Part 7

“Mr. Foster,” replied the lawyer, with impressive deliberation, “I shall go into this case with a confidence that you are absolutely innocent.”

“Thank you,” murmured the young man, grasping Patterson’s hand violently, and then turning away to wipe a tear, which had been too quick for him.

“Excuse my weakness,” he said, presently. “But I don’t believe any worthy man is strong enough to bear the insult that the world has put upon me, without showing his suffering.”

Certainly, Foster’s bearing and the sentiments which he expressed had the nobility and pathos of injured innocence. Were it not that innocence _can be_ counterfeited, as also that a fine demeanor and touching utterance are not points in law, no alarming doubt would seem to overshadow the result of the trial. And yet, strange as it must seem to those whom my narrative may have impressed in favor of Foster, the sedate, Puritanic population of Barham and its vicinity inclined more and more toward the presumption of his guilt.

For this there were two reasons. In the first place, who but he had any cause of spite against Mercy Lauson, or could hope to draw any profit from her death? There had been no robbery; there was not a sign that the victim’s clothing had been searched; the murder had clearly not been the work of a burglar or a thief. But Foster, if he indeed assassinated this woman, had thereby removed an obstacle to his marriage, and had secured to his future wife a considerable fortune.

In the second place, Foster was such a man as the narrowly scrupulous and orthodox world of Barham would naturally regard with suspicion. Graduate of a German university, he had brought back to America, not only a superb scientific education, but also what passed, in the region where he had settled, for a laxity of morals. Professor as he was in the austere college of Hampstead, and expected, therefore, to set a luminously correct example in both theoretical and practical ethics, he held theological opinions which were too modern to be considered sound, and he even neglected church to an extent which his position rendered scandalous. In spite of the strict prohibitory law of Massachusetts, he made use of lager-beer and other still stronger fluids; and, although he was never known to drink to excess, the mere fact of breaking the statute was a sufficient offence to rouse prejudice. It was also reported of him, to the honest horror of many serious minds, that he had been detected in geologizing on Sunday, and that he was fond of whist.

How apt we are to infer that a man who violates _our_ code of morals will also violate his own code! Of course this Germanized American could not believe that murder was right; but then he played cards and drank beer, which we of Barham knew to be wrong; and if he would do one wrong thing, why not another?

Meantime how was it with Bessie? How is it always with women when those whom they love are charged with unworthiness? Do they exhibit the “judicial mind”? Do they cautiously weigh the evidence and decide according to it? The girl did not entertain the faintest supposition that her lover could be guilty; she was no more capable of blackening his character than she was capable of taking his life. She would not speak to people who showed by word or look that they doubted his innocence. She raged at a world which could be so stupid, so unjust, and so wicked as to slander the good fame and threaten the life of one whom her heart had crowned with more than human perfections.

But what availed all her confidence in his purity? There was the finger of public suspicion pointed at him, and there was the hangman lying in wait for his precious life. She was almost mad with shame, indignation, grief, and terror. She rose as pale as a ghost from sleepless nights, during which she had striven in vain to unravel this terrible mystery, and prayed in vain that Heaven would revoke this unbearable calamity. Day by day she visited her betrothed in his cell, and cheered him with the sympathy of her trusting and loving soul. The conversations which took place on these occasions were so naïve and childlike in their honest utterance of emotion that I almost dread to record them, lest the deliberate, unpalpitating sense of criticism should pronounce them sickening, and mark them for ridicule.

“Darling,” she once said to him, “we must be married. Whether you are to live or to die, I must be your wife.”

He knelt down and kissed the hem of her dress in adoration of such self-sacrifice.

“Ah, my love, I never before knew what you were,” he whispered, as she leaned forward, caught his head in her hands, dragged it into her lap, and covered it with kisses and tears. “Ah, my love, you are too good. I cannot accept such a sacrifice. When I am cleared publicly of this horrible charge, then I will ask you once more if you dare be my wife.”

“Dare! O, how can you say such things!” she sobbed. “Don’t you know that you are more to me than the whole universe? Don’t you know that I would marry you, even if I knew you were guilty?”

There is no reasoning with this sublime passion of love, when it is truly itself. There is no reasoning with it; and Heaven be thanked that it is so! It is well to have one impulse in the world which has no egoism, which rejoices in self-immolation for the sake of its object, which is among emotions what a martyr is among men.

Foster’s response was worthy of the girl’s declaration. “My love,” he whispered, “I have been bemoaning my ruined life, but I must bemoan it no more. It is success enough for any man to be loved by you, and as you love me.”

“No, no!” protested Bessie. “It is not success enough for you. No success is enough for you. You deserve everything that ever man did deserve. And here you are insulted, trampled upon, and threatened. O, it is shameful and horrible!”

“My child, you must not help to break me down,” implored Foster, feeling that he was turning weak under the thought of his calamity.

She started towards him in a spasm of remorse; it was as if she had suddenly become aware that she had stabbed him; her face and her attitude were full of self-reproach.

“O my darling, do I make you more wretched?” she asked, “when I would die for you! when you are my all! O, there is not a minute when I am worthy of you!”

These interviews left Foster possessed of a few minutes of consolation and peace, which would soon change into an increased poverty of despair and rage. For the first few days of his imprisonment his prevalent feeling was anger. He could not in the least accept his position; he would not look upon himself as one who was suspected with justice, or even with the slightest show of probability; he would not admit that society was pardonable for its doubts of him. He was not satisfied with mere hope of escape; on the contrary, he considered his accusers shamefully and wickedly blameworthy; he was angry at them, and wanted to wreak upon them a stern vengeance.

As the imprisonment dragged on, however, and his mind lost its tension under the pressure of trouble, there came moments when he did not quite know himself. It seemed to him that this man, who was charged with murder, was some one else, for whose character he could not stand security, and who might be guilty. He almost looked upon him with suspicion; he half joined the public in condemning him unheard. Perhaps this mental confusion was the foreshadowing of that insane state of mind in which prisoners have confessed themselves guilty of murders which they had not committed, and which have been eventually brought home to others. There are twilights between reason and unreason. The descent from the one condition to the other is oftener a slope than a precipice.

Meanwhile Bessie had, as a matter of course, plans for saving her lover; and these plans, almost as a matter of course too, were mainly impracticable. As with all young people and almost all women, she rebelled against the fixed procedures of society when they seemed likely to trample on the dictates of her affections. Now that it was her lover who was under suspicion of murder, it did not seem a necessity to her that the law should take its course, and, on the contrary, it seemed to her an atrocity. She knew that he was guiltless; she knew that he was suffering; why should he be tried? When told that he must have every legal advantage, she assented to it eagerly, and drove at once to see Mr. Patterson, and overwhelmed him with tearful implorations “to do everything,—to do everything that could be done,—yes, in short, to do everything.” But still she could not feel that anything ought to be done, except to release at once this beautiful and blameless victim, and to make him every conceivable apology. As for bringing him before a court, to answer with his life whether he were innocent or guilty, it was an injustice and an outrage which she rebelled against with all the energy of her ardent nature.

Who could prevent this infamy? In her ignorance of the machinery of justice, it seemed to her that her grandfather might. Notwithstanding the little sympathy that there had been between them, she went to the grim old man with her sorrows and her plans, proposing to him to arrest the trial. In her love and her simplicity she would have appealed to a mountain or to a tiger.

“What!” roared the Squire. “Stop the trial? Can’t do it. I’m not the prosecutor. The State’s attorney is the prosecutor.”

“But can’t you say that you think the proof against him is insufficient?” urged Bessie. “Can’t you go to them and say that? Won’t that do it?”

“Lord bless you!” replied Squire Lauson, staring in wonder at such ignorance, and dimly conscious of the love and sorrow which made it utter its simplicities.

“O grandfather! do have pity on him and on me!” pleaded Bessie.

He gave her a kinder glance than she had ever received from him before in her life. It occurred to him, as if it were for the first time, that she was very sweet and helpless, and that she was his own grandchild. He had hated her father. O, how he had hated the conceited city upstart, with his pert, positive ways! how he had rejoiced over his bankruptcy, if not over his death! The girl he had taken to his home, because, after all, she was a Lauson by blood, and it would be a family shame to let her go begging her bread of strangers. But she had not won upon him; she looked too much like that “damn jackanapes,” her father; moreover, she had contemptible city accomplishments, and she moped in the seclusion of Barham. He had been glad when she became engaged to that other “damn jackanapes,” Foster; and it had been agreeable to think that her marriage would take her out of his sight. Mercy had made a will in her favor; he had sniffed and hooted at Mercy for her folly; but, after all, he had in his heart consented to the will; it saved him from leaving any of his money to a Barron.

Of late, however, there had been a softening in the Squire; he could himself hardly believe that it was in his heart; he half suspected at times that it was in his brain. A man who lives to ninety-three is exposed to this danger, that he may survive all his children. The Squire had walked to one grave after another, until he had buried his last son and his last daughter. After Mercy Lauson, there were no more children for him to see under ground; and that fact, coupled with the shocking nature of her death, had strangely shaken him; it had produced that singular softening which we have mentioned, and which seemed to him like a malady. Now, a little shattered, no longer the man that he so long had been, he was face to face with his only living descendant.

He reached out his gray, hard hand, and laid it on her glossy, curly hair. She started with surprise at the unaccustomed touch, and looked up in his face with a tearful sparkle of hope.

“Be quiet, Bessie,” he said, in a voice which was less like a _caw_ than usual.

“O grandfather! what do you mean?” she sobbed, guessing that deliverance might be nigh, and yet fearing to fall back into despair.

“Don’t cry,” was the only response of this close-mouthed, imperturbable old man.

“O, was it any one else?” she demanded. “Who do you think did it?”

“I have an idea,” he admitted, after staring at her steadily, as if to impress caution. “But keep quiet. We’ll see.”

“You know it couldn’t be he that did it,” urged Bessie. “Don’t you know it couldn’t? He’s too good.”

The Squire laughed. “Why, some folks laid it to you,” he said. “If he should be cleared, they might lay it to you again. There’s no telling who’ll do such things, and there’s no telling who’ll be suspected.”

“And you _will_ do something?” she resumed. “You _will_ follow it up? You _will_ save him?”

“Keep quiet,” grimly answered the Squire. “I’m watching. But keep quiet. Not a word to a living soul.”

Close on this scene came another, which proved to be the unravelling of the drama. That evening Bessie went early, as usual, to her solitary room, and prepared for one of those nights which are not a rest to the weary. She had become very religious since her trouble had come upon her; she read several chapters in the Bible, and then she prayed long and fervently; and, after a sob or two over her own shortcomings, the prayer was all for Foster. Such is human devotion: the voice of distress is far more fervent than the voice of worship; the weak and sorrowful are the true suppliants.

Her prayer ended, if ever it could be said to end while she waked, she strove anew to disentangle the mystery which threatened her lover, meanwhile hearing, half unawares, the noises of the night. Darkness has its speech, its still small whisperings and mutterings, a language which cannot be heard during the clamor of day, but which to those who must listen to it is painfully audible, and which rarely has pleasant things to say, but threatens rather, or warns. For a long time, disturbed by fingers that tapped at her window, by hands that stole along her wall, by feet that glided through the dark halls, Bessie could not sleep. She lost herself; then she came back to consciousness with the start of a swimmer struggling toward the surface; then she recommenced praying for Foster, and once more lost herself.

At last, half dozing, and yet half aware that she was weeping, she was suddenly and sharply roused by a distinct creak in the floor of her room. Bessie had in one respect inherited somewhat of her grandfather’s iron nature, being so far from habitually timorous that she was noted among her girlish acquaintance for courage. But her nerves had been seriously shaken by the late tragedy, by anxiety, and by sleeplessness; it seemed to her that there was in the air a warning of great danger; she was half paralyzed by fright.

Struggling against her terror, she sprang out of bed and made a rush toward her door, meaning to close and lock it. Instantly there was a collision; she had thrown herself against some advancing form; in the next breath she was engaged in a struggle. Half out of her senses, she did not scream, did not query whether her assailant were man or woman, did not indeed use her intelligence in any distinct fashion, but only pushed and pulled in blind instinct of escape.

Once she had a sensation of being cut with some sharp instrument. Then she struck; the blow told, and her antagonist fell heavily; the fall was succeeded by a short shriek in a woman’s voice. Bessie did not stop to wonder that any one engaged in an attempt at assassination should utter an outcry which would almost necessarily insure discovery and seizure. The shock of the sound seemed to restore her own powers of speech, and she burst into a succession of loud screams, calling on her grandfather for help.

In the same moment the hope which abides in light fell under her hand. Reeling against her dressing-table, her fingers touched a box of waxen matches, and she quickly drew one of them against the wood, sending a faint glimmer through the chamber. She was not horror-stricken, she did not grasp a comprehension of the true nature of the scene; she simply stared in trembling wonder when she recognized Mrs. Lauson.

“You there, grandmother!” gasped Bessie. “What has happened?”

Mrs. Lauson, attired in an old morning-gown, was sitting on the floor, partially supported by one hand, while the other was moving about as if in search of some object. The object was a carving-knife; she saw it, clutched it, and rose to her feet; then for the first time she looked at Bessie. “What do you lie awake and pray for?” she demanded, in a furious mutter. “You lie awake and pray every night. I’ve listened in the hall time and again, and heard you. I won’t have it. I’ll give you just three minutes to get to sleep.”

Bessie did not think; it did not occur to her, at least not in any clear manner, that this was lunacy; she instinctively sprang behind a large chair and uttered another scream.

“I say, will you go to sleep?” insisted Mrs. Lauson, advancing and raising her knife.

Just in the moment of need there were steps in the hall; the still vigorous and courageous old Squire appeared upon the scene; after a violent struggle the maniac was disarmed and bound. She lay upon Bessie’s bed, staring at her husband with bloodshot, watery eyes, and seemingly unconscious of anything but a sense of ill-treatment. The girl, meanwhile, had discovered a slight gash on her left arm, and had shown it to the Squire.

“Sallie,” demanded the cold-blooded old man, “what have you been trying to knife Bessie for?”

“Because she lay awake and prayed,” was the ready and firm response of downright mania.

“Look here, Sallie, what did you kill Mercy for?” continued the Squire, without changing a muscle of his countenance.

“Because she sat up and prayed,” responded Mrs. Lauson. “She sat up in the garden and prayed against me. Ever so many people sit up and lie awake to pray against me. I won’t have it.”

“Ah!” said the old man. “Do you hear that, Bessie? Remember it, so as to say it upon your oath.”

After a second or two he added, with something like a twinkle of his characteristic humor in his hard gray eyes, “So I saved my life by not praying!”

Thus ended the extraordinary scene which brought to light the murderer of Miss Mercy Lauson. It is almost needless to add that on the day following the maniac was conveyed to the State Lunatic Asylum, and that shortly afterward Bessie opened the prison gates of Henry Foster, and told him of his absolution from charge of crime.

“And now I want the whole world to get on its knees and ask your pardon,” she said, after a long scene of tenderer words than must be reported.

“If the world should ask pardon for all its blunders,” he said, with a smile, “it would pass its whole time in penance, and wouldn’t make its living. Human life is like science, a sequence of mistakes, with generally a true direction.”

One must stick to one’s character. A philosopher is nothing if not philosophical.

THE IRON SHROUD.

BY WILLIAM MUDFORD.

The castle of the Prince of Tolfi was built on the summit of the towering and precipitous rock of Scylla, and commanded a magnificent view of Sicily in all its grandeur. Here, during the wars of the Middle Ages, when the fertile plains of Italy were devastated by hostile factions, those prisoners were confined, for whose ransom a costly price was demanded. Here, too, in a dungeon excavated deep in the solid rock, the miserable victim was immured, whom revenge pursued,—the dark, fierce, and unpitying revenge of an Italian heart.

VIVENZIO,—the noble and the generous, the fearless in battle, and the pride of Naples in her sunny hours of peace,—the young, the brave, the proud Vivenzio,—fell beneath this subtle and remorseless spirit. He was the prisoner of Tolfi; and he languished in that rock-encircled dungeon, which stood alone, and whose portals never opened twice upon a living captive.

It had the semblance of a vast cage; for the roof and floor and sides were of iron, solidly wrought and spaciously constructed. High above ran a range of seven grated windows, guarded with massy bars of the same metal, which admitted light and air. Save these, and the tall folding-doors beneath them, which occupied the centre, no chink or chasm or projection broke the smooth, black surface of the walls. An iron bedstead, littered with straw, stood in one corner, and, beside it, a vessel of water, and a coarse dish filled with coarser food.

Even the intrepid soul of Vivenzio shrunk with dismay as he entered this abode, and heard the ponderous doors triple-locked by the silent ruffians who conducted him to it. Their silence seemed prophetic of his fate, of the living grave that had been prepared for him. His menaces and his entreaties, his indignant appeals for justice, and his impatient questioning of their intentions, were alike vain. They listened but spoke not. Fit ministers of a crime that should have no tongue!

How dismal was the sound of their retiring steps! And, as their faint echoes died along the winding passages, a fearful presage grew within him, that nevermore the face or voice or tread of man would greet his senses. He had seen human beings for the last time! And he had looked his last upon the bright sky and upon the smiling earth and upon a beautiful world he loved, and whose minion he had been! Here he was to end his life,—a life he had just begun to revel in! And by what means? By secret poison? or by murderous assault? No; for then it had been needless to bring him thither. Famine, perhaps,—a thousand deaths in one! It was terrible to think of it; but it was yet more terrible to picture long, long years of captivity in a solitude so appalling, a loneliness so dreary, that thought, for want of fellowship, would lose itself in madness, or stagnate into idiocy.

He could not hope to escape, unless he had the power, with his bare hands, of rending asunder the solid iron walls of his prison. He could not hope for liberty from the relenting mercies of his enemy. His instant death, under any form of refined cruelty, was not the object of Tolfi; for he might have inflicted it, and he had not. It was too evident, therefore, he was reserved for some premeditated scheme of subtle vengeance; and what vengeance could transcend in fiendish malice, either the slow death of famine, or the still slower one of solitary incarceration till the last lingering spark of life expired, or till reason fled, and nothing should remain to perish but the brute functions of the body?

It was evening when Vivenzio entered his dungeon; and the approaching shades of night wrapped it in total darkness, as he paced up and down, revolving in his mind these horrible forebodings. No tolling bell from the castle, or from any neighboring church or convent, struck upon his ears to tell how the hours passed. Frequently he would stop and listen for some sound that might betoken the vicinity of man; but the solitude of the desert, the silence of the tomb, are not so still and deep as the oppressive desolation by which he was encompassed. His heart sunk within him, and he threw himself dejectedly upon his couch of straw. Here sleep gradually obliterated the consciousness of misery; and bland dreams wafted his delighted spirit to scenes which were once glowing realities for him, in whose ravishing illusions he soon lost the remembrance that he was Tolfi’s prisoner.