Studies in Wives

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Theodore had not thought of the old local prison for years, but now he knew that he and his father were together there, in a small cell lighted by one candle. The wall of silence, raised on both sides by shame and pain, had broken down, but, alas! too late; for, again in some curious inexplicable way, the young man was aware that he lay under sentence of death, and that he was to be hanged early in the morning of which the dawn was only just now breaking.

Yet, strange to say, this knowledge caused him, personally, but little uneasiness, but on his father's account he felt infinitely distressed, and he found himself bending his whole mind to comfort and sustain the old man.

Thus, he heard a voice, which he knew to be his own, saying in an argumentative tone, "I assure you, father, that an extraordinary amount of nonsense is talked nowadays concerning—well, the death penalty. Is it possible that you do not realise that I am escaping a much worse fate—that of having to live on? I wish, dear dad, that I could persuade you of the truth of this."

"If only," muttered the old man in response, "if only, my boy, I could bear it for you;" and Carden saw that his father's face was seared with an awful look of terror and agony.

"But, indeed, father, you do not understand. Believe me, I am not afraid—it will not be so bad after all. So do not—pray, pray, father, do not be so distressed."

And then, with a great start, Theodore Carden awoke—awoke to see the small, spare figure of that same dear father, clothed in the long, old-fashioned linen nightshirt of another day, standing by his bedside.

The old man held a candle in his hand, and was gazing down at his only child with an expression of unutterable woe and grief.

"I will try—I am trying, my boy, not to be unreasonably distressed," he said.

Theodore Carden sat up in bed.

Since this awful thing had come on him, he had never, even for an instant, forgotten self, but now he saw that his sufferings were small compared with those he had brought on the man into whose face he was gazing with red-rimmed, sunken eyes.