Part 18 (1/2)
She entered with a feeling of dread, as if the atmosphere of the place chilled and repelled her. It is always thus with persons visiting a jail for the first time. There is something sinister in the suggestions conveyed by the long, silent tiers of grated iron doors, something that strikes terror into the stoutest hearts.
A trusty carried her name to Beard and returned at the end of five minutes with the information that the prisoner was willing to see her.
As if further to rasp her refined sensibilities and shock her, she was escorted into a little side room and subjected to a thorough search at the hands of a stout, impa.s.sive matron. To Josephine Burden it seemed an unnecessary humiliation and she shrank inwardly from contact with those rough, though nimble hands.
Being unaccustomed to the peculiar etiquette of prisons, she was unable to appreciate how necessary is the precaution of searching all visitors.
Even with the exercise of the utmost care, it is impossible to prevent the smuggling of weapons and other contraband to the prisoners.
Nothing to arouse the suspicion of the matron was found on Miss Burden and she was escorted to the tier on which Beard was confined. As she pa.s.sed up the winding iron stairs and down the long corridors, catching glimpses of human faces peering anxiously through the grating of their cells, she could not help a feeling of pity for the poor wretches confined like wild animals in their iron cages.
To the ordinary curiosity seeker the spectacle is one which leaves a feeling of depression that abides with one like a frightful nightmare prolonged through the hours of wakefulness. What then must be the emotions of those, who, visiting the prison for the first time, behold one who is near and dear to them peering helplessly, with that look of mute appeal that is ever present in the eyes of unfortunate humans deprived of liberty, from behind the interposing bars of a gloomy cell?
The first flash which Josephine Burden obtained of the man she had come to visit, produced a feeling of horror not unmixed with revolt at the relentless cruelty of the steel bars through which she discerned his haggard face. Beard's form, dimly outlined against the steel door at the end of a long corridor, seemed to have gathered to itself the wan light that filtered through a narrow window at the right of the aisle, and taken on a gray, misty aspect, wraith-like and terrifying. She had come upon him abruptly, at the turn of the stairs, and for a moment she stood silent, overcome by a chaos of emotions.
If she expected the door to open she was disappointed, for the trusty simply withdrew half a dozen paces leaving the prisoner and his visitor to face each other and converse through the narrow s.p.a.ce between the bars.
”I received your note,” Beard broke the embarra.s.sing silence, ”and I can't tell you how much it cheered me.”
She advanced nearer the door, and extending a gloved hand through the bars, permitted it to repose an instant in the prisoner's grateful palm.
”I had to come,” she murmured, ”although father went into a fury when I told him.”
”And you came to cheer me--to tell me you believe in me?”
Something far deeper than mere grat.i.tude shone in his eyes, and was reflected in the agitated countenance of the girl.
”I came to tell you that I broke my engagement to Lester Ward,” she said in quivering voice.
Cautiously Britz peered at the couple through the iron grating of his cell. He noted the tremor which pa.s.sed down Beard's form and the furtive caress which he bestowed on the visitor's hand. At the same time the girl lifted her veil, disclosing a finely molded face of flawless features, with a skin of exquisite paleness, and flas.h.i.+ng brown eyes shaded by long, dark lashes. As she stood with fingers encircling the bars that interposed between her and Beard, her beautiful face took on a purposeful aspect, as of one suddenly possessed of a new and consuming interest in life.
The news which she had brought the prisoner cheered him perceptibly. But he regarded her as if even now he found it difficult to credit her with the courage she must have displayed in discarding the man whom she had promised to wed.
”How did it happen?” inquired Beard in a voice that betrayed his bewildered state of mind.
”You must have known, your instinct must have told you that I accepted him because of father's urging,” she said. ”Now that you are in trouble I don't fear to tell you that I wanted you all the time. When I read of your arrest I wanted to fly to you, to be near you, to sustain you. This morning I told father of my intention to break the engagement. And, do you know, he a.s.sented at once. But he went into a rage when I told him I was coming here, although he seemed perfectly pleased to have me break with Lester.”
A person of duller intellect than Britz, from overhearing the conversation between Beard and the girl, would have discerned the romance in the lives of the couple. Had they revealed it in its most intimate detail, they could not have conveyed a better understanding of it than through the words uttered in this murky prison corridor. It was plain to Britz that Beard and Ward had been suitors for the girl's hand; that Ward's suit was successful through the favor which he found in the eyes of the girl's father. But now, when the man with whom she really was in love was in desperate straits, that love could no longer be diverted from its true channel, and, like an irresistible current that sweeps everything before it, it had carried her to the side of her endangered lover.
Materialists may find it difficult to distinguish between love and pa.s.sion--may deny to their hearts' content the existence of any line of demarcation between them. But the true lover has no doubt on the subject. Love distinguishes itself from pa.s.sion, through sacrifice.
Pa.s.sion is invariably selfish. Love never is.
Britz, recognizing instinctively the genuineness of the woman's love, pa.s.sed over its enn.o.bling aspect, to find therein a potent influence for the solution of the crime with which he was engaged. The girl had unconsciously revealed herself to him as a means to an end--that end being the discovery and punishment of the murderer of Herbert Whitmore.
Had Beard been an experienced criminal, he would have known that no walls have more ears, nor more delicately attuned ears, than prison walls. And that knowledge would have inspired a suspicion of the very bars against which he pressed his fevered face. But being without previous jail experience, he said in a voice as distinctly audible to Britz as if he had been talking directly to the detective,--
”Then you don't believe for a single instant the terrible accusation they have lodged against me?”
”No one who knows you can possibly believe it,” she answered in a tone of conviction.
”Dearest,” he said, adopting a confidential air, ”I could leave this prison to-morrow were I so inclined. They haven't the least particle of evidence against me--they cannot have. Were I to force the issue they could not make out a case sufficient to justify my being held for the grand jury. I am staying here because I want to, because it is best that they should direct their efforts toward trying to prove me the murderer.”