"La journee sera dure, mais elle se pa.s.sera."
"----_Se pa.s.sera_:" yes, that is true, I whispered to myself; my day also, my season of trial will be hard to bear; but that also will have an end; that also "_se pa.s.sera_." Thus I talked or thought so long as I thought at all; for the hour was now rapidly approaching when thinking in any shape would for some time be at an end for me.
That day, as the morning advanced, I went again, accompanied by Hannah, to the police court and to the prison--a vast, ancient, in parts ruinous, and most gloomy pile of building. In those days the administration of justice was, if not more corrupt, certainly in its inferior departments by far more careless than it is at present, and liable to thousands of interruptions and mal-practices, supporting themselves upon old traditionary usages which required at least half a century, and the shattering everywhere given to old systems by the French Revolution, together with the universal energy of mind applied to those subjects over the whole length and breadth of Christendom, to approach with any effectual reforms. Knowing this, and having myself had direct personal cognizance of various cases in which bribery had been applied with success, I was not without considerable hope that perhaps Hannah and myself might avail ourselves of this irregular pa.s.sport through the gates of the prison. And, had the new regulation been of somewhat longer standing, there is little doubt that I should have been found right; unfortunately, as yet it had all the freshness of new-born vigour, and kept itself in remembrance by the singular irritation it excited. Besides this, it was a pet novelty of one particular minister new to the possession of power, anxious to distinguish himself, proud of his creative functions within the range of his office, and very sensitively jealous on the point of opposition to his mandates. Vain, therefore, on this day were all my efforts to corrupt the jailers; and, in fact, antic.i.p.ating a time when I might have occasion to corrupt some of them for a more important purpose and on a larger scale, I did not think it prudent to proclaim my character beforehand as one who tampered with such means, and thus to arm against myself those jealousies in official people which it was so peculiarly important that I should keep asleep.
All that day, however, I lingered about the avenues and vast courts in the precincts of the prison, and near one particular wing of the building, which had been pointed out to me by a jailer as the section allotted to those who were in the situation of Agnes; that is, waiting their final commitment for trial. The building generally he could indicate with certainty, but he professed himself unable to indicate the particular part of it which "the young woman brought in on the day previous" would be likely to occupy; consequently he could not point out the window from which her cell (her "_cell!_" what a word!) would be lighted. "But, master," he went on to say, "I would advise n.o.body to try that game." He looked with an air so significant, and at the same time used a gesture so indicative of private understanding, that I at once apprehended his meaning, and a.s.sured him that he had altogether misconstrued my drift; that, as to attempts at escape, or at any mode of communicating with the prisoner from the outside, I trusted all _that_ was perfectly needless; and that at any rate in my eyes it was perfectly hopeless. "Well, master," he replied, "that"s neither here nor there.
You"ve come down handsomely, that I _will_ say; and where a gentleman acts like a gentleman, and behaves himself as such, I"m not the man to go and split upon him for a word. To be sure it"s quite nat"ral that a gentleman--put case that a young woman is his fancy woman--it"s nothing but nat"ral that he should want to get her out of such an old rat-hole as this, where many"s the fine-timbered creature, both he and she, that has lain to rot, and has never got out of the old trap at all, first or last"----"How so?" I interrupted him; "surely they don"t detain the corpses of prisoners?" "Ay, but mind you--put case that he or that she should die in this rat-trap before sentence is past, why then the prison counts them as its own children, and buries them in its own chapel--that old stack of pigeon-holes that you see up yonder to the right hand." So, then, after all, thought I, if my poor Agnes should, in her desolation and solitary confinement to these wretched walls, find her frail strength give way--should the moral horrors of her situation work their natural effect upon her health, and she should chance to die within this dungeon, here within this same dungeon will she lie to the resurrection, and in that case her prison-doors have already closed upon her for ever.
The man, who perhaps had some rough kindness in his nature, though tainted by the mercenary feelings too inevitably belonging to his situation, seemed to guess at the character of my ruminations by the change in my countenance, for he expressed some pity for my being "in so much trouble"; and it seemed to increase his respect for me that this trouble should be directed to the case of a woman, for he appeared to have a manly sense of the peculiar appeal made to the honour and gallantry of man, by the mere general fact of the feebleness and the dependence of woman. I looked at him more attentively in consequence of the feeling tone in which he now spoke, and was surprised that I had not more particularly noticed him before; he was a fine-looking, youngish man, with a bold Robin-hood style of figure and appearance; and, morally speaking, he was absolutely transfigured to my eyes by the effect worked upon him for the moment, through the simple calling up of his better nature. However, he recurred to his cautions about the peril in a legal sense of tampering with the windows, bolts, and bars of the old decaying prison; which, in fact, precisely according to the degree in which its absolute power over its prisoners was annually growing less and less, grew more and more jealous of its own reputation, and punished the attempts to break loose with the more severity, in exact proportion as they were the more tempting by the chances of success. I persisted in disowning any schemes of the sort, and especially upon the ground of their hopelessness. But this, on the other hand, was a ground that in his inner thoughts he treated with scorn; and I could easily see that, with a little skilful management of opportunity, I might, upon occasion, draw from him all the secrets he knew as to the special points of infirmity in this old ruinous building. For the present, and until it should certainly appear that there was some use to be derived from this species of knowledge, I forbore to raise superfluous suspicions by availing myself further of his communicative disposition. Taking, however, the precaution of securing his name, together with his particular office and designation in the prison, I parted from him as if to go home, but in fact to resume my sad roamings up and down the precincts of the jail.
What made these precincts much larger than otherwise they would have been, was the circ.u.mstance that, by a usage derived from older days, both criminal prisoners and those who were prisoners for debt, equally fell under the custody of this huge caravanserai for the indifferent reception of crime, of misdemeanour, and of misfortune. And those who came under the two first t.i.tles were lodged here through all stages of their connection with public justice; alike when mere objects of vague suspicion to the police, when under examination upon a specific charge, when fully committed for trial, when convicted and under sentence, awaiting the execution of that sentence, and, in a large proportion of cases, even through their final stage of punishment, when it happened to be of any nature compatible with indoor confinement. Hence it arose that the number of those who haunted the prison gates with or without a t.i.tle to admission was enormous; all the relatives, or more properly the acquaintances and connections of the criminal population within the prison, being swelled by all the families of needy debtors who came daily either to offer the consolation of their society, or to diminish their common expenditure by uniting their slender establishments. One of the rules applied to the management of this vast mult.i.tude that were every day candidates for admission was, that to save the endless trouble as well as risk, perhaps, of opening and shutting the main gates to every successive arrival, periodic intervals were fixed for the admission by wholesale: and as these periods came round every two hours, it would happen at many parts of the day that vast crowds acc.u.mulated waiting for the next opening of the gate. These crowds were a.s.sembled in two or three large outer courts, in which also were many stalls and booths, kept there upon some local privilege of ancient inheritance, or upon some other plea made good by gifts or bribes--some by Jews and others by Christians, perhaps equally Jewish. Superadded to these stationary elements of this miscellaneous population, were others, drawn thither by pure motives of curiosity, so that altogether an almost permanent mob was gathered together in these courts; and amid this mob it was,--from I know not what definite motive, partly because I thought it probable that amongst these people I should hear the case of Agnes peculiarly the subject of conversation; and so, in fact, it did really happen,--but partly, and even more, I believe, because I now awfully began to shrink from solitude. Tumult I must have, and distraction of thought. Amid this mob, I say, it was that I pa.s.sed two days. Feverish I had been from the first,--and from bad to worse, in such a case, was, at any rate, a natural progress; but, perhaps, also amongst this crowd of the poor, the abjectly wretched, the ill-fed, the desponding, and the dissolute, there might be very naturally a larger body of contagion lurking than accorded to their mere numerical expectations. There was at that season a very extensive depopulation going on in some quarters of this great metropolis, and in other cities of the same empire, by means of a very malignant typhus. This fever is supposed to be the peculiar product of jails; and though it had not as yet been felt as a scourge and devastator of this particular jail, or at least the consequent mortality had been hitherto kept down to a moderate amount, yet it was highly probable that a certain quant.i.ty of contagion, much beyond the proportion of other popular a.s.semblages less uniformly wretched in their composition, was here to be found all day long; and doubtless my excited state, and irritable habit of body, had offered a peculiar predisposition that favoured the rapid development of this contagion.
However this might be, the result was, that on the evening of the second day which I spent in haunting the purlieus of the prison (consequently the night preceding the second public examination of Agnes), I was attacked by ardent fever in such unmitigated fury, that before morning I had lost all command of my intellectual faculties. For some weeks I became a pitiable maniac, and in every sense the wreck of my former self; and seven entire weeks, together with the better half of an eighth week, had pa.s.sed over my head whilst I lay unconscious of time and its dreadful freight of events, excepting in so far as my disordered brain, by its fantastic coinages, created endless mimicries and mockeries of these events--less substantial, but oftentimes less afflicting, or less agitating. It would have been well for me had my destiny decided that I was not to be recalled to this world of wo. But I had no such happiness in store. I recovered, and through twenty and eight years my groans have recorded the sorrow I feel that I did.
I shall not rehea.r.s.e circ.u.mstantially, and point by point, the sad unfolding, as it proceeded through successive revelations to me, of all which had happened during my state of physical incapacity. When I first became aware that my wandering senses had returned to me, and knew, by the cessation of all throbbings, and the unutterable pains that had so long possessed my brain, that I was now returning from the gates of death, a sad confusion a.s.sailed me as to some indefinite cloud of evil that had been hovering over me at the time when I first fell into a state of insensibility. For a time I struggled vainly to recover the lost connection of my thoughts, and I endeavoured ineffectually to address myself to sleep.
I opened my eyes, but found the glare of light painful beyond measure.
Strength, however, it seemed to me that I had, and more than enough, to raise myself out of bed. I made the attempt, but fell back, almost giddy with the effort. At the sound of the disturbance which I had thus made, a woman whom I did not know came from behind a curtain, and spoke to me.
Shrinking from any communication with a stranger, especially one whose discretion I could not estimate in making discoveries to me with the requisite caution, I asked her simply what o"clock it was.
"Eleven in the forenoon," she replied.
"And what day of the month?"
"The second," was her brief answer.
I felt almost a sense of shame in adding--"The second! but of what month?"
"Of June," was the startling rejoinder.
On the 8th of April I had fallen ill, and it was now actually the 2nd of June. Oh! sickening calculation! revolting register of hours! for in that same moment which brought back this one recollection, perhaps by steadying my brain, rushed back in a torrent all the other dreadful remembrances of the period, and now the more so, because, though the event was still uncertain as regarded my knowledge, it must have become dreadfully certain as regarded the facts of the case, and the happiness of all who were concerned. Alas! one little circ.u.mstance too painfully a.s.sured me that this event had not been a happy one. Had Agnes been restored to her liberty and her home, where would she have been found but watching at my bedside? That too certainly I knew, and the inference was too bitter to support.
On this same day, some hours afterwards, upon Hannah"s return from the city, I received from her, and heard with perfect calmness, the whole sum of evil which awaited me. Little Francis--she took up her tale at that point--"was with G.o.d:" so she expressed herself. He had died of the same fever which had attacked me--had died and been buried nearly five weeks before. Too probably he had caught the infection from me. Almost--such are the caprices of human feeling--almost I could have rejoiced that this young memorial of my vanished happiness had vanished also. It gave me a pang, nevertheless, that the grave should thus have closed upon him before I had seen his fair little face again. But I steeled my heart to hear worse things than this. Next she went on to inform me that already, on the first or second day of our calamity, she had taken upon herself, without waiting for authority, on observing the rapid approaches of illness in me, and arguing the state of helplessness which would follow, to write off at once a summons in the most urgent terms to the brother of my wife. This gentleman, whom I shall call Pierpoint, was a high-spirited, generous young man as I have ever known.
When I say that he was a sportsman, that at one season of the year he did little else than pursue his darling amus.e.m.e.nt of fox-hunting, for which indeed he had almost a maniacal pa.s.sion--saying this, I shall already have prejudged him in the opinions of many, who fancy all such persons the slaves of corporal enjoyments. But, with submission, the truth lies the other way.
According to my experience, people of these habits have their bodies more than usually under their command, as being subdued by severe exercise; and their minds, neither better nor worse on an average than those of their neighbours, are more available from being so much more rarely clogged by morbid habits in that uneasy yoke-fellow of the intellectual part--the body.
He at all events was a man to justify in his own person this way of thinking; for he was a man not only of sound, but even of bold and energetic intellect, and in all moral respects one whom any man might feel proud to call his friend. This young man, Pierpoint, without delay obeyed the summons; and on being made acquainted with what had already pa.s.sed, the first step he took was to call upon Barratt, and without further question than what might ascertain his ident.i.ty, he proceeded to inflict upon him a severe horsewhipping. A worse step on his sister"s account he could not have taken. Previously to this the popular feeling had run strongly against Barratt, but now its unity was broken. A new element was introduced into the question: Democratic feelings were armed against this outrage; gentlemen and n.o.bles, it was said, thought themselves not amenable to justice; and again, the majesty of the law was offended at this intrusion upon an affair already under solemn course of adjudication. Everything, however, pa.s.ses away under the healing hand of time, and this also faded from the public mind. People remembered also that he was a brother, and in that character, at any rate, had a right to some allowances for his intemperance; and what quickened the oblivion of the affair was, which in itself was sufficiently strange, that Barratt did not revive the case in the public mind by seeking legal reparation for his injuries. It was, however, still matter of regret that Pierpoint should have indulged himself in this movement of pa.s.sion, since undoubtedly it broke and disturbed the else uniform stream of public indignation by investing the original aggressor with something like the character of an injured person; and therefore with some set-off to plead against his own wantonness of malice: his malice might now a.s.sume the n.o.bler aspect of revenge.
Thus far, in reporting the circ.u.mstances, Hannah had dallied--thus far I had rejoiced that she dallied, with the main burden of the wo; but now there remained nothing to dally with any longer--and she rushed along in her narrative, hurrying to tell--I hurrying to hear. A second, a third examination had ensued, then a final committal--all this within a week.
By that time all the world was agitated with the case; literally not the city only, vast as that city was, but the nation was convulsed and divided into parties upon the question, Whether the prosecution were one of mere malice or not? The very government of the land was reported to be equally interested, and almost equally divided in opinion. In this state of public feeling came the trial. Image to yourself, oh reader, whosoever you are, the intensity of the excitement which by that time had arisen in all people to be spectators of the scene--then image to yourself the effect of all this, a perfect consciousness that in herself as a centre was settled the whole mighty interest of the exhibition--that interest again of so dubious and mixed a character--sympathy in some with mere misfortune--sympathy in others with female frailty and guilt, not perhaps founded upon an absolute unwavering belief in her innocence even amongst those who were most loud and positive as partisans in affirming it,--and then remember that all this hideous scenical display and notoriety settled upon one whose very nature, const.i.tutionally timid, recoiled with the triple agony of womanly shame--of matronly dignity--of insulted innocence, from every mode and shape of public display. Combine all these circ.u.mstances and elements of the case, and you may faintly enter into the situation of my poor Agnes. Perhaps the best way to express it at once is by recurring to the case of a young female Christian martyr, in the early ages of Christianity, exposed in the b.l.o.o.d.y amphitheatre of Rome or Verona to "fight with wild beasts," as it was expressed in mockery--she to fight!
the lamb to fight with lions! But in reality the young martyr _had_ a fight to maintain, and a fight (in contempt of that cruel mockery) fiercer than the fiercest of her persecutors could have faced perhaps--the combat with the instincts of her own shrinking, trembling, fainting nature. Such a fight had my Agnes to maintain; and at that time there was a large party of gentlemen in whom the gentlemanly instinct was predominant, and who felt so powerfully the cruel indignities of her situation, that they made a public appeal in her behalf. One thing, and a strong one, which they said, was this:--"We all talk and move in this case as if, because the question appears doubtful to some people, and the accused party to some people wears a doubtful character, it would follow that she therefore had in reality a mixed character composed in joint proportions of the best and the worst that is imputed to her. But let us not forget that this mixed character belongs not to her, but to the infirmity of our human judgments--_they_ are mixed--_they_ are dubious--but she is not--she is, or she is not, guilty--there is no middle case--and let us consider for a single moment, that if this young lady (as many among us heartily believe) _is_ innocent, then and upon that supposition let us consider how cruel we should all think the public exposure which aggravates the other injuries (as in that case they must be thought) to which her situation exposes her." They went on to make some suggestions for the officers of the court in preparing the arrangements for the trial, and some also for the guidance of the audience, which showed the same generous anxiety for sparing the feelings of the prisoner. If these did not wholly succeed in repressing the open avowal of coa.r.s.e and brutal curiosity amongst the intensely vulgar, at least they availed to diffuse amongst the neutral and indifferent part of the public a sentiment of respect and forbearance which, emanating from high quarters, had a very extensive influence upon most of what met the eye or the ear of my poor wife. She, on the day of trial, was supported by her brother; and by that time she needed support indeed. I was reported to be dying; her little son was dead; neither had she been allowed to see him. Perhaps these things, by weaning her from all further care about life, might have found their natural effect in making her indifferent to the course of the trial, or even to its issue.
And so, perhaps, in the main, they did. But at times some lingering sense of outraged dignity, some fitful gleams of old sympathies, "the hectic of a moment," came back upon her, and prevailed over the deadening stupor of her grief. Then she shone for a moment into a starry light--sweet and woful to remember. Then----but why linger? I hurry to the close: she was p.r.o.nounced guilty; whether by a jury or a bench of judges, I do not say--having determined, from the beginning, to give no hint of the land in which all these events happened; neither is that of the slightest consequence. Guilty she was p.r.o.nounced: but sentence at that time was deferred. Ask me not, I beseech you, about the m.u.f.f or other circ.u.mstances inconsistent with the hostile evidence. These circ.u.mstances had the testimony, you will observe, of my own servants only; nay, as it turned out, of one servant exclusively: _that_ naturally diminished their value. And, on the other side, evidence was arrayed, perjury was suborned, that would have wrecked a wilderness of simple truth trusting to its own unaided forces. What followed? Did this judgment of the court settle the opinion of the public? Opinion of the public! Did it settle the winds? Did it settle the motion of the Atlantic? Wilder, fiercer, and louder grew the cry against the wretched accuser: mighty had been the power over the vast audience of the dignity, the affliction, the perfect simplicity, and the Madonna beauty of the prisoner. That beauty so childlike, and at the same time so saintly, made, besides, so touching in its pathos by means of the abandonment--the careless abandonment and the infinite desolation of her air and manner--would of itself, and without further aid, have made many converts. Much more was done by the simplicity of her statements, and the indifference with which she neglected to improve any strong points in her own favour--the indifference, as every heart perceived, of despairing grief. Then came the manners on the hostile side--the haggard consciousness of guilt, the drooping tone, the bravado and fierce strut which sought to dissemble all this. Not one amongst all the witnesses, a.s.sembled on that side, had (by all agreement) the bold natural tone of conscious uprightness. Hence it could not be surprising that the storm of popular opinion made itself heard with a louder and a louder sound.
The government itself began to be disturbed; the ministers of the sovereign were agitated; and, had no menaces been thrown out, it was generally understood that they would have given way to the popular voice, now continually more distinct and clamorous. In the midst of all this tumult obscure murmurs began to arise that Barratt had practised the same or similar villainies in former instances. One case in particular was beginning to be whispered about, which at once threw a light upon the whole affair: it was the case of a young and very beautiful married woman, who had been on the very brink of a catastrophe such as had befallen my own wife, when some seasonable interference, of what nature was not known, had critically delivered her. This case arose "like a little cloud no bigger than a man"s hand," then spread and threatened to burst in tempest upon the public mind, when all at once, more suddenly even than it had arisen, it was hushed up, or in some way disappeared. But a trifling circ.u.mstance made it possible to trace this case:--in after times, when means offered, but unfortunately no particular purpose of good, nor any purpose, in fact, beyond that of curiosity, it _was_ traced: and enough was soon ascertained to have blown to fragments any possible conspiracy emanating from this Barratt, had that been of any further importance. However, in spite of all that money or art could effect, a sullen growl continued to be heard amongst the populace of villainies many and profound that had been effected or attempted by this Barratt; and accordingly, much in the same way as was many years afterwards practised in London, when a hosier had caused several young people to be prosecuted to death for pa.s.sing forged bank-notes, the wrath of the people showed itself in marking the shop for vengeance upon any favourable occasion offering through fire or riots, and in the meantime in deserting it. These things had been going on for some time when I awoke from my long delirium; but the effect they had produced upon a weak and obstinate and haughty government, or at least upon the weak and obstinate and haughty member of the government who presided in the police administration, was, to confirm and rivet the line of conduct which had been made the object of popular denunciation.
More energetically, more scornfully, to express that determination of flying in the face of public opinion and censure, four days before my awakening, Agnes had been brought up to receive her sentence. On that same day (nay, it was said in that same hour), pet.i.tions, very numerously signed, and various pet.i.tions from different ranks, different ages, different s.e.xes, were carried up to the throne, praying, upon manifold grounds, but all noticing the extreme doubtfulness of the case, for an unconditional pardon. By whose advice or influence, it was guessed easily, though never exactly ascertained, these pet.i.tions were unanimously, almost contemptuously, rejected. And to express the contempt of public opinion as powerfully as possible, Agnes was sentenced by the court, rea.s.sembled in full pomp, order, and ceremonial costume, to a punishment the severest that the laws allowed--viz. hard labour for ten years. The people raged more than ever; threats public and private were conveyed to the ears of the minister chiefly concerned in the responsibility, and who had indeed, by empty and ostentatious talking, a.s.sumed that responsibility to himself in a way that was perfectly needless.
Thus stood matters when I awoke to consciousness: and this was the fatal journal of the interval--interval so long as measured by my fierce calendar of delirium--so brief measured by the huge circuit of events which it embraced, and their mightiness for evil. Wrath, wrath immeasurable, unimaginable, unmitigable, burned at my heart like a cancer. The worst had come. And the thing which kills a man for action--the living in two climates at once--a torrid and a frigid zone--of hope and fear--that was past. Weak--suppose I were for the moment: I felt that a day or two might bring back my strength. No miserable tremors of hope _now_ shook my nerves: if they shook from that inevitable rocking of the waters that follows a storm, so much might be pardoned to the infirmity of a nature that could not lay aside its fleshly necessities, nor altogether forego its homage to "these frail elements," but which by inspiration already lived within a region where no voices were heard but the spiritual voices of transcendant pa.s.sions--of
"Wrongs unrevenged, and insults unredress"d."
Six days from that time I was well--well and strong. I rose from bed; I bathed; I dressed: dressed as if I were a bridegroom. And that _was_ in fact a great day in my life. I was to see Agnes. Oh! yes: permission had been obtained from the lordly minister that I should see my wife. Is it possible? Can such condescensions exist? Yes: solicitations from ladies, eloquent notes wet with ducal tears, these had won from the thrice radiant secretary, redolent of roseate attar, a countersign to some order or other, by which I--yes I--under license of a fop, and supervision of a jailer--was to see and for a time to converse with my own wife.
The hour appointed for the first day"s interview was eight o"clock in the evening. On the outside of the jail all was summer light and animation. The sports of children in the streets of mighty cities are but sad, and too painfully recall the circ.u.mstances of freedom and breezy nature that are not there. But still the pomp of glorious summer, and the presence, "not to be put by," of the everlasting light, that is either always present, or always dawning--these potent elements impregnate the very city life, and the dim reflex of nature which is found at the bottom of well-like streets, with more solemn powers to move and to soothe in summer. I struck upon the prison gates, the first among mult.i.tudes waiting to strike. Not because we struck, but because the hour had sounded, suddenly the gate opened; and in we streamed. I, as a visitor for the first time, was immediately distinguished by the jailers, whose glance of eye is fatally unerring. "Who was it that I wanted?" At the name a stir of emotion was manifest, even there: the dry bones stirred and moved: the pa.s.sions outside had long ago pa.s.sed to the interior of this gloomy prison: and not a man but had his hypothesis on the case; not a man but had almost fought with some comrade (many had literally fought) about the merits of their several opinions.
If any man had expected a scene at this reunion, he would have been disappointed. Exhaustion, and the ravages of sorrow, had left to dear Agnes so little power of animation or of action, that her emotions were rather to be guessed at, both for kind and for degree, than directly to have been perceived. She was in fact a sick patient, far gone in an illness that should properly have confined her to bed; and was as much past the power of replying to my frenzied exclamations, as a dying victim of fever of entering upon a strife of argument. In bed, however, she was not. When the door opened she was discovered sitting at a table placed against the opposite wall, her head pillowed upon her arms, and these resting upon the table. Her beautiful long auburn hair had escaped from its confinement, and was floating over the table and her own person. She took no notice of the disturbance made by our entrance, did not turn, did not raise her head, nor make an effort to do so, nor by any sign whatever intimate that she was conscious of our presence, until the turnkey in a respectful tone announced me. Upon that a low groan, or rather a feeble moan, showed that she had become aware of my presence, and relieved me from all apprehension of causing too sudden a shock by taking her in my arms. The turnkey had now retired; we were alone. I knelt by her side, threw my arms about her, and pressed her to my heart.
She drooped her head upon my shoulder, and lay for some time like one who slumbered; but, alas! not as she had used to slumber. Her breathing, which had been like that of sinless infancy, was now frightfully short and quick; she seemed not properly to breathe, but to gasp. This, thought I, may be sudden agitation, and in that case she will gradually recover; half an hour will restore her. Wo is me! she did _not_ recover; and internally I said--she never _will_ recover. The arrows have gone too deep for a frame so exquisite in its sensibility, and already her hours are numbered.
At this first visit I said nothing to her about the past; _that_, and the whole extent to which our communications should go, I left rather to her own choice. At the second visit, however, upon some word or other arising which furnished an occasion for touching on this hateful topic, I pressed her, contrary to my own previous intention, for as full an account of the fatal event as she could without a distressing effort communicate. To my surprise she was silent--gloomily--almost it might have seemed obstinately silent. A horrid thought came into my mind; could it, might it have been possible that my n.o.ble-minded wife, such she had ever seemed to me, was open to temptations of this nature? Could it have been that in some moment of infirmity, when her better angel was away from her side, she had yielded to a sudden impulse of frailty, such as a second moment for consideration would have resisted, but which unhappily had been followed by no such opportunity of retrieval? I had heard of such things. Cases there were in our own times (and not confined to one nation), when irregular impulses of this sort were known to have haunted and besieged natures not otherwise ign.o.ble or base. I ran over some of the names amongst those which were taxed with this propensity. More than one were the names of people in a technical sense held n.o.ble. That, nor any other consideration, abated my horror. Better, I said, better (because more compatible with elevation of mind) better to have committed some b.l.o.o.d.y act--some murderous act. Dreadful was the panic I underwent. G.o.d pardon the wrong I did; and even now I pray to him--as though the past thing were a future thing and capable of change--that he would forbid her for ever to know what was the derogatory thought I had admitted. I sometimes think, by recollecting a momentary blush that suffused her marble countenance,--I think--I fear that she might have read what was fighting in my mind. Yet that would admit of another explanation. If she did read the very worst, meek saint! she suffered no complaint or sense of that injury to escape her.
It might, however, be that perception, or it might be that fear which roused her to an effort that otherwise had seemed too revolting to undertake. She now rehea.r.s.ed the whole steps of the affair from first to last; but the only material addition, which her narrative made to that which the trial itself had involved, was the following:--On two separate occasions previous to the last and fatal one, when she had happened to walk unaccompanied by me in the city, the monster Barratt had met her in the street. He had probably,--and this was, indeed, subsequently ascertained,--at first, and for some time afterwards, mistaken her rank, and had addressed some proposals to her, which, from the suppressed tone of his speaking, or from her own terror and surprise, she had not clearly understood; but enough had reached her alarmed ear to satisfy her that they were of a nature in the last degree licentious and insulting. Terrified and shocked rather than indignant, for she too easily presumed the man to be a maniac, she hurried homewards; and was rejoiced, on first venturing to look round when close to her own gate, to perceive that the man was not following. There, however, she was mistaken; for either on this occasion, or on some other, he had traced her homewards. The last of these rencontres had occurred just three months before the fatal 6th of April; and if, in any one instance, Agnes had departed from the strict line of her duty as a wife, or had shown a defect of judgment, it was at this point--in not having frankly and fully reported the circ.u.mstances to me. On the last of these occasions I had met her at the garden-gate, and had particularly remarked that she seemed agitated; and now, at recalling these incidents, Agnes reminded me that I had noticed that circ.u.mstance to herself, and that she had answered me faithfully as to the main fact.
It was true she had done so; for she had said that she had just met a lunatic who had alarmed her by fixing his attention upon herself, and speaking to her in a ruffian manner; and it was also true that she did sincerely regard him in that light. This led me at the time to construe the whole affair into a casual collision with some poor maniac escaping from his keepers, and of no future moment, having pa.s.sed by without present consequences. But had she, instead of thus reporting her own erroneous impression, reported the entire circ.u.mstances of the case, I should have given them a very different interpretation. Affection for me, and fear to throw me needlessly into a quarrel with a man of apparently brutal and violent nature--these considerations, as too often they do with the most upright wives, had operated to check Agnes in the perfect sincerity of her communications. She had told nothing _but_ the truth--only, and fatally it turned out for us both, she had not told the _whole_ truth. The very suppression, to which she had reconciled herself under the belief that thus she was providing for my safety and her own consequent happiness, had been the indirect occasion of ruin to both. It was impossible to show displeasure under such circ.u.mstances, or under any circ.u.mstances, to one whose self-reproaches were at any rate too bitter; but certainly, as a general rule, every conscientious woman should resolve to consider her husband"s honour in the first case, and far before all other regards whatsoever; to make this the first, the second, the third law of her conduct, and his personal safety but the fourth or fifth. Yet women, and especially when the interests of children are at stake upon their husband"s safety, rarely indeed are able to take this Roman view of their duties.
To return to the narrative.--Agnes had not, nor could have, the most remote suspicion of this Barratt"s connection with the shop which she had not accidentally entered; and the sudden appearance of this wretch it was, at the very moment of finding herself charged with so vile and degrading an offence, that contributed most of all to rob her of her natural firmness, by suddenly revealing to her terrified heart the depth of the conspiracy which thus yawned like a gulf below her. And not only had this sudden horror, upon discovering a guilty design in what before had seemed accident, and links uniting remote incidents which else seemed casual and disconnected, greatly disturbed and confused her manner, which confusion again had become more intense upon her own consciousness that she _was_ confused, and that her manner was greatly to her disadvantage; but--which was the worst effect of all, because the rest could not operate against her, except upon those who were present to witness it, whereas this was noted down and recorded--so utterly did her confusion strip her of all presence of mind, that she did not consciously notice (and consequently could not protest against at the moment when it was most important to do so, and most natural) the important circ.u.mstance of the m.u.f.f. This capital objection, therefore, though dwelt upon and improved to the utmost at the trial, was looked upon by the judges as an after-thought; and merely because it had not been seized upon by herself, and urged in the first moments of her almost incapacitating terror on finding this amongst the circ.u.mstances of the charge against her--as if an ingenuous nature, in the very act of recoiling with horror from a criminal charge the most degrading, and in the very instant of discovering, with a perfect rapture of alarm, the too plausible appearance of probability amongst the circ.u.mstances, would be likely to pause, and with attorney-like dexterity, to pick out the particular circ.u.mstance that might admit of being _proved_ to be false, when the conscience proclaimed, though in despondence for the result, that all the circ.u.mstances were, as to the use made of them, one tissue of falsehoods. Agnes, who had made a powerful effort in speaking of the case at all, found her calmness increase as she advanced; and she now told me, that in reality there were two discoveries which she made in the same instant, and not one only, which had disarmed her firmness and ordinary presence of mind. One I have mentioned--the fact of Barratt, the proprietor of the shop, being the same person who had in former instances persecuted her in the street; but the other was even more alarming--it has been said already that it was _not_ a pure matter of accident that she had visited this particular shop. In reality, that nursery-maid, of whom some mention has been made above, and in terms expressing the suspicion with which even then I regarded her, had persuaded her into going thither by some representations which Agnes had already ascertained to be altogether unwarranted. Other presumptions against this girl"s fidelity crowded dimly upon my wife"s mind at the very moment of finding her eyes thus suddenly opened. And it was not five minutes after her first examination, and in fact five minutes after it had ceased to be of use to her, that she remembered another circ.u.mstance which now, when combined with the sequel, told its own tale;--the m.u.f.f had been missed some little time before the 6th of April. Search had been made for it; but, the particular occasion which required it having pa.s.sed off, this search was laid aside for the present, in the expectation that it would soon reappear in some corner of the house before it was wanted: then came the sunny day, which made it no longer useful, and would perhaps have dismissed it entirely from the recollection of all parties, until it was now brought back in this memorable way. The name of my wife was embroidered within, upon the lining, and it thus became a serviceable link to the h.e.l.lish cabal against her. Upon reviewing the circ.u.mstances from first to last, upon recalling the manner of the girl at the time when the m.u.f.f was missed, and upon combining the whole with her recent deception, by which she had misled her poor mistress into visiting this shop, Agnes began to see the entire truth as to this servant"s wicked collusion with Barratt, though, perhaps, it might be too much to suppose her aware of the unhappy result to which her collusion tended. All this she saw at a glance when it was too late, for her first examination was over. This girl, I must add, had left our house during my illness, and she had afterwards a melancholy end.
One thing surprised me in all this, Barratt"s purpose must manifestly have been to create merely a terror in my poor wife"s mind, and to stop short of any legal consequences, in order to profit of that panic and confusion for extorting compliances with his hideous pretensions. It perplexed me, therefore, that he did not appear to have pursued this manifestly his primary purpose, the other being merely a mask to conceal his true ends, and also (as he fancied) a means for effecting them. In this, however, I had soon occasion to find that I was deceived. He had, but without the knowledge of Agnes, taken such steps as were then open to him, for making overtures to her with regard to the terms upon which he would agree to defeat the charge against her by failing to appear.
But the law had travelled too fast for him and too determinately; so that, by the time he supposed terror to have operated sufficiently in favour of his views, it had already become unsafe to venture upon such explicit proposals as he would otherwise have tried. His own safety was now at stake, and would have been compromised by any open or written avowal of the motives on which he had been all along acting. In fact, at this time he was foiled by the agent in whom he confided; but much more he had been confounded upon another point--the prodigious interest manifested by the public. Thus it seems--that, whilst he meditated only a snare for my poor Agnes, he had prepared one for himself; and finally, to evade the suspicions which began to arise powerfully as to his true motives, and thus to stave off his own ruin, had found himself in a manner obliged to go forward and consummate the ruin of another.
The state of Agnes, as to health and bodily strength, was now becoming such that I was forcibly warned--whatsoever I meditated doing, to do quickly. There was this urgent reason for alarm: once conveyed into that region of the prison in which sentences like hers were executed, it became hopeless that I could communicate with her again. All intercourse whatsoever, and with whomsoever, was then placed under the most rigorous interdict; and the alarming circ.u.mstance was, that this transfer was governed by no settled rules, but might take place at any hour, and would certainly be precipitated by the slightest violence on my part, the slightest indiscretion, or the slightest argument for suspicion.
Hard indeed was the part I had to play, for it was indispensable that I should appear calm and tranquil, in order to disarm suspicions around me, whilst continually contemplating the possibility that I myself might be summoned to extremities which I could not so much as trust myself to name or distinctly to conceive. But thus stood the case; the Government, it was understood, angered by the public opposition, resolute for the triumph of what they called "principle," had settled finally that the sentence should be carried into execution. Now that she, that my Agnes, being the frail wreck that she had become, could have stood one week of this sentence practically and literally enforced--was a mere chimera. A few hours probably of the experiment would have settled that question by dismissing her to the death she longed for; but because the suffering would be short, was I to stand by and to witness the degradation--the pollution--attempted to be fastened upon her. What! to know that her beautiful tresses would be shorn ignominiously--a felon"s dress forced upon her--a vile taskmaster with authority to----; blistered be the tongue that could go on to utter, in connection with her innocent name, the vile dishonours which were to settle upon her person! I, however, and her brother had taken such resolutions that this result was one barely possible; and yet I sickened (yes, literally I many times experienced the effect of physical sickness) at contemplating our own utter childish helplessness, and recollecting that every night during our seclusion from the prison the last irreversible step might be taken--and in the morning we might find a solitary cell, and the angel form that had illuminated it gone where we could not follow, and leaving behind her the certainty that we should see her no more. Every night, at the hour of locking up, _she_, at least, manifestly had a fear that she saw us for the last time; she put her arms feebly about my neck, sobbed convulsively, and, I believe, guessed--but, if really so, did not much reprove or quarrel with the desperate purposes which I struggled with in regard t o her own life.
One thing was quite evident--that to the peace of her latter days, now hurrying to their close, it was indispensable that she should pa.s.s them undivided from me; and possibly, as was afterwards alleged, when it became easy to allege anything, some relenting did take place in high quarters at this time; for upon some medical reports made just now, a most seasonable indulgence was granted, viz. that Hannah was permitted to attend her mistress constantly; and it was also felt as a great alleviation of the horrors belonging to this prison, that candles were now allowed throughout the nights. But I was warned privately that these indulgences were with no consent from the police minister; and that circ.u.mstances might soon withdraw the momentary intercession by which we profited. With this knowledge we could not linger in our preparations; we had resolved upon accomplishing an escape for Agnes, at whatever risk or price; the main difficulty was her own extreme feebleness, which might forbid her to co-operate with us in any degree at the critical moment; and the main danger was--delay. We pushed forward, therefore, in our attempts with prodigious energy, and I for my part with an energy like that of insanity.
The first attempt we made was upon the fidelity to his trust of the chief jailer. He was a coa.r.s.e vulgar man, brutal in his manners, but with vestiges of generosity in his character--though damaged a good deal by his daily a.s.sociates. Him we invited to a meeting at a tavern in the neighbourhood of the prison, disguising our names as too certain to betray our objects, and baiting our invitation with some hints which we had ascertained were likely to prove temptations under his immediate circ.u.mstances. He had a graceless young son whom he was most anxious to wean from his dissolute connections, and to steady, by placing him in some office of no great responsibility. Upon this knowledge we framed the terms of our invitation.
These proved to be effectual, as regarded our immediate object of obtaining an interview of persuasion. The night was wet; and at seven o"clock, the hour fixed for the interview, we were seated in readiness, much perplexed to know whether he would take any notice of our invitation. We had waited three quarters of an hour, when we heard a heavy lumbering step ascending the stair. The door was thrown open to its widest extent, and in the centre of the door-way stood a short, stout-built man, and the very broadest I ever beheld--staring at us with bold enquiring eyes. His salutation was something to this effect.
"What the h.e.l.l do you gay fellows want with me? What the blazes is this humbugging letter about? My son, and be hanged! what do you know of my son?"
Upon this overture we ventured to request that he would come in and suffer us to shut the door, which we also locked. Next we produced the official paper nominating his son to a small place in the customs,--not yielding much, it was true, in the way of salary, but fortunately, and in accordance with the known wishes of the father, unburdened with any dangerous trust.
"Well, I suppose I must say thank ye: but what comes next? What am I to do to pay the damages?" We informed him that for this particular little service we asked no return.
"No, no," said he, "that"ll not go down: that cat"ll not jump. I"m not green enough for that. So, say away--what"s the damage?" We then explained that we had certainly a favour and a great one to ask: ["Ay, I"ll be bound you have," was his parenthesis:] but that for this we were prepared to offer a separate remuneration; repeating that with respect to the little place procured for his son, it had not cost us anything, and therefore we did really and sincerely decline to receive anything in return; satisfied that, by this little offering, we had procured the opportunity of this present interview. At this point we withdrew a covering from a table upon which we had previously arranged a heap of gold coins, amounting in value to twelve hundred English guineas: this being the entire sum which circ.u.mstances allowed us to raise on so sudden a warning: for some landed property that we both had was so settled and limited, that we could not convert it into money either by way of sale, loan, or mortgage. This sum, stating to him its exact amount, we offered to his acceptance, upon the single condition that he would look aside, or wink hard, or (in whatever way he chose to express it) would make, or suffer to be made, such facilities for our liberating a female prisoner as we would point out. He mused: full five minutes he sat deliberating without opening his lips; At length he shocked us by saying, in a firm decisive tone that left us little hope of altering his resolution,--"No: gentlemen, it"s a very fair offer, and a good deal of money for a single prisoner. I think I can guess at the person. It"s a fair offer--fair enough. But, bless your heart! if I were to do the thing you want----why perhaps another case might be overlooked: but this prisoner, no: there"s too much depending. No, they would turn me out of my place. Now the place is worth more to me in the long run than what you offer; though you bid fair enough, if it were only for my time in it. But look here: in case I can get my son to come into harness, I"m expecting to get the office for him after I"ve retired. So I can"t do it. But I"ll tell you what: you"ve been kind to my son: and therefore I"ll not say a word about it. You"re safe for me. And so good-night to you." Saying which, and standing no further question, he walked resolutely out of the room and down-stairs.
Two days we mourned over this failure, and scarcely knew which way to turn for another ray of hope;--on the third morning we received intelligence that this very jailer had been attacked by the fever, which, after long desolating the city, had at length made its way into the prison. In a very few days the jailer was lying without hope of recovery: and of necessity another person was appointed to fill his station for the present. This person I had seen, and I liked him less by much than the one he succeeded: he had an Italian appearance, and he wore an air of Italian subtlety and dissimulation. I was surprised to find, on proposing the same service to him, and on the same terms, that he made no objection whatever, but closed instantly with my offers. In prudence, however, I had made this change in the articles: a sum equal to two hundred English guineas, or one-sixth part of the whole money, he was to receive beforehand as a retaining fee; but the remainder was to be paid only to himself, or to anybody of his appointing, at the very moment of our finding the prison gates thrown open to us. He spoke fairly enough, and seemed to meditate no treachery; nor was there any obvious or known interest to serve by treachery; and yet I doubted him grievously.
The night came: it was chosen as a gala night, one of two nights throughout the year in which the prisoners were allowed to celebrate a great national event: and in those days of relaxed prison management the utmost license was allowed to the rejoicing. This indulgence was extended to prisoners of all cla.s.ses, though, of course, under more restrictions with regard to the criminal cla.s.s. Ten o"clock came--the hour at which we had been instructed to hold ourselves in readiness. We had been long prepared. Agnes had been dressed by Hannah in such a costume externally (a man"s hat and cloak, &c.) that, from her height, she might easily have pa.s.sed amongst a mob of masquerading figures in the debtors" halls and galleries for a young stripling. Pierpoint and myself were also to a certain degree disguised; so far at least, that we should not have been recognised at any hurried glance by those of the prison officers who had become acquainted with our persons. We were all more or less disguised about the face; and in that age when masks were commonly used at all hours by people of a certain rank, there would have been nothing suspicious in any possible costume of the kind in a night like this, if we could succeed in pa.s.sing for friends of debtors.
I am impatient of these details, and I hasten over the ground. One entire hour pa.s.sed away, and no jailer appeared. We began to despond heavily; and Agnes, poor thing! was now the most agitated of us all. At length eleven struck in the harsh tones of the prison-clock. A few minutes after, we heard the sound of bolts drawing, and bars unfastening. The jailer entered--drunk, and much disposed to be insolent. I thought it advisable to give him another bribe, and he resumed the fawning insinuation of his manner. He now directed us, by pa.s.sages which he pointed out, to gain the other side of the prison.
There we were to mix with the debtors and their mob of friends, and to await his joining us, which in that crowd he could do without much suspicion. He wished us to traverse the pa.s.sages separately; but this was impossible, for it was necessary that one of us should support Agnes on each side. I previously persuaded her to take a small quant.i.ty of brandy, which we rejoiced to see had given her, at this moment of starting, a most seasonable strength and animation. The gloomy pa.s.sages were more than usually empty, for all the turnkeys were employed in a vigilant custody of the gates, and examination of the parties going out.
So the jailer had told us, and the news alarmed us. We came at length to a turning which brought us in sight of a strong iron gate, that divided the two main quarters of the prison. For this we had not been prepared.
The man, however, opened the gate without a word spoken, only putting out his hand for a fee; and in my joy, perhaps, I gave him one imprudently large. After pa.s.sing this gate, the distant uproar of the debtors guided us to the scene of their merriment; and when there, such was the tumult and the vast mult.i.tude a.s.sembled, that we now hoped in good earnest to accomplish our purpose without accident. Just at this moment the jailer appeared in the distance; he seemed looking towards us, and at length one of our party could distinguish that he was beckoning to us. We went forward, and found him in some agitation, real or counterfeit. He muttered a word or two quite unintelligible about the man at the wicket, told us we must wait a while, and he would then see what could be done for us. We were beginning to demur, and to express the suspicions which now too seriously arose, when he, seeing, or affecting to see some object of alarm, pushed us with a hurried movement into a cell opening upon the part of the gallery at which we were now standing. Not knowing whether we really might not be retreating from some danger, we could do no otherwise than comply with his signals; but we were troubled at finding ourselves immediately locked in from the outside, and thus apparently all our motions had only sufficed to exchange one prison for another.
We were now completely in the dark, and found, by a hard breathing from one corner of the little dormitory, that it was not unoccupied. Having taken care to provide ourselves separately with means for striking a light, we soon had more than one torch burning. The brilliant light falling upon the eyes of a man who lay stretched on the iron bedstead, woke him. It proved to be my friend the under-jailer, Ratcliffe, but no longer holding any office in the prison. He sprang up, and a rapid explanation took place. He had become a prisoner for debt; and on this evening, after having caroused through the day with some friends from the country, had retired at an early hour to sleep away his intoxication. I on my part thought it prudent to entrust him unreservedly with our situation and purposes, not omitting our gloomy suspicions. Ratcliffe looked, with a pity that won my love, upon the poor wasted Agnes. He had seen her on her first entrance into the prison, had spoken to her, and therefore knew _from_ what she had fallen, _to_ what. Even then he had felt for her; how much more at this time, when he beheld, by the fierce light of the torches, her wo-worn features!
"Who was it," he asked eagerly, "you made the bargain with? Mana.s.seh?"