Fresh Leaves

CHAPTER II

“A gentleman, sir, to see you,” said a servant to Jacob Ford, as he ushered in his old friend, Mr. Trask.

“Ah, Trask, how are you? Glad to see you,” said Jacob, with one of his vice-like shakes of the hand. “Come for a rubber at whist? That’s right. I was thinking to-day, how long it was since you and I had a quiet hour together. How’s trade, Trask? You ought to be making money. Why, what’s the matter, man?” clapping him on the shoulder; “never saw you this way before; hang me if you don’t look as solemn as old Parson Glebe. Why don’t you speak? Why do you stare at me so?”

“Jacob,” replied Mr. Trask, and there he stopped.

“Well – that’s my name; Jacob Ford: as good a name as you’ll find on ’change. I never have done any thing to make me ashamed of it.”

“I wish every body could say as much,” said Trask, gravely.

“What are you driving at?” asked Jacob Ford; “don’t talk riddles to me – they get me out of temper. If you have any thing to tell, out with it. I’ve seen fifty years’ wear and tear; I’m not frightened by trifles.”

“But this is no trifle, Ford. I can’t do it,” said the soft-hearted Mr. Trask. “Jacob, my old friend – I – can’t do it,” and he sat down and covered his face with his hands.

“Come – come,” said Jacob; “take heart, man. If you have got into a scrape, Jacob Ford is not the man to desert an old friend; if a few hundreds or more will set it all right, you shall have it.”

“For God’s sake, stop,” said Trask; “the shadow has fallen on your threshold, not on mine.”

“Mine?” replied Jacob, with a bewildered look. “Mine? defalcations? banks broke? hey? Jacob Ford a beggar, after fifty years’ toil?”

“Worse – worse,” said Trask, making a violent effort to speak. “Percy Lee is arrested for embezzlement, and I have proofs of his guilt. There – now I’ve said it.”

“Man! do you know this?” said Jacob, in a hoarse whisper, putting his white lips close to his friend’s ear, as if he feared the very walls would tell the secret.

“Before God, ’tis true,” said Trask, solemnly.

“Then God’s curse light on the villain,” said Jacob Ford. “My Mary – my bright, beautiful Mary! Oh! who will tell her? Listen, Trask, that’s her voice – singing. Oh, God – oh God, this is too dreadful” – and the old man bowed his head upon his breast, and wept like a child.

“What does all this mean?” asked Lucy Ford, opening the door. “Jacob – husband – Trask – what is it?” and she looked from one to the other, in bewildered wonder.

“Tell her, Trask,” whispered Jacob.

“Don’t weep so, dear Jacob,” said Lucy; “if money has gone, we can both go to work again; we both know how. Mary will soon have a home of her own.”

Jacob sprang to his feet, and seizing Lucy by the arm, hissed in her ear, “Woman, don’t you name him. May God’s curse blight him. May he die alone. May his bones bleach in the winds of heaven, and his soul be forever damned. Lucy – Percy Lee is a – a – swindler! There – now go break her heart, if you can. Lucy? – Trask?” – and Jacob, overcome with the violence of his feelings, wept again like a child; while poor Lucy, good Lucy, hid her face on her husband’s breast, repressing her own anguish that she might not add to his.

“Who’s going to tell her, I say?” said Jacob. “May my tongue wither before I do it. My darling – my loving, beautiful darling – who will tell her?”

“I,” said the mother, with ashen lips, as she raised herself slowly from her husband’s breast, and moved toward the door.

Clutching at the balustrade for support, Lucy dragged herself slowly up stairs. Ah! well might she reel to and fro as she heard Mary’s voice:

A trembling hand was laid upon Mary’s shoulder. She shook back her long bright hair, and looked smilingly up into her mother’s face.

“Mary,” said Lucy, solemnly, “you will never marry Percy Lee.”

“Dead? Percy dead? Oh – no – no,” gasped the poor girl. “My Percy! – no – no!”

“Worse – worse,” said Lucy, throwing her protecting arms around her child. “Mary, Percy Lee is a swindler; he is unworthy of you; you must forget him.”

“Never,” said Mary – “never! Who dare say that? Where is he? – take me to him;” and she sunk fainting to the floor.

“I have killed her,” said the weeping mother, as she chafed her cold temples, and kissed her colorless lips. “I have killed her,” she murmured, bending over her, as Mary passed from one convulsive fit to another.

“Will she die, Jacob?” asked Lucy, looking mournfully up into her husband’s pallid face. “Will she die, Jacob?”

“Better so,” groaned the old man. “God’s curse on him who has done this. She was my all. What’s my gold good for, if it can not bring back the light to her eye, the peace to her heart? My gold that I have toiled for, and piled up in shining heaps: what is it good for?”

“The curse was on it, Jacob,” groaned Lucy. “Oh, Jacob, I told you so. God forgive us; it was cankered gold.”

“Why did the villain blast my home?” asked Jacob, apparently unconscious of what Lucy had said; “kill my one ewe lamb; all Jacob had to love – all that made him human? Lucy, I never prayed, but perhaps He would hear me for her;” and he knelt by his child. “Oh God, make my soul miserable forever, if thou wilt, but spare her– take the misery out of her heart.”

“If it be Thy will,” responded Lucy.

“Don’t say that, Lucy,” said Jacob. “I must have it so; – what has she done, poor lamb?”

CHAPTER III

Percy Lee a defaulter – a swindler! The news flew like wildfire.

“No great catch, after all,” said a rival beauty, tossing her ringlets.

“I expected something of that sort,” said a modern Solomon.

“Hope he’ll be imprisoned for life,” said a charitable tailor, whom Jacob Ford had eclipsed, “this will bring Jacob’s pride down a trifle, I’m thinking.”

“How lucky you did not succeed in catching him,” said a mother, confidentially, to her daughter.

“I?” exclaimed the young lady. “I? Is it possible you can be so stupid, mamma, as to suppose I would waste a thought on Percy Lee! I assure you he offered himself to Mary Ford in a fit of pique at my rejection. Don’t imagine you are in all my secrets,” said the dutiful young lady, tossing her head. “Well – her disappearance from society is certain – thank goodness – not that she interferes with me; but her pretended simplicity is so disgusting! What the men in our set could see to admire in her, passes me; but chacun à son gout.”

“Of course, Lee will get clear,” said a rough dray-man to his comrade. “These big fish always flounder out of the net; it is only the minnows who get caught. Satan! it makes me swear to think of it. I will be sure to stand at the court-house door when he is brought for trial, and insult him if I can. I hope the aristocratic hound will swing for it.”

“Come, now, Jo,” said his friend, taking out his penknife, and sitting down on a stump to whittle. “You are always a railing at the aristocracy, as you call ’em. I never knew a man who talks as you do, who was not an aristocrat at heart, worshiping the very wealth and station he sneered at. Don’t be a fool, John. We are far happier, or might be, with our teams, plenty of jobs, and good health, than these aristocrats, as you call them, who half the time are tossing on their pillows, because this ship hasn’t arrived in port, or that land speculation has burst up, or stocks depreciated, or some such cursed canker at the root of all their gourds. Now there’s poor Jacob Ford; of what use are all his riches, now his daughter’s heart is broke? And Percy Lee, too – will his fine education and book learning get him out of the clutches of the law? Have a little charity, Jo. It hurts a man worse to fall from such a height into a prison, than it would you or me, from a dray-cart. Gad – I pity him; his worst enemy couldn’t pile up the agony any higher.”

“Pity him!” said Jo, mockingly – “a swindling rascal like that – to break a pretty girl’s heart!”

“Jo,” said his friend, shutting up his penknife, and looking him steadily in the eye, “have you always said no to the tempting devil in your heart? Did you never charge a stranger more than the law allows for a job? Did no poor girl ever curse the hour she saw the light, for your sake?”

“Well, Mr. Parson, what if all that were true?” asked Jo, with an abortive attempt at a laugh. “I can’t see what it has to do with what we are talking about; hang it.”

“Just this,” answered his friend. “He who is without sin, only, is to cast the first stone.”

“O, get out,” said Jo, cracking his whip over his horse’s head, and taking refuge, like many other cornered disputants, in flight.

And Percy Lee! From the hour in which he passed from the heaven of Mary’s smile, up to the present moment, in which he paced like a caged lion up and down his narrow bounds, what untold agonies were his! Why had he wrecked happiness, love, honor, all in one fatal moment? Why had he prostituted his God-given talents so madly to sin? Let those answer who have in like manner sinned, and who have expiated that sin, by a life-long brand upon the brow and a life-long misery in the heart. “Let him who thinketh he standeth, take heed lest he fall.”

CHAPTER IV

“I can’t remember,” said Mary, two months after Percy’s arrest, “I can’t remember,” raising herself, and laying her emaciated hand upon her brow. “Have I been sick, mamma?”

“Yes, Mary,” replied her mother, repressing her tears of joy at the sound of her child’s voice.

“Where’s Percy, mamma?”

But before Lucy could answer, she again relapsed into stupor. Another hour passed – there was reason in her glance. “Mamma? Percy – take me to him” – said Mary, with a burst of tears, as she strove vainly to rise from her couch.

“By-and-by, darling,” said her mother, coaxingly, laying her gently back upon the pillow, as she would an infant, “by-and-by, Mary, when you are stronger.”

“No —now” she replied, a spasm of pain contracting her features. “Is he – is he —there? How long have I lain here?”

“Two months, Mary.”

“Two months,” exclaimed poor Mary, in terror, “two months. O, mamma, if you ever loved me, if you want me to live – take me to him. Two months! He will think! – O, dear, mamma, take me to Percy!”

“Yes – yes, you shall go,” said Jacob, “only don’t cry. I would shed my heart’s blood to save you one tear. You shall go, Mary, even to that curs – ”

“Well – well, I won’t say it,” said the old man, kissing her forehead; “but mind, it is only for your sake – here – Lucy, quick, she is fainting.”

Another week passed by, poor Mary making superhuman efforts to sit up, to gain strength to accomplish her heart’s wish. Jacob would look at her wasted figure, till the curse rose to his lip, and then rush suddenly from her presence.

“I did not think I could do this, even for her,” muttered Jacob, on the morning of their visit to the prison. “I don’t know what has come over me, Lucy – sometimes I wonder if I am Jacob. I don’t care for any thing, so she don’t grieve.”

The carriage came – in silence the sad trio moved toward the prison.

“Can’t do it,” whispered Jacob to Lucy, as they stopped before the door; “I thought I could go in with her; but I can’t do it, not even for Mary. The old feeling has come back. I can’t look on that man’s face without crushing him as I would a viper;” and the old man left them in the turnkey’s office, returned to the carriage, twitched down the blinds, and threw himself back upon the seat.

Ah! how much the poor heart may bear! Mary sat in the prison office – still – motionless! – but a bright spot burned upon her cheek, and her tone was fearful in its calmness, and Lucy asked her again “if she were strong enough to go through with it.” How distinctly the turnkey’s clock ticked! What a quantity of false keys and other implements which had been taken from refractory prisoners, were on exhibition in the glass case! How the clerk stared at them as they registered their names in the book! What a mockery for that little bird to sing in his cage, over Mary’s head! How crushed and broken-hearted the poor woman looked in the black bonnet, on the bench, waiting to see her prodigal son! How sad his young wife beside her, with the unconscious baby sleeping on her breast! The room grew smaller – the air grew stifled.

“You can go now, ma’am,” said the turnkey, rattling his keys and addressing Lucy.

“In a moment, please,” said Lucy, with a quivering lip, as Mary fell from her chair: – “Some water quick, please, sir” – and she untied the strings of Mary’s hat.

“Now,” said Mary, after a pause. And again the bright spot burned upon her cheek – and as with faltering step, she followed the turnkey, the young wife’s tears fell on her baby’s face, while she murmured, “God help her, and it’s my own heart that has the misery, too.”

CHAPTER IV

The huge key grated in the lock. In the further corner of the cell, crouched Percy – his chin in his palms, his eyes bloodshot, and his face livid as death.

As Mary tottered through the door, Percy raised his head, and, with a stifled groan, fell at her feet. Pressing his lips to the hem of her robe, he waved her off with one hand, as if his touch were contamination. Mary’s arms were thrown about his neck, and the words, “I love you,” fell upon his doomed ear, like the far-off music of heaven. When Percy would have spoken, Mary laid her hand upon his mouth – not even to her, should he humiliate himself by confession. And so, in tears and silence, the allotted hour passed – He only, who made the heart, with its power to enjoy or suffer, knew with what agonizing intensity.

“Well, I’ve seen a great many pitiful sights in my day,” said the old jailor, as the carriage rolled away with Mary; “but never any thing that made my eyes water like the sight of that poor young cretur. Sometimes I think there ain’t no justice up above there, when I see the innocent punished that way with the guilty. I hope these things will all be made square in the other world; I can’t say they are clear to my mind here. I get good pay here, but I’d rather scull a raft than stay here to have my feelin’s hurt all the time this way. If I didn’t go in so strong for justice, I should be tempted, when I think of that young woman, to forget to lock that fellow’s cell some night. ‘Five years’ hard labor!’ ’Tis tough, for a gentleman born – well, supposing he got out? if he is a limb of the devil, as some folks say, he will break her heart over again some day or other. It would be a shorter agony to let her weep herself dead at once. God help her.”

CHAPTER V

The Bluff Hill penitentiary was called “a model prison.” A “modern Howard” was said to have planned it, and passed his oracular judgment, ratified by the authorities of the State in which it was located, upon its cells, prison-yards, work-shops, chapel, eating-rooms, and ingenious instruments of torture.

That the furnaces failed to keep the prisoners from freezing in winter, or that there was no proper ventilation in summer, was, therefore, nobody’s meddling business. Better that they should suffer, year in and year out, than that a flaw should be publicly picked in any scheme set afoot by the “modern Howard.” The officers elected to preside over Bluff Hill prison, were as stony as its walls, and showed curious visitors round the work-shops, amid its rows of pallid faces, pointing out here a disgraced clergyman, there a ruined lawyer, yonder a wrecked merchant, with as much nonchalance as a brutal keeper would stir up the caged beasts in a menagerie, for the amusement of the crowd; with as little thought that these fallen beings were men and brothers, as if the Omniscient eye noted no dark stain of sin, hidden from human sight, on their souls.

They gave you leave to stop as long as you pleased, and watch the muscles of your victim’s face, work with emotion under your gaze. You could take your own time to speculate upon the scowl of defiance, or the set teeth of hate, as you flaunted leisurely past their prison uniform, in your silk and broadcloth; or you could stand under the fair blue sky, in the prison-yard, when the roll beat for dinner, and see them in file, by twos – guarded – march with locked step and folded arms, to their eating-room. The beardless boy branded in your remembering eye for life, wherever you might hereafter meet him, for this his first crime, how hard soever against fearful odds, he might struggle upward to virtue and heaven. You might follow the sad procession to thair meals, where the fat, comfortably-fed chaplain craved a blessing over food, from which the very dog at his door would have turned hungry away; or you could go into the prison hospital, and view the accommodation (?) for the sick – the cots so narrow that a man could not turn in them; or you could investigate “The Douche,” which the keeper would tell you, with a bland smile, “conquered even old prison birds;” or you could peep into the cells (philanthropically furnished by this “modern Howard” with a Bible), so dark that at the brightest noonday no prisoner could read a syllable; or you could see the row of coffins standing on an end in the hall, kept on hand “for sudden emergencies;” or any other horrors of the place, for which your morbid curiosity was appetized.