That evening Morton arrived at the post house at ——. He was alone, his companion of the morning, whose route lay in another direction, having left him long before. At the head of the ancient staircase, the host welcomed him with a "good night," and ushered him into a large, low, wooden room, where some thirty men and women were smoking, eating, and lounging among the tables and benches. Old Germans talked over their beer pots, and puffed at their pipes; young ones laughed and bantered with the servant girls. A Frenchman,en routefor Laibach, gulped down his bowlful of soup, sprang to the window when he heard the postilion's horn, bounded back to finish his tumbler of wine, then seized his cane, and dashed out in hot haste. A small, prim student strutted to the window to watch him, pipe in hand, and an amused grin on his face; then turned to roar for more beer, and joke with the girl who brought it.
Morton sat alone, incensed, disturbed, anxious. He had resolved to go no farther without taking measures to secure his own safety; and a day or two, he hoped, would place him out of the reach of danger. Meanwhile, what with his horror at the villany which had duped him, his anger with himself at being duped, and the consciousness that the hundred-handed despotism of Austria might at any moment close its gripe upon him, the condition of his mind was far from enviable.
As he surveyed the noisy groups around him, three men appeared at the door. Morton sipped his wine, and watched them uneasily out of the corner of his eye. One of them was a military officer; another was a tall man in a civil dress; the third was the conductor of the diligence in which Morton had travelled all day. The conductor looked towards him significantly; the tall man inclined his head, as a token that he understood the sign. Then approaching, hat in hand, he said very courteously, in French,—
"Pardon, monsieur; I regret that I must give you some little trouble. I have a carriage below; will you have the goodness to accept a seat in it?"
"To go whither?" demanded Morton, in alarm.
"To the office of police, monsieur."
The Austrian Briareus had clutched him at last.
"You have trifled long enough," said the commissioner; "declare what you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."
A long journey, manacled like a felon, and guarded by dragoons with loaded carbines; a rigorous imprisonment, already five months protracted; repeated examinations before a military tribunal; cross-questionings, threats, and insults, to extort his supposed secrets;—all these had formed a sharp transition from the halcyon days of Vassall Morton's prosperity.
"Declare what you know, or you shall be dealt with summarily."
"I know nothing, and therefore can declare nothing."
"You have held that tone long enough. Do you imagine that we are to be deceived by your inventions? Tell what you know, or in twenty minutes you will be led to the rampart and shot."
"I am in your power, and you can do what you will."
The commissioner spoke in German to the corporal of the guard, who took Morton into custody, and was leading him from the room.
"Stop," cried the official, from his seat.
Morton turned.
"You are destroying yourself, young man."
"It is false. You are murdering me."
"Do not answer me. I tell you, you are murdering yourself. Are you the fool to fling away your life in a fit of obstinacy?"
"Are you the villain to shoot innocent men in cold blood?"
The commissioner swore a savage oath, and with an angry gesture sent the corporal from the room.
The corporal led his prisoner along the corridor, which had grown ruefully familiar to Morton's eye; but instead of following the way which led to the latter's cell, he turned into a much wider and more commodious passage. Here, at his open door, stood Padre Luca, confessing priest of the castle.
Padre Luca had mistaken his calling, when he took it upon him to discharge such a function. He was too tender of heart, too soft of nature; ill seasoned, moreover, to his work, for he had been but a week in the fortress, and this was the first victim whom it behooved him to prepare for death. And when he saw the young prisoner, and learned the instant doom under which he stood, his nerves grew tremulous, and he found no words to usher in his ghostly counsels.
Corporal Max Kubitski, with a face unperturbed as a block, unfettered Morton's wrists, left him with the confessor, and withdrew, placing a soldier on guard at the door without. Morton sat silent and calm. The hand of Padre Luca quivered with agitation.
"My son," he began; and here his voice faltered.
"I trust," he said, finding his tongue again, "that you are a faithful child of our holy mother, the church, and that the heresies and infidelities of these times——"
"Father," said Morton, willingly adopting the filial address to the kind-hearted priest, "I am a Protestant. I was born and bred among Protestants. I respect your ancient church for the good she has done in ages past, and for the good men who have held her faith; but I do not believe her doctrine, nor approve her practice."
The priest's face betrayed his discomposure.
"My son, my dear son, it is not too late; it is never too late. Listen to the truth; renounce your fatal errors. I will baptize you; and when you are gone, I will pray our great saint of Milan to intercede for you, and I will say masses for your soul."
Morton smiled faintly, and shook his head.
"I thank you; but it is too late for conversion. I must die in my heresy, as I have lived."
"So young!" exclaimed Padre Luca; "and so calm on the brink of eternity! Ah, it is hard to die, when so much is left to enjoy; but it is worse to plunge from present suffering into everlasting despair." And he proceeded to give a most graphic picture of post-mortal torments, drawn from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, a work very familiar to his meditations. This dire imagery failed to convince the dying heretic.
"My mind is made up. I cannot believe your doctrine, but I can feel your kindness. You have spoken the first friendly words that I have heard for months."
"It is hard that you should die so unprepared, and so young. You have relatives? You have friends?"
"More than friends! More than friends!" groaned Morton. And as a flood of recollection swept over him, his heart for a moment was sick with anguish.
"Come with me," whispered Padre Luca. He led the way into the chapel of the castle, which adjoined his room. Here he bowed and crossed himself before an altar, over which was displayed a painting of the Virgin.
"Our Blessed Mother is full of love, full of mercy. See,—hang this round your neck"—placing in his hand a small medal on which her image was stamped. "Go and kneel before that altar, and repeat these words," pointing to the Ave Maria in a little book of devotion. "Call on her with a true heart, and she will have pity. She cannot see you perish, body and soul. She will appear, and teach you the truth."
There was so much of earnestness and sincerity in his words, that Morton felt nothing but gratitude as he answered,—
"It would be no better than a mockery, if I should do as you wish. I cannot——"
Here a clear, deep voice from the adjacent room interrupted him.
"Mother of heaven!" cried Padre Luca, greatly agitated.
"I am ready," answered Morton, in a voice firm as that which summoned him.
He returned to the priest's apartment, and in the doorway stood the athletic corporal, like the statue of a modern Mars.
"Mio figlio! Mio caro figlio!" faltered Padre Luca, laying a tremulous hand on the young man's shoulder. The kindly accents of the melodious Italian fell on his ear like a strain of music.
"You must not die now; you are not prepared. I will go to the commissioner. He will grant time."
He was pushing past the corporal, when Morton gently checked him.
"I thank you, father, a thousand times; but if I must die, there is no mercy in a half hour's delay. Let me go. This sentence may be, after all, a kindness."
The corporal took him into custody; and, with three soldiers before and three behind, he moved towards his place of execution. He seemed to himself like one not fully awake; the stern reality would not come home to his thoughts, until, as he was mounting a flight of steps leading to the rampart, a vivid remembrance glowed upon him of that summer evening when, in her father's garden, Edith Leslie had accepted his love. It was with a desperate effort of pride and resolution that he quelled the emotion which rose choking to his throat, and murmuring a petition for her safety, walked forward with an unchanged face.
A light shone in upon the passage, and they stood in a moment upon the rampart, whence a panorama of sunny mountains opened on the view. It was a space of some extent, paved with flag-stones, and compassed with battlements and walls. On one side stood, leaning on their muskets, a file of Bohemian soldiers, in their close frogged uniforms and long mustaches. These, with their officer, Corporal Kubitski, with his six men, a sub-official acting for the commissioner, and Padre Luca, were the only persons present, besides the prisoner. The latter was placed before the Bohemians, at the distance of twelve or fourteen paces. The corporal and his men drew aside.
"Now," demanded the deputy, "will you confess what you know, or will you die?"
"I have told you, once and again, that I have nothing to confess."
"Then take the consequence of your obstinacy."
He motioned to the officer. A word of command was given. Each soldier loaded with ball, and the ramrods rattled as they sent home the charge. Another command, and the cocked muskets rose to the level, concentrating their aim against the prisoner's breast.
"If you will speak, speak now. You have a quarter of a minute to save yourself." And the deputy took out his watch.
Morton turned his head slowly, and looked at him for an instant in silence.
"Speak, speak," cried Padre Luca, pressing towards him; "tell him what you know."
The sharp voice of the officer warned him back.
Morton stood with compressed lips, and every nerve at its tension, in instant expectation of the volley; already, in fancy, he felt the bullets plunging through his breast; but not a muscle flinched, and he fronted the deadly muzzles with an unblenching eye. The deputy scrutinized his face, and turned away, muttering. At that moment a man, who through the whole scene had stood hidden in the entrance of a passage, ran out with a pretence of great haste and earnestness, and called to stop the execution, since the commissioner had granted a reprieve. In fact, the whole affair was a sham, played off upon the prisoner to terrify him into confession.
The Bohemians recovered their muskets, and the bewildered Morton was once more in custody of the corporal, who led him, guarded as before, back towards his cell. Padre Luca, who thought that an interposition of the Virgin had softened the commissioner's heart, hastened to his oratory to pray for the heretic's conversion. Faint and heartsick, Morton scarcely knew what was passing, till he was thrust in at his narrow door. The jailer was there, but the corporal entered also, to aid in taking the handcuffs from his wrists.
One might have looked in vain among ten thousand to find a nobler model of masculine proportion than this soldier. He stood more than six feet high, and Morton, who loved to look upon a man, had often, even in his distress, admired his martial bearing and the powerful symmetry of his frame. His face, too, was singularly fine in its way, and though the discipline of long habit usually banished from it any distinct expression, yet the cast of the features, and the manly curve of the lip, which the thick brown mustache could not wholly hide, seemed to augur a brave, generous, and loyal nature.
More stupefied than cheered at being snatched, as he supposed, from the jaws of death, Morton stood passive while his hands were released. The jailer left him for a moment, and crossed over to the opposite corner of the cell. His back was turned as he did so. The corporal's six soldiers were all in the passage without. At that instant, Morton felt a warm breath at his ear, and heard whispered in a barbarous accent,—
"Courage, mon ami! Vive la liberté! Vive l'Amerique!"
He turned; but the martial visage of the corporal was unmoved as bronze; and, in a moment more, the iron door clanged behind him as he disappeared.
The whispered words of the corporal kindled a spark of hope in Morton's breast; but it was destined to fade and die. Once he was sure that he heard the tones of his voice in the passage without his cell; but weeks passed, months passed, and he did not see him again.
And now let the curtain drop for a space of three years.
Morton was still a prisoner. Despair was at hand. He longed to die. His longing at length seemed near its accomplishment. A raging fever seized him, and for days he lay delirious, balanced on the brink of death. But his constitution endured the shock; and late one night he lay on his pallet, exhausted, worn to a skeleton, yet fully conscious of his situation.
The locks clashed, the hinges jarred, and a physician of the prison, a bulky German, stood at his side.
He felt his patient's pulse.
"Shall I die, or not?" demanded the sick man.
"Die!" echoed the German, a laugh gurgling within him, like the first symptom of an earthquake; "all men die, but this sickness will never kill you. It would have killed ninety-nine out of a hundred; but you are as tough as a rhinoceros."
Morton turned to the wall, and cursed the hour when he was born.
The German gave a prescription to his attendant; the locks clashed again behind him, and Morton was left alone with his misery.
The lamp in the passage without shone through the grated opening above the door, and shed a square of yellow light on the black, damp stones of the dungeon. They sweated and trickled with a clammy moisture; and the brick pavement was wet, as if the clouds had rained upon it. Morton lay motionless as a dead man. The crisis of his disorder was past; but its effects were heavy upon him, and his mind shared the deep exhaustion of his body. Perilous thoughts rose upon him, spectral and hollow-eyed.
"By what right am I doomed to this protracted misery? By what justice, when a refuge is at hand, am I forbidden to fly to it? I have only to drag myself from this bed, and rest for a few moments on those wet, cold bricks, and all the medicines in Austria could not keep me many days a prisoner. And who could blame me? Who could say that I destroyed myself? It is not suicide. It is but aiding kindly nature to do a deed of mercy."
He repelled the thought; but it returned. He repelled it again, but still it returned. The insidious demon was again and again at his ear, stealing back with a noiseless gliding, smoothly commending her poison to his lips, soothing his worn spirit as the vampire fans its slumbering victim with its wings. But his better nature, not without a higher appeal, fortified itself against her, and struggled to hold its ground.
When the French besieged Saragossa; when her walls crumbled before their batteries; when, day by day, through secret mine or open assault, foot by foot, they won their way inward towards her heart; when treason within aided force without, and famine and pestilence leagued against her,—still her undespairing children refused to yield. Sick men dragged themselves to the barricades, women and boys pointed the cannon, and her heroic banner still floated above the wreck.
Thus, spent with disease, gnawed with pertinacious miseries, assailed by black memories of the past, and blacker forebodings of the future, did Morton maintain his weary battle with despair.
Morton recovered slowly. The influences about him were any thing but favorable to a quick convalescence, and it was months before he was himself again. Even then, though his health seemed confirmed, a deeper cloud remained upon his spirits: his dungeon seemed more dark and gloomy, his prospects more desperate.
One day he paced his cell in a mood of more than usual depression.
"Fools and knaves are at large; robbery and murder have full scope; vanity and profligacy run their free career; then why is honest effort paralyzed, and buried here alive? There are those in these vaults,—men innocent of crime as I,—men who would have been an honor to their race,—who have passed a score of years in this living death. And canting fools would console them with saying that 'all is for the best.' I will sooner believe that the world is governed by devils, and that the prince of them all is bodied in Metternich. Why is there not in crushed hope, and stifled wrath, and swelling anguish, and frenzy, and despair, a force to burst these hellish sepulchres, and blow them to the moon!
"It is but a weak punishment to which Milton dooms his ruined angel. Action,—enterprise,—achievement,—a hell like that is heaven to the cells of Ehrenberg. He should have chained him to a rock, and left him alone to the torture of his own thoughts; the unutterable agonies of a mind preying on itself for want of other sustenance. Action!—mured in this dungeon, the starved soul gasps for it as the lungs for air. 'Action, action, action!—all in all! What is life without it? A marsh, a quagmire, a rotten, stagnant pool. It is its own reward. The chase is all; the prize nothing. The huntsmen chase the fox all day, and, when they have caught her, fling her to their hounds for a worthless vermin. Alexander wept that he had no more worlds to conquer. What did it profit him that a conquered world lay already at his feet? The errant knights who roamed the world with their mistress's glove on their helmet, achieving impossibilities in her name,—which of them could have endured to live in peace with her for a six-month? The crusader master of Jerusalem, Cortes with Mexico subdued, any hero when his work is done, falls back to the ranks of common men. His lamp is out, his fire quenched; and what avails the stale, lack-lustre remnant of his days?
"Action! the panacea of human ills; the sure resource of misery; the refuge of bad consciences; a maelstroom, in whose giddy vortex saints and villains may whirl alike. How like a madman some great criminal, some Macbeth, will plunge on through his slough of blood and treachery, frantic to dam out justice at every chink, and bulwark himself against fate; clinching crime with crime; giving conscience no time to stab; finding no rest; but still plunging on, desperate and blind! How like a madman some pious anchorite, fervent to win heaven, will pile torture on torture, fast, and vigil, and scourge, made wretched daily with some fresh scruple, delving to find some new depth of self-abasement, and still struggling on unsatisfied, insatiable of penance, till the grave devours him! Human activity!—to pursue a security which is never reached, a contentment which eludes the grasp, some golden consummation which proves but hollow mockery; to seize the prize, to taste it, to fling it away, and reach after another! This cell, where I thought myself buried and sealed up from knowledge, is, after all, a school of philosophy. It teaches a dreary wisdom of its own. Through these stone walls I can see the follies of the world more clearly than when I was in the midst of them. A dreary wisdom; and yet not wholly dreary. There is a power and a consolation in it. Misery is the mind-maker; the revealer of truth; the spring of nobleness; the test, the purger, the strengthener of the spirit. Our natures are like grapes in the wine press: they must be pressed to the uttermost before they will give forth all their virtue.
"Why do I delude myself? What good can be wrung out of a misery like mine? It is folly to cheat myself with hope. This hell-begotten Austria has me fast, and will not loosen her gripe. Abroad in the free world, fortitude will count for much. There, one can hold firm the clefts and cracks of his tottering fortunes with the cement of an unyielding mind; but here, it is but bare and blank endurance. Yet it is something that I can still find heart to face my doom; that there are still moments when I dare to meet this death-in-life, this slow-consuming horror, face to face, and look into all its hideousness without shrinking. To creep on to my end through years of slow decay, mind and soul famishing in solitude, sapped and worn, eaten and fretted away, by the droppings of lonely thought, till I find my rest at last under these cursed stones! God! could I but die the death of a man! De Foix,—Dundee,—Wolfe. I grudge them their bloody end. When the fierce blood boiled highest, when the keen life was tingling through their veins, and the shout of victory ringing in their ears, then to be launched at a breath forth into the wilderness of space, to sail through eternity, to explore the seas and continents of the vast unknown! But I,—I must lie here and rot. You fool! you are tied to the stake, and must bide the baiting as you can. Will you play the coward? What can you gain by that? You cannot run away. What wretch, when misery falls upon him, will not cry out, 'Take any shape but that?' In the familiar crowd, in the daily resort, how many an unregarded face masks a wretchedness worse than this! some shrunken, cankered soul, palsied and world-weary, more hopelessly dungeoned than you. Crush down your anguish, choke down your groan, and say, 'Heaven's will be done.'
"Muster what courage you may. Not those spasms of valor that make the hero of an emergency, and when the heart is on fire and the soul in arms, bear him on to great achievement. Mine must be an inward flame, that warms though it cannot shine; a fire, like the sacred Chaldean fire, that must never go out; a perpetual spring, flowing up without ceasing, to meet the unceasing need.
"And you, source of my deepest joy and my deepest sorrow,—do not fail me now. Come to me in this darkness; let your spirit haunt this tomb where I lie buried. In your presence, the evil of my heart shrank back, rebuked; its good sprang up and grew in life and freshness. You rose upon me like the sun, warming every noble germ into leaf and flower. You streamed into my soul, banishing its mists, and gladdening it to its depths with summer light. These are no girl's tears. Towards myself and my own woes, I have hardened my heart like the barren flint. I should be less than man if I did not weep when I think of you. You must pass the appointed lot; you must fade with time and sorrow; but to me you will be radiant still with youth and beauty. So will I bide my hour, anchored on that pure and lofty memory, waiting that last release when the winged spirit shall laugh at bolts and dungeon bars."
Since his illness, Morton had had some of an invalid's privilege. He had been allowed to walk on the rampart for half an hour daily. In the distance, a great mountain range bounded the view, and, nearer, the Croatian forest stretched its dark and wild frontier. The scene recalled kindred scenes at home; and when he was led back to his cell, when the heavy door clashed and the bolts grated upon him, he leaned his forehead on his hand, and stood in fancy again among the mountains of New England, with all their associations of health, freedom, and golden hopes. The White Mountains seemed to rise around him like a living presence, rugged with their rocks and pines, scarred with avalanches, cinctured with morning mists; and, standing again on the bank of the Saco, he seemed to feel their breezes and hear the brawling of their waters. Then his roused fancy took a wider range; carried him across the Alleghanies and along the Ohio, up the Mississippi to its source, and downward to the sea, picturing the whole like the shifting scene of a panorama.
"Ah," he thought, "if my story could be blown abroad over those western waters! How long then should I lie here dying by inches? The farmers of Ohio, the planters of Tennessee, the backwoodsmen of Missouri, how would they endure such outrage to the meanest member of their haughty sovereignty! A hopeless dream! I have looked my last on America. My wrongs will find no voice. They and I are smothering together, safely walled up in sound and solid mason-work. Strange, the power of fancy! Heaven knows how or why, but at this moment I could believe myself seated on the edge of the lake at Matherton, under the beech trees, on a hot July noon. The leaves will not rustle; the birds will not sing; nothing seems awake but the small yellow butterflies, flickering over the clover tops, and the heat-loving cicala, raising his shrill voice from the dead pear tree. The breathless pines on the farther bank grow downward in the glassy mirror. The water lies at my feet, pellucid as the air; the dace, the bream, and the perch glide through it like spirits, their shadows following them over the quartz pebbles; and, in the cove hard by, the pirate pickerel lies asleep under the water lilies.
"On such a day, I came down the garden walk, and found Edith reading under the shade of the maple grove. On the evening of such a day, I heard from her lips the words which seemed to launch me upon a life of more than human happiness. Could I have looked into the future! Could I have lifted the glowing curtain which my fancy drew before it, the gay and gilded illusion which covered the hideous truth! Where is she now? Does she still walk in the garden, and read under the grove of maples? She thinks me dead: almost four years! She has good cause to think so; and perhaps at this moment some glib-tongued suitor, as earnest and eager as I was, is whispering persuasion into her ear, winning her to his hearth stone and his arms. Powers of hell, if you would rack man's soul with torments like your own, show him first a gleam of heaven; bathe him in celestial light; then thrust him down to a damnation like this."
And he groaned between his set teeth, in the extremity of mental torture.
One day the jailer came in at his stated hour. He was, by birth, a German peasant, stupid and brutish enough; but, his calling considered, he might have been worse, and, in the lack of better company, Morton had diligently cultivated his acquaintance. On this occasion he was more than commonly dogged and impenetrable; and, on being taken to task for some neglect or malperformance of his functions, he made no manner of reply, by word, look, or gesture. Being again upbraided, he turned for a moment towards the prisoner a face as expressive as a block of pudding stone, and then sullenly continued his work as before. Morton laughed, partly in vexation, and resumed his walk, of just three paces, to and fro, the length of his cell. He followed the jailer with his eye, as the latter closed the door.
"'God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man.' Measure the distance from Shakspeare down to that fellow, and then from him again down to a baboon, and which measurement would be the longer? It would be a knotty problem to settle the question of kindred; and yet, after all, a soul to be saved, such as it is, and an indefinite power of expansion and refining, give Jacob strong odds against the baboon. He has human possibilities, like the rest of us; his unit goes to make up the sum of man; man, the riddle and marvel of the universe, the centre of interest, the centre of wonder. When I was a boy, I pleased myself with planning that I would study out the springs of human action, and trace human emotion up to its sources. It was a boy's idea,—to fathom the unfathomable, to line and map out the shifting clouds and the ever-moving winds. De Staël speaks the truth—'Man may learn to rule man, but only God can comprehend him.' View him under one aspect only. Seek to analyze that pervading passion, that mighty mystic influence which, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, prevails in human action, and holds the sovereignty of the world. It is a vain attempt; the reason loses and confounds itself. What human faculty can follow the workings of a principle which at once exalts man to the stars, and fetters him to the earth; which can fire him with triumphant energies, or lull him into effeminate repose; kindle strange aspirations and eager longings after knowledge; spur the intellect to range time and space, or cramp it within narrow confines, among mean fancies and base associations? In its mysterious contradictions, its boundless possibilities of good and ill, it is a type of human nature itself. The soldier saint, Loyola, was right when he figured the conflicts of man's spirit by the collision of two armies, ranked under adverse banners; for what is the spirit of man but a field of war, with its marches and retreats, its ambuscades, stratagems, surprises, skirmishings, and weary life-long sieges; its shock of onset, and death-grapple, throat to throat? And whoever would be wise, or safe, must sentinel his thoughts, and rule his mind by martial law, like a city beleaguered.
"How to escape such strife! There is no escape. It has followed hermits to their deserts; and it follows me to my prison. It will find no end but in that decay and torpor, that callousness of faculty, which long imprisonment is said to bring, but which, as yet, I do not feel. Perhaps I may never feel it; for strive as I will to prepare for the worst, by inuring my mind to contemplate it, that spark of hope which never, it is said, dies wholly in a human heart, is still alive in mine. And sometimes, of late, it has kindled and glowed, as now, with a strange brightness. Is it a delusion, or the presage of some succor not far distant? Let that be as it may, I will still cling to the possibility of a better time. Whatever new disaster meets me, I will confront it with some new audacity of hope. I will nail my flag to the mast, and there it shall fly till all go down, or till flag, mast, and hulk rot together."
Here his reflections were interrupted by the opening of the outer door of his cell, and a voice somewhat sternly pronouncing his name.
It was a regulation of the prison, that twice a day an official should visit each cell, to prevent the possibility of the tenant's attempting to escape, or hold communication with neighboring prisoners. This duty was commonly discharged by non-commissioned officers of certain corps in the garrison. Each cell had two doors. The outer one was of massive wood, guarded by iron plates and rivets. The inner door, though much less ponderous, was secured with equal care; but in the middle of it was an oblong aperture, much like that of a post office letter box, though shorter and wider. The visiting official opened the outer door, and without opening the inner, could see the prisoner by applying his eye to this aperture.
"What are you doing there?" demanded the voice, in the usual form of the visitor's challenge.
The voice was different from that to which Morton had been accustomed; and, as he gave the usual answer, he looked towards the opening. Here he saw a full, clear, blue eye, with a brown eyebrow, very well formed; altogether a different eye from that which had formerly presented itself,—a contracted, blackish, or mud-colored organ, furrowed round about with the wrinkles called "crow's feet;"—altogether a mean and vulgar-looking eye, belonging, indeed, to a rugged old soldier, whose skull might safely have been warranted sabre-proof.
Morton looked at the eye, and the eye looked at him, with great intentness, seemingly, for some twenty seconds. Then it disappeared, but returned, and resumed its scrutiny for some moments longer.
"A new broom sweeps clean," thought Morton; "that fellow means to do his duty."
The eye vanished at length, the door closed, and the step of the retiring visitor sounded along the flag-stones.
Morton thought little more of the matter, but busied himself with his usual masculine employment of stocking knitting, till seven in the evening, when the visitor came on his second round, and the same voice challenged him through the opening. He looked up, and saw the eye again; when to his astonishment, the low, hissing sound—"s—s—t"—used by Italians and some other Europeans when they wish to attract attention, sounded from the soldier's lips. At the next instant, however, something seemed to have alarmed him; for the eye disappeared, and the door closed abruptly.
Morton perplexed himself greatly with conjectures about this incident, and had half persuaded himself that the whole was a cheat of the fancy; when, on the next morning, as he was led back, under a guard, from his walk on the rampart, he saw, on entering a long gallery of the prison, a tall man approaching from the farther end. He recognized him at once. It was Max Kubitski, the corporal, who long before had guarded him to his sham execution, and whose friendly whisper in his cell had wakened in him a short gleam of hope. As the corporal passed, his eye met Morton's for an instant, with, as the latter thought, a glance of recognition.
In vain he tried to reason down the new hope that, in spite of himself, this meeting kindled. Of one thing he was sure; the corporal's eye was the eye that looked in upon him through the hole in the door; and he felt assured, moreover, that, from whatever cause, the corporal inclined to befriend him.
He waited, in great expectancy and some agitation, for the next visit; and at the stated hour, the outer door was opened, and the eye appeared.
Morton, as he replied to the challenge, made a gesture of friendly recognition.
"You remember me, eh?" whispered a voice, in broken French; "be always close to the door when I come. I shall have something to tell you."
The moustached lips whence the whisper issued were withdrawn from the opening, and Morton was left to his reflections.
To have a friend near him, however humble, was much, and the hope, slender as it seemed, that this friend might aid him, filled him with a feverish excitement. Why the corporal should interest himself in his behalf, he could not imagine; and he waited restlessly for his next coming.
In due time, the eye appeared.
"Look here," whispered Max, and thrust a paper through the opening, waiting only long enough to see Morton pick it up.
The chirography was worse, if possible, than the spelling; but Morton at last deciphered words to the following purport.
"You are brave. Don't despair. I shall help you, if I can. Long live America! Down with the emperor! Only be patient. Be sure to chew this paper, and swallow it."
The last injunction had its objections, and the prisoner compromised the matter by tearing the paper into small pieces, and stuffing them into the crevices of the floor.
At the next appearance of the eye, Morton, in a few rapid words, expressed his gratitude; adding that if the corporal would help him to escape, and go with him to America, he would make him rich for life.
The intimation probably had its effect; and yet in the case of Max it was not needed. Though his tastes and habits savored of the barrack, the corporal was one of the most simple-hearted and generous of men, with, besides, much of that kind of enthusiasm of character which is apt to be rather ornamental than useful to its owner. His birth and connections were not quite so low as might have been argued from his mean station in the service, in which his life had been spent from boyhood. He was a native of Gallicia. Several of his brothers, and others of his relatives, had been deeply compromised in the Polish rising of 1831, and had suffered heavy and humiliating penalties in consequence. His eldest brother, however, had escaped in time, and gone to America, where, being very different in character from Max, he had thriven wonderfully. After a long absence, he had reappeared, travelling with a United States passport, as an American, inveighing against European despotisms, and dilating on the glories of his adopted country. Max, the only auditor of these declamations, was greatly excited by them. He had long been tired of his thankless position in the Austrian service; and listening to his brother's persuasions, he agreed to desert, and go with him to America, the seat, as he began to imagine, of more than earthly beatitude. But before he could find opportunity, his cautious brother took alarm; and seeing some indications that his identity was suspected by the police, decamped with the promptness and alacrity which had always distinguished him in times of danger. Max, therefore, was left alone; his adviser, for fear of compromising him, not daring to attempt any communication.
It was soon after this, that, being on guard in the commissioner's inquest room at Ehrenberg, Max first saw Morton, brought in for examination, and learned from the questions and replies, that the prisoner was an American. His interest was greatly stirred; for he had never seen one of the favored race before; and, like the commissioner, he had no doubt that Morton had come on a revolutionary mission. His interest was inflamed to enthusiasm, when, being ordered to guard Morton to his execution, he saw the calmness with which the latter faced his expected fate. Indeed, his soldier heart was moved so deeply, that in the flush of the moment he conceived the idea of helping Morton to escape, and going with him to the land of promise. It was an idea more easily conceived than executed; and before he could find an opportunity, his corps was removed from the castle, and sent on duty elsewhere.
Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially of a prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable to him. Though brave as the bravest, he had not much energy or forecast, and commonly let his affairs take care of themselves. He lived on from day to day, neither abandoning his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until, after more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where his old disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this state of his mind, the duty of visitor was assigned to him, thus bringing him in contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten feeling, and, at the same time, promising him an opportunity to carry his former scheme into effect.
To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much philosophy as could reasonably have been expected; but now that something like a tangible hope began to open on him, the excitement became intense. He waited the daily visits of the soldier with a painful eagerness and suspense. At the stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return, some whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.
Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and Morton read as follows:—
"We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten days; perhaps in a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only be patient."
Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon of the sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton, with a beating heart, read,—
"When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with you, and keep him with his back to the door.I shall come.Be cool and steady. I shall tell you what to do."
Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's system in a manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve the coolness which the emergency demanded; but he summoned his utmost resolution to meet this crisis of his fate.
The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how to engage him in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There was only one topic on which Morton had ever seen him at all animated. This was the battle of Wagram, in which, in his youth, he had taken part, and where he had received a sabre cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his cheek. In dilating on this momentous passage of his life, the old German would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and Morton had often amused himself with trying to comprehend the jargon which he poured out, in thick gobbling tones, about cannonading and charging, sabres and bombshells, pointing continually at his scar, and laboring to impress his hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own mind, that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.
At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon, Jacob appeared. As he came in, he closed the outer door, which secured itself by a latch. This latch could be moved back from within or without, by a species of key in the jailer's keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a duplicate. The jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this, during his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.
Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply, meanwhile, and talking unconsciously to himself, after his usual manner.
"Do you know, Jacob," said Morton, seating himself on a stool in the farther corner, "I was dreaming the other night of you and the battle of Wagram."
"Eh!" grunted the jailer.
"What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You were never in that battle at all."
"Eh!"
"You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting began."
"Run! I run off!" growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating his brain.
Morton nodded assent.
The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open eyes and mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he began to pour forth a flood of denial, mixed with invective against his assailant, appealing to his scar as proof positive of his valor.
"A sabre never made that scar," said Morton, as the other paused in his eloquence.
Jacob stared at him, speechless.
"You got it in a drunken row."
At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and Morton thought he would attack him bodily, as he stood before him, shaking his fists, and stamping on the pavement.
This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair of strong hands clinched around Jacob's neck from behind, with the gripe of a vice.
"Shut the door," whispered Max.
On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close it. The corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of the cell.
"Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a sound."
Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of Max, and kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of the weapon against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp, and gagged him effectually with a piece of wood and a cord which he had brought for the purpose. Jacob lay, during the whole, quite motionless, glaring upward with glassy, bloodshot eyes, stupefied with fright and astonishment.
"You must put on his clothes," said Max.
They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments, which Morton substituted for his own, drawing the deep-visored cap over his eyes. Max, at the same time, bound the jailer, hand and foot, with strings of leather, which he took from his pocket.
"Look out into the gallery," he said, unclosing the door, "and see if there's any body in the way."
Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back, reported that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed the door. The helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some other functionary of the castle should come to his relief.
They passed along the gallery, down one flight of steps, and up another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max gave a careless nod of recognition. There were several private outlets to the castle, but each was guarded by a sentinel; and it was chiefly his preparation against this difficulty that had caused Max's delay.
Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,—a Prussian by birth. He had learned to read and write, and being inordinately vain of his superior acquirements, looked upon himself as the most learned of men. When off duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner of the barrack, poring over a greasy little book, which he always carried in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general butt of his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his crusty mood. Max, however, with a view to the furtherance of his scheme, had of late courted his good graces, flattering him on his learning, often asking him to drink, and otherwise cajoling him. Finding that, on this day, Peter's turn had come to stand guard at a certain postern of the prison, he had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium, mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular compound of simplicity and finesse, the former the result of nature, the latter of circumstance, plumed himself greatly on this exploit.
As they approached the narrow door in question, Max stooped and took off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the same. At a few paces farther on, they saw the sentinel, walking to and fro on his post, with no very military gait.
Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed Morton's arm.
"Voilà, monsieur,"—he was now and hereafter very respectful in his manner towards the man he was saving,—"voilà;look at the old booby; how he reels and staggers about—ah! do you see?"
Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the wall, nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and silly. Meanwhile his musket was slowly slipping down between his arm and his side, in spite of one or two efforts to clutch it. At last the butt struck on the pavement. The sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook himself, and began his walk again; but in a few moments stopped, leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther side of the door, let his musket this time rest fairly on the floor, and began nodding and butting his head, in a most ludicrous manner, into an angle of the wall.
Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe past the drugged sentinel, they went out at the door without alarming him. They were now in an obscure and narrow precinct of the castle, flanked on one side by a high wall of ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear of various outbuildings. The place did no great credit to the neatness of the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking along under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat dangling from her mouth.
They next passed into a wider area, overlooked on the left by the rear of the principal range of barracks.
"Hallo, Max, where are you going?" cried a voice.
Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at one of the barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side of his head, and a German pipe between his moustached lips.
"To the village."
"Who gave you leave?"
"The lieutenant."
"It's good company you are in. What are you going to do below?"
"Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for without his pipe?"
The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined, levelled at Max and his companion. Max retorted only by a ludicrous gesture of derision, which drew a horse laugh from a soldier at another window, under cover of which they passed out of the area, and reached a pathway leading down the height.
A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged down the side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a little watercourse, conducting all the rain that fell on the western roofs of the castle down to the filthy and picturesque hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty population of five hundred Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of dirtier gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their descents to the village.
Max began to descend, and Morton followed at his heels. The fresh wind, the open view, the unwonted sense of treading mother earth, wrought on him strangely; not, as on the wrestler of old, to nerve him with renewed force. He grew faint, dizzy, and half blind; and as he staggered after his guide, he felt for the first time how the prison had sapped away his strength.
In ten minutes, they were at the bottom, and picking their way past the rear of the squalid cottages, among rickety outhouses, broken fences, heaps of litter, pigs, children, and other impediments. Most of the men were absent; a few women only stared at them as they passed. With one very pretty Wallack girl, Max, for the sake of appearances, exchanged a few words of bantering gallantry. She stood looking after him admiringly. Behind the next cottage, a yellow Hungarian shepherd dog, large as a wolf, jumped suddenly from a heap of rotten straw, on which he had been dozing, and made a fierce dash at Max's leg; but the latter gave him a kick in the teeth, which sent him off yelping, followed by a brickbat, and a curse from the Wallack damsel.
Beyond the village, the ground was without trees or shrubs for a full half mile; yet it was uneven,—not to say broken; and Max, who had made a careful reconnaissance, knew that if they could but reach unnoticed a hollow some twenty rods from the skirts of the hamlet, no eye from the ramparts could see them. Towards this, therefore, he walked, with an air of great nonchalance, Morton following, his heart in his throat. Their movements were either unseen, or failed to excite suspicion; and taking a beaten track into the hollow, they came upon a spring at the foot of a rock, where three women were pounding clothes on a stone with clubs, by way of washing them; while a lazy boor, in a broad felt hat, lay on the ground listlessly watching the process.
In five minutes more, the hollow ceased to conceal them; and, to Morton's great dismay, they stood again within eyeshot of the castle. Max, however, with the skill of an old deer stalker, soon managed to place, first, a large rock, then the rugged shoulder of a hill, between themselves and the detested battlements. Next they gained the partial shelter of the scattered scrub oaks and pines which formed a ragged outskirt to the deeper forest behind, and, in a few moments more, reached the dark asylum of its matted boughs and underwood.
Thus far they had walked at the leisurely pace of a pair of idle strollers; but no sooner were they well out of sight, than Max cried, "Come on!" and set out at a run. When he turned, however, and saw the pale face of Morton, already tired with unwonted effort, he took a flask of brandy from his pocket. The fiery draught strung Morton's sinews afresh. They pushed on, over hills and hollows, by cattle paths and brooks, across open glades, and through wooded tracts, dense and breathless as an American forest.
"Look!" said Max, stopping on a rising ground, and pointing back over the woods. Three miles off, the rock of Ehrenberg rose in view, bearing aloft its heavy load of battlements and towers. Morton gave it one look, prayed it might be the last, and motioned his companion forward again.
They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In the mud by its side was the slough where a wild boar had wallowed. The solitude and savageness of the place shot a fresh life through Morton's failing veins. The sense came upon him that his fate was now in his own hands; the resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max to stop.
"Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?"
Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to appropriate; and, keeping one of them, handed the other to Morton.
It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods, on a grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old beeches, oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the ground. Max made a fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of his flint-lock pistol, and placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a piece of cotton rag, rubbed with a little wet gunpowder. Morton roused himself, and breaking off small branches of the firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf which the jailer had brought for his next day's meal, with some more solid viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and, for drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring brook.
It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red light flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs, and knotty limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if time and space were done away; as if the prison were a dream; and as if, once more on some college ramble, he were seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests of America. But instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a Penobscot lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and long, waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged, like a Turk, on the pile of evergreens.
As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the boundless debt he owed him, his heart warmed towards him, and he poured forth his gratitude as well as he could, in the patchwork of languages which Max himself had used as his medium of communication.
The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With his companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the stars, and the dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening to the wind, and the mysterious sounds of the forest, and, as the night drew on, shivering with the damp and cold. His mind was a maze of confused emotions, suspense, and delight, hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos; till at last fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep haunted by hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and repose.
He woke, shivering; and rising in the twilight, stirred the half-dead embers, and crouched over them for warmth. But, as the fresh odors of the morning reached his senses, they brought so vividly upon him the memory of his youthful health, and hope, and liberty, that his spirits rose almost to defiance of the peril around him. He woke Max, whose slumbers were noisy as ever, and they pushed forward again on a well-beaten cattle path, leading westward.
About sunrise they found a cow, one of the gray, long-horned breed of the country, grazing very peacefully. Max looked about him, and began to move with caution. The cow was wild, and would not let them pass her, but walked before them along the path. In a few minutes, a great number of cattle appeared, grazing on an open glade, with two men watching them. They were of the half-savage herdsmen of this district, little better than banditti. One of them sat on a rock, the other lounged on the grass. Both were dressed in coarse linen shirts and trousers, short, heavy woollen cloaks thrown over their shoulders, a kind of rude sandals, and broad felt hats. For weapons, one carried a club, the other a hatchet, the long handle of which served him for a walking stick.
Max whispered to Morton; and stealing unperceived through the bushes, they suddenly appeared before the two men, much, as it seemed, to their amazement. Max, in a language quite new to his companion, desired them to change clothes with Morton and himself. The voice and air of the applicant, and the butt of a pistol protruding from the breast pocket of each of the strangers, gave warning that the wish could not wisely be slighted. The boors complied, the more willingly as they would be great gainers by the bargain. Max threw off his uniform, and put on the dress of the taller herdsman. Morton satisfied himself with the woollen cloak of the other, in exchange for the jailer's coat.
The exchange made, he signed to the man to give him the hatchet which he carried; but the boor hesitated, scowling very sullenly. Max hastened to interpose, and offered a silver coin in return for the hatchet, which its owner at once surrendered. It was by no means any love of abstract justice which dictated this procedure; but a desire, on Max's part, to leave the men in good humor, lest, being offended, they might set the soldiers on the track of the fugitives.
They parted on the best terms, and Max and Morton betook themselves again to the woods.