Fashion and Famine

by Ann S. Stephens

And now the old man was alone, utterly alone, locked and bolted deep into that solitude which must be worse than death to the guilty soul. At first his brain was dizzy; the tragic events that cast him into prison had transpired too rapidly for realization. They rose and eddied through his mind like the phantasmagoria of a dream. He could not think—he could not even pray.

He sat down on the hard pallet, and bowing his forehead to his hands, made an effort to realize his exact situation. His eyes were bent on the floor. Once or twice his lips moved with a faint tremor, for in all the confusion of his ideas he could recollect one thing vividly enough. His wife and grandchild—the two beings for whom he had toiled and suffered, were torn from his side. His poor old wife—her cry, as she strove to follow him, still rang in his ear. She had not even the comforts of a prison.

He looked around the cell—it was clean and dry—the walls snowy with whitewash—the stone flags swept scrupulously. In everything but size it was more comfortable than the basement from which the officers had taken them. True, it was but a hole dug into the ponderous walls of a prison, but if she had been there the poor old man would have been content—nay, grateful, for as yet he had found no strength to realize the terrible danger that hung over him.

Thus, hour after hour went by, and he sat motionless, pondering over all the incidents of his examination like one in a dream. None of them seemed real—but the voice of his wife—the wild, white face of his grandchild as she was borne away through the crowd—these things were palpable enough. He tried to conjecture where his wife would go; what place of refuge she would find; not to their old home, the floor was still red with blood. She was a timid woman, dependent as a child. Without his calm strength to sustain her, what could she do? Perish in the street, perhaps; lie down, softly, upon some door-stone, and grieve herself to death.

There is nothing on earth more touchingly holy than the tenderness which an old man feels for his old wife. The most ardent love of youth is feeble compared to the solemn devotion into which time purifies passion. The mere habit of domestic intercourse is much, independent of those deeper and more subtle feelings which give us our first glimpses of Paradise through the joys of home affection. It was not the prison—it was not the charge of murder that held that old man spell-bound and motionless so long. His desolation was of the heart; his spirit fled out from those huge walls, and followed the lone woman who had been thrust rudely from his side, for the first time in more than thirty years.

It was not with this keen anguish that he thought of Julia, for in her character there was freshness, energy, something of moral strength beyond her years. She might suffer terribly, but something convinced the grandfather that the sublime purity of her nature would protect itself. She was not a feeble, broken-spirited woman like his wife. Yet his heart yearned as he thought of this young creature so pure, so beautiful, so full of sensitive sympathies, among the inmates of that gloomy dwelling.

It was of these two beings the old man pondered, not of himself. After awhile, this keen anxiety goaded him into motion. He stood up and began to pace back and forth in his cell. A narrow strip of the floor lay between his bed and the wall, and along this a little footpath had been worn in the stone by former prisoners.

Who had thus worn the prints of his solitary misery into the hard granite? What foot had trodden there the last sad step of destiny! This question drew the old man's attention for a moment from those he had lost. He became curious to know something of his predecessor—what was his crime? How did he look? Had he a wife and child to mourn? Did he leave the cell for liberty, other confinement, or death?

The word death brought a sense of his own condition for the first time before him. He became thoroughly conscious that a terrible charge had been made against him, and that appearances must sustain that charge. From that instant he stood still, with his eyes bent upon the floor, pondering the subject clearly in his mind. At length a faint smile parted his lips, and he began to pace the narrow cell again, but more calmly than before.

I will tell you why that old man smiled there, alone, in his prison cell, because it will convince you that nothing but guilt can make one utterly wretched. He had thought over the whole matter—the charge of murder—the impossibility of disproving a single point of the evidence. Nothing could be more apparent than the danger in which he stood—nothing more certain than the penalty that would follow conviction. But it was this very truth that sent the smile to those aged lips. What was death to him but the threshold of heaven? Death, he had never prayed for it, for his Christianity was too holy and humble for selfish importunity, even though the thing asked for was death. He was not one to cast himself at the footstool of the Almighty, and point out to His all-seeing wisdom the mercies that would please him best. No—no, the religion of that noble old man—for true religion is always noble—was of that humble, trusting nature that says, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done." He was only thinking when he smiled so gently, how much greater sorrow he had encountered than death could bring.