University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.

When Gordon was committed to jail, he summoned
all the energies that guilt and inebriety had left him
to escape the consequences of his crimes. He inquired
of the jailor the morning after his commitment
if Mr. Bronson was in the village; and learned from
him that that worthy had been absent from Springdale
some time, and had not yet returned. Daily he made
the fruitless inquiry, and almost momently he was
casting his eyes round the walls of his prison devising
some mode of escape; but his appalled heart throbbed
thick with the consciousness that without assistance,
strongly ironed as he was, that even that jail, so inferior
in strength to the city jail, would hold him until justice
consigned him to the penitentiary.

He wondered if to that unguarded prison window
Bully Ben or Pounder, or Tom Fenton, would not
come in some deep dark midnight to save him.

“No, no!” he would soliloquize; “they have not
the heart; and if they had, they lay the break upon
me—and here they will leave me to my fate. Damn
them! if they were here and I were free they might
watch awhile for my coming.” Thus, in speaking
his feelings towards them, forgetting that he was
portraying very naturally what their's were to himself.
Then he thought of his abused wife, and tried to
devise some means of making her acquainted with his

situation; believing, notwithstanding his brutal conduct
towards her, that she might be induced to convey
him secretly some instrument whereby he might
effect his liberation.

After Bobby's deliverance, the man who had committed
the assault and battery, the only other prisoner
then in jail, had been released; and in his gloomy and
silent solitude, Gordon felt it would be relief if he could
hear the clanking of any other fetters in unison with
his own. As he lay upon his miserable mattrass, the
intense solitude which sometimes would reign over
the quiet village would press upon his brain like the
weight of mountains, and he would impulsively toss
up his hands as if to remove it. The least sound that
came to his ears was welcomed, for it relieved his
mind in his efforts to divine what occasioned it.
The solitary mouse that stole across his prison-floor
he tried to allure nearer to him with crumbs of
bread thrown as noiselessly to it as the feathery fall
of the snow; and when the motion of his hand would
start the little pilferer back again, he would groan
in the anguish of his guilt, and fancy even the tiny
animal knew the depravity of his heart, and shunned
him because he was friendless.

His nerves were utterly unstrung by his long course
of dissipation, and he would fancy in the midst of
day that darkness encompassed him, and ten thousand
fiends were heaping living coals of red-hot fire upon
his heart. O! how the poor wretch begged, and
begged in vain—for it was against the regulations of
the prison—for a little brandy, to give him nerve. At
other times, in the midst of the night, he would fancy
it broad day—but a strange, unnatural day, in which
the sunbeams whirled and whisked about him like
witches in a dance. Sometimes they would assume
the shape of spirits in air—and it seemed wonderful
to him how their features, in smallest miniature, not

bigger than a pin's point, could be so distinct. While
he wondered how they would swell and bloat, and
become loathsome and reptile-like, and come and crawl
upon him, and thrust their forked tongues in his face,
and belch forth breaths of fire, or of putrid rottenness.
They seemed to creep into the soles of his feet, and
into each finger, and steal into his veins and revel in
his blood, until they gathered at last in one great knot
about his heart, and fed upon it—while the hair of his
head became living serpents, and stung his eyes out.
At other times he would fancy that a fair spirit of
light descended from heaven into his room; a visitant
of mercy, who bade him confess, repent, and go free;
and when he had confessed all his crimes, she would
turn into a denouncing angel, an accuser before the
High Judge, and she would pour forth the vials of
wrath upon his head, and he saw the mountains reeling
and rolling towards him, yet they would not cover
him, and could that feeble hand hold them from hiding
him! the feeble hand of Granny Gammon! O! how
distinctly she wore that death-in-life look that countenance
when she cursed him.

Again he would fancy that little dogs with club feet
danced round his couch; they were so comical that
he laughed till his bones ached. There was one little
black fellow, with a stiff, pompous, curled-up tail, that
led him through the hills, and by Aunt Agnes, and
by Holly, and took him to the tree where he met Peggy
the night of her grandmother's death. Instead of
being angry with him she was all delight, all joy, all
willingness, and she had a little bird in her hand that
sang so sweetly. While he played with the bird, she
plucked flowers—yet it seemed strange to him how
he could tell their colours so distinctly by the starlight,
but he could—and she made them into garlands, and
in graceful dalliance wound them round his waist; in
humility and in token of respectful attention and love,

she kneeled and bound them round his ankles: she
begged and implored him not to be angry with her
when he drew back his foot to spurn her from him, but
a sudden pain prostrated him to earth, and lo! she
had bound him in fetters. Then the little black dog,
with the curly tail, kept getting larger and larger, and
at last he got a livery suit on him, and turned out to
be old Pompey, while the bird proved to be Bobby,
who whistled for joy.

Then Ross, the constable, and he took a ride, and
he stopped to drink, but Ross would not, and after he
had drank, Ross proposed a race, to see which could
ride to the devil fastest, and he agreed; and they
dashed on up hill and down dale through Springdale,
and away past the cross roads. They mounted at
last a steep precipice, and they were spurring side
and side, neck and neck, when Ross gave Gordon's
horse a cut with a babbon's tail which his whip turned
into, which made his steed spring ahead clear over
the precipice into the bottomless pit of brimstone.
Ross peeped over, and laughed at him till the woods
echoed.

Then his wife came, and she looked so kindly on
him. She leaned over the precipice, and stretched
out her hand to save him. Their fingers touched.
O! what a glow of joy thrilled through him: but just
as she was about to pluck him as a brand from the
burning, Ross threw a rope made of counterfeit notes
round her, and drew her back, while the fiends clapped
their hands for joy, and laughed till the hills and
valleys echoed with their malignity.

Then Ross called to him, and told him that if he
had one single cent wherewith to pay toll of good
money, that he should come forth, scott free; and
Gordon thought he turned his pockets inside out in
search of the half-dollar that his wife gave him, but
he had spent it in buying liquor and treating at the

tavern where he and Ross stopped, and the counterfeit
notes fell thick and fast around him. At last out
came Ross's ten-dollar note, but a current of cool air
whisked it away off, while the counterfeit ones tumbled
the faster from his pocket, and, igniting immediately,
gave him such intense agony as to cause him
to leap madly about, at which the fiends laughed
louder than ever, while his wife and Ross disappeared

Then he thought, after a weary travel, he stopped
by a shady fountain embowered in trees, and then
threw himself down, and soon sunk into a sweet sleep.
Awaking feverish and all athirst, he reached over for
a draught, and the limpid stream turned to molten
lava, and poured down his throat and burned his heart
out, and he heard Ross call out in a tone of derision:
“I told you, Jack, it was your worst enemy.”
He found himself still in the bottomless pit, with little
devils skipping round him perfectly crazy with delight.

All at once they seemed to leave him at the approach
of a small, gentlemanly-looking little man,
dressed in black. Gordon took him at first for a
clergyman, but he proved to be Satan himself.
Strange, but as he advanced to Gordon the bank
notes under him seemed to moulder and grow cooler,
and a fiendish glow of satisfaction ran through the
prisoner's veins. He announced himself by taking
off his hat. Gordon observed that his eye was a merry
one, and though it certainly had a touch of deviltry
in it—it was merry deviltry, and not very malignant.
His nose was too large rather, and too much
hooked, and he was bald, with a little rein of hair
above his ears, and a big tuft on his forehead like the
forelock of time. His hair was originally black, but,
having been so long amid the flames, it had got tinged
with a crispy red here and there like the first gray

hairs in the head of a gentleman growing elderly.
Gordon felt proud, he knew not why.

“Sir,” said this personage, with great apparent
cordiality and kindness, not unmingled with respect,
“you give yourself unnecessary uneasiness: most of
those poor devils that were dancing about you have
forfeited their souls forever, and yet you see they
are quite merry. The cause of your trouble is, that
you are in a state of purgatory; you have not committed
murder yet; sell me the fee-simple of your soul,
and you shall go back and dwell on earth, and be as
old as Mesthuselah. “There,” said he, offering him
notes to countless amounts, “are the means to gratify
all your wants!” As Satan offered them, Gordon
thought that Peggy, Bobby, his wife, and even
Pompey, with tearful eyes, besought him not to take
them—but he stretched out his hand. Then the
shade of his mother appeared to him, and, in tones of
unutterable we, prayed him to touch not.

“But you have always disobeyed your mother,”
said the tempter; “why should you mind her now?”
Then the voice of Granny Gammon called out to him
that she would take back her curse if he would forbear.

“Forbear! why should you forbear?” cried out
Satan; “it will give you revenge on all your
enemies.”

“Give me the money,” cried Gordon, “I'll seal the
bond with my heart's blood.”

With tears and wailing, his mother and the rest disappeared,
while Satan plunged a flaming pen into his
breast, and drawing it out, dripping with blood, bade
him seal the bond. He did so, and throughout all the
regions round them was a yell of delight. Gordon
felt proud. He thought he said to them in the language
of the player whom he had seen enacting
Byron's Manfred—“Back, ye baffled fiends—” and he

laughed himself so loudly that he was startled at the
echoes of his own tones.

Then he thought he trod the earth again in the
hot fulfilment of his revenge. How his soul revelled
in its purposes! how he thought he would scourge
Pompey—and he made the motion of a blow with his
arm; how he would gloat over Peggy, who should
cringe at his feet, while Bobby stood impotently by.

He thought he stopped at Springdale, and ordered
a dinner and wines, while the landlord, and even the
Fitzhursts' and Pinckney, fawned around him. With
what an air he ordered his bill—Lo! when he pulled
out the bank notes for which he had sold himself to
pay it, Ross arrested him for passing counterfeit
money, and he was thrown into Springdale jail.
There his wife came to see him, when, maddened with
her because she had not brought him the means of
escape, he dashed her brains out against the wall.

In an instant he was transported back again into
the bottomless pit. O! what a thrill of horror ran
through his heart as a hollow voice called out:

“You are mine forever and forever.”

He started up from his prison floor. He felt the
walls to convince himself of his locality. He grasped
his limbs all over and every feature of his face to
satisfy himself that he was still in the flesh. He
struck his manacled hands against his brow till the
blood gushed from his nostrils, and as he felt it trickling
forth he threw himself back on his dungeon floor,
and thanked God fervently that he was still on earth,
though a prisoner and guilty.