Chapter XV.

Before leaving the guard-room, Ormiston poured out a large goblet of wine from a flask which he had sent one of the soldiers to procure at a wine-tavern hard by, and insisted upon Nellie drinking it to the last drop.

The remainder of the flask he gave to Roger, who, truth to say, was almost as much in need of it as Nellie; and they then all went forth together, O'More having previously pledged his word, both to Ormiston and Holdfast, to consider himself merely as a prisoner at large, until they themselves should release him from his parole.

Their way led them from the gate-house into Bridge street, and from thence to Ormond Gate, Earl's Gate, "Geata-na-Eorlagh," as it was then sometimes called. With Major Ormiston in their company, this was opened to them without a question, and they afterward proceeded, as fast as Nellie's strength permitted, up the steep hill street, debouching into the Corn Market. Entering the latter, they found themselves face to face with Newgate, the great criminal prison of the city. There it stood, dark, strong, and terrible--too strong, Roger could not help thinking, to be a fitting prison for the frail, dying woman it was guarding for the hangman. It seemed, indeed, almost like an abuse of power to have cast her there, so helpless as she was, and powerless, in the strong grasp of the law.

Newgate had originally formed a square, having at each of its four angles a tower, three stories high, and turreted at the top. Two of these however, those facing toward the city, had been recently taken down; and when Nellie looked upon it for the first time, it consisted merely of the gate-house, with its portcullis and iron gates, and a strong tower at either end. Near the prison stood the gibbet, metaphorically as well as really; for few, indeed, in those sad days, were the prisoners who, once shut up within the walls of Newgate, ever left them for a pleasanter destination than the gallows. From the position in which it stood, they could hardly avoid seeing it as they passed onward toward the prison; but in the faint hope of sparing at least poor Nellie's eyes this terrible apparition, Ormiston stepped a little in advance of his companions, and placed himself between her and it. Roger, however, upon whose arm she leaned, knew, by the sudden tremor which shook her frame that this tender caution had been in vain. Nellie, in fact, had already seen and guessed at the ghastly nature of its office there; and as her eye glanced reluctantly--and almost, as it were, in spite of herself--toward it, she felt as if she had never before thoroughly realized the awful position in which her mother stood. What wonder that she grew sick and giddy as the thought forced itself, in all its naked reality, on her mind, that her mother--_her mother_, the very type and personification of refined and delicate womanhood--might at any hour be dragged hither, shrinking and ashamed, beneath the rude hangman's grasp? {737} What wonder that her very feet failed to do their office, and that Roger was compelled rather to carry than to lead her past the spot, never pausing or suffering her to pause until they stood before the gates of Newgate?

Here, as at the city gate, the name and authority of Ormiston procured them ready admission, the jailer receiving them with courtesy, and showing them at once into a low, vaulted room on the ground-floor of the prison. Notwithstanding this, however, Ormiston had no sooner announced the name of the prisoner they had come to visit, than the man showed symptoms of great and irrepressible embarrassment.

"The prisoner had been very ill," he muttered; "had burst a blood-vessel in the morning, and the bleeding had returned within the hour. A doctor had been sent for, and was at that moment with her; but if Major Ormiston could condescend to wait, he would call his wife, who was also in attendance on the poor lady, and would tell her to announce the arrival of a visitor. It must be done gently," he repeated over and over again, "very gently; for the doctor had already told him that any sudden shock would of necessity prove fatal."

Ormiston eyed the man curiously as he blundered through this statement. He knew enough of Newgate, as it was then conducted, to doubt much if the visit of a doctor was a luxury often vouchsafed to its inhabitants; and feeling in consequence that some mystery was concealed beneath the mention of such an official, he was almost tempted to fancy that Mrs. Netterville was already dead, and that, on account of the presence of her daughter, the man hesitated to say so. The next moment, however, he had leaped to another and more correct conclusion, though for Nellie's sake, and because intolerance formed no part of his character, he made neither question nor comment, as the jailer evidently expected that he would, on the matter. Greatly relieved by this apparent absence of suspicion on the part of the English officer, the man brought in a stool for Nellie to sit upon, and then once more announced his intention of going in quest of his wife. Just as he opened the door for this purpose, Ormiston caught a glimpse of a tall, gray-haired man, who passed down the passage quickly in company of a woman. The jailer saw him also, and with a sudden look of dismay upon his features, closed the half-opened door, and turned again to Ormiston.

"It was the doctor," he said with emphasis--"the doctor who had just taken his departure; and as there was nothing now to prevent their seeing the sick lady, he would send his wife at once to conduct them to her cell."

A long ten minutes followed, during which time Nellie sat quite still, her face hidden by her hands, and shivering from head to foot in fear and expectation. The door opened again, and she sprang up. This time it was the jailer's wife who entered.

"The poor lady had been informed," she said, "of the arrival of her daughter, and was longing to embrace her. Would the young lady follow her to the cell?"

Nellie was only too eager to do so, and they left the room together. Ormiston hesitated a moment as to what he would do himself; but not liking to leave Nellie entirely in the hands of such people as jailers and their wives were in those days, he at last proposed to Roger to follow and wait somewhere near the cell during her approaching interview with her mother. {738} To this Roger readily assented, and they reached the open door just as Nellie entered and knelt down by her mother's side.

More than a hundred years later than the period of which there is question in this tale, the treatment of prisoners in the Dublin Newgate was so horrible and revolting to the commonest sense of decency and humanity as to demand a positive interference on the part of government. There is nothing, therefore, very astonishing in the fact, that the state in which Nellie found her mother filled her brimful with sorrow and dismay. The cell in which she was confined was low, and damp, and dark, and this she might have expected, and was in some degree prepared for; but she had not counted on the utter misery of its appointments; and the sight of her pale mother--death already haunting her dark eyes, and written unmistakably on her ghastly features--stretched upon the clammy pavement, a heap of dirty straw her only bed, and a tattered blanket her only covering, was such a shock and surprise to Nellie that, instead of joyfully announcing the fact of her reprieve to the poor captive, as she had intended, she fell upon her knees beside her, and wept over her like a child.

"Mother! mother!" was all that she could say for sobbing, as she took her mother's hand in hers and covered it with tears and kisses. Mrs. Netterville appeared for a moment too much overcome to speak, or even move, but gradually a faint flush passed over her wan face, and her eyes at last grew brighter and more life-like, when Nellie, making a strong and desperate effort to command her feelings, suddenly wiped away her tears and bent over the bed to kiss her.

"O mother! mother!" the poor girl could not refrain from once more sobbing, "is it thus that I see you after all?"

"Nay, child," the mother gasped with difficulty, "you should rather thank God for it on your knees. See you not it is an especial mercy? If I had not burst a blood-vessel to-day, to-morrow--yes, to-morrow"--a shudder ran through her wasted frame, and she broke off suddenly.

"But I have brought you a reprieve," sobbed Nellie, hardly knowing what she said, or the danger of saying it at that moment--"a reprieve which is almost a pardon. Only a few days more, and you would have been free, whereas now--now"--tears choked her utterance, and, hiding her face on her mother's scanty coverlet, she sobbed as if her heart were breaking. Mrs. Netterville half raised herself on her pallet bed. For one brief moment she struggled with that desire for life which lurks in every human breast, and which Nellie's exclamation had called forth afresh in hers. For one brief moment that phantom of life and liberty, lost just as they had been found again--lost just as they had become more than ever precious in her eyes--that contrast between what was to be her portion and what it _might_ have been, deluged her soul with a bitterness more intolerable than that of death itself, and her frail body shook and trembled like an aspen leaf beneath the new weight of misery thus laid upon it. That one unguarded word of Nellie's had, in fact, changed, as if by magic, all her thoughts and feelings and aspirations. Death and life, and health and sickness, freedom and captivity, had each put on a new and unexpected aspect in her eyes, and that very thing which, only a minute or two before, had seemed to her soul as a source of real consolation, had suddenly taken the guise of a great misfortune. It was as if God himself had mocked her with feigned mercy; a weaker soul might so have said, and sunk beneath the burden! But with that strong and well-tried spirit the struggle ended otherwise.

{739}

Clasping her wasted hands together, and lifting up her eyes to heaven, the dying woman exclaimed, in a voice which none could hear and doubt of the truth of the sentiments it uttered, "My God! my God! Thy will, not mine, be done!" Then she fell back quietly on her pillow, exhausted indeed with the effort she had made, but calm and smiling and resigned, as if that sudden glimpse of renewed happiness and life had never, mirage-like, risen to mock her with its beauty.

The first use Mrs. Netterville made of her victory over nature was to comfort Nellie.

"Weep not, dear child," she whispered tenderly; "weep not so sadly, but rather thank God with me for the consolation which he has given us in this meeting. Where is Hamish?" she added, turning her dim eyes toward the open door, where Ormiston and O'More were lingering still, and evidently fancying that one or other of them was her absent servant--"where is Hamish? He has done my bidding bravely; why comes he not forward, that I may thank him?"

"Hamish is not here, mother; I left him with my grandfather."

"God help you, child!" moaned Mrs. Netterville, a sudden spasm at her heart at the thought of her unprotected child, "God help you! have you come hither all this way alone?"

"Mother," said Nellie in a smothered voice, "I am not alone. Roger More came with me. Without him it would have been impossible."

"Roger More--Roger More," repeated Mrs. Netterville, trying to gather together her memories of the days gone by. "It was in the arms of a Roger More that your father breathed his last."

"In mine, dear lady!" cried Roger, unable any longer to resist the temptation of presenting himself to Nellie's mother--"in mine! And knowing that the father did me the honor to call me friend, Lord Netterville has had the great kindness to entrust me with the daughter in this long journey, which the love she bears you compelled her to undertake."

Something in the tones of Roger's voice, rather than in the words he uttered, seemed to strike on the mother's ear. She smiled a grateful smile of recognition, and then turned a questioning glance, first upon his face and afterward on Nellie's. Perhaps Roger interpreted that glance aright. At all events, he took Nellie's hand, and, as if moved by a sudden inspiration, laid it on her mother's, saying:

"Only the day after that on which I saw her first, I told her that I would never ask for this dear hand until her mother was by to give it."

"Her mother gives it," said Mrs. Netterville solemnly. "Yes! for I guess by Nellie's silence that her heart is not far from you already."

"Mother, mother!" cried Nellie, resisting Mrs. Netterville's feeble efforts to place her hand in Roger's--"not here--not now--not when you are dying."

"For that very reason," gasped the mother. "My son," she added, fixing her eyes full on Roger, "_you_ can understand. I would see my Nellie in safe hands before I go."

"It would be the fulfilment of my dearest wish," said Roger earnestly, "if only it be possible."

{740}

"It _is_ possible," she was beginning; but pausing at the sight of Ormiston, who had by this time joined himself to the group around her bed, she added in an apprehensive tone, "but there is a stranger present."

"Not a stranger, but a friend," the young officer replied, in a tone of sincerity it would have been impossible to doubt, even if Nellie had not whispered, "A friend, indeed! Without him we could hardly have been with you now."

"Then I will trust him as a friend," Mrs. Netterville replied. "The gentleman who left me as you entered--"

"The doctor," Ormiston interrupted, with a marked emphasis on the word.

"Well, the doctor," she replied, with a languid smile. "He can do all I need, and he lives close at hand, with the merchant William Lyon, who knows him not, however," she added, mindful of the safety of the person named--"who knows him not in any other character than that of a lodger and chance sojourner in the city."

"In ten minutes he shall be here," said Ormiston, "if I can induce him to come with me. Meanwhile I will give orders to the jailer to leave you undisturbed."

"If you permit it, Major Ormiston, I will go with you," said Roger, not only zealous for the success of the embassy, but anxious, likewise, that before taking such a decided step Nellie should have the opportunity of a private conference with her mother. "I think my name, and a word which I can whisper in his ear, may be of use--otherwise he might fear a snare."

Ormiston assenting to this proposition, the young men departed, and for the first time since the commencement of their interview mother and daughter were alone together.

For some minutes, however, neither of them spoke. Mrs. Netterville lay back, endeavoring to recover breath and strength for the coming scene, and Nellie was completely stunned. The shock of finding her mother dying at the very moment when she had hoped to restore her to new life--the bodily weariness consequent on her journey--the sudden, and, to her, the most inexplicable resolution to which Mrs. Netterville had come in her regard--all combined to paralyze her faculties, and, hardly able to think or even feel, she sat like a statue on the floor beside her mother.

From this state of stupor she was roused at last by the sound of the dying woman's voice:

"Nellie!"

"Mother!" cried the girl; and then, as she felt that poor mother's hand feebly endeavoring to twine itself round her neck, she burst into a fresh flood of tears. They saved her senses, perhaps--who knows? Creatures as strong in mind as she was, and stronger far in body, have died or gone mad ere now beneath such a strain on both as had been put upon her for weeks.

"Nellie, my child--my only one--weep not!" her mother whispered tenderly. "Believe me, little daughter, that I die happy."

"O mother, mother!" Nellie sobbed; "and I thought to have given you life!"

Mrs. Netterville paused a moment, and then, in a voice tremulous with feeling, she replied:

"Nellie, I would not deceive you. Life is no idle thing to be cast off carelessly as a garment; and for one brief moment the thought that, but for this sudden malady, I might yet have lived some years longer, filled my soul with sorrow! But it is over now--more than over--and I am at peace. Why should I not? for you are safe--you for whom I chiefly clung to life! Yes! now that a man good and generous, as I long have known Roger More to be, is about to take my place beside you, I go without repining--nay, 'repining' is not the word," she said, correcting herself--"I go in great joy and jubilation to the presence of my God."

{741}

"O mother!" sobbed Nellie, cut to the soul by this allusion to her marriage, "that is the worst of all. Do not insist upon it, I entreat you."

"Silence, Nellie!" Mrs. Netterville answered, almost sternly. "Think you I could die happy if I left you--a child--a girl--unprotected in this wild city?"

"Mother, be not angry, I beseech you," Nellie pleaded, "if I remind you that I came hither safe!"

"Ay, but you were coming to your mother, and the world itself could say no evil of one bent on such a mission. To-morrow, Nellie, you will be motherless, and I will not have it said of you hereafter, that you went wandering through the country protected by a man who had no husband's right to do it. Child, child!" Mrs. Netterville added, in a tone of almost agonized supplication, "if you would have me die in peace, if you would not that your presence here (instead of joy) should cast gall and vinegar into the cup of death, you will yield your will to mine, and go back to your grandfather a wedded woman."

"Mother!" cried Nellie, terrified by the vehemence with which her mother spoke, "dear mother, say no more! It shall be even as you wish. I promise. Alas! alas! this weary bleeding has commenced again--what shall I do to aid you?"

Mrs. Netterville could not speak, for blood was gushing violently from her lips, but she pointed to a jug of water on the floor. Nellie took the hint at once, and dipped a handkerchief into the water; with this she bathed her mother's brow, and washed her lips, until by degrees the hemorrhage subsided, and the dying woman lay back once more pale and quiet on her pillow.

Just then, to Nellie's great relief, the jailer entered, bearing a lighted torch; for the sun was going down, and the cell was almost dark already.

After him came Ormiston and O'More, accompanied by the gray-haired man who had been with Mrs. Netterville at the moment of their own arrival in the prison. Ormiston took the torch from the jailer's hand, and placing a gold piece there instead, dismissed him, with orders to close the door behind him, and to give them due notice before shutting up the prison for the night. As he set the torch in the sconce placed for it against the wall, the light fell full upon Mrs. Netterville's face, which looked so pale and drawn that for a moment he thought that she was dead, and whispered his suspicion to the stranger.

The latter drew a small vial from his bosom, and poured a few drops upon her lips. They revived her almost immediately; she opened her eyes, and a smile passed over her white face as they fell upon her visitant. "You here again, my father!" she murmured beneath her breath. "I thank God that you have had the courage. You know the purpose for which I need you?"

"I know it--and, under the circumstances, approve it," the stranger answered quietly. "The sooner, therefore, that it is done the better it will be for all."

"Poor child--poor Nellie!" murmured Mrs. Netterville, as she caught the sound of the low sobbing which, spite of all her efforts at self-control, burst ever and anon from Nellie's lips. "Poor little Nellie! no wonder that she weeps. It is a sad, strange place for a wedding, is this prison-cell!"

{742}

"These are strange times," said the priest kindly, "and they leave us, alas! but little choice of place in the fulfilment of our duties. Nevertheless, sad as all this must seem at present, I am certain that your daughter will, some day or other, look back upon her wedding in this prison-cell with a sense of gladness no earthly pomp could have conferred on marriage; for she then will understand, even better than she does now, how, by this concession to a mother's wishes, she has secured peace and happiness to that mother's death-bed. That is," he added, turning and pointedly addressing himself to Nellie, "if sorrow for her mother's state is the sole cause for all this weeping?"

Nellie felt that he had asked indirectly a serious question, and she was too truthful not to answer it at once. She did not speak, however--she could not; but she gave her hand to Roger, and made one step forward.

"Come nearer," whispered her mother, "come nearer, that I may see and hear."

Roger drew Nellie nearer, until they both were standing close to the sick woman's pillow.

"Raise me up," the latter whispered faintly.

He lifted her in his strong arms, for she was as helpless as a child, and placed her in a sitting posture, with her back supported by the wall near which her bed was placed.

As soon as she had recovered a little from the faintness consequent on this exertion, she waved her hand to Roger as a signal that the ceremony should begin. The priest turned at once to the young couple, and commenced his office, making it as brief as possible. Brief, however, as it was, and bare of outward ceremonial, Ormiston, as he stood a little in the background, could not help feeling that he never before had looked on, might never again behold, such a strangely touching scene. The wasted features of the poor mother, for whom death seemed only waiting until her anxiety for the safety of her child had been set at rest for ever; the fair face of Nellie, pale now with grief and watching, but ready as a budding rose to flush into yet brighter beauty with the first return of sunshine; Roger, with such a look of grave yet conscious gladness in his eyes as best suited the mingled nature of the scene in which he was a foremost actor; the priest, who, at the risk of his own liberty or life, was fulfilling one of the most solemn offices of his sacred calling; the vaulted roof above, glistening in the damp as the light flashed on it, and the bare, bleak walls around, with the names of many a weary captive inscribed upon them; joy and sorrow, hope and fear; life springing forward, on the one hand, to its brightest hours, and sadly receding, on the other, into the shadows of the tomb--all were gathered together in that prison-cell, and combined to form a picture which would have needed the pencil of a great master to render in its full force and truth.

It was done at last! Nellie had said the word which made her a wedded wife, and Mrs. Netterville folded her in her arms, and whispered, "Thank you, dearest, thank you; for I know what this must have cost you!" and then placing her hand in Roger's, added, "Take her, my son--take her; God is my witness that I give her to you without a fear for her future happiness. To you in whose arms the father died I may well intrust the daughter!"

{743}

"You shall never repent it, mother--never!" said Roger, with that calm, determined manner which better than many words, brings assurance to the soul, of truth. "I loved her from the first day I saw her, not so much for her brightness and her human beauty, as for that higher beauty which I thought I discovered in her soul, and which she has bravely proved since then. Over beauty such as that time has no power; the love, therefore, that springs from it must last for ever."

"It is well, my son," replied Mrs. Netterville, "I thank you, and believe you. And now, be not angry if I bid you go! For this one day Nellie must be all my own--to-morrow there will be no one to dispute her with you."

She spoke the last words hurriedly, for the jailer entered at that moment to inform Ormiston that the prison was about to be shut up for the night, and that it was his duty to see that all strangers left it.

"But not Nellie--not my child?" said Mrs. Netterville, with an appealing look, first to the jailer and then to Ormiston. "Surely you will leave Nellie with me?"

"They must!" cried Nellie passionately, "for by force alone can they drag me from you."

"Sir," said the dying woman, addressing herself this time to Ormiston alone, "add this one favor, I beseech you, to all the others you have done me, and let my child close my dying eyes?"

"I cannot refuse you, madam," he replied, much moved. "But is your daughter equal to the effort? Would it not be better to have the jailer's wife as well?"

"No--no!" cried Nellie, answering before her mother, who looked half inclined to assent to this proposition, could reply. "I am equal, and more than equal. I would not have a stranger with us to-night for the world."

"Come for her, then, at the first dawn of day," said Mrs. Netterville, with a glance, the meaning of which they understood too well. She gave her hand in turn to each of the young men, and then signed to them to withdraw. Ormiston did so at once; but Roger turned first to Nellie, and taking her passive hand, lifted it silently to his lips. Not to save his life or hers could he have done more than that in the solemn presence of her dying mother.

He then followed Ormiston. The priest lingered a moment longer to speak a word of cheer to his poor penitent; but the jailer calling him impatiently, he also disappeared, and the cell-door was closed behind him.