Chapter 13

As he uttered the words, it appeared as if he again exerted himself to keep the enemy, who still threatened him, at bay. I replied nothing; for I suspected that the carriage brought only some official, or, probably, some mourner, to see him, previous to the fatal scene--that scene which, in all likelihood, I was endeavouring to render more heart-rending to his friends and spectators, by keeping alive the vital spark, that might only serve to make him conscious of pain. It appeared to be too evident that he had increased tenfold the misery of his situation; for the stern law would admit of no excuse, and if he was not able to walk to the scaffold he would be carried; yet, if I remitted my endeavours to keep in life, I might, in the event of the looked-for reprieve still arriving, be liable to be accused, by my own conscience, of having been as cruel as the law itself. The door of the jail now opened, and a turnkey told me that the usual time had arrived when the officials began their preparatory duties. I replied that it was in vain to attempt, at present, the performance of these sacred rites; the prisoner was wrestling with death; and, if the exertions of the men, who kept still dragging him backwards and forwards, were remitted, he would sink, in a few minutes, into insensibility. I noticed the eye of poor Eugene turned imploringly upon me, as if he wished to know who it was that had arrived in the carriage. I merely shook my head; and the sign was no sooner made than his chin fell down on his breast; his limbs became weaker, his knees bent, and if the supporters had not exerted themselves still farther, he would have sunk. But the men still performed their duty, and dragged him hurriedly along, scarcely now with any aid from his feet, which, obeying no impulse of the loose and flaccid muscles, were thrown about in every direction, with, a shuffling, lumbering noise, and a clanking of the chain, that must have produced an extraordinary effect on those who waited in the adjoining cells. The noise thus produced was indeed all that was heard; for the effect of the poison was such as to take away all power of groaning. I was now doubtful if all the working of the men would be able to keep off much longer the sleepy incubus, for he seemed to have lost almost all power of seconding their efforts; but the door of the jail again opened, and the sound of the grating hinges made him again lift his head. His eye seemed to indicate that he had lost all sense of the passing of the moments, and I could not discover whether he looked for the entry of one bearing his letter of salvation, or of the jailor with his hammer, to knock the chain from his feet, and lead him forth to the scaffold. He again muttered some words as the turnkey was proceeding forward to where I was. I could not make them out, so faint had his voice now become; but one of the men said he wished to know the hour. I told him it was one o'clock--that was just one hour from the appointed termination of his life. The turnkey, meanwhile, whispered in my ear that his father, mother, and sister had arrived. It was the sound of their carriage wheels that we had heard. I enjoined upon the men the necessity of continuing their labours, and went out to prevent the entry of his parents to the witnessing of a scene transcending all their powers of bearing. I found the three standing in the recess where the executioner was sitting in gloomy silence. I took the father and mother by the arms, and hurried them away to the empty cell, where the chaplain and several officials were collected. The turnkey saw his error, and excused himself, on the ground that he was confused by the extraordinary state of affairs within the prison. I ascertained that no notice had been made to his parents of his having taken the drug. They had come to take farewell of him. The mail had arrived, but had brought no intelligence--not even of the petition having been disposed of; and, having given up all hope, their intention was that the mother and daughter should, after the last act of parting, fly to the country, to be as far as possible from the scene of the impending tragedy. I was the first who communicated the tidings of the condition of their son; and the noise in the prisoner's cell, as the men still continued their operations, was a sad commentary on my words. The sister, who was veiled, uttered a shrill scream, and fell back on the floor. The father stood like

"Wo's bleak, voiceless petrifaction,"

moving neither limb nor countenance; his eye was fixed steadfastly on the ground, and a deadly paleness was over his face. The mother, who was also veiled, staggered to a bench--recovering herself suddenly, as some thought, rising wildly, stung her to a broken utterance of some words. I approached her, while Mr H----, the chaplain, was assisting in getting Miss D---- to a chair.

"Let him die!--let him die!" she exclaimed. "Is not his doom inevitable? You will torture my Eugene by keeping in his life till the law demands its victim, and he may be carried--carried! O God!--to a second death, ten times more cruel than that which he is now suffering."

"No rejection of the petition has been intimated," I replied; "and there is hope to the last grain in life's ebbing glass. It is not yet two years since a reprieve came to a prisoner, in this very jail, within three hours of the appointed term of his life. You have spoken from the impulse of an agony which has overcome the truer feelings of a mother and the better dictates of prudence."

"Small, small, indeed, is that hope which a mother may not see through the gloom of a despair such as mine," she replied. "But what means that dreadful noise in Eugene's cell?"

"Only the efforts of the men to keep him awake," replied I. "My duty requires my efforts in behalf of a fellow-creature to the last moment. Reflect for an instant, and the proper feeling will again vindicate its place in the heart of a parent."

"Dreadful alternative!" she replied. "But, sir, hear me. I am his mother, and I tell you, from the divination of a mother's heart, that there will now be no respite. I say it again; it would be a relief to me if I heard, at this moment, that he had escaped by death that tragedy which will now be rendered a thousand times more painful to him and dreadful to me."

The father moved his eyes, and fixed them on the face of the mother of his boy, who, in her agony, thus called for his death in a form which bore even a shade of relief from the horror of what awaited the victim. It was, indeed, an extraordinary request; and told, as no words spoken by mortal had ever told, the pregnancy of an anguish that could seek for alleviation (if I may use so inadequate a phrase) from so fearful an alternative. All were, for a time, now silent, and there was no sound to be heard but the deep sobs of the daughter, as she recovered from her swoon; the struggle in the throat of the mother; and the shuffling and tramping in the cell of the prisoner.

"There is still hope," I whispered in the ear of the mother.

"None--none!" she ejaculated again. "My Eugene! my Eugene!"

She reclined back, with her hands over her face, still sobbing out the name of her son. I pointed to the father to assist her, while I should go again to ascertain the state of the son; but he did not seem to understand me--retaining still his rigid position, and looking with the calmness of despair on the scene around him. Her silence continued but a few moments; and when she opened her eyes again, it was to fix them on me.

"What are you doing?" she exclaimed again. "What, in the name of heaven, are you doing to my Eugene?--Saving him for second, and still more cruel death. It might have been all over. Let me see him--let me see him!"

And she rose to proceed to the cell where her son was confined; but her strength failed her, and she again reclined helplessly back in her seat. The clergyman's ministrations were called for by these uttered sentiments, which seemed so little in accordance with the precepts of Holy Writ, however natural to the bursting heart of the mother, to whom the reported death of her son, in his unparalleled situation might almost have been termed a boon. Retreating from a scene so fraught with misery, I hastened back to Eugene, who was still in the arms of the men. One of them whispered to me that he had spoken when he heard the shrill cry of his sister; but, immediately after, he relapsed again into stupor. The men complained of being exhausted by their efforts to keep him moving. His weight was now almost that of a dead body; and it was only at intervals that he made any struggles to move himself by the aid of his paralysed limbs. Two other individuals were got to relieve them; and the compulsory motions were continued. The lethargy had not altogether mastered the sentient powers; and, the operation having been stopped that I might examine his condition, he lifted his head slowly, looked round him with a vacant stare, and, after a few moments, muttered again the word "hour." I pulled out my watch, and told him that it was twenty minutes past one, he understood me, as I thought; and pronouncing indistinctly "mother," he again sank into apparent listlessness. The men again resumed their work.

Meanwhile, a buzz from without intimated too distinctly that the mob was collecting to witness the fate of their townsman. There was no distinct sound, save that which a mass of people, under the depressing feelings of sorrow, seem to send forth involuntarily--making the air, as it were, thick, and yet with no articulation or distinct noise which can be caught by the ear of one at a distance, or within the walls of a house. Eugene, I am satisfied, was unable to recognise the faint indication. It was well for him. I learned, from the turnkey, that the sound of the hammer in the erection of the gallows had put him almost distracted, and precipitated the execution of the purpose, which he had wished to delay till after the arrival of the mail. I had little doubt that he might now be kept from the grasp of the death-stupor for the remaining three quarters of an hour; but, alas! what would be my triumph? Every minute added to the certainty that I was only preparing for him and his relations greater pain; for, in any view, he could not walk to the fatal spot without as much aid as might have sufficed to carry him; and it was even more than probable that he would be so overcome that that latter operation would require to be resorted to, under the stern sanction of a law that behoved to be put in force within a given time, or not at all. The case I am now describing might suggest some consideration worthy of the attention of our legislators, who, arrogating to themselves a license as wide as the limits of the human mind, deny all manner of discretion to the superintendents of the last execution of the law. We profess to be abhorrent from scenes of torture, as well as, on grounds of policy, hostile to a species of punishment which, indeed, defeats its own ends; and yet I could give more than one case where the substance has been retained in all its atrocity, while the form was veiled by flimsy excuses of a false necessity. My situation was now a very painful one indeed. I was training and supporting the victim for the altar; rescuing from death only to sacrifice him with more bloody rites and a crueller spirit of immolation. The words of his mother, wrung from the agony of a parent's love, rang in my ears; the look of the father--that of imbecile despair--was imprinted on my mind; the hour was fast on the wing; all hope had perished; and before me was the unfortunate youth, handsome, elegant, and interesting, even in the writhings of the master-fiend, suffering a death which was to be, in effect, repeated in another and a crueller form. I had seen him under circumstances of friendship, and the ebullitions of his generous spirit; and I was become, as I pictured to myself, his enemy, who would not allow him to die, to escape from shame and an increased agony of dissolving nature. Will I admit it? For a moment or two I hesitated; and, indeed, had half-resolved to tell the men to stop--the time might yet have sufficed for finishing what he had begun. If he was not dead before two, he would, at least be beyond feeling; and, if the officials chose to take the last step of getting him carried to the gallows, they would in effect be immolating a corpse.

My better and calmer thoughts of duty, however, prevailed; and, in the meantime, I saw the prudence of preventing any meeting between Eugene and his parents, which could tend to nothing but an increase of pain on the side of those who were still able to feel--for, as regarded the young man himself, he was beyond the impulse of the feelings that might otherwise have been called up, even by such a scene. I was not even ill pleased to hear from the under turnkey, that the magistrates had given orders for the departure of the friends; though, for my own satisfaction, I wished that the father, who had still some command of himself, might visit his son for a few minutes, and sanction my proceedings with his approbation. I was informed also by the turnkey, that the father was resisting to the utmost of his power the efforts of the mother to get into the cell. He probably saw too clearly that in the excited condition in which she still remained, the scene might prove disastrous, as affecting either life or reason; and, if I could judge from what I myself felt in spite of the blunting effects of a long acquaintanceship with misery in its various phases, there was good reason for his fears. The scene presented features

"Direr than incubus's haggard train."

I had just looked my watch--it wanted now only twenty minutes of the last hour. The order for the friends to quit the jail was about to be obeyed. The father sent a messenger for me. I repaired to the cell; but to avoid the appeals of the mother and daughter, I beckoned him forth to the lobby. He asked me whether he should see his son now that he was all but insensible, and could not probably recognise him. He feared that he could not stand the scene, for that the calmness he assumed was false! I replied that it certainly required no ordinary firmness; and yet the pain might in some degree be even lessened by the state of stupor and insensibility in which the youth still continued. He fixed his eyes on my face with an expression of forced and unnatural calmness, that pained me more than the death-like inanity of the still beautiful countenance of his son, or the hysterical excitement of the mother. He at last seized my hand and proceeded along to the cell hurriedly, as the turnkey was crying loudly for the friends to depart. We entered and stood for a moment. He stood and gazed at his son, as the latter was still kept moving by the men; but Eugene was apparently unconscious of the presence of his parents. A loud cry from the dense crowd who had assembled to witness the execution, struck my ear. I ran to the window, and saw a man in the act of coming off a horse, whose sides were covered with foam and blood. The cries of the crowd continued, and I could distinctly hear the word "_reprieve_" mixed with the shouts. Mr. D---- was at my back, and I felt his hands press me like a vice. The two men who were supporting Eugene, had also heard the sound, and, paralysed by the extraordinary announcement, they actually let the prisoner sink on the floor. The sound of his fall made me turn; the father had vanished, doubtless to meet the messenger, and communicate the tidings to his wife and daughter. A great bustle in the neighbouring cells succeeded. The two men stood and looked at me in silence. Eugene still lay on the floor, to all appearance insensible. By my orders he was immediately again lifted up, and dragged more violently than ever, backwards and forwards. In a few seconds, the turnkey came in, and struck off the irons, by which his ancle had been so severely torn that the blood flowed from it on the floor. He informed me that he was indeed reprieved, and that the fault of the delay was attributable to the authorities in London. I shouted in the ear of the young man the electric word; he lifted his head, looked wildly around him for a few seconds, and uttered a strange gurgling sound unlike any expression of the human voice I ever heard. I was indeed uncertain whether he understood me or not. In a few minutes more, the cell was crowded--the father, mother, and daughter, the chaplain, the messenger, and several of the officials, all bursting in, to see the condition of the criminal. To this I was not averse; because the more excitement that could be produced in the mind of the youth, the greater chance remained of our being able to keep off the deadly effects of the drug. A thousand times did the parent and mother sound into his dull ear the vocable pregnant with so much relief to him and his friends; but it was not until two hours afterwards that he was so far recovered as to understand perfectly the narrow escape he had made from death. In the evening he was conveyed home in a carriage; and, as they were leaving the jail, he looked out at the grim apparatus which had been erected for him, and which the workmen were removing in the midst of a dense crowd of citizens.

Some days afterwards, Eugene D---- had almost entirely recovered from the effects of the poison. One day when I called, I found him lying on a sofa, with his mother sitting by his side. She took her eyes off her son, and bent them on me till tears filled them.

"Before you entered," she said, "I was talking to Eugene about the request I made to you in the jail on that dreadful day, to let my son die. Repeatedly since, have I thought of my wild words; but they know little of human nature, at least little of the feelings of a mother in my situation, who could brand them as unnatural, or doubt the sanity that recognised fully their effect."

"I am too well apprised, madam," I replied, "of the workings of that organ, whose changes often startle ourselves, to be surprised at the words you then made use of. I knew not, after all, if you did not exhibit as much heroism as Brutus, who condemned his son to death; certainly more than Zaleucus, who condemned his to the loss of an eye, having first submitted to the loss of his own, to make the love of a father quadrate with the justice of the law-giver."

"And what say you to yourself, to whom I owe the safety of my Eugene?" she added.

"An Acesias might have accomplished all that I accomplished, madam--for all I did was to keep off sleep; but, if the secret must needs be told, I had some doubts at least of the humanity of my proceedings, whatever I might have thought of my duty."

Eugene afterwards went to the East Indies, where he made a fortune. Some pecuniary embarrassments afterwards overtook the family, on which occasion he sent them home the one half of the money he had made, whereby they were again placed in a condition of affluence. A present was also sent to me. It is not yet very many years ago since I saw Eugene. He had assumed another name in India, where he had married a very beautiful woman, and to whom he again returned.

THE UNBIDDEN GUEST,

OR, JEDBURGH'S REGAL FESTIVAL.

"In the mid revels, the first ominous night Of their espousals, when the room shone bright With lighted tapers--the king and the queen leading The curious measures, lords and ladies treading The self-same strains--the king looks back by chance, And spies a strange intruder fill the dance; Namely, a mere anatomy, quite bare, His naked limbs both without flesh and hair, (As we decipher Death,) who stalks about Keeping true measure till the dance be out."

_Heywood's Hierarchie of the Blessed Angels._

There is no river in this country which presents in its course, scenes more beautifully romantic than the little Jed. Though it exhibits not the dizzy cliffs where the eagles build their nests, the mass of waters, the magnitude and the boldness, which give the character of sublimity to a scene; yet, as it winds its course through undulating hills where the forest trees entwine their broad branches, or steals along by the foot of the red, rocky precipices, where the wild flowers and the broom blossom from every crevice of their perpendicular sides, and from whose summits the woods bend down, beautiful as rainbows, it presenteth pictures of surpassing loveliness, which the eye delights to dwell upon. It is a fair sight to look down from the tree-clad hills upon the ancient burgh, with the river half circling it, and gardens, orchards, woods, in the beauty of summer blossoming, or the magnificence of their autumnal hues, encompassing it, while the venerable Abbey riseth stately in the midst of all, as a temple in paradise. Such is the character of the scenery around Jedburgh now; and, in former ages, its beauty rendered it a favourite resort of the Scottish Kings.

About the year 1270, an orphan boy, named Patrick Douglas, herded a few sheep upon the hills, which were the property of the monks of Melrose. Some of the brotherhood, discovering him to be a boy of excellent parts, instructed him to read and to write; and perceiving the readiness with which he acquired these arts, they sought also to initiate him into all the learning of the age, and to bring him up for their order. To facilitate and complete his instructions, they had him admitted amongst them, as a _convert_ or lay-brother. But, though the talents of the shepherd boy caused him to be regarded as a prodigy by all within the monastery, from the Lord Abbot down to the kitchener and his assistants; yet, with Patrick, as with many others even now, gifts were not graces. He had no desire to wear the white cassock, narrow scapulary, and plain linen hood of the Cistertian brethren; neither did he possess the devoutness necessary for performing his devotions seven times a-day; and when the bell roused him at two in the morning, to what was called the _nocturnal_ service, Patrick arose reluctantly; for, though compelled to wedge himself into a narrow bed at eight o'clock in the evening, it was his wont to lie awake, musing on what he had read or learned, until past midnight; and, when the _nocturnal_ was over, he again retired to sleep, until he was aroused at six for _matins_; but, after these came other devotions, called _tierce_, the _sexte_, the _none_, _vespers_, and the _compline_, at nine in the morning, at noon, at three in the afternoon, at six in the evening and before eight. These services broke in on his favourite studies; and, possessing more talent than devotion, while engaged in them he thought more of his studies than of them. Patrick, therefore, refused to take the monastic vow. He

"had heard of war, And longed to follow to the field some warlike lord."

He, however, was beloved by all; and when he left the monastery, the Abbot and the brethren gave him their benediction, and bestowed gifts upon him. He also carried with him letters from the Lord Abbot and Prior, to men who were mighty in power at the court of King Philip of France.