Part 26 (2/2)
All prisons are, of course, wretched places; but the jail of M---- was one of the most wretched of its kind. Comparatively small, shamefully overcrowded, close, ill-ventilated and pestilential, it insured nothing but the safe custody of the bodies of its miserable inmates. Evidently reform had not even looked upon its outer walls, far less opened one of its doors or windows.
For greater security Valentine had been confined in the condemned cell.
A slight irregularity, but one of which no one had the right to complain. Although, under circ.u.mstances less tragic it must have seemed ludicrous to a.s.sociate the graceful and almost girlish delicacy of poor Valentine's figure with danger to the security of bolts and bars and prison walls.
Howbeit, in the condemned cell Valentine was placed, and there Fannie and her companions found him.
Valentine received them with great composure, that was only slightly disturbed when Fannie, upon first seeing him, threw herself, with a cry of pa.s.sionate sorrow, upon his bosom.
When the turnkey had left the cell, and locked them all in together, Valentine addressed himself to soothing Fannie. And after a while, favored by the exhaustion that followed her vehement emotion, he succeeded in quieting her.
After a little conversation, the old preacher invited all to join him in prayer, and, kneeling down, offered up a fervent pet.i.tion for the divine mercy on the prisoner. Through the whole of the interview, all were impressed by the perfect composure and cheerfulness of Valentine. He seemed like a man who had cast a great weight from his breast, or in some other way had been relieved from a heavy burden. Though his manner was perfectly free from any charge of reprehensible levity, there was certainly an elasticity of spirit in all he said or did, that was as strange as it was entirely sincere and unaffected. Was this because he felt that he had nothing further to hope or fear, and trouble had ceased with uncertainty? Whatever was the cause, his mood happily influenced others, and they grew quiet and cheerful in his company.
”Dearest friends,” Valentine said, afterward, to Elisha, ”these things that have occurred were obliged to happen; no power on earth could have prevented them; and the power of Heaven never intervenes to perform miracles, or to avert evil at the expense of moral free agency. I am not a predestinarian, Brother Elisha, but I know that certain causes must produce certain effects, as surely as given figures produce known results. As I told you before, I always knew that this was to be my fate. From the first moment that I was provoked to strike Oswald Waring, I have seen this crime and this fate before me, like a horrible cloud. I would try to close my eyes to it--try to forget it. In vain--for even in my brightest moments it would fall suddenly like a funeral pall around me, blackening all the light of life. When poor Oswald Waring lay dead before me, I did not realize the crime more intensely than I had by presentiment a hundred times before. And when I shall stand, as I shall very soon do, upon the scaffold's fatal drop, with the cord around my neck, and the cap that is about to shut out the last glimpse of this world's suns.h.i.+ne from my eyes, descending over my face--even in that supreme moment, I know I cannot feel the situation more acutely than I have done prophetically a thousand times before!
”This prophetic feeling was the secret horror of my whole life. I dared not confide it to any one; therefore, it preyed upon my spirits, driving me at times almost to insanity. Yet, friends, there was nothing occult in this presentiment. It was but the swift and sure inference of certain effects from certain causes. It was rather a helpless foresight, than second sight. Well, the worst has come! I am calmer and happier now than I have been for many long, sad years. This fate is not nearly so horrible in reality as it seemed in antic.i.p.ation. The only earthly trouble that I have is in the thought of my little family. Comfort them, Brother Elisha! Help them to bring all the power of religion to their support. Time and religion cures the worst of sorrows; it will cure theirs. Only, in the meantime--in the hour of their greatest trial, and the first dark days that follow it--watch over them, sustain and comfort them, and lift up their hands to G.o.d, Elisha.”
”I will--I will, indeed, Brudder Walley,” promised the old preacher.
Valentine was not left alone in his trials. The friends of the Methodist church flocked around, and one or another was always with him. The clergymen of every denomination took a great interest in his situation and character. And the better Valentine was known, the deeper this interest grew. In advance of his trial, the press took up his case, and the papers were filled with accounts of visits that this or that gentleman had made him; conversations that one or another clergyman had held with him in his cell; and with descriptions of his good looks, graceful manners, intelligence, knowledge, conversational powers and eloquence--all ”so remarkable in one of his race and station.” It would seem, indeed, as if, unhappily, the good points of the unhappy young man had never been known or suspected, until crime had brought him prominently before the public. If there was anything to be regretted in the great sympathy that was felt for him, it was that the sympathizers kept up too much fuss around him for the good of one of his excitable temperament, and thus prevented the self-recollection and sobriety that befited the solemnity of his situation. Through the kindness of these friends, the best counsel that could be prevailed upon to take up his hopeless cause was retained, to defend Valentine in the approaching trial.
There was one affecting circ.u.mstance that occurred just before the sitting of the criminal court. Mrs. Waring had been subpoenaed to attend as a witness for the prosecution. She came up from Louisiana; and, soon after her arrival in the city, she sought out the poor, little, obscure wife of the prisoner, and gave her what comfort she could impart--telling her, that though she was the princ.i.p.al witness, her testimony would not bear hard upon Valentine, whom she felt persuaded was mad, and unconscious of his acts at the moment she witnessed them.
And that she hoped his life might yet be spared, for she felt convinced that capital punishment was in no case a corrector or a preventor of crime. And that, if the trial should terminate unfavorably, she would pet.i.tion the governor for a commutation of the sentence. And that her pet.i.tion, under the circ.u.mstances, would be the most powerful that could be presented. These and other merciful promises and reviving hopes did the gentle-hearted widow infuse into the poor girl's sinking heart.
And, oh! how Fannie knelt, and covered the lady's hands with loving kisses, and bathed them with grateful tears. And Mrs. Waring, when she left her, went directly to the most eminent lawyer in the city--one who had indignantly repulsed a clergyman who wished to retain him for the prisoner--and, after telling him very much what she had told Fannie relative to the character of her own testimony, succeeded in retaining him to defend Valentine; for this gentleman seemed to think that the favorable opinion and testimony of Mrs. Waring would make a very great difference in the respectability, popularity and security of the cause that he no longer hesitated to embrace.
Of course, there was much diversity of opinion in regard to Mrs.
Waring's course. All wondered at her, many censured her, while a few saw in her conduct the perfection of Christian charity. But, like all who have thought and suffered much, and profited by such experience, Mrs.
Waring was indifferent to any earthly judgment outside the sphere of her own affections; and so, ignorant and regardless of popular praise or censure, the lady went calmly on her merciful course.
The day of the sitting of the court drew near, when, one morning, a bustle in the gallery leading to Valentine's cell attracted the attention of the latter, and he had just concluded that the officials were bringing in a new prisoner, when the noisy group paused before his own door, unlocked it, and introduced Governor, Major Hewitt's big negro. With a few parting words, the turnkey and the constable left him, went out, and locked the door.
Then, for the first time, Valentine recovered from his surprise, and spoke to the newcomer.
But Governor, standing bolt upright until his tall figure and large head nearly reached the low ceiling, looked the image of stupor, and answered never a word.
Valentine knew, of course, that he was in desperate trouble, or he would not be in that cell. Kindly taking his hand, he led him to the bed, and made him sit down upon it. He was as docile as the gentlest child, though seemingly more stupid than any brute. And it was hours before he recovered sufficiently to tell Valentine the cause of his arrest.
The story gathered from his thick and incoherent talk was this: He himself was a huge, black, unsightly negro, painfully conscious of his personal defects. He was married to Milly, a pretty mulatto woman, whom he loved with the idolatrous affection that often distinguishes his race, and who had loved him in return, for the wealth of goodness under his rude exterior.
And he had been very happy with his wife and two little girls, until the new overseer came.
This person was a young, unmarried man, and his name was Moriarty. He took a fancy to Milly; used to stop every day at the door of her cabin, to ask for a drink of water; then, after a while, he got into the habit of going into her cabin to sit down and rest, and was never in a hurry to go away.
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