Suffered!—the wretched felon whose foot is upon the first step of the scaffold, never suffered more than the crushed, ruined, accused Torrens;—for all his guilt had arisen from the lack of moral courage to meet misfortune face to face; and now that misfortune had thrust itself upon him, and compelled him to gaze on its pale and death-like countenance, he was completely weighed down.
His infamy in respect to Rosamond, lay as heavily upon his conscience as would have lain the crime of murder, had he really perpetrated it; and he suffered more on account of the deed which he had committed, but for which the law had not touched him, than on account of the charge of which he was innocent, but for which the law had seized upon him.
Miserable—miserable man! Darkness—silence—and sleeplessness were indeed terrible to him,—so terrible that, as he lay tossing upon his feverish pallet, he wished that he was dead:—yet, had he possessed the means of inflicting self-destruction, he would have been afraid to die!
He was not placed in a ward along with other prisoners; because the charge against him was so black and terrible—the charge of murder—that he was lodged in a dungeon by himself—a cell that had seen many, many previous occupants, most of whom had gone forth to the scaffold!
For in Newgate the possession of a room to oneself—if a room such a coffin of masonry can be called—is the horrible privilege of him who is accused of murder; and those whose alleged offences are of a less deep dye, herd together in common wards, where a fetid atmosphere is the medium of communicating the foulest ideas that words can convey or ears receive.
Oh! what a plague-spot is that horrible gaol—that pandemonium of Newgate—upon the civilisation of the metropolis of these realms!
Shame—shame, that it should be allowed to exist under the management of an incapable, ignorant, and monstrously corrupt body—the Aldermen of London:—shame, shame that it should be permitted to remain as a frightful abuse of local jurisdiction, just because no statesman has yet been found bold enough to wrest a barbarian charter from an overgrown, bloated, and despicable corporation!
The wife—the newly married wife of Mr. Torrens,—that woman so well known to our readers by the name of Martha Slingsby,—was not lodged by herself:—being accused of a crime one degree less heinous than that of murder, she was placed in a ward with several other females.
And she also heard the iron tongue of Time proclaim the hour of two in the morning;—and she also tossed upon a hard, sleepless, and feverish pallet.
For she had not even the solace of conscious innocence as an anodyne for her lacerated heart and wounded spirit: she knew that she was guilty of the crime imputed to her—and that knowledge lay upon her soul like a weight of lead.