in the very crisis of his agony, he was to be reprieved.
Gladly would he have clung even to this possibility, if his heart would have let him; but he felt a dreadful assurance of its fallacy. And what matchless inhumanity it was to doom the sufferer to such lingering torments; to lead him day by day to so appalling a death, unsupported by the consolations of religion, unvisited by any human being, abandoned to himself, deserted of all, and denied even the sad privilege of knowing that his cruel destiny would awaken pity! Alone he was to perish! Alone he was to wait a slow-coming torture, whose most exquisite pangs would be inflicted by that very solitude and that tardy coming.
“It is not death I fear,” he exclaimed, “but the death I must prepare for! Methinks, too, I could meet even that, all horrible and revolting as it is,—if it might overtake me now. But where shall I find fortitude to tarry till it come? How can I outlive the three long days and nights I have to live? There is no power within me tobid the hideous spectre hence; none to make it familiar to my thoughts, or myself patient of its errand. My thoughts rather will flee from me, and I grow mad in looking at it. Oh! for a deep sleep to fall upon me! That so, in death’s likeness, I might embrace death itself, and drink no more of the cup that is presented to me than my fainting spirit has already tasted!”
In the midst of these lamentations, Vivenzio noticed that his accustomed meal, with the pitcher of water, had been conveyed, as before, into his dungeon. But this circumstance no longer excited his surprise. His mind was overwhelmed with others of a far greater magnitude. It suggested, however, a feeble hope of deliverance; and there is no hope so feeble as not to yield some support to a heart bending under despair. He resolved to watch, during the ensuing night, for the signs he had before observed, and, should he again feel the gentle, tremulous motion of the floor, or the current of air, to seize that moment for giving audible expression to his misery. Some person must be near him, and within reach of his voice, at the instant when his food was supplied; some one, perhaps, susceptible of pity. Or, if not, to be told even that his apprehensions were just, and that his fatewasto be what he foreboded, would be preferable to a suspense which hung upon the possibility of his worst fears being visionary.
The night came; and, as the hour approached when Vivenzio imagined he might expect the signs, he stood fixed and silent as a statue. He feared to breathe, almost, lest he might lose any sound which would warn him of their coming. While thus listening, with everyfaculty of mind and body strained to an agony of attention, it occurred to him he should be more sensible of the motion, probably, if he stretched himself along the iron floor. He accordingly laid himself softly down, and had not been long in that position when—yes—he was certain of it—the floor moved under him! He sprang up, and, in a voice suffocated nearly with emotion, called aloud. He paused—the motion ceased—he felt no stream of air—all was hushed—no voice answered to his—he burst into tears; and, as he sunk to the ground, in renewed anguish, exclaimed, “O my God! my God! You alone have power to save me now, or strengthen me for the trial you permit.”
Another morning dawned upon the wretched captive, and the fatal index of his doom met his eyes.Twowindows!—andtwodays—and all would be over! Fresh food—fresh water! The mysterious visit had been paid, though he had implored it in vain. But how awfully was his prayer answered in what he now saw! The roof of the dungeon was within a foot of his head. The two ends were so near that in six paces he trod the space between them. Vivenzio shuddered as he gazed, and as his steps traversed the narrow area; but his feelings no longer vented themselves in frantic wailings. With folded arms, and clenched teeth; with eyes that were bloodshot from much watching, and fixed with a vacant glare upon the ground; with a hard, quick breathing, and a hurried walk,—he strode backward and forward in silent musing for several hours. What mind shall conceive, what tongue utter, or what pen describe, the dark and terrible character of his thoughts? Like the fate thatmoulded them, they had no similitude in the wide range of this world’s agony for man. Suddenly he stopped, and his eyes were riveted upon that part of the wall which was over his bed of straw. Words are inscribed there! A human language, traced by a human hand! He rushes toward them; but his blood freezes as he reads,—
“I, Ludovico Sforza, tempted by the gold of the Prince of Tolfi, spent three years in contriving and executing this accursed triumph of my art. When it was completed, the perfidious Tolfi, more devil than man, who conducted me hither one morning to be witness, as he said, of its perfection, doomedmeto be the first victim of my own pernicious skill; lest, as he declared, I should divulge the secret, or repeat the effort of my ingenuity. May God pardon him, as I hope he will me, that ministered to his unhallowed purpose. Miserable wretch, whoe’er thou art, that readest these lines, fall on thy knees, and invoke, as I have done, His sustaining mercy who alone can nerve thee to meet the vengeance of Tolfi, armed with his tremendous engine which, in a few hours, must crushyou, as it will the needy wretch who made it.”
A deep groan burst from Vivenzio. He stood, like one transfixed, with dilated eyes, expanded nostrils, and quivering lips, gazing at this fatal inscription. It was as if a voice from the sepulchre had sounded in his ears, “Prepare.” Hope forsook him. There was his sentence, recorded in those dismal words. The future stood unveiled before him, ghastly and appalling. His brain already feels the descending horror; his bones seem to crack and crumble in the mighty grasp of the iron walls!Unknowing what it is he does, he fumbles in his garment for some weapon of self-destruction. He clenches his throat in his convulsive gripe, as though he would strangle himself at once. He stares upon the walls; and his warring spirit demands, “Will they not anticipate their office if I dash my head against them?” An hysterical laugh chokes him as he exclaims, “Why should I? He was but a man who died first in their fierce embrace; and I should be less than man not to do as much!”
The evening sun was descending, and Vivenzio beheld its golden beams streaming through one of the windows. What a thrill of joy shot through his soul at the sight! It was a precious link that united him, for the moment, with the world beyond. There was ecstasy in the thought.
As he gazed, long and earnestly, it seemed as if the windows had lowered sufficiently for him to reach them. With one bound, he was beneath them; with one wild spring, he clung to the bars. Whether it was so contrived, purposely to madden with delight the wretch who looked, he knew not; but, at the extremity of a long vista cut through the solid rocks, the ocean, the sky, the setting sun, olive groves, shady walks, and, in the farthest distance, delicious glimpses of magnificent Sicily, burst upon his sight. How exquisite was the cool breeze as it swept across his cheek, loaded with fragrance! He inhaled it as though it were the breath of continued life. And there was a freshness in the landscape, and in the rippling of the calm, green sea, that fell upon his withering heart like dew upon the parched earth. How he gazed, and panted, and still clung to his hold! sometimeshanging by one hand, sometimes by the other, and then grasping the bars with both, as loath to quit the smiling paradise outstretched before him; till, exhausted, and his hands swollen and benumbed, he dropped helpless down, and lay stunned for a considerable time by the fall.
When he recovered, the glorious vision had vanished. He was in darkness. He doubted whether it was not a dream that had passed before his sleeping fancy; but gradually his scattered thoughts returned, and with them came remembrance. Yes! he had looked once again upon the gorgeous splendor of nature! Once again his eyes had trembled beneath their veiled lids at the sun’s radiance, and sought repose in the soft verdure of the olive-tree or the gentle swell of undulating waves. O that he were a mariner, exposed upon those waves to the worst fury of storm and tempest, or a very wretch, loathsome with disease, plague-stricken, and his body one leprous contagion from crown to sole, hunted forth to gasp out the remnant of infectious life beneath those verdant trees, so he might shun the destiny upon whose edge he tottered!
Vain thoughts like these would steal over his mind from time to time, in spite of himself; but they scarcely moved it from that stupor into which it had sunk, and which kept him, during the whole night, like one who had been drugged with opium. He was equally insensible to the calls of hunger and of thirst, though the third day was now commencing since even a drop of water had passed his lips. He remained on the ground, sometimes sitting, sometimes lying; at intervals sleeping heavily, and, whennot sleeping, silently brooding over what was to come, or talking aloud, in disordered speech, of his wrongs, of his friends, of his home, and of those he loved, with a confused mingling of all.
In this pitiable condition, the sixth and last morning dawned upon Vivenzio, if dawn it might be called,—the dim, obscure light which faintly struggled through theone solitarywindow of his dungeon. He could hardly be said to notice the melancholy token. And yet he did notice it; for, as he raised his eyes and saw the portentous sign, there was a slight convulsive distortion of his countenance. But what did attract his notice, and at the sight of which his agitation was excessive, was the change the iron bed had undergone. It was a bed no longer. It stood before him, the visible semblance of a funeral couch or bier! When he beheld this, he started from the ground; and, in raising himself, suddenly struck his head against the roof, which was now so low that he could no longer stand upright. “God’s will be done!” was all he said, as he crouched his body, and placed his hand upon the bier; for such it was. The iron bedstead had been so contrived, by the mechanical art of Ludovico Sforza, that, as the advancing walls came in contact with its head and feet, a pressure was produced upon concealed springs, which, when made to play, set in motion a very simple though ingeniously contrived machinery that effected the transformation. The object was, of course, to heighten, in the closing scene of this horrible drama, all the feelings of despair and anguish which the preceding one had aroused. For the same reason, the last window was so made as to admit only a shadowykind of gloom rather than light, that the wretched captive might be surrounded, as it were, with every seeming preparation for approaching death.
Vivenzio seated himself on his bier. Then he knelt and prayed fervently; and sometimes tears would gush from him. The air seemed thick, and he breathed with difficulty; or it might be that he fancied it was so, from the hot and narrow limits of his dungeon, which were now so diminished that he could neither stand up nor lie down at his full length. But his wasted spirits and oppressed mind no longer struggled with him. He was past hope, and fear shook him no more. Happy if thus revenge had struck its final blow; for he would have fallen beneath it almost unconscious of a pang. But such a lethargy of the soul, after such an excitement of its fiercest passions, had entered into the diabolical calculations of Tolfi; and the fell artificer of his designs had imagined a counteracting device.
The tolling of an enormous bell struck upon the ears of Vivenzio! He started. It beat but once. The sound was so close and stunning that it seemed to shatter his very brain, while it echoed through the rocky passages like reverberating peals of thunder. This was followed by a sudden crash of the roof and walls, as if they were about to fall upon and close around him at once. Vivenzio screamed, and instinctively spread forth his arms, as though he had a giant’s strength to hold them back. They had moved nearer to him, and were now motionless. Vivenzio looked up, and saw the roof almost touching his head, even as he sat cowering beneath it; and he felt that a further contraction of but afew inches only must commence the frightful operation. Roused as he had been, he now gasped for breath. His body shook violently; he was bent nearly double. His hands rested upon either wall, and his feet were drawn under him to avoid the pressure in front. Thus he remained for more than an hour, when that deafening bell beat again, and again came the crash of horrid death. But the concussion was now so great that it struck Vivenzio down. As he lay gathered up in lessened bulk, the bell beat loud and frequent; crash succeeded crash; and on and on and on came the mysterious engine of death, till Vivenzio’s smothered groans were heard no more. He was horribly crushed by the ponderous roof and collapsing sides; and the flattened bier was his iron shroud.