 | CHAPTER XXII.
A STRANGE COMPACT. Haunted hearts |  |
22. CHAPTER XXII.
A STRANGE COMPACT.
Angie was soon warm. The effect of the fire upon
Hannah, however, seemed to be that of developing
rather than allaying the chill with which her system
was charged. The imperceptible shiver which ordinarily
attends long-continued exposure to cold became
a tremor so violent and universal that her knees knocked
together, her chair shook under her, and the tapping of
her feet on the floor was distinctly audible. She manifested
many of the symptoms, which, to the experienced
observer, are prophetic of paralysis, or what the unsophisticated
would express, in general terms, as an “ill turn.”
She probably feared some such result herself, for her lips
were agape with agitation, her breath came quick and
short, and her eye was turned upon Angie with an expression
of alarm. Angie started to her assistance. So
did the jailer. The former loosened the strings of her
silk bag, — the indispensable of those days, — and produced
a vial containing spirits of camphor, which she
uncorked and applied to Hannah's nostrils. The fumes
gasped and drew a deep breath.
“If I only had some hot water to mix with it, I'd
give her a little of this to drink,” cried Angie.
“I rather think I can muster some,” was the cordial
response of the jailer, who had hitherto stood by, anxious
but inefficient. “I'll see,” and he hastened from
the room.
It was a considerable distance to the prison kitchen,
where the hot-water boilers were, and the jailer was
gone some minutes. By the time he returned, bringing
with him a porringer of hot water and a little in mug,
Hannah had partially rallied. A dose of diluted spirits
of camphor, which Angie then administered, proved so
efficacious that the tremor soon began to subside, the
blue lips of the patient resumed their natural color, she
became composed and breathed easily.
“That 'll do — now, let me alone!” she said imperatively
to Angie, as soon as she could recover her speech.
“I'm well enough — go an' sit down, child!” she added,
with irritation, seeing that Angie, who had been supporting
her head, still stood watching her progress towards
recovery. “I hate to see folks make a fuss about
nothing,” muttered Hannah, speaking to herself, but as
usual in an audible tone.
Angie obeyed. The jailer, seeing the girl thus unceremoniously
repulsed, and much diverted himself at the
old woman's “grit,” bit his lips to keep from laughing,
and returned to his occupation at the desk. After a
and went out, pausing at the door an instant to inspect
the room with a jailer's eye, and see if all was right,
especially the obscure corner where the settle was, which
he peered into so scrutinizingly before satisfying himself
of the safety of every thing, that the action attracted
Angie's attention, and after he had gone her eyes unconsciously
continued to rest upon the dark pile of rags and
clothing which was heaped up there.
The jailer's step had hardly ceased to echo through
the long stone corridors when Angie was startled by a
low, moaning sound, a sort of suppressed groan proceeding
from the dim corner into which she was gazing. At
the same moment there was a perceptible motion in the
dark heap on the settle. Angie held her breath and listened;
her eyes were strained and intent upon the movement.
It almost seemed to her that she must be dreaming,
and that the moan of pain and despair which she
heard was an utterance wrung from her own aching
heart. Any self-delusion on this subject, however, was
but momentary, for almost before she could indulge in
a conjecture concerning what had just met her eye and
ear, a figure hitherto stretched out on the settle and
asleep started into a sitting posture, with such spasmodic
velocity and force, that Angie, as if actuated by an
electric shock, sprang to her feet at the same instant.
“Who's that?” cried a voice in what would have
been a shriek, but that feebleness transformed it into
a whisper.
Angie, frightened no less by the ghostly voice than
by the spectral object which she beheld opposite to
her, stood still and made no reply.
“What do I smell? Give us some on't; come
here!” cried the sepulchral voice, and at the same
time a great gaunt hand clutched eagerly at the air
in the direction of Angie. The gesture was so threatening,
the dread that this ghostly figure would rise
and make a spring at her, so overmastered any lesser
fear that Angie crept a little nearer. At the same
time she gave a timid glance at Hannah, who, deaf
and drowsing (for the camphor was exercising a
soothing influence upon her), saw and heard nothing.
Even at this present crisis the fear of Hannah was instinctively
uppermost with Angie. “Hush,” she said,
in a persuasive tone, as she approached the fresh object
of dread so unexpectedly revealed to her. “Hush!
lie still! you'll disturb her,” pointing towards Hannah.
But the exhortation was needless. Before Angie,
creeping cautiously forward, had reached the settle, the
figure, exhausted and faint, had fallen back like a dead
weight and lay mute and rigid.
Angie, breathing more freely as the form before her
thus became powerless for harm, stood and gazed upon
it. It was a man, or rather the vestige of a man, a mere
wreck. There is nothing on earth so ugly as sickness,
except sin. The one ravages the body as the other the
soul. Both had done their worst to waste and deform
this man. The result was appalling. Add to this the
where, as it seemed, to force itself through the skin, the
coarse clothes that, too large for his wasted body, were
carelessly put on and hung loosely about him, the shirt
gaping wide, and in the absence of every species of neckcloth,
revealing a grisly throat and chest with sharp protruding
breast-bone, the hair and beard of a satyr, and
behind them the face of a ghost, an eye so sunken and
hollow as to be almost lost, and yet burning with the
fire of unquenchable violence and lust, — and was it
strange that Angie's first sensation, when she saw him
fall back lifeless was one of deliverance and relief? —
that, unable to summon help against this wretch's possible
violence, she found her own strength in his weakness?
Inevitable as was this first feeling, compassion
almost instantly succeeded it. As he lay with his eyes
closed, his consciousness gone, his form, just now writhing
with excitement and vehemence, reduced to more
than infant feebleness, all the woman in Angie was
stirred; the wretch of the last moment was the victim
of this; her terror was changed to pity; he needed her;
not to help herself but him, was now her first impulse,
and she applied herself to the task, not without an inward
shrinking, but with no less zeal than she had
employed a few moments before for Hannah's restoration.
But not with such immediate success. For some
time her efforts were unavailing. She chafed his temples
with the camphorated spirit which he had smelt
and craved, applied it to his nose and lips, fanned him
but apparently to no purpose. The swoon was utter and
obstinate; she could not even perceive that he breathed;
and at last she found all her self-command forsaking her
in the belief that the blow which had thus felled him in her
very sight was nothing less than a death-blow. She had
just reached such a stage of alarm that to rouse Hannah,
run into the passage way, and clamor for aid from some
quarter, would have become instinctive and inevitable,
when the object of her cares gave a slight gasp, then a
feeble breath dilated his nostrils.
“He's coming to!” murmured Angie, with thankfulness.
“Poor soul!” she added pitifully, putting one
hand beneath his head and raising him a little, while
with the other she diligently bathed his forehead with
camphor. She was thus occupied, thus murmuring,
when he opened his eyes and looked at her.
Now this man was no novice. He had tasted life at
many springs, exhausted many. He had worn out the
world and himself; he had known far too much. But
there was one thing he had never known, — the touch
of a virtuous woman's hand; the sound of her voice in
pity. Had he wakened out of his swoon to hear some
angel voice welcoming him to the abodes of the blest,
to feel some angel hand washing away his sins, he
could not have been more astonished, more awed. That
little remnant of virtue which his soul retained, —
Lose all their virtue —”
otherwise become, — and for the first time, throughout
a long career of guilt, the expression of this man's
eye had in it nothing terrible.
So Angie kept on with her task, undismayed by the
eye fastened full upon her; she even smiled upon her
patient with a gentle smile of congratulation and encouragement,
at which he only wondered the more.
“Wouldn't you like a little to drink?” she presently
asked, seeing how eagerly he began to snuff the medicated
spirits, and remembering that this was what he
had smelt and been seized with a longing for on first
awaking.
He responded by a sort of grunt, expressive of satisfaction
at the proposal.
The porringer of hot water was still steaming on the
hearth. Angie once more poured from her vial into
the tin mug, and diluted the spirits from the porringer —
very weak she made the dose this time. She stepped
stealthily to the fireplace and back again so as not to
disturb Hannah, who was by this time deep in her nap,
sitting bolt upright, as was her practice, we know, at
home.
“You feel better now, don't you?” was Angie's next
kind inquiry, as the sick man after drinking gluttonously,
handed back the mug to her, at the same time smacking
his lips and licking up the drops that clung to his
beard.
He answered only by stretching out his hand and
touch was really any thing human.
“Poor hand! how thin it is!” said Angie, trying
not to shrink from the bony fingers with their great
out-grown joints. “Let me bathe it,” she added, partly
out of compassion, still more, perhaps, as a ruse to
escape the repulsive ordeal of his touch; and stretching
the hand on the rug which served for a coverlet,
she moistened a handkerchief already devoted to the
cause, and bathed the dry skeleton thing sedulously
for a moment or two.
It pleased, and no doubt refreshed him. Childlike
(for he had been child once, and childhood came
back to him strangely at this moment), he soon
stretched out the other hand in a pleading fashion.
Angie understood; said, “Yes, indeed!” and cheerfully
accepted this new claimant for attention. She had
scarcely made a pass across it with the handkerchief,
however, when she stopped short, — something had
happened to her, — she could not proceed. It was not
that this man had some time met with an injury; that one
of his joints was bent so as to be at right angles with the
rest of the finger, and that the nail was shapeless, — it
was not even that it was the right hand, and the third
finger, that had suffered thus, — this sort of accident
might have occurred to any body. No, it was not that
alone; but, as the finding of the first link in a lost
chain is the finding of all the rest, so Angie, seeing
this, saw more. Let one whom we have not beheld
come upon us suddenly, and he is a stranger; let
him show us one familiar look, recall one association connected
with him in the past, and the recognition is instant
and complete. A moment more and we wonder we ever
could have mistaken his identity. So with Angie; to recognize
this token was to pause, to question herself, to be
convinced, and all in one second of time. Almost before
she could drop the hand and scan the face, she knew
what misery, disease, and decay had only veiled. Light
now had come in like a flash and revealed to her Nicholas
Bly.
She had half expected to see this very man before the
day was over. She had looked to find him in the criminal
prepared to testify. She had imagined how, when
the lawyers came, this well-remembered villain would
come too, — a great, bloated, swaggering, swearing
villain; but to find him thus, was a discovery as startling
as if she had encountered what he indeed looked
to be — his own ghost; and more to be dreaded, for real
ghosts are phantoms, this seeming ghost was real.
And what a task was that which she had set herself!
no mortal task — the washing of those hands! Could
she continue it? At first her whole soul revolted at the
thought; then came a reaction. Were not hands that
she had clasped in love, that her secret heart clasped still,
as blood-stained in their grave, perhaps? What right
had she to shun a murderer's hands? And, the struggle
past, she bathed on more assiduously than before, not
cleanse those accursed hands, if it was blood that had
shrunk and withered them so.
The shock had been so momentary, the hesitation
whether to resume her task or retreat dismayed had been
so well mastered, that it did not occur to her that she had
done any thing to attract attention or excite alarm. But
there must have been something on her part, either in
action or look, that was abrupt and significant. The
magnetism with which she had hitherto charmed her
patient into repose was broken; the acute sensibilities of
disease were irritated. Without giving her a chance to
regain the monotonous motion which had proved so soothing,
this fevered man (no longer a trusting child — she
had startled and banished the child) snatched his hands
from her, raised himself on his couch in the same vehement
manner as on his first awakening, and cried out in
that husky whisper which gave a mysterious horror to
his slightest word, “Who are yer? I say, what are yer
here fur?”
Involuntarily Angie retreated a step, upon which the
man, naturally brutal, and seeing her courage yield, tried
to grasp her arm, and would have become fierce and
clamorous in his speech, but there was no tenacity to his
limp muscles, and his words resolved themselves into a
gurgle. His hand fell as if paralyzed, and he could only
question her with his eyes.
Seeing this, Angie resumed her sway. “Be quiet,”
she said, in a tone none the less commanding that it was
and are quiet. There!” as he fell back, exhausted and
obedient, “that is right; now think a moment, and you
will know who I am. You have seen me before.”
A wild, incredulous stare now fastened itself upon her.
Though inwardly trembling under his gaze, she suffered it
a while; then, having assured herself that he was completely
subdued, and perceiving that the racking of his
memory was costing him fruitless efforts, she said, in the
low, firm tone which evidently impressed him powerfully,
“I know you, Nicholas Bly, and you will know me when
I tell you who I am, and how I came here. Have you
forgotten Angie Cousin, daughter of the old Frenchman
at Stein's Plains?”
He would have started up in surprise at this, but she
held him down; it did not require much strength.
“I know I am changed,” said she; “misery changes
us all; but you saw me the night of the Christmas ball.
You must have seen me before, I think, for your face was
familiar to me then, though I did not know your name
until afterwards.”
While she spoke, he was scanning her features — a
process which, beginning in doubt, ended in conviction,
the latter asserting itself, the moment she paused, in the
words, whispered hoarsely, as if to himself, “It's the
very gal!” and confirmed by an oath which would have
been horrible in the mouth of a man in full strength, and
which seemed as if it must blast the feeble lips that gave
it utterance.
“Don't swear,” cried Angie, imploringly; “don't speak
such a word as that again.”
He grinned in a ghastly fashion, but was awed, nevertheless,
by a request so strange, and — what would have
seemed miraculous to any old comrade of his — he gave
vent to his blasphemy but once again during his further
dialogue with her.
“What do you know about me?” he asked, abruptly,
after a moment, and looked anxiously at her, awaiting
her answer.
“All.”
“All!” he exclaimed, in a suppressed howl. “What,
not about —?” and he stopped short.
“About old Baultie Rawle? Yes; you can hardly tell
me any thing about that which I do not know already.”
“Who else knows?” he gasped forth, his eyes rolling
wildly.
“Nobody.”
“Nobody else?”
“Not another soul.”
“You never told?”
“Never.”
“You're a — ” he was about to preface his noun of
compliment by a string of most profane adjectives, but her
look checked him at the first syllable — “You're a — a
— angel!” he brought out with difficulty, and an apparent
consciousness that the word was a tame one to express
his appreciation of her.
“How could I tell and betray you both?” was her impulsive
ejaculation.
“'Twas the young man you was partial to then, not
Nick Bly? O, I see! I understand!” Nick spoke with
more distinctness now. Excitement had partially restored
his voice.
“I loved him,” said Angie. I — I — pity you; but
you were a stranger, and I loved him dearly.”
“Loved him right straight through?”
“Yes.”
“Love him now, by —!” He barely restrained
himself this time from an oath in confirmation of the
truth which her heaving breast and trembling lips
revealed.
“I do.”
“Wal,” again with difficulty suppressing a blasphemy,
“ain't you a buster for lovin'?”
Angie was silent; this was a question that required
no other answer than her sobs.
“He wan't wuth it,” soliloquized Nick, looking at her
with mingled admiration and pity, both ennobling sentiments,
almost unknown before in this bad man's breast.
Angie made haste to control herself. Pride came to
her aid. She must not lose her self-control in such a
presence. It would be too degrading.
“Any how,” continued Nick, who had spent the time
she occupied in rallying, in mental calculation, and who
addressed her the moment she looked up, “you saved
my neck from swingin' fur nigh on ter half a dozen year;
I thank yer fur that; it don't matter to me how it came
about, so 's I was the gainer. You may blow now fur's
whether or no, an' give the devil his due. He's got his
grip on me already. I'd like to tickle him with some
other game;” and Nick's words ended in a smothered
roar — one of those yells of bodily anguish which tell of
giant strength transformed to giant pain.
Angie waited until the groan was past, and until he
had ceased to writhe under the paroxysm.
“I give that young man's name up to infamy, Nicholas
Bly!” she then vehemently exclaimed, — “no, never,
nor you either; — whatever else you tell, you must not,
you shall not, betray him!”
“Why not?” was the defiant retort, spirted at her
from between teeth clinched with agony.
She took advantage of the acknowledgment he had
just made. She had no real claim on that score, but she
was desperate. “I have kept your secret all these
years,” she said, in a tone of appeal; “now you must
keep mine!”
He parted his teeth only to grin scornfully at her.
“'Twas yourn all along,” was his keen answer, when,
at length, he spoke.
“I know it; I know it,” she replied, as vehement in
her candor as in her expostulation. “It was for his
sake; I own that, — but I spared you as well. O, keep it
now, for mercy's sake, and spare me!”
“What would I get by keeping dark, I'd like to
know?” was the rejoinder of one, in whom a brutish
greed was instinctively uppermost.
“You will get nothing by betraying him,” responded
Angie, confidently.
“Shan't I?” he exclaimed. “You needn't tell me
that! You think, I s'pose, that nothin' in this world can
do any good to a poor rascal that's got the death-grip
on him, and is bound to kick the bucket 'fore many days.
But if I had only one breath left, gal, I'd give it to see
him with a rope round his neck, I would.”
“O, how can you be so cruel?” she cried, raising
both hands before her face to shut out the malignant
expression, which frowned on her like a gathering tempest.
“Cruel!” he vociferated, in husky tones, the gnashing
of his wolfish teeth making up in fierceness what his
voice lacked in strength. “Look here!” and he snatched
her hands before she could repel him, and with a force
for which she was unprepared, and holding them a moment,
compelled her to face the torrent of rage which
her words had excited. “Cruel, you call it, do yer?
you fool! What do you know 'bout cruelty? I'll tell
yer what's cruel, I will. It's for me to do the dirty
work an' starve, an' fur him to live idle an' lick up the
cream. It's fur me to skulk about in rags an' have the
dogs o' the law at my heels, an' fur him to wear fine
clothes an' play the gentleman! It's fur him to be strong,
an' rich, an' free, and fur me to rot in a jail! An' which
on us is the wust? He had eddication, an' friends, an'
chances in life, an' I, I was a poor toad, that was born
an' brought up in the mud. I was bad enough 'fore he
own cub. His time's come though at last! Blow on
him, gal? yes, I will, and blast him! He carries matters
with a high hand now, I warrant; but I'll soon see
yer laid low as I am, yer —” and giving license
now to his blasphemous tongue, he apostrophized his
former accomplice in a volley of epithets so imprecatory,
that the walls of the room seemed to shudder, and Hannah
partially awoke, and muttered like one disturbed by
uneasy dreams. At the same time Angie released herself,
by a sudden effort, from a grasp which she felt to be
more than ever contagious of evil.
“What yer 'fraid of? I won't hurt you?” expostulated
Nick.
“You have hurt me! You mean to hurt me!” she
cried, in the tone of one suffering torture already. “Yes,
me and his old mother, nobody else, — you cannot hurt
the poor fellow you have cursed.”
“What do yer mean by that?” he retorted, at once
incredulous and alarmed.
“He's laid low already; as low as you could wish.”
“How? Where?”
“He is dead.”
“Dead!” echoed Nick, with a smothered roar, like
that of a wild beast disappointed of its prey.
The unearthly sound completed the awakening of Hannah,
whose short, final snore gave indication of an abrupt
restoration to consciousness.
“Are you sure?” questioned Nick, the eagerness of
of defeat and chagrin which had overspread his face.
“Angie, where are you? who's that?” queried Hannah
at the same instant, edging round in her chair as
she spoke, and gazing into the dark corner, darker than
ever now, for the fire had ceased blazing altogether,
and the smoking embers occasionally sent a whiff into
the room and thickened the atmosphere.
“Sure as I am of my own life,” was Angie's low,
solemn answer to the first question. “I'm here, ma'am!
It's only a sick man,” was her response to Hannah, uttered
in a louder key.
“Who are you speaking to? who's settin' there?”
demanded Bly, looking round with agitation; for he now
realized for the first time that a third party was present
in the room.
“The old woman I came with,” said Angie, in a
soothing tone; “only the old woman.”
“A what, did you say? Come close, I can't hear!”
burst petulantly from Hannah meanwhile. “Wait —
tell me one thing fust! Was it suicide?” gasped Bly, in
a whisper; and catching Angie by the shoulder, he forcibly
detained her.
“One of the prisoners! he's sick!” she shouted, by
way of appeasing Hannah — at the same time that she
answered Bly by an affirmative gesture.
“I thought so! Jest like him! The mean dog! he's
even cheated the gallers!” soliloquized Bly, still holding
Angie fast, as if she were a hostage. “A sick prisoner!
alone, don't you hear me? It may be ketchin!” cried
Hannah, imperatively.
“There, let me go! Mrs. Rawle is calling me; she
will be angry,” pleaded Angie, struggling to release herself.
Mrs. Rawle was angry. She was already starting up
out of her chair.
“Rawle?” echoed Nick, in sudden alarm. “Not,” —
and his voice trembled and sank to the feeblest whisper,
— “not — his old ooman — the widder?”
She was approaching at a sort of spring-halt. Angie,
standing just between her and the bedside, again nodded
in the affirmative.
“Keep her off! keep her off!” shrieked Nick, in the
tone and accent of one frenzied with fear. “I know
her. She's a tiger! — a wild-cat! She'll tear my eyes
out!” and drawing up his knees, by way of a barricade
for the rest of his person, he shrank back and crouched
in the farthest corner of the settle.
“She shan't hurt you!” was Angie's prompt assurance
to Bly; at the same time interposing between him and
Hannah, she thrust her back, with the words, “Don't
come too near; he's afraid of you!”
“What's he 'fraid on?” cried Hannah, sharply; then
bestowing a keen look on him — “why, he's mad!” He
looked the maniac, certainly, as, drawn up into a heap,
he glared at her, and with hands outspread like claws,
at once anticipated and shrank from a conflict.
“He's feverish and excited!” cried Angie, putting her
mouth to Hannah's ear; “you startled him. He didn't
know you were here. If you'll go back and sit down I
can quiet him.”
But Hannah, always courageous, and stimulated now
by curiosity, only answered with “Bosh, child!” and she
made a movement to push past Angie, and obtain a nearer
survey of the strange object curled up in the corner.
“Keep her off! keep her off!” reiterated Bly, with
frantic gestures: for her resistance to Angie, confirmed
him in the notion that she was approaching with threatening
intent.
Again Angie assured him of his safety, but the poor
wretch, helpless and conscience-stricken, was palpitating
in every limb, so terrible was his dread of Hannah's
vengeance. He seemed to have an intuitive conception
of her character. “She knows me,” he gurgled out, as
if he read his death-warrant in the old woman's eyes.
“She's heard what we've said; you've betrayed me to
her!” and he shook his fist furiously at Angie, who had,
as he believed, suffered Hannah to remain in ambush,
and so to master his secret. “She's a tiger! She'll suck
my blood!” he gasped, and tried to give utterance to one
last shriek of despair, but it died into silence, his arms
dropped, his head sank with a jerk upon his breast, and
his whole form collapsed. Fear had struck to the very
seat of life, and once more he had fallen into a swoon.
“There!” cried Angie, in that tone which is a plain
rebuke.
Hannah heard and understood it. She involuntarily
retreated a little. Angie supplanted her at the head of
the couch, and had recourse to the camphor bottle.
“What's the matter on him? is he dead? or is it only
a trick?” asked Hannah, a little anxiously.
“He's been just so once before,” replied Angie, speaking
loudly. “I can bring him to, if you'll only go and
sit down.
Hannah, conscious that her presence was injurious,
and might be fatal to the man, who was evidently in a
most feeble condition, hobbled back to her chair, muttering,
“I'll ventur to say it's only a trick; he's as mad as a
March hare. You may have him to yourself, an' welcome!”
Her ears had not caught the burden of his
expressions of alarm. His husky language was unintelligible
to her, else her suspicions would have been
aroused concerning him. As it was, she only realized
that she was some how repulsive to the man, and she felt
that sort of ill humor against him which invalids and
children naturally excite when they manifest arbitrary
dislikes.
So she sat down with her back obstinately turned on
the offenders (she felt proportionately provoked with
Angie, of course). This was well; Angie improved
her opportunity, and soon succeeded in first restoring,
then calming, her patient. He looked around wildly,
when he first opened his eyes, as one does on awaking
from a horrible dream. She made haste to soothe him
with the words, “She's gone — gone back to her chair
Angie continued, in a soft, comforting tone, “She's deaf,
she has not heard a word; she does not suspect who
you are. You are safe with me; I won't tell her.”
Each of these little phrases was a drop of balm to the
irritated nervous system ready to quake at every fresh
fear. Bly looked up at her gratefully, confidingly. As
she finished speaking he sought her hand, as children
seek a hand when their feet totter in some perilous place.
She granted him this pledge of protection, and knew, as
she did so, that her power over him — Virtue's power
over vice — was culminating.
“She came from Stein's Plains to-day,” said Angie,
pointing towards Hannah, “to hear your confession.
She was in hopes to learn who was guilty of — ” Here
Angie faltered. “The murder?” continued Nick. He
did not shrink from the word as much as she did. “Yes,
— but you will not tell now,” continued Angie, with
energy. “At least, you will not betray him. Confess
to God and to man what you have done yourself — that
is right. But, O, do not drag his name before every
body; do not have him hooted at in his grave, poor
fellow! There can be no need of that.”
He was studying her face with a strange, searching
look. He had withdrawn his hand the moment she
began thus to plead. The subject estranged him from
her, but his features did not now wear a vindictive
expression. He was attentive to her words, and she
went on.
“If he were alive, and rich, and respected, as you
were thinking, then it would be different,” she argued.
“Then you might compare your lot with his, and think
yours crueller and harder. But to betray his share in
the crime would do no harm to him now, for he is dead;
it would do you no good, for,” — she could not add, —
“for you are dying,” though that was her thought.
Perhaps he read her thought; perhaps he only expressed
his own; at any rate, he rounded the assertion
for her with a groan, and the words, “There ain't enough
o' me left to ballast a rope's end — that's a fact.”
“I can tell you what will do you good!” she exclaimed.
“What?” asked the now humbled and submissive
man, speaking in the plaintive accents of a sick child.
“Pity, forgiveness, mercy!” she continued, in an outburst
of hope and fervor, for she saw how she had
subdued him once more to almost infantile docility, and
she caught at the chance thus afforded her. “I can't
measure your sin or his, or how far each dragged the
other down. God knows! But whatever you have
against him it will ease your soul to forget it now, and
let his memory rest in peace. O, think how soon you
may come yourself to judgment; think how many sins
you have got to answer for there! They will not seem
so black, I know they will not, if you can say, `I spared
a man that was dead, and pitied an old woman who had
not long to live, and heard the prayer of a girl whose
heart was broken.”'
The sound of a footstep just at the threshold of the
door startled her in the midst of her supplication. Instinctively,
like one tampering with crime, and fearing to
be caught in the act, she darted away from the vicinity
of Bly, and with her face to the opposite wall, fixed her
eyes vacantly on the plan of the prison which hung
there. Bly, too old a counterfeiter to need any further
hint, drew up the rug, which served him for a coverlet,
and pretended to be asleep. The next instant Tracy, the
assistant jailer, opened the door and looked in. He cast
his eye all round the room; Hannah sat staring straight
into the fire; Angie was studying prison architecture;
Bly still lay, a motionless heap, upon the settle. Tracy
was satisfied with his inspection. It was all right; and
he went out to receive and usher in other guests perhaps,
— most likely the lawyer and his clerk, — for footsteps
and voices could be heard at some distance down
a long corridor, and one of the city clocks had just
struck ten.
“Hark! they are coming,” cried Angie, as the door
closed upon Tracy; and turning, she sprang again to the
sick man's side.
“Who? What?” he timidly whispered, lifting his
head, staring wildly around, and striving once more, in
a childish fashion, to link his hand to hers for protection.
“The people, — the lawyers, — the jailer! They are
coming to hear what you have to tell. O, don't tell
about him — don't!” — and flinging herself on her knees
and wringing her hands convulsively, she would have
and they were all merged in one explosive sob, in which
the pent-up agony of years seemed to vent itself.
The soul of Nicholas Bly had long been steeped in sin
and buried beneath a heap of corruptions. But sunk and
imbruted as it was, there was one power never before
tried upon it, — the power of a holy love; and that sob
of Angie's reached it, even in its grave. The spark
thus kindled revealed itself in a softer light, which
gleamed from his eye, and rested on her with something
like compassion.
Startled by the sound of that involuntary sob of hers,
Angie had turned her ear with a spasmodic start, in the
direction of the approaching footsteps, one eye meanwhile
scanning the figure of Hannah, who fortunately continued
obstinately unobservant. As her glance returned
once more to the object of her supplications, she read
her advantage in his pitying look; and forgetting every
thing now but the chance of effecting her purpose, and
binding him to secrecy, she snatched both his rough
hands in hers, and pressed them fervently, then laying
one of her own little palms on his clammy forehead, she
exclaimed in an ecstasy of gratitude, “God bless you!
God bless you!”
The action was premature, perhaps, but it sealed her
victory.
This man know nothing of God, had no faith in
Heaven, no hope of the divine blessing; but this woman's
look, her touch, her benediction had fallen on him like
trust, and joy. For the first time in his life this
abject man looked up, this doubting man believed, this
blasphemous man was blessed. Promises, warnings,
threats, would but have hardened him the more. In the
overflowing of a grateful heart the tide of human love
had welled up and reached his parched soul; the blessing
was his already; he could afford to pay the price.
So, without a word's being spoken to that effect, a contract
was sealed between them. There was no time,
indeed, for words; a hand was already on the door-lock;
Angie had barely an opportunity to glide into her chair
opposite Hannah, Bly to resume his sleeping attitude;
but as she retreated, with her finger on her lip, there was
a solemn query in her gesture which was responded to
by an emphatic dropping of the eyelids on the part of
Bly that seemed to promise a secrecy as eternal as the
night.
Then ensued a change of scene. The jailer came
bustling in, accompanied by a lawyer and his clerk;
Tracy and Van Hausen followed, the latter giving
emphasis to his entrance by striking the floor with his
wooden whip-handle at every step, and the constable,
previously referred to, brought up the rear, dangling a
pair of iron handcuffs, and displaying a professional
indifference to their use by an attempt to wring music
from their metal.
| CHAPTER XXII.
A STRANGE COMPACT. Haunted hearts | |