Fashion and Famine Part 67

"What was that, Jacob? A noise--the stirring of feet! Oh, my G.o.d--my G.o.d--they are coming in!"

She caught hold of Jacob's rough over-coat with one hand. The gleam of her teeth, as they knocked together, made the strong man recoil. It gave an expression of fearful agony to her face. He listened.

"No, it is the wind breaking through the hall."

"How it sobs! How like a human voice it is! Do you hear it?

Death!--death!--that is what it says!"

"You shudder--you are cold. How your teeth chatter!" said Jacob, folding the half-frozen cloak about her. "What can I do? If you would only go home, I will come the first minute after the verdict. Do--do go!"

"Hus.h.!.+ it is there again. Are the winds human, that they moan so?"

"It is a fierce storm, nothing more," said Jacob.

A woman came down the steps that moment. She had no cloak on, and a thin shawl hung in limp folds over her shoulders. An old hood lay back from her face, revealing features large and stern, but for the instant softened with sorrow. She came from the vestibule overhead. In that direction lay the court-room. Ada saw the woman, and holding out both her hands, s.h.i.+vering and purple with cold, walked slowly up to meet her.

These two females had seen each other but once in the world. One was from a prison, the other from a palatial home; yet they stood face to face, on equal terms, now. I am wrong; the woman of the prison looked down with something of stern rebuke upon the lady. She said in her heart, "The blood of this old man be upon her head! Did she not deny me the gold that might have saved him?" But when she looked upon that face, her resentment gave way. She paused on the steps, instead of pus.h.i.+ng roughly by, and said, in a tone that sounded peculiarly gentle from its contrast with her appearance and bearing--

"This is a bitter night, madam."

"Tell me--tell me," gasped Ada, seizing the woman's shawl, and raising her hand toward the court-room, "have they--have they--"

"Poor thing! so you repent at last," answered the woman, comprehending her gesture with that quick magnetism which is the lightning of some hearts. "No, they have not come in; but it is of no use waiting--the poor old man is as good as hung, depend on it."

Ada uttered a faint cry, very faint, but it seemed to her that it sounded through the whole building, ringing above the storm like a yell.

She dropped the woman's shawl, and stood motionless, looking helplessly in her face.

"You had better take the lady home," said the woman, turning kindly to Jacob; "she is wet through--the ice rattles on her clothes; she will catch her death of cold. I would stay and help her, for she seems in trouble; but there is worse trouble coming for the poor creature overhead. I thought I had seen hard sights before; but this--there is no brandy strong enough to make me forget this!"

"There is no news--the jury are still out?" questioned Jacob. "Tell me!"

"No, no--I have nothing to say--the jury are out yet--the judge waiting--the old man--"

"Hus.h.!.+" said Jacob, "she is listening."

"Stay--tell me all--the old man--tell me all!" cried Ada, hurrying down two or three steps after the woman.

"I cannot wait, lady; the jury may come in any moment. Those poor watchers will want a carriage. I must find one somewhere. n.o.body thought of that but me. They might not feel the storm, for the verdict will numb them; but it is a piercing night."

"You have no cloak--scarcely more than summer clothes. I will go," said Jacob.

"I am used to battling with the weather," was the answer. "Thank you, though."

"Stay with her," answered Jacob, and he hurried down the steps.

"How the wind blows!--it is a terrible night," said the woman, drawing her scant shawl together, and sitting down by Ada, who had sunk upon the cold steps, as if all the strength had withered from her limbs the moment Jacob left her. "You tremble--your teeth chatter--these poor hands are like ice; there, there, let me rub them between mine."

Ada submitted her s.h.i.+vering hands meekly as a child, and a drop, that was not rain, stole down her face.

"You told me once," she said, "that money would save him; will thousands--hundreds of thousands do it now?"

"It is too late," answered the woman, sadly.

The tempest rose just then, and, to Ada's almost frenzied mind, it seemed as if every swell of the wind answered back, "too late--too late!" She shuddered, and cowered down by the woman, as if a death sentence were ringing over her.

When Jacob returned, he found the two women sitting together, upon the steps. Ada rose to her feet, and, without speaking, began rapidly to mount them. Jacob followed.

"Where are you going! Not there, I hope--not there!"

"Yes, _there_!"

She rushed forward, her frozen garments crackling and shedding ice-drops as she moved. All the high-bred dignity of her mien was gone; all the richness of her toilet drenched away. The woman who followed her scarcely looked more poverty stricken--did not look so utterly desolate.

She opened the court-room door, and crept in. All the audience was gone.

Empty benches flung their long, gloomy shadows athwart the room. Dim lamps flared across the wall, leaving patches of blackness in the angles and around every object that could catch and break the weak gleams of light. The judge was upon his seat, pale and still as a statue of marble. Weary with excitement and the protracted trial, he sat there in the gloomy midnight, waiting for the death-word, face to face with that old man, whose life lay in the breath on his lip. Constantly his eyes turned upon the prisoner, and always they were met with a glance that penetrated his heart to the core. A light, overhead, fell upon the old man's temple, silvering the broad, high forehead, gleaming through the white locks and glancing downward, shedding faint rays upon his beard and bosom. I have seen a picture of Rembrandt's, so like my idea of the old man, that it has haunted me ever since. The calm, deep-set eyes, the holy strength slumbering within them--the expanse of forehead, the whole head, were so perfectly the embodiment of my thought, that it startled me. That which I saw in the picture, it was, which penetrated to the heart of the judge, as he gazed upon the living man.

A group of police-officers hung about the door; some asleep, with their caps down over their eyes, others yawning and stretched at full length upon the benches, making the scene more gloomy by the contrast of their indifference with the anguish that surrounded them.

Away, in the darkest corner, was another group of persons--three females and a man. No word, no whisper pa.s.sed among them. It scarcely seemed as if they drew breath; but as you looked that way, the glitter of wild eyes struck you with a sort of terror; and if the least sound arose, the shadows around those women changed sharply, as if they felt something of the anguish which made their princ.i.p.als start. Ada Leicester crept noiselessly along the darkened wall, followed by the prison woman, and sat down a little way from the rest. No one seemed to regard her, and there she remained in the gloom, motionless as the figures upon which her dull eyes were now and then turned. Thus an hour went by; all within the court room was silent as death; without was the storm, wailing and sobbing around the windows, shaking them angrily, like evil spirits striving to break in, then rus.h.i.+ng off with a hoa.r.s.e disappointed howl.

This terrible contrast--the stillness within--the wild tumult without--made even the officers cower closer together, and filled the other persons present with intense awe. It seemed as if heaven and earth had combined in hurling denunciations against that hapless old man. It was after midnight, and for an instant there was a hush in the storm--a hush in the vast building. Then came the sharp closing of a door, the tramp of heavy feet, and twelve figures glided, one after another, into the court-room. They ranged themselves in a dark line along the jury-box, and stood motionless, their cloaks huddled around them, like folds of a thunder-cloud, their faces white as marble.

The judge arose, leaning heavily with one hand upon the desk before him.

His lips moved, but it was not till a second effort that they gave forth a sound; but when it did come, his voice broke through the room like a trumpet.

"Prisoner, stand up and look upon the jury!"

The old man arose, and turning meekly around, lifted his eyes to the twelve jurors. * * *

"Guilty or not guilty?"

"Guilty!"

The storm began to howl again, but all was still in the court-room.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

THE PARENTS, THE CHILD AND GRANDCHILD.

Nor sin, nor shame, nor sense of wrong Can yet a mother's love control; It waiteth, watcheth, hopeth long, And grows immortal with the soul.

The next morning, a carriage, one of the few superb equipages that give an air of elegance to Broadway, equal to that of any public drive I have yet seen, stopped at the corner of Franklin street. The grey horses and deep green of the carriage were well known in that thoroughfare, and it had been too often seen before Stewart's, and Ball & Black's, for any one to remark the time during which it remained in that unusual place.

Had any one seen Ada Leicester as she descended from the carriage and walked hurriedly toward the City Prison, it might have been a matter of wonder, how a creature so elegant and so fastidious had forced herself to enter a neighborhood which few women visit, except from force or objects of philanthropy.

Jacob Strong walked by the side of his mistress. Few words pa.s.sed between them, for both seemed painfully preoccupied. Jacob betrayed this state of mind by a more decided stoop of the shoulders, and by knocking his great feet against every loose brick in the sidewalk, as he stumbled along. The lady moved on as one walks in a dream, her eyes bent upon the pavement, her ungloved hand grasping the purple velvet of her cloak and holding it against her bosom. The people who pa.s.sed her thought it a pretty piece of coquetry, by which she might reveal the jewels that flashed upon the snow of that beautiful hand. Alas, how little we can judge of one another! The delicate primrose gloves had dropped from her grasp unheeded, and lay trampled in the mud close by her own door. The maid had placed them in her palsied hand, as she had performed all other duties of the toilet that morning, but the wretched woman was quite unconscious of it all.