Pope Damasus wished to detain him in Rome after the departure of the bishops for the east, in order that Jerome should expound the holy Scriptures and give answers to those who came to Rome from all parts of the globe for explanations of the dogmas and discipline of the church. A great friendship had sprung up between the sovereign pontiff and St. Jerome. The study of the holy Scriptures bound their affections together. "I know of nothing better," wrote the holy father to him in one of his letters, "than our conversations about Scripture; that is to say, when I ask questions, and you answer; and I say like the prophet, that your voice is sweeter to my heart than honey to my lips."
After the departure of Epiphanius and Paulinus, Marcella and Paula sought for Jerome and entreated him to explain the Scriptures to them at Mount Aventine. The austere monk resisted them long, but at last yielded, and crowds came to hear him. He would read the text, and then make his comments. The listeners were captivated by his eloquence, and his language was peculiarly strong, clear, and forcible. His monk's attire, his cheeks, sunken by penance and browned by the eastern sun, and his deep voice, all combined to throw a strange spell over his hearers.
He, too, soon discovered that he spoke to noble souls, and thus was his abiding interest awakened by his own delight in opening such treasures to those so capable of appreciating them.
Such was the ardor of Paula and her friends in studying the Scriptures, that Jerome was in admiration at their labor and perseverance; and it excited him to further efforts, and made him feel the necessity of undertaking a complete translation of the entire Bible, which, indeed, was the work of his life from that time afterward, without remission; being begun on Mount Aventine, among his favorite disciples, and only ending many years later, with his life. Jerome now undertook the spiritual direction of Paula, Marcella, Asella, and their friends. Many of his letters to them have been preserved, a monument of this wonderful direction. He wrote to them unceasingly, and what remains to us of this vast correspondence suffices to show the noble light in which he viewed Christian duty. Their moral elevation is marvellous, and when from theory he came to practice, he seemed to trample under foot all human weakness and to expect from these high-born and gently nurtured patricians the abstinence and fasting of the Anchorites of the Theban deserts.
This direction of St. Jerome wrought wonders in the soul of Paula. She daily grew in grace, and became a still more noble example of austerity, of prayer, of abundant charities, and good works, and of the fruitful study of the Scriptures.
"What shall I say of the worldly goods of this noble lady, almost entirely spent on the poor?" exclaims St. Jerome. "What shall I say of her universal charity, which made her love and succor beings she had never even seen? What sick person was not nursed by her? She sought the afflicted throughout the great city, and ever thought she had met with a loss if the sick or the hungry had already found assistance before hers."
This is what the love of Christ brought about in imperial and corrupt Rome when, for the first time, such Christian heroism burst forth from the midst of the patricians, their admirable and pious daughter shedding new lustre upon those glorious old pagan families.
To Be Continued.
The warden's wife followed her husband down the steps leading to the prison. "'O caro Duca mio,' is there an inscription over the door?" she asked; "for I have brought hope with me, and will not let it go."
Not having anything to say, the warden kept silent. He was used to his wife's fanciful ways of speaking, and liked to hear her pleasant voice, though her meaning might escape him. For education had emphasized the difference which nature had pronounced between these two—a difference which William Blake has defined in a word: the man lookedwithhis eyes, the woman lookedthroughhers.
Besides, the warden's attention was at the moment fully occupied. The prison-bell had rung the second time, and the convicts had finished their day's work. Mr. and Mrs. Raynor stood just within the great entrance of the prison, and watched the sluggish streams of crime that oozed from the doors of the different shops, joined in the yard, and crept toward them—an Acheron, in which human faces presently became visible; but faces bleached, unwholesome, and expressionless. Perhaps their souls had been scorched up in the baleful flames that had wafted these men hither, or mesmerized in the leaden to-and-fro of their lives. Or, more likely, retired to some secret recess of the brain, their restless wits might be working out new designs of evil. An occasional spark in some sidelong eye favored the latter guess.
"Now for explanation," the warden said, keeping a strict eye on the advancing line, yet aware of a hand stealing toward his arm. "Be careful, dear! my revolver is on that side. Your man will go into the furthest cell in the first ward. His name is Dougherty; his nationality, of course, a mystery. He was sentenced ten years for assault and highway robbery, and has now but two months to stay. Excepting this one affair, he has always borne a good name, and there couldn't be a better prisoner. He might have been pardoned out long ago if he had tried, but he never asks favors. When he came here, his only brother, a decent fellow, went to California. He couldn't stand the disgrace. But he writes once a month, a very good letter, too; and when the ten years shall be up, will come or send for his brother. They say that Dougherty behaved very well by him when he went away, and gave him all his, Dougherty's, money. I shouldn't wonder. The fellow has the strongest sense of duty I ever knew in a man. That's what is the matter with him now. He told the deputy yesterday that he should never go to chapel again. He had before been in doubt about it, he said; but when the chaplain praised Martin Luther, and called the church some ugly name or other, then he knew that it was a sin for him to listen.I don't want to punish the man; but, of course, he must go to chapel. I can't make exceptions; and half a dozen of the worst rascals here have some way got wind of the affair, and have all at once experienced theology. That tall, heavy fellow, who murdered his mother and his brother, and then set fire to the house and burnt their bodies up, had his feelings badly hurt when the chaplain said something sarcastic of the pope's great toe. But Dougherty is honest, and if he will submit, I can easily bring the others down. If he should hold out, there will be trouble; for they will do for deviltry what he will do for conscience' sake. If you can talk him over, I shall be glad; but I haven't much hope of it. He is not a man likely to be influenced by a woman's soft words. He is granite."
The wife smiled saucily. "I have seen a silly little pink cloud make a granite boulder blush as though it had blood in it," she said.
At this moment the file of convicts reached the portal, and came winding through in the slow lock-step, separated noiselessly into detachments, a part moving toward the lower cells, the rest climbing the narrow flight of stairs leading to the upper tiers. The faces of the men caught an additional pallor from the cold, whitewashed stone of the prison, and a darker shade as, one by one, they disappeared into the cells, the doors clapping to in rapid succession behind them, like the leaves of a book run over in the fingers. In a few minutes the whole line had crumbled away, and there were visible but the three tiers of iron doors, each door with a hand thrust through the bars, and a dim face behind them. Mrs. Raynor glanced up the block to the last cell. The hand she saw there had a character of its own. The fingers were not half closed, listlessly waiting to be seen, but firm and straight, and the thumb was clasped tightly around the bar against which it rested—a dogged hand. "You think that the dungeon would have no effect?" she asked.
The warden repeated the word "dungeon" with a circumflex calculated to give the impression that the apartment in question was vaulted. "I doubt if even the strings will break him," he said. "You take a Catholic Irishman born in Ireland, and you can't hammer nor melt him into anything but a Catholic. He may lie as fast as a dog can trot, and steal your eye-teeth from under your eyes; but if you cut him into inch pieces, as long as he has a thumb and finger left, he will make the sign of the cross with them. You are losing courage, little woman."
"No!"
"Well, good luck to you! I'm going off."
The lady walked up the ward, nodding to the convicts who pressed eagerly for recognition, stopping to speak to those who had requests to make, and, pausing at a little distance from the upper cell, looked attentively at its occupant, herself unseen by him.
The warden had well compared this man to granite. He was tall, thick-set, as straight as a post, had the broad, combative Irish head, crowned with a luxuriance of dark-brown hair, and square jaws that promised a tenacious grip on whatever he might set his mental teeth in. But the face was honest, though hard, and the straight mouth did not look as though giving to lying or blasphemy, but had something solemn in its closing. The well-shaped nose was as notable for spirit as the mouth for firmness, and the blue-grey eyes were steady, not bright, and rather small.Altogether, a man of whom one might say that, if he was not so good, he would not have been so bad.
This convict sat on a bench in the middle of his little whitewashed cell, and appeared to be lost in thought. But in his attitude there was none of that easy drooping which usually accompanies such abstraction. He sat perfectly upright and rigid, the only perceptible motion a quick one of the eyelids, the eyes fixed—locked, rather than lost in thought.
He rose immediately on seeing who his visitor was, bowed with a soldierly stiffness that was not without state, and waited for her to speak.
After a few pleasant inquiries, civilly answered, she told her errand. It was not so easy as she had expected; but she spoke kindly and earnestly, urging the necessity for discipline in such a place, and the unwillingness of the warden to inflict any punishment on him. "I have no doubt of your sincerity," she concluded, "though the others mean only mischief. But the decision must be the same in both cases."
He listened attentively to every word she said, then replied with quiet firmness, "I am sorry, ma'am, that there is going to be any trouble about it. But it would be a sin for me to go and hear Protestantism called the church of God, when it is no more a church than a barnacle is a ship."
"That is not the question," she persisted. "Admitting that what the chaplain says may be false, I still say that you ought to go. You are here in a state of servitude; you have no will of your own; your duty is obedience to the rules of the place; and the more difficult that duty, the more your merit. If you should listen with pleasure, or even with toleration, while your faith is attacked, that might be sin; but the listening unwillingly and with pain you can offer to God as a penance in expiation of the crime which obliges you to perform it. I am speaking now as a Catholic would. I believe that your priest would say the same."
She paused to note the effect of her words; but his face was unmoved.
"I have a dear friend who is a Catholic," she added. "For her sake I should be sorry to have you punished for such a cause."
This plea made no impression whatever. Plainly, the man was not soft-hearted, nor susceptible to flattery. He merely listened, and appeared to be gravely considering the subject.
"To yield would be humility; to refuse would be pride," she said. "You need not listen while in the chapel; you can think your own thoughts and say your own prayers."
As he still pondered, she again went over her argument, enlarging and dwelling on it till it reached his comprehension. He listened as before, but made no sign of approval nor dissent. Either from nature or habit, it seemed hard for the man to get his mouth open. But at length he spoke.
"You were right, ma'am, in telling me that my duty here is obedience," he said; "but you left out one condition—obedience in all that is not sin. If the warden should tell me to kill a man, it would not be my duty to obey. I do obey in all that is not sin. It would be a sin for me to go to chapel."
He spoke respectfully, but with decision; and the lady perceived that their argument had reached a knot which only the hand of authority could cut. She sighed, and abandoned her attempt.
Could she abandon it? Remembering the dungeon and the strings, her heart strengthened itself for one more effort. She had begun by marching straight up to the subject, challenging opposition; it might be better to approach circuitously. "Let me undermine him," she thought; and, turning away, as though leaving the captive to silence and loneliness again, let the sense of returning desolation catch him for an instant, then hesitated, and glanced backward. It was a good beginning; he was looking after her. The sight of a friendly face, the sound of a friendly voice, and liberty to speak, were unfrequent boons in that place, and too precious to be willingly relinquished,
"The days must seem long to you," she said.
She came nearer, and leaned against the door. "Yes, they are long; but I thank God for every one of them. My coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was getting to be drunkard, and this put a stop to it."
As he spoke, he lifted his face and looked out at the strip of sky visible through the window across the corridor, and his eyes began to kindle.
"Have you a family?" the lady asked.
He waited a moment before answering, seemed to break some link of thought that had a bright fracture, and his expression underwent a slight but decided change. A light in it that had been lofty softened to a light that was tender, as at her question he looked down again. "There's Larry," he said.
"And who is Larry?"
The convict stared with astonishment at her ignorance. And, indeed, Mrs. Raynor was the only person about the prison who had not heard the name of this Larry. "He is my step-brother, ma'am," he replied. "We had but the one father; but he had his own mother. When she died, there were two of us left, and I took the lad and brought him to this country. He was five years old then, and I was twenty. I was a stone-cutter, and thought to do better here; and, faith, one way I have, and another way I haven't. Shame never touched one of us at home."
"Who took care of the child?" Mrs. Raynor asked.
"Myself, ma'am. He ate and slept with me, and I took him on my arm as often as I put my hat on. He had his little chair on the table in my shop, or he played about at the end of a long string. For the lad was venturesome, and I never trusted him but with a tether."
"He must have been a great care," she said.
"Have you any children, ma'am?" the convict asked.
"No."
"I thought that," he said dryly; then smiled. "Larry was like a picture. He had red cheeks and black eyes, and his hair was like gold with a shadow on it. It used to take me half an hour every morning to make his curls, and they reached to his waist. Everybody noticed the child, and they'd turn to look after him in the street. One of the richest ladies in the city wanted to take him for her own, and me to promise never to see him again; and when she told what she would do for him, I thought that perhaps I ought to let him go. The lady coaxed him, and gave him picture-books and candy, and then asked him if he'd go and live with her; and faith, ma'am, my heart didn't get such a scalding when Mary asked her promise back, and said she liked Larry best, as it did when that child went to the lady's knee and said he would go and live with her. God forgive me, but I hated her that minute. Well, I told her that I would think about it, and let her know the next day.That night I dreamed that she had him, and that I saw him far off at play, dressed in jewels, and his little frock like a fall of snow. I dreamed that I couldn't speak to him, and that set me crying; and I cried so that I waked myself up. I put my hand out for the child, but I couldn't find him. He was a restless little fellow, and had crawled down to the foot of the bed. For a minute I thought that the dream was true; and then I knew that I couldn't let him go. I waked him up, and asked him if he'd stay and live for ever with his brother John; and I was a happy man when he put his little arms round my neck and said yes, he would. And I made a promise to the child that night, while he was asleep in my arms, that, since I kept him back from being a rich man, whatever he might ask of me in all his life, if it was my heart's blood, he should have it! And, ma'am, I've kept my promise."
The tenderness with which he spoke of his brother invested the convict's manner with the softening grace which it so much needed, and grew upon his rough nature like a gentian upon its rock.
"This brother is in California?" Mrs. Raynor asked.
The convict dropped his eyes. "He and Mary went there when I came here," he said.
"Who is Mary?"
"Mary is Larry's wife," was the brief reply.
"You hear from them?"
"Oh! yes," he said eagerly. "They write to me every month. In his last letter Larry said that he was coming after me at the end of my term; but I sent him word not to. I can go alone, and he will send me the money."
The man seemed to have a jealous suspicion of her thought that he had been cruelly deserted. "I told them to go," he said with a touch of pride; "and I shall go and live with them when I get out of this. They wouldn't hear to my going anywhere else."
He broke off, glanced through the window, and said, as if involuntarily, "There's the west wind!" then drew back, rather ashamed when the lady looked to find what he meant. "You see, ma'am, we don't have much to think of here, and there's only the sight of stone and iron, and that bit of sky. Three years ago there wasn't a glimpse of green; but two years ago I began to catch a flit of leaves when the west wind blew. Last summer I could see a green tip of a bough all the time, and now in the high March wind I can see a bit of a twig."
"It is an elm-tree," the warden's wife said; "and the branches are longest on this side. I think they stretch out for you to see. You miss many a pleasant sight here, Dougherty."
"What I miss is nothing to what I have seen," he said quickly, his eyes beginning again to kindle.
"What do you mean?"
He gazed at her searchingly for a moment, as if to read whether she were worthy to hear; then he looked up at the sky.
Mrs. Raynor tried not to be impressed. "He is a thief, serving out his sentence in the State prison," she repeated mentally. "He is a poor, ignorant Irishman, who can scarcely spell his own name, and who reverences a polysyllable next to the priest."
"I will tell you," he said after a moment, his voice trembling slightly, not with weakness, but with fervor. "When I first came here, I had to pray all the time to keep myself from going crazy; but by and by I got reconciled.You know we never have a priest here, and must find things out as well as we can for ourselves. All I wanted to know was whether God was angry with me. Sometimes I thought he was; but that might be a temptation of the devil. What I am going to tell you happened about six months ago, at nine o'clock in the evening. The night-watch was in, and had just gone round. He spoke to me, and I answered him. I was in bed, and I shut my eyes as soon as he went back to his place. Something made me open them again, and I saw on the wall of my cell here a little spot like moonlight. It grew larger while I looked, and the whole cell was full of the light of it; and it trembled like the flame of a candle in the wind. There didn't seem to be any wall here; it was all opened out. I pulled the blanket about me and went down to my knees on the stone floor. I don't know how long it was before two faces began to show in the midst of the light; and when they came, it was still. At first they were faint; but they grew brighter till they were as bright as I could bear. I couldn't tell whether it was the brightness in their faces or the thought in my heart, that brought the tears into my eyes. There was the Blessed Virgin with the Infant Jesus in her arms, and they both looking at me and smiling. And while they smiled, they faded away!"
"How probable that would sound if it were related as having happened in the year of our Lord 62, instead of 1862!" the lady thought, restraining a smile, awed by the perfect conviction of the speaker.
"Dougherty," she said, "a man like you ought not to be caught at highway robbery. How did it happen?"
Some swift emotion passed over his face; but whether of fear or anger she could not tell. The next moment he smiled grimly. "I know just how it happened, ma'am," he said; "for didn't the lawyers tell me? Oh! but they told the whole story so plain you'd have thought they did the deed themselves; and faith, they made me almost believe I did it. It is a very convincing way that the lawyers have about them. They made out that Mike Murray was at our house one night, and we all played cards and got drunk together; and when we were pretty high, that Larry and I went out with Mike to see him home; and that I sent Larry back, he being too drunk to go on; and that I waited upon Mike out to a piece of woods, and there I knocked him down and robbed him; and that he was picked up half-dead the next morning, and I was caught throwing the money away. They proved that I only did it because I was drunk, and that I never did a dishonest deed before; and so they sent me here for ten years. And the pity it was of poor Mike Murray! It would have brought tears to your eyes to hear that lawyer go on about him, as if Mike was his own father's son, and a saint to the bargain, instead of a dirty, drunken blackguard that Mary was mad to see in the house, and that beat his own wife with a stool, and kicked her down-stairs every morning; and that's the way she used to get down. She told our Mary that she was never without a sore spot on her head, and that when she got to the top of a flight of stairs, if it was in the church itself, she'd look behind for the kick that Mike always had for her. Indeed, ma'am, while the lawyer was talking, I didn't believe he meant the Mike Murray I knew at all, but a sweet, gentle creature with the same name, and that never took a sup of anything but milk. And that's the story of my coming here, ma'am," the convict concluded, giving a short laugh.
"You have had troubles enough," Mrs. Raynor said gently; "but now they are nearly over. Only two months longer, and you will be free. It won't hurt you to go to chapel for that short time."
"I shall not go," he replied.
She turned away at that, went into the deserted prison-yard, and stood there a moment recollecting a sermon she had heard not long before. "Why should we not now have a saint after the grand old way?" the speaker had asked.
"There is every reason why we should not!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Thosebizarre, uncompromising virtues of the antique time would now scandalize the very elect. We must not offend againstles bienséances, though all the saints should clap their hands. This poor Irishman is unquestionably a little wrong in his head, and will have to go to the dungeon. For you, Madge Raynor, you had best return to yourmoutons, and cease pulling at the skirts of the millennium. What a quixotic little body you are, to be sure!"
To the dungeon, accordingly, Dougherty was sent the next Sunday and after a few hours, the warden's wife went to see him.
A door of solid iron opened in the basement wall of the prison, and let the light into a stone vestibule that was otherwise perfectly dark. Opposite this entrance was what looked like an oven or furnace-door, about two feet square, and also of solid iron. Removing a padlock from the inner door, the guard opened it, and called Dougherty.
Mrs. Raynor started back as the foul air from the dungeon struck her face; for, though there was an aperture artfully contrived so as to admit a little air and exclude all light, it was not large enough to do more than keep the prisoner from actual suffocation.
"You are acting like a simpleton!" the lady exclaimed when the convict's pale face appeared at the opening. "Go to chapel next Sunday, and say your prayers under the parson's nose. I will give you beads that shall rattle like hail-stones."
"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet way; "but I can't go to chapel."
"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.
"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.
"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison are children of the devil!" she said.
"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is right."
"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."
Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work again after three days, that being the longest time the rules allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.
Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said. "I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service.At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the sick, and that troublesomeprotégéof hers. "I won't go near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.
Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan. Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings" was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up, while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the first sign of submission or of fainting.
The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down his face.
"Will you give up and go to chapel next Sunday?" asked the deputy.
"O God! strengthen me," cried the convict. "No, I will not go!"
Mrs. Raynor's pale face flushed as she heard this reply.
The moans became fainter.
"Now, give up like a man," the deputy said. "You've shown your grit, and that is enough."
"Lord, help me!" came in a broken cry.
"He's going; let him down," the deputy said.
"Dead?" cried the warden's wife, starting forward.
"No, madam; he has fainted."
They applied restoratives, and when his senses had returned, led him, reeling, out into the guardroom, and placed him in a chair by the open window.
"Did you ever read a history of the Spanish Inquisition, Mr. Deputy?" asked the warden's wife.
"Yes'm!" was the immediate reply. "This is just like it, isn't it?"
"Well, Dougherty, you will be content now, and go to chapel next Sunday, will you not?" asked the lady, touching the convict's sleeve.
He lifted his heavy eyes. He was still catching his breath like one who sobs. "I will die before I will go to hear the name of God and of his truth blasphemed!" he answered, speaking with difficulty.
"But if you should be again put up in the strings?"
He shivered, but replied without hesitation, "He that died upon the cross will strengthen me."
"The fellow is a fool!" muttered one of the guard.
"May God multiply such fools!" cried Mrs. Raynor, turning upon the speaker. Then to the convict, "I will urge you no more. I am not capable of judging for you, and you do not need help nor advice from me. Go your own way."
Dougherty's own way was to persist in his refusal to attend chapel; and since the officers had no choice but to punish him for his disobedience, it chanced that for the next four weeks he was put up in the strings every Sunday morning.
"It shall not be done again," the warden said then. "He has but a fortnight longer to stay; and, rule or no rule, he shall do as he likes."
"Only a fortnight," he said to the convict, "then you will be a free man."
Dougherty's face brightened. "Yes, sir! And I long to set my feet on the turf again. A man doesn't know what green grass is, till he gets shut up in a place like this."
"Don't come here again," the officer said kindly. "Let what you have suffered teach you to resist temptation."
The convict looked at Mr. Raynor with a singular expression of surprise, not unmingled with a momentary indignation, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself.
"It is only to keep from drink," the warden went on. "I don't believe you would be dishonest when sober."
The convict dropped his eyes. "God knows all hearts," he said.
The next day Dougherty had a cold and a headache; the second day he was unable to go to work; the third day he had a settled fever. He was removed to the hospital, where the cells were larger, and, being next the outside wall, had light and air; a convict whose term had nearly expired was set to take care of him, and Mrs. Raynor visited him twice a day.
But the fever had got well fixed before the man gave up, and it found him good fuel. He burned like a solid beech log, with a slow, intense, unquenchable heat. His pale and sallow face became a dull crimson; his strong, full pulses beat fiercely in neck, wrists, and temples; and his restless eyes glowed with a brilliant lustre. Mrs. Raynor was sometimes startled, as she sat fanning and bathing his face, fancying that she had soothed him to sleep, to see those eyes open suddenly, and fix themselves on her with a searching gaze, or wander wildly about the cell. But he lay almost as motionless as the burning log would, locked in that fierce and silent struggle with disease. Nearly a fortnight passed, and there were but two days left of Dougherty's term of imprisonment; but there was no longer a hope that any freedom of man's giving would profit him. There was scarcely more than the embers of a man left of him; not enough, indeed, for a fever to prey upon. The flushes had become intermittent, like the last flickerings of a fire, and the parched and blackened mouth showed how he had been consumed inwardly.
It was May, and the sweet air and sunshine came in through two narrow windows and lightened and freshened the cell where the convict lay. Everything was clean and in order. The stone walls and floor were whitewashed; a prayer-book, crucifix, medicine, and glasses were carefully arranged on a little table between the windows; and there was a spotless cover on the narrow pallet that stood opposite. The door was wide open for a draught, and now and then one of the guard, approaching laboriously on tiptoe, would put his head into the cell, raise his eyebrows inquiringly at the convict-nurse who sat at the head of the bed, receive a nod in return, and retire with the same painful feint of making no noise. Neither of the two men was quite clear in his mind as to what he meant by this pantomime; but the result with both was a conviction that all was right. Presently, as the afternoon waned, there was the soft rustle of a woman's garments in the corridor, and a woman's unmistakable velvet footfall. At that sound the convict-nurse went lightly out; and Mrs. Raynor came in, and seated herself on the stool where he had sat, and slipped a bit of ice between the lips of the patient. He had been lying motionless and apparently asleep during the last hour; but as she touched him, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. "What does the doctor say, ma'am?" he asked in a tone so firm that one forgot it was but a whisper.
"I think that you will want to see the priest," she said gently. "I have sent for one, and he will come tomorrow."
A slight spasm passed over the sick man's face, his eyelids quivered, and his mouth contracted for an instant.
"It must come to us all sooner or later," she continued; "and it is well for us that He who knows best and does best is the one to choose."
He said not a word, but closed his eyes again; and she kept silence while he went through with his struggle, her own tears starting as she saw how the tears swelled under his eyelids, and the stern mouth quivered, and knew that he was tearing up the few simple hopes that had taken root in his heart: the setting his feet on the green grass again, the meeting his brother, the dream of a cheerful fireside where he should be welcome, the honest gains and generous gifts, the happy laughter, kind looks, and sorrows from which love and faith should draw the sting. Simple hopes; but they had struck deep, and every fibre of the man's heart quivered and bled at their uprooting.
Presently the watcher spoke softly: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord hath mercy on them that fear him!"
"May his will be done!" said the convict. "But, poor Larry!"
"You want me to write to him?"
"Yes ma'am!" he answered eagerly. "Tell him that I was comfortable here, and that I was willing to die; and be sure to tell him that coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. Don't let him know anything about the punishment. Larry'd feel bad about that. Don't forget!" he urged, looking anxiously in the lady's face.
"I won't forget," she said.
He stopped a moment for breath; then resumed, "Tell him that my last words were, that he should remember his promises to me, and never taste liquor again. And tell him to be kind to Mary for my sake. You see, ma'am, I was fond of Mary; but of course she liked Larry best."
The lady blushed faintly, and laid her cool white hand on his fevered one. "Dougherty," she said, "nobody but God thanks us for true love. In this world a light love meets with most gratitude."
"Sometimes I've thought the same," the man said gravely. "Some are made to give, and some are made to take; but the Lord gives to all."
The next day a priest came and spent some time with the sick man. Mrs. Raynor went up for her afternoon visit, and found him still lingering there, looking gravely and intently at his penitent, who lay with an expression of perfect peace on his countenance.
"Poor man!" she sighed, glancing toward the bed.
The father looked up with a light flashing into his thoughtful eyes. "Poor man, madam?" he repeated. "Not so: that man is rich! It is for him to pity us."
She followed the priest out, and spoke to him in the corridor. "Dougherty's brother has come from California," she said. "He reached here this morning. It seems hard to keep him out, but I hate to disturb a man who is dying."
The priest frowned. "Keep the fellow out for to-day. I have just given this man the viaticum, and want him to be undisturbed. His confession has exhausted him, and he mustn't be made to talk much more. How does his brother appear?"
"Oh! he is frantic. He fainted when I first told him, and I could hear him crying out in the yard when I got up into the guard-room. I told him that he couldn't come in till he should have become quiet."
"What sort of fellow is he?" asked the priest coldly.
The lady hesitated. In spite of her pity, she did not fancy Larry; neither did she like the coldness the priest showed toward him. "He is a very handsome young man," she said presently, "and very well dressed."
The father shrugged his shoulders. "Oh! then he should be admitted without delay."
She must, of course, free herself from such an imputation. "He looks weak and faithless," she said; "but his grief is genuine; and his having come so far shows that he loves his brother."
"You might tell Dougherty tonight, and let Larry in to-morrow morning if he behaves himself."
Mrs. Raynor sat by her patient without speaking, till presently he looked at her and smiled faintly. "May the Lord reward you, ma'am!" he said fervently. "You've been a good friend to me."
"Here is a note from your brother," she said. "Shall I read it to you?"
He glanced eagerly at the folded paper in her hand—a note which, in the midst of his lamentations, Larry had written and entreated her to take up to his brother.
"Read it!" the sick man said, making an effort to turn toward her.
"Would you like very much to see your brother?" she asked.
Dougherty's face began to work. "O ma'am! has Larry come?" he asked tremulously.
"Yes; and presently he is to come in to see you. Of course, he feels very much grieved, you know. That must be. But when he shall see how resigned and happy you are, he will take comfort."
Seeing that he eagerly watched the paper in her hand, the lady unfolded and glanced over it. As she did so, her face underwent a change. "It cannot be!" she cried out; and, crushing the note, looked at the man who lay there dying before her.
He did not understand, was too weak and dull to think of anything but the letter. "Read it!" he said faintly.
She began breathlessly to read the blotted page: "My dear brother John, for God's sake don't die! I have come to take you back to California with me, and Mary and I will spend our lives in taking care of you. We will make up to you what you have suffered for me, going to prison for my crime."
The sick man started up with sudden energy and snatched the paper from the reader's hand. "The lad is wild!" he gasped. "He didn't know what he was writing!"
She tried to soothe him, to coax him to lie down; but he sat rigid with that terrible suspense, his haggard eyes fixed on hers, a deathly pallor in his face.
"You won't tell anybody what the foolish boy wrote!" he pleaded.
"It was your brother, then, who robbed the man?" she said.
He sank back, moaning, upon his pillow, "All for nothing!" he said despairingly. "I've given my heart's blood for nothing! O ma'am! have you the heart to spoil all I've been trying to do, and have just about finished?"
It was a hard promise to give, but she gave it. Without his permission, what she had learned should never be revealed.
"The poor lad wasn't to blame," the sick man said. "It was drink did it. Drink always made Larry crazy. When he got home that night, he didn't know what he'd been doing; but in the morning Mary found the money on him, and the stain of blood on his hand. I tried to throw the money away, and they saw me."
He paused, gasping for breath. He was making an effort beyond his strength.
"Tell me the rest to-morrow," Mrs. Raynor said, giving him a spoonful of cordial.
But he went on excitedly, clutching at the bed-clothes as he spoke. "It would have been the ruin of Larry if he had come here. He would never again have looked anybody in the face. Besides, Mary's heart was broke entirely. So when I was caught, I just bid Larry hold his peace. But I didn't tell any lie, ma'am. When they asked me in court if I was guilty or not guilty, I said 'not guilty;' and it was true."
She gave him the cordial again, wiped his forehead, and, noticing that his hands were cold, first lifted the blanket to cover them, then hesitated, looked at him more closely, finally laid it back.
He lay for a while silent and exhausted, then spoke again. "You promise?"
"I promise, Dougherty. Set your heart at rest. You are dying; did you know it?"
"Yes, ma'am!"
After a while he said faintly, "My time will be up to-morrow morning."
"Yes!"
Twilight faded into night. Mrs. Raynor went into the house for a while, then returned to sit by her patient, sending the nurse out. One and another came to the cell-door, looked in, spoke a word, then went away. The heavy doors clanged, there was a sound of rattling bars as the prison was closed for the night, then silence settled all over. The dying man lay perfectly quiet, breathing slowly, and responding now and then to the prayers read by his attendant. He felt no pain, and his mind was clear and calm. He had no complicated intellectual mechanism to confuse his ideas of right and wrong; there was no labyrinth of sophistry to entangle his faith, no flutter of imagination to start a latent fear. He had done what he could; and he held on to the promises with an iron grasp.
That lonely watcher almost feared for him. Might he not be presuming on an act of devotion which, after all, rose from a love that was entirely human?
"My friend," she said, "even the angels are not pure before God. Perhaps you loved your brother too well."
"If I had loved him less, he would have been lost," was the calm reply. "I haven't loved him well enough to sin for him."
"Do not be too sure," she said.
"I'm a poor, ignorant man; but I've done as well as I knew how; and he has promised. I never broke a promise to man nor woman; and do you think that the Almighty would do the thing that I would scorn to do?"
"Are you not afraid of presumption?"
"It would be presumption to doubt the word of God."
"Do not rely on your own strength," she urged.
"I have no strength but what he gives me," said the dying man.
While they talked, or prayed, or were silent, the stars wore slowly and brightly past the open windows of the cell, dropping down the west like golden sands in an hour-glass, and counting out the minutes of that ebbing life. Then the dim and humid crescent of the waning moon stole by in the early morning twilight; then the air grew alive with the golden glances of the dawn.As the sun rose, the man called Dougherty, a convict no longer, lay dead on his prison pallet, his face white and calm, the dull eyes half open, as though the deserted body followed with a solemn gaze the flight of its emancipated tenant.
"Would you rather have been the angel loosing Peter, or Peter in chains? I would rather have been Peter!"