Unfortunately he had evidence enough, and could afford to take this poor mother from the rack of his questions.
When this danger was over, the prisoner fell back into her previous state of gentle resignation. So long as her husband"s reputation was safe, so long as his name was kept out of the proceedings, she had no feeling of resistance.
The business of the court went on. All the details of that strange death and burial, so far as known evidence could give them, were laid before the court. The prisoner heard them like one in a dream. Once or twice she lifted those mournful eyes as some detail struck suddenly on her remembrance; but the connecting links being deficient in her mind, baffled its consciousness. Then a change came upon the court. The witness stand was empty, and a tall, hard-faced man stood before the judge, pledging himself to prove her guilt. Katharine heard him with a sort of dreary amazement. How st.u.r.dily he denounced her. How bitter were his words. How cruelly sharp those dark eyes as they turned from the jury to her face. Poor thing, it seemed very cruel. What had she done that a strong man should hunt her to death with his words.
Then another man arose. She knew him, for he had visited her in prison.
The look which he cast upon her was full of compa.s.sion. He pleaded for her like one inspired. His face was pale with emotion--his voice faltered and his eyes filled when he turned to make a last appeal to the twelve men who held her life in their hands. In the midst of this appeal, Katharine came out of her dream and began to weep from self pity. Her sufferings all rose vividly before her, but it seemed another person she was pitying, not herself. She met the softened glances turned toward the place where she sat with tender sympathy, as if they were all deploring the misery of some third person. Thus, a faint glow shone out from the pallor of her face, which deepened the sentiment in her behalf.
Then the judge arose with his face to the jury. His voice was slow and grave, his countenance sad. She could not comprehend him. He was neither stern like her enemy, nor pathetic like her friend. Still, under his seriousness she felt that some pity for her youth existed. When he sat down she gave him a long, sorrowful look, which he broke by lifting one hand to his face as if those eyes troubled him.
The twelve men arose and went out, one after another, like mourners at a funeral. Then a murmur ran through the court, and suppressed whispers went from lip to lip. She knew that these men held her life, but could not realize that their fiat was so near. Time went by. It might have been minutes, it might have been hours, for aught she knew, since those men had left their seats empty. The court was still thronged. The judge sat in his arm-chair, shrouding his face with one hand.
A faint bustle. The twelve men glided into their old places, and a voice, deep, solemn, and stern, spoke out:
"Prisoner, look upon the jury--jury, look upon the prisoner."
Katharine stood up. Those twelve men met her mournful gaze with shrinking glances.
"Guilty, or not guilty?"
"Guilty! But not of murder in the first degree. Not guilty unto death!"
There was a hushed tumult in the crowd. Those who looked upon her face rejoiced that she was saved the last penalty. Some muttered bitterly against the verdict, and grew indignant with the jury for depriving them of a death spectacle; and a few said, in their hearts, this verdict is unjust--that young creature is innocent.
Katharine sat down; a band, hard and firm as iron, that had seemed tightening around her heart all the day, broke, and flooded her being with tears. Poor, poor child! she had been so afraid to die. Amid all her heroism, there was a perpetual dread, which made her gentle nature shrink from the horror before her. Besides, death would take her away from _him_, perhaps, forever and ever. This thought had been the most cruel of all. But it was over now. They would not take her life--she might see him again--he would love her all the better for having shielded his name from this trouble and disgrace; at any rate, she would not die, she would not die.
Overwhelmed with these feelings, she heard nothing that was going on in the court, but sat with her hands clasped and quivering in her lap, while the tears fell, drop by drop, down her cheeks, whispering:
"I live! I live! and shall see him again!"
A voice called forth her name, commanding her to stand up and hear the sentence of the court.
She arose, supporting herself by the railing, for the last few moments had left her very weak. Her eyes were full of tears. She saw the judge through a mist, and his words sounded from a great distance.
"Condemned to sit upon a gallows, erected on the public common of New Haven, for one hour, with a halter around your neck; and, after that, to be confined in the State"s Prison, at Simsbury Mines, during eight years."
She heard words of kindly encouragement and entreaty to use the mercy extended by the court as a means of repentance. Her great sin, unnatural cruelty. Time for reformation--fragments like these floated by her, but they left no impression. She only comprehended one thing--they had given her life! life! life! life!
She sunk on her knees as the judge ceased, buried her face on the criminal"s seat--and thanked G.o.d that he had permitted her to live. The old widow had sat through it all quiet--as great suffering most frequently is--pale as death, but with a certain stern fort.i.tude which a Spartan mother might have felt without shame. When the jury came in she arose with slow unconsciousness, and stood upright in the presence of the court, her gray eyes heavy with anguish, her white lips parted in an agony of suspense. Guilty, but not unto death. She lifted her clasped hands feebly upward, and fell back, sobbing like a little child.
CHAPTER LV.
THE TRAIL OF THE SERPENT.
No more brilliant house than that of Mrs. Nelson could be found in the city of New York. This woman had flashed upon society like a meteor. Her dress--her style so original that they were taken to be foreign. Her quick wit and sumptuous beauty won hosts of admirers. Her carriage was the most splendid and n.o.bly appointed of any that appeared in the fashionable thoroughfares. Every thing rich and unique that a prodigal taste could imagine or money obtain, was to be found in her home. All the costly adornments which her husband had prepared for her, with so much solicitude, were crowded into side rooms and entrance halls, while she filled the princ.i.p.al apartments after a fancy entirely her own. The great joy of her life was in spending money, and in parading the result before the world. To defy emulation and excite envy was her crowning desire. Yet, with all this prodigality, she was never generous, never felt the sweet impulses of charity, or knew the gentle bliss of self-sacrifice.
It sometimes, nay, often happens, that those who rise from poverty to sudden wealth, are more hard-hearted than persons born to affluence.
This may arise from a reluctance to review painful or humiliating a.s.sociations; or it may be that, with some characters, poverty has a hardening process, and, when lifted above it, they feel a sort of pleasure in seeing others suffer as they have done. This is a bad phase of human nature--but who can say that it seldom presents itself in society.
Mrs. Nelson was one of these women. She would not, knowingly, have perpetrated a crime, or done a palpable injustice; but her whole life was made up of trivial vanity and intense selfishness. What little feeling she possessed, had been sacrificed to a craving desire for wealth, and she bent all her faculties to one end, that of securing all its privileges and enjoyments to herself.
It was not long before her husband became convinced of this; for real and deep pa.s.sion rendered him keen sighted. His character, naturally stern and silent, grew bitter under this one thought; but the fatal love which had led him to lavish so much upon her, still imprisoned his heart as the serpents of the laoc.o.o.n coil around their victims.
A few months of married life, and this was the condition in which the Nelsons found themselves. He a lonely, sullen slave--she reckless and egotistical, at the best--sometimes insolent in her exactions, and always ungrateful. But this did not impair her popularity, or, in truth, meet public observation at all. To the world she was every thing charming. But it is at home we must seek this woman in order to judge her aright in this new phase of her strange life.
It was Mrs. Nelson"s caprice to breakfast alone in a little room which opened to the sunniest nook of the flower garden. In less than three weeks after her marriage she began to separate her life from that of her husband in every possible manner, and absolutely sold the fragments of time which she doled out to him, bartering them off unblushingly for some new extravagance, until even his absorbing pa.s.sion revolted at her egotism.
The room that we speak of was really an exquisite affair in its way; very cheerful and sumptuous in all its appointments. Lace curtains were looped back from the deep windows, so heavy with embroidery that they fell over the pure plate-gla.s.s like snow wreaths floating over ice.
Through this transparent cloud came the cool rustle of tree boughs, the gleam of flowers, and glimpses of warm sunshine, turning the gra.s.s to a golden green. A broad mirror, surmounted by a wreath of gilded foliage, reflected back this out-door picture from its limpid surface. The carpet appeared but a continuation of the blossoming turf without; you seemed to trample upon a living flower at every step, and the foot sank luxuriously into its rich pile, as if pressing wood moss in a forest.
The hangings upon the walls were of pale green cl.u.s.tering with golden roses. Small tables of oriental alabaster and delicate mosaic supported vases of flowers, which shed a delicate perfume through the apartment.
Two easy chairs of the most elaborate construction, and a couch that yielded to pressure like down, completed the rich a.s.semblage.
Most regally did this apartment frame in the queenly woman who formed a tableau of wonderful effect in its centre. The rare tone of her beauty demanded delicate tints, and these were in direct contrast with the colors that predominated in the room. Morning dresses, as they are now worn, were not then in vogue, but a Canton c.r.a.pe dress, of a glowing red, fell across her bosom in surplice folds, revealing glimpses of costly lace underneath; the sleeves fitted her symmetrical arms to the elbow, where they terminated in a fall of frost-like lace. A gossamer cap seemed to have settled like a b.u.t.terfly on the l.u.s.trous tresses coiled around her proud head, which she crushed ruthlessly against the back of her chair, rather than change her idle position. She held a newspaper in her hand, while her foot rested on the ebony claw of a small table, on which the frosted silver and delicate china of a breakfast service were arranged.
Mrs. Nelson was no reader, but she loved to drone over the morning papers after breakfast, picking up such fragments of gossip and news as floated through their columns with satisfaction, so long as no effort of thought was necessary. Thus her eyes roved restlessly over the paper in her hand until they fell upon the heading of a paragraph that sent the bloom for a moment from her cheeks. It was an account of Katharine Allen"s trial. She read it breathlessly from beginning to end. A cloud gathered on her fair forehead as she proceeded, which grew dark and stormy when she approached the termination.
Jealousy is more likely to spring from self-love than from pure affection. The pang which Mrs. Nelson felt was not the less keen because she had no real regard for the man whom she had married. Her arrogant vanity had been pampered till its craving could not be satisfied, and the idea that another would dare lift admiring eyes to the man it had been her pleasure to select, wounded her almost as if she had possessed a heart. She remembered Katharine Allen as she had appeared that night at her own humble home in the pine woods, and a clear conviction fell upon her that Nelson Thrasher was in some way implicated in the trouble that had fallen upon the girl. Had he--her slave, her spaniel, whom it was her right to caress or spurn, dared to swerve from his allegiance to her, even when she was the wife of another?
The question filled her heart with bitter scorn. She gloried over the fact that this girl would be degraded and crushed out of respectable life for having presumed to cross her path. She remembered the delicate beauty which had been so remarkable that evening, and bit her lips fiercely as the idea presented itself, that less adroit management on her part might have placed Katharine in the honorable possession of all she enjoyed so keenly. What if he should relent, even then? What if the knowledge of this poor girl"s terrible position should touch the heart she had herself trampled down so insolently, while it was loading her with benefits!
She grasped the paper in her hand--no, no, he must never hear the news it contained. She would change her course, and strive to endure his society. He had grown sullen of late. What if his love for her should change. The crowning pa.s.sion of her character revolted at this, but still a lurking fear crept in, and she reflected that the slavery of a strong heart would not last forever.
She touched a curious little bell that stood on the table, and a servant opened the door.
"Send me all the papers that have been brought this morning!"
The man went away and returned with several of the morning journals; she glanced them over hurriedly, pressing her lips hard, while each column was scanned. That paragraph was only to be found in the paper that lay crushed in her lap. She arose hurriedly, and pa.s.sing through the entrance hall, swept toward the kitchen.
The cook stopped in the middle of the floor, struck with astonishment by the presence of her haughty mistress in that place. Mrs. Nelson walked toward the range, and taking up a heavy poker, thrust the newspaper into the fire, holding it down till the fragments floated in black flakes over her hand. She laid the poker down, observing that the woman was regarding her curiously.
"Send in coffee, and some of those delicate French rolls which Mr.
Nelson is so fond of," she said, indifferently; "with any other nice thing you can pick up."
CHAPTER LVI.
LOVE"S GOLDEN HARVEST.
The cook was full of regrets that madame had been compelled to give her own orders, and, amid a world of protestations, Mrs. Nelson went back to her room. Soon after she rang the bell with emphasis, and directly that exquisite breakfast service was re-arranged for two, and one of the silken easy chairs rolled opposite her own.
"Go tell Mr. Nelson that I am waiting for him to breakfast with me," she said, drawing close to the table, and forcing the clouds from her face.