CHAPTER XXVIII.
BENJAMIN.
I t was the evening of September the Sixteenth, about nine of the clock. I was sitting alone in my lodging. Downstairs I heard the voice of the poor widow, Mrs. Prior, who had received us. She was praying aloud with some godly friends for the safety of her sons. These young men, as I have said, were never more heard of, and were therefore already, doubtless, past praying for. I, who ought to have been praying with them, held Robin's last letter in my hands. I knew it by heart; but I must still be reading it again and again; thinking it was his voice which was indeed speaking to me, trying to feel his presence near me, to hear his breath, to see his very eyes. In the night, waking or sleeping, I still would hear him calling to me aloud. 'My heart! my life! my love!' he would cry. I heard him, I say, quite plainly. By special mercy and grace this power was accorded to me; because I have no doubt that in his mind, while lying in his noisome prison, he did turn his thoughts, yea, and the yearnings of his fond heart, to the maid he loved. But now the merciless Judge who had sentenced three hundred men to one common doom—three hundred men!—was such a sentence ever known?—had left Dorchester, and was already, perhaps, at Exeter. Oh!—perhaps Robin had by this time stood his trial: what place was left for prayer? For if the poor, ignorant clowns were condemned to death, how much more the gentlemen, the officers of Monmouth's army! Perhaps he was already executed—my lover, my boy, my Robin!—taken out and hanged, and now a cold and senseless corpse! Then the wailings and prayers of the poor woman below, added to the distraction of these thoughts, made me feel as if I was indeed losing my senses. At this time, it was blow upon blow—line upon line. The sky was black—the heavens were deaf. Is there—can there be—a more miserable thing than to feel that the very heavens are deaf? The mercy of the Lord—His kindly hearkening to our cries and prayers—these we believe as we look for the light of day and the warmth of the sun. Nay, this belief is the very breath of our life; so that there is none but the most hardened and abandoned sinner who doth not still feel that he hath in the Lord a Father as well as a Judge. To lose that belief—'twere better to be a lump of senseless clay. The greatest misery of the lost soul, even greater than his continual torment of fire, and his never-ending thirst, and the gnawing of remorse, must be to feel that the heavens are deaf to his prayers—deaf for ever and for ever!
At this time, my prayers were all for safety. 'Safety, good Lord! give them safety! Save them from the executioner? Give them safety?' Thus, as Barnaby said, the shipwrecked mariner clinging to the mast asks not for a green, pleasant, and fertile shore, but for land—only for land. I sat there, musing sadly, the Bible on the table and a lighted candle. I read not in the Bible, but listened to the wailing of the poor soul below, and looked at the churchyard without, the moonlight falling upon the fresh mounds which covered the graves of the poor dead prisoners. Suddenly I heard a voice—a loud and harsh voice—and footsteps. I knew both footsteps and voice, and I sprang to my feet trembling, because I was certain that some new disaster had befallen us.
Then the steps mounted the stairs; the door was opened, and Benjamin—none other than Benjamin—appeared. What did he here? He was so big, with so red a face, that his presence seemed to fill the room. And with him—what did this mean?—came Madam herself, who I thought to have been at Exeter. Alas! her eyes were red with weeping; her cheeks were thin and wasted with sorrow; her lips were trembling.
'Alice!' she cried, holding out her hands. 'Child, these terrible things are done, and yet we live! Alas! we live! Are our hearts made of stone that we still live? As for me, I cannot die, though I lose all—all—all!'
'Dear Madam, what hath happened? More misery! More disaster! Oh! tell me! tell me!'
'Oh! my dear, they have been tried—they have been tried, and they are condemned to die—both Robin—my son Robin—and with him Humphrey, who dragged him into the business and alone ought to suffer for both. But there is now no justice in the land. No—no more justice can be had. Else Humphrey should have suffered for all.'
There was something strange in her eyes—she did not look like a mother robbed of her children; she gazed upon me as if there was something else upon her mind. As if the condemnation of her son was not enough.