Part 3 (1/2)
Slight iron bars cross the window; he is strong; he wrenches at them manfully. They yield! They are displaced, and now only this paltry sash and a bit of gla.s.s between him and Will! These are soon demolished. The window is low, and, noiselessly dropping into the yard beneath, he calls softly, ”Will! Will!” No response. Strange! A moment ago he was there! It is cool and quiet out here beneath the summer moon, and Will cannot be far off,--over that wall, perhaps. He scales it. ”Not here? Well, he will run on a bit, and come up with him.” And run on he does. On and on, through that long summer night. Across dewy-scented garden-plots, over trim cut lawns, whose tender gra.s.s is as velvet to his bare, fleeting feet. Through moist, wide meadows, and across low, babbling brooks, till, at last, he is upon the long, white road. Fleet as a hound upon the flying scent, pausing but to listen, and whisper, huskily, to the heedless night, ”Will! Will! Will!” he hurries on. A half-clad, phantom-like form, breathlessly pursuing a phantom. The moon sets. The stars are paling in the still, sweet dawn, when, in the purlieu of a tangled wood, pale and spent, foam gathering on his lips, blood trickling from his torn feet, he pauses; and, tottering feebly into an odorous covert of blossoming underwood, falls p.r.o.ne upon the earth. An angel, with broad and kindly wing, the gentlest of all G.o.d's ministering host, descends to brood tenderly this desolate creature,--_Sleep_, messenger of peace, forerunner of that eternal quietude that somewhere stays for all earth's life-worn children!
On the ensuing morning, sensation craving readers of the Boston _Morning Chronicle_ read, with characteristic relish, the following:
GREAT EXCITEMENT!!!
A Murderer Pretends Insanity and Escapes!
The citizens of Taunton and its vicinity were this morning startled by tidings of the escape of a patient from our State Lunatic Hospital. The man was entered, for treatment, from Charles Street Jail, and his name is John Gravesend.
Our readers will, no doubt, recall him to memory as the abandoned wretch who, not long since, was arrested in this city for the murder of young Ferguson, a mere lad, whom he enticed into one of the North Street dens, and there, after robbing his victim of a large sum of money, butchered the ill-fated boy.
The mother of Ferguson, as will be remembered, died soon after of a broken heart. While awaiting the award of his crime, Gravesend--having successfully feigned insanity--was consigned to the State asylum. On the night of the 15th, the asylum watchman making his round at ten o'clock, found Gravesend, as he supposed, in a sound sleep. At two, the rascal was gone.
Being a man of great muscular power, he had displaced the grating of his window, and thus made good his escape. The wretch has been tracked for several miles, and we are informed that two efficient detectives, a.s.sisted by hospital _employes_, are now in full pursuit. Other outrages are imputed to this daring villain, and it is hinted that he is concerned in a certain mysterious murder, that yet thrills our community with horror. Great alarm prevails in the vicinity, and it is hoped that the fugitive will be speedily secured.
This ”bloodthirsty” monster was, on the afternoon succeeding his escape, found slumbering as placidly as the leaf-strewn ”Babes in the Wood,” in that flowery covert to which we have already tracked him.
From this long trance-like slumber--the crisis of his mental malady--John Gravesend awoke, with strained, aching limbs, and brain yet hazy from delirium. Restored to the asylum and treated for his malady, he gradually returned from that labyrinthian world in which, for more than two months, his mind had wearily wandered.
Mind and body in their normal condition, he was remanded to jail, and subsequently arraigned for the wilful destruction of a life dearer to him than his own. Pleading guilty, and legally condemned for manslaughter, he was sentenced to confinement for life in the State Prison. Unmoved, he hears the terrible mandate that dooms him to life-long banishment from G.o.d's wide, beautiful world. With him, the fatal Rubicon is already pa.s.sed. He has slain the beloved one. Life holds in reserve no heavier woe; and death has not in store a pang more terrible.
A BUNCH OF VIOLETS.
”There's Neilson, takin' his afternoon walk,” said the good-natured turnkey, making a casual survey of the prison yard from the grated window near the guard-room door, which he was about to open for my exit. Neilson! and in the yard? At last, I must encounter that bad man! I was, be it known, on my way to the prison hospital, carrying a basket of Parma violets for distribution among a score or so of my fellow-sinners, now stretched upon hard beds, or wearily sitting on harder chairs, in that mildly penal department of the inst.i.tution; and, no doubt, not eminently deserving of agreeable sniffs at Parma violets. At this unlooked-for announcement of the turnkey, a cold s.h.i.+ver ran down my back, for Neilson, even in prison circles, was accounted a desperate man. He was both robber and murderer; and for the last fifteen years had been serving out a life sentence of solitary confinement in one of the dreary cells of the ”Upper Arch.”
Five of these awful years had he pa.s.sed in uninterrupted solitude, but, since the advent of the present humane prison warden, Neilson had been permitted to take, daily, an hour's exercise in the prison yard, a sunny enclosure, opening on the workshops, the hospital wing, and indirectly on the ”Upper Arch.” In the centre of this court, ”the new warden” had caused a cheery flower plot to be made, and now, in April, many-hued crocuses already brightened its borders.
It was just before the establishment of the beautiful and helpful Flower Mission that I undertook, not without some discouragement, to try the gracious effect of violets, roses, pinks, and heartsease, behind the bars. In my _then_ limited experience, to be locked out of the friendly guard-room, and sent alone across the prison yard, had not been agreeable to me; and, in deference to my groundless fears, an officer had been detailed to accompany me from the main prison to the hospital wing. As the years went on, my social popularity in the State Prison became well a.s.sured, and some surprise at this needless precaution was expressed to me by the convicts; and one attached prison friend (a highway robber) had even a.s.sured me that ”if anybody in that prison should lay a finger on me, he'd be torn to pieces by the men, afore you could say Jack Robinson.”
Though scarcely convinced that the entire demolition of a fellow-being would indemnify me for such ”scaith and scart” as might in the _melee_ accrue to my own poor person, it was on this a.s.surance that I decided to dispense with official escort to the wing. Thus far, my visits had been so happily timed that the dreaded ”Solitary” had never once crossed my path. Looking anxiously from the window, I made a hasty survey of the yard. An officer was just stepping from the door of a distant workshop. Two or three convicts were, at various points of observation, shuffling across the yard. Well, it was too late to show the white feather. The turnkey had already unlocked the door, and stood waiting. I handed him a tiny nosegay (the good man adored flowers, and I never omitted this pretty ”Sop to Cerberus”); and now, grasping tightly the handle of my flower basket, ”with my heart in my mouth,” I thanked him as he held back the heavy door for me, and pa.s.sed trembling out.
With a hard iron clang, the door closed behind me. Descending a roomy flight of steps, I found myself in the prison yard, and, at the same moment, confronted by,--yes, it must be that dreadful fellow, Neilson, himself! And a sinister-visaged wretch he was, with his small, ferrety eyes, his coa.r.s.e mouth, and heavy chin. He shuffled as he went, and, with an evil look, stared boldly in my face.
”A tough subject,” I mentally determined; but ”total depravity” is not an article of my creed, and I _do_ believe in humanity. In a moment, I had dismissed all fear of Neilson, in my zeal for his reformation, and, stepping up to him with a friendly good-afternoon, into which I insinuated all the approval I could conscientiously bestow upon so forbidding a creature, I handed him, from my basket, a bunch of violets. He took them, and, with a clumsy nod, but not a word of thanks, pa.s.sed on, leaving me with a lightened heart. And, now, I stopped a moment to exchange civilities with the officer whom I had descried from the guard-room window. We were fast friends, and I was indebted to him for many a kind turn. He glanced disparagingly at my flowers, and, as a relief to my chagrin, I said, ”Well, I have just given Neilson a bunch of violets; do you imagine that he cares at all for them?”
”Neilson?” he questioned, in evident perplexity.
”Yes, Neilson,” I replied, ”that short, stout man yonder, there he is _now_! going into that door!”
”Bless your heart, my good lady,” exclaimed the officer, ”that ain't Neilson! There _he_ is; can't you see him, the tall fellow with his nose in the air, standing there by the crocus bed? If there's any flowers in the yard, Neilson's about sure to fetch up near 'em.”
”Is he?” I said; and from that moment ”a fellow-feeling made me kind.”
I felt sure of the ultimate good-will of Neilson. Meantime, having exhausted the attraction of the crocus bed, he was moving in my direction, but so slowly that I had time to make a critical survey of this famous personage,--a grave, quiet man of slender but firm build, and, even in his coa.r.s.e prison uniform, bearing himself with a certain air of (if I may so express it) scholarly elegance.
Suitably clothed, he might have been taken for a clergyman, or a Harvard professor. Selecting the very choicest nosegay from my basket, I bade him, as we met, a cheerful good-afternoon, and, offering the flowers, said timidly (for I found this grave, lordly being somewhat unapproachable), ”Would you like a bunch of violets to-day?” Absorbed in his own reflections, he had not, until now, observed me. He stopped, came out of his reverie, and, lifting his worn prison cap with a highly ceremonious bow, took the flowers from my hand, composedly smelt them, and said, slowly: ”Thank you, madam, they _would_ be very refres.h.i.+ng.” Though Neilson's demeanour was eminently stoical, his face was pitiably wan and thin, and in his faded blue eye there was a world of patient pathos that went straight to my heart.
As he was about to pa.s.s on, I detained him for a moment, and said, eagerly, ”If you like flowers--if you--if you think they would _help_ you, I might bring you a few every Monday, as I come to the hospital.”
”Flowers,” he replied sententiously, ”_are_ refres.h.i.+ng; and if it will not be putting you to too much inconvenience, madam, I would be glad to receive a few from you every week.” After this it was arranged with the obliging guard-room turnkey, that every Monday afternoon, along with his own b.u.t.tonhole posy, a bouquet of ”seasonable flowers” should be left on his desk, and should be sent by him to Neilson's cell. And, moreover, ascertaining that Neilson had no ”visitor,” I obtained permission of the warden to put his name on my visiting list, among those of some forty other unvisited convicts, who, in lieu of dearer company, received _me_ once in three months, in the big guard-room. On these occasions, I was allowed to bring my sorry acquaintances flowers, fruit, drawing and writing materials, books, tracts and magazines, together with such sound moral advice as could be,--like the ”sheep in the Vicar's family picture,”--”thrown in for nothing.”
In their turn, my friends confided to me such pa.s.sages in their lives as might properly be told to a lady; acquainted me with their desires and aspirations, and, almost invariably, craved my intercession with the governor. (For, whatever his crime, each prison convict hopes that, with some friendly go-between to present his case, that mild-hearted executive will promptly ”pardon him out.”) But of this service I was conscientiously chary. Gladly it was, however, that I undertook the sale of such inlaid boxes, photograph frames, and other articles as the men found time and material to fas.h.i.+on, the proceeds of which enabled them to subscribe for ”Harper's,” to own a book or two, or, better still, to make an occasional remittance to some dependent mother, wife or child, left in want by their own wicked folly. Of all the convicts on my list, none proved more satisfactory than Neilson. Our conversation, carried on, according to the prison rules, within earshot of an officer, related chiefly to literature; for this sometime robber and murderer was a man of no mean intellect; and his mental energies, now necessarily diverted from more deplorable channels, had, in these years of solitary leisure, been so well applied to self-improvement, that from almost utter ignorance he had come to be, after his own fas.h.i.+on, an educated man.