"All right," he said; "this comes of being a married man; a ten miles"
tramp, with a heart fluttering like a partridge all the way. Well, we old bachelors have nothing to hurry for, and can afford to take it comfortably. I"ll go down to Bucks, and be at the old woman"s to supper.
But keep dark; I want to come down upon her and Kate all of a sudden, to say nothing of that little shaver and cuff--so keep a close lip, captain."
The captain gave a happy laugh, thinking that he would be too pleasantly employed for any chance at gossip, so he promised silence very cordially, and the two shook hands.
"Good luck to you," exclaimed Rice, with hearty good will, "I"ll be after you in short order."
They parted here. The man with the portmanteau walking with rapid strides toward the highway which led to the country, and our sailor friend taking a more leisurely course into the town.
He was so busy with thoughts of home at first that a certain bustle and excitement among the people upon the sidewalks failed to arrest his attention. But as he approached the heart of the city this unusual bustle aroused him. The people all seemed to be going one way, men hurried along in eager haste, women jostled against each other in their reckless movements, some dragging little children after them, and scolding their slow progress.
Rice followed the current. He, too, became anxious to see what was taking a whole population so completely in one direction, and having plenty of time, sauntered on, with the easy roll learned in his home on the rolling deep. He asked no questions, indeed he felt very little interest in the matter. Something was going on--it might be a political meeting, or "a general training," it made very little difference to him which it should prove. There seemed to be a crowd a.s.sembling somewhere, and that was all he cared about the matter.
At last the throng of people grew so thick around one of these green enclosures, common to the City of Elms, that Rice made his way onward with some difficulty. He paused to take an observation, saw the great square crowded full of people that murmured and swayed to and fro, when new crowds poured in from the streets, as he had seen the ocean in many a dangerous storm.
The general excitement fully aroused him now, and he looked keenly around while elbowing his way through the human ma.s.ses, asking the crowd in general, and no one in particular, what the noise was about.
No one answered him. All were eagerly searching for commodious standing room, and his questions remained unheeded. At last he saw, looming up in the centre of the public green, a ma.s.s of timber, great, heavy oaken posts, and a cross-beam rising above a scaffold, upon which a ma.s.s of white, that possibly shrouded a human figure, was lifted above the crowd.
Rice paused, with a sudden exclamation.
"What is that?" he said, turning to a female, who elbowed him fiercely with one arm, lifting up her child with the other.
"What is it? Can"t you see? Look for yourself. What should it be but a gallows, and a woman on it?" cried the mother, lifting the little, golden-haired girl on her shoulder, that she might command a view of the show.
"A gallows, and a woman on it!" exclaimed Rice, losing half of his ruddy color. "Oh, my good woman, what has the poor thing done?"
"Done! why, where did you come from? Done enough to hang her as high as Haman, where she ought to be swinging this minute. Done, indeed!"
With these words the woman thrust herself forward, marking her rude progress by the frightened face of the child, which rose and fell in that ocean of human heads like some flower tossed upward by a storm.
A strange feeling seized upon Rice--a desperate wish to struggle through the crowd, and flee from the spot. He turned and pressed blindly against the human ma.s.ses that heaved around him. But, in spite of his great strength, they bore him onward like the waters of a vortex, till he was flung, against his own will, almost at the foot of the gallows.
Yes; a woman was shrouded in that white drapery--a fair young girl, so fair and so young that the sailor"s heart melted with pity at the first glance. How still and white she was. How like some of the Madonnas he had seen in the churches and cathedrals of foreign parts; those hands were folded under the cloud-like sleeves. She was very slender and frail. Rice could trace the blue veins on her temples, and see the quiver of her hands under the white drapery. A hideous thing was coiled, like a great ash-colored serpent, around that delicate neck, and fell writhing along the scaffold.
Rice uttered a cry of horror; something in that face smote all the strength from his heart. The sight of that rope made him tremble like a little child. The meek eyelids drooping over the shrinking agony of those eyes, the mouth parting now and then from its tremulous pressure, the small feet resting so helplessly on the scaffold. It was a pitiful sight.
I cannot explain why that craving desire to know who the criminal was, seized upon the strong man, whose face the unhappy creature would not have known had she lifted those heavy eyes? "Who is it? why is she here?
will no one tell me?"
An old woman, or the shadow of an old woman, who leaned against the timbers of the gallows, looked up at this outcry, and her eyes settled on his face. Then her poor withered hands were slowly lifted, and fell helplessly into his.
"My son!"
"Mother--my mother, and looking so!"
"Hush!" she said, lifting her trembling finger, and pointing to the girl on the scaffold. "It is our Katharine."
CHAPTER LVIII.
THE MOTHER AND SON.
Rice did not speak--he did not move--a weight of blood fell back on his heart, turning it to stone. He felt like a drowning man, with the billows of a turbulent ocean heaving around him.
The old woman left her support against the timbers of the gallows, and rested against him. Unconsciously he circled her with one arm. She looked up in his face, and the slow relief of tears gathered in her eyes.
All this had pa.s.sed very quietly. No one saw it, for but few had heeded the old woman who crept silently after the cortege when it left the jail. As the sheriff led his charge up to the scaffold, a stifled moan had made him pause, and he saw a thin hand steal forth from the crowd and touch that of the prisoner, without seeming to heed the act; for he was a kind man, and guessed who the woman was. Then the strong, brave son came up, and the old woman recognized him with sorrowful gladness; but the crowd was eager for the spectacle of human shame, and cared nothing for that.
Oh, how differently the half brother looked on that scaffold now! He saw the delicate form drooping in the presence of a great mult.i.tude. The sunlight fell around her with a soft, mocking radiance. Not even a cloud crept mercifully into the heavens to vail her with shadows. Her eyes were bent on the rough, unjoined boards beneath her feet. The tumult of popular curiosity rose and swelled around her, but she never moved or looked up. Coa.r.s.e words and harsh revilings pa.s.sed by her, but save a quiver of the eyelids, you would not have known that she heard them.
As she sat thus meek and still while the minutes of her punishment dropped into eternity, carrying her shame with them, the great mult.i.tude around her grew turbulent. After all, what was it to walk so far and stay so long only to see a young girl sitting upon a platform of boards, without giving a sign or lifting her eyes? They had come to see a murderess--something wild and exciting--a scene to frighten their children with in after times, and talk over with the neighbors when subjects of gossip ran low. Why did not the sheriff make her stand up and confess her crime before them all? That would be something to satisfy the law!
As the hour wore on these expressions of discontent grew strong. Men shouted for her to stand up, while the mocking voices of disappointed females scoffed at her with unwomanly fierceness.
All feelings are contagious when humanity crowds itself into ma.s.ses.
Lashed by these jibes the people grew coa.r.s.e and cruel--the meek silence of the prisoner seemed like obstinacy to them. Her drooping face, half hidden from their eager glances, had no right to evade them thus.
These murmurs of discontent grew turbulent and surged through the crowd like the dashing of spent waves upon a rocky bank--a sea of human faces waved to and fro, white and terrified with conflicting emotions. In all that throng there was, perhaps, not one countenance which expressed indifference; a great painter might have made his name immortal could he have pictured that dense mult.i.tude as it really appeared. Men and women looked cruel and hard, as if they longed to drag the miserable young creature down from her place of shame with their own hands and put her to death. Here and there a visage appeared which seemed to express something akin to pity; but the most tender-hearted would hardly have ventured, amid that excited populace, to have expressed a word of sympathy.
In the midst of this tumult Rice heard a voice close to his elbow, which hissed in his ear like a serpent. A rough looking man stood by him with a face full of cruel mockery uplifted to the gallows. He stooped down and spoke to a lad who stood near:
"Go and give the halter a jerk, my little fellow, and I"ll pay ye a ninepence the minute it"s done. If you pull her off so much the better; I"ll make the ninepence a shilling!"
These were the words which made Rice start, and look fiercely around.
He saw the boy, an evil-visaged imp, skulking away toward the gallows.
Looking back over his shoulder, with a sly, cunning smile.
"Mother, stand alone one minute," he said, in a hoa.r.s.e whisper.
The old woman could not stand without support, but she fell back against the gallows timbers, looking wildly in his face. He waited for nothing, but sprang into the crowd with the bound of a panther, grappled the lad by the throat, just as his hand touched an end of the rope which had fallen over the scaffold. With the strength of a giant he lifted the boy high in the air with both hands, and pitched him far over the heads of the mult.i.tude. Here the urchin fluttered and turned, like some uncouth bird, till he was engulfed by the crowd, amid shouts of laughter and wild exclamations of astonishment.
Pale and trembling with rage, Rice turned upon the man who had instigated this dastardly act, but the craven took prompt warning, and plunged into the crowd, which, closing upon him, left Rice with his hand clenched and specks of foam trembling on his lips. A hand was laid heavily on his shoulder. Thinking it was some constable ready to arrest him, Rice turned, but only to meet a mild and elderly face, whose placid eyes looked gently into his. It was old Mr. Thrasher.
"Stop, stop, my friend. Let the laws be fulfilled without tumult. G.o.d may be doing a great work here."
"But what is man now doing, I should like to know?" cried the angry sailor. "Can your G.o.d look down on such work as this and not hate the people He has made? Look at this girl! look at the old woman yonder! My mother and my sister!"
"Your mother--sister! Then you are David Rice?"
"Yes, I am Dave Rice, that old woman"s son. I hadn"t seen her for nigh upon eight years, and this is how I find her!" cried Dave, shaking all over with a burst of grief; "and that"s how I find my half sister, the sweetest little child that man ever sat eyes on."
Great tears trembled in his eyes and dropped down his cheeks, he wiped them away with the cuff of his sailor"s jacket, dashing his hand down in a pa.s.sion of self-contempt.
"What has the girl done? What does this all mean? If you know, tell me--do tell me!"