CHAPTER XI.
“Day dawned—within a curtained room,
Filled to faintness with perfume,
A lady lay at point of doom.
Morn broke—an infant saw the light,
But for the lady, fair and bright,
She slumbered in undreaming night.”
Life and death had passed each other on the threshold! Lucy Ford’s tears were the baptism of Mary’s motherless babe. The poor weary heart, whose pulse had beat so unevenly above it, had ceased its flutterings. It was nothing new to see Mary lie with marble face, folded hands, and softly-fringed, closed eyes. But, sometimes, the thin hand had been kindly outstretched toward Lucy; sometimes, the glossy head had raised itself, and leaned tenderly on the maternal bosom; sometimes, the blue eye had lingered lovingly on her wrinkled face. Small comfort, God knows—and yet it was much to poor Lucy. She looked at the little gasping, helpless thing before her—a tenant already for her rifled heart—a new claimant for her love and care. Oh, how could she else but welcome it? With soft folds she wrapped its fragile limbs, with motherly care she soothed it on her sunken breast, and with a prayer to God, as she pressed her lips to Mary’s brow, she promised Death to be faithful to the trust of Life.
Days and nights—weeks, months and years came and went, blanching the prisoner’s lip and cheek, but failing to subdue a love which yet had not saved him from incurring a doom so terrible. Had Mary forgotten him? for, since that dreadful, happy day, when he clasped her in his cell, he had heard nothing save the damning sneer of the villain Scraggs. Perhaps she was dead—and his bloodless lip quivered at the thought. Nay—worse—perhaps they might have married her, in her despair, to another. Percy tossed on his narrow cot in agony.
He even welcomed the day-light, which recalled him to his task. Oh, those long, long nights, when locked in his cell, remorse kept him silent company! or worse, the dreary, idle Sunday, when taken out once to chapel, then remanded back to his dark cell, he lay thinking of the pleasant Sabbaths he had passed with Mary, in the little parlor, on the sofa by her side. He could see her now, in the pretty blue dress she wore to please him; the ring he had given her, sparkling on her white hand—her glossy hair, worn the very way he liked to see it, the book opened at the passage he liked best, the little flower pressed between its leaves, because he gave it. Then the little arbor in the garden—where they used to sit the pleasant Sabbath evenings—the song Mary sang him there—with her head upon his breast. Oh, happiness—oh, misery!
Percy knew it was summer, for as he passed through the prison-yard he saw that the green blades of grass were struggling up between the flag-stones, and now and then, he heard the chirp of a passing bird. The sky, too, was softly blue, and the breeze had been where clover and daisies had bloomed, and rifled their sweetness.
Percy looked down on his shrunken limbs, clad in his felon garb—then on his toil-worn hands. He passed them slowly over his shaven crown. Merciful Heaven! he—Percy Lee—Mary’s lover! Fool—thrice-accursed fool; life—liberty—happiness—love—all laid at the feet of the tempting fiend—for this! No tears relieved the fierce fire, which seemed consuming his heart and brain. How long could he bear this? Was his cell to be his grave? Once, seized with a sudden illness, he had been taken to the prison hospital, where the doctor tried pleasant little experiments on the subjects who came under his notice. Around him were poor wretches, groaning under every phase of bodily and mental discomfort. Now roused out of some Heaven-sent slumber, when it suited the doctor to show them to visitors; or to descant upon the commencement and probable duration of their disease, coupled with accounts of patients who had died in those beds, and whom he could have cured under different circumstances.
It was here that Percy shed the only tears which had moistened his eyes since his incarceration. A party of visitors were passing through the wards, listening to the doctor’s egotistical details, and peeping into the different cots. A sweet little girl had strayed away from the rest of her party, and was making her tour of childish observation alone. Her eye fell upon Percy. She stood for a moment, gazing at him with the intensest pity written on her sweet face. Then gliding up to his side, she drooped her bright curls over his pillow, and placing a flower between his fingers, she whispered, “I’ll pray to God to make you well and let you go home.”
“Mary! come here,” said a shrill female voice, recalling the child; “don’t you know that is a horrid bad man! he might kill you.”
“No, he is not,” said the little creature, confidently, with a piteous glance of her soft, blue eyes at Percy; “no, he is not.”
“What makes you think so?” asked one of the party.
“I don’t know,” replied the child; “something tells me so—here;” and she laid her hand on her breast.
“Won’t you please let him go home?” asked she of the doctor.
“Home.”
As the sweet pleader passed out, the room seemed to grow suddenly dark, and Percy turned his face to his pillow, and wept aloud.
Heavenly childhood! that the world should ever chill thy Christ-like heart. That scorn should uproot pity. That suspicion should stifle love. That selfishness should dry up thy tears, and avarice lock thine open palm, with its vice-like grasp! Oh, weep not ye who straighten childhood for the grave; over whose household idols the green grass waves; heaven’s bright rain showers and spring flowers bloom. Let the bird soar, while his song is sweetest, before one stain soil his plumage, or with maimed wing he flutter helplessly. Let him soar. The cloud which hides him from thy straining eye, doth it not hide him from the archer?