The Legacy of Cain. Уилки Коллинз

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СКАЧАТЬ showed signs of failing. The child pounced on them with her chubby hands, and screamed with pleasure. And the hangman was waiting for her mother—and, more horrid still, the mother deserved it!

      My duty required me to let the Prisoner know that her little daughter had arrived. Did that heart of iron melt at last? It might have been so, or it might not; the message sent back kept her secret. All that it said to me was: “Let the child wait till I send for her.”

      The Minister had consented to help us. On his arrival at the prison, I received him privately in my study.

      I had only to look at his face—pitiably pale and agitated—to see that he was a sensitive man, not always able to control his nerves on occasions which tried his moral courage. A kind, I might almost say a noble face, and a voice unaffectedly persuasive, at once prepossessed me in his favor. The few words of welcome that I spoke were intended to compose him. They failed to produce the impression on which I had counted.

      “My experience,” he said, “has included many melancholy duties, and has tried my composure in terrible scenes; but I have never yet found myself in the presence of an unrepentant criminal, sentenced to death—and that criminal a woman and a mother. I own, sir, that I am shaken by the prospect before me.”

      I suggested that he should wait a while, in the hope that time and quiet might help him. He thanked me, and refused.

      “If I have any knowledge of myself,” he said, “terrors of anticipation lose their hold when I am face to face with a serious call on me. The longer I remain here, the less worthy I shall appear of the trust that has been placed in me—the trust which, please God, I mean to deserve.”

      My own observation of human nature told me that this was wisely said. I led the way at once to the cell.

CHAPTER IV. THE MINISTER SAYS YES.

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      The Prisoner was seated on her bed, quietly talking with the woman appointed to watch her. When she rose to receive us, I saw the Minister start. The face that confronted him would, in my opinion, have taken any man by surprise, if he had first happened to see it within the walls of a prison.

      Visitors to the picture-galleries of Italy, growing weary of Holy Families in endless succession, observe that the idea of the Madonna, among the rank and file of Italian Painters, is limited to one changeless and familiar type. I can hardly hope to be believed when I say that the personal appearance of the murderess recalled that type. She presented the delicate light hair, the quiet eyes, the finely-shaped lower features and the correctly oval form of face, repeated in hundreds on hundreds of the conventional works of Art to which I have ventured to allude. To those who doubt me, I can only declare that what I have here written is undisguised and absolute truth. Let me add that daily observation of all classes of criminals, extending over many years, has considerably diminished my faith in physiognomy as a safe guide to the discovery of character. Nervous trepidation looks like guilt. Guilt, firmly sustained by insensibility, looks like innocence. One of the vilest wretches ever placed under my charge won the sympathies (while he was waiting for his trial) of every person who saw him, including even the persons employed in the prison. Only the other day, ladies and gentlemen coming to visit me passed a body of men at work on the road. Judges of physiognomy among them were horrified at the criminal atrocity betrayed in every face that they noticed. They condoled with me on the near neighborhood of so many convicts to my official place of residence. I looked out of the window and saw a group of honest laborers (whose only crime was poverty) employed by the parish!

      Having instructed the female warder to leave the room—but to take care that she waited within call—I looked again at the Minister.

      Confronted by the serious responsibility that he had undertaken, he justified what he had said to me. Still pale, still distressed, he was now nevertheless master of himself. I turned to the door to leave him alone with the Prisoner. She called me back.

      “Before this gentleman tries to convert me,” she said, “I want you to wait here and be a witness.”

      Finding that we were both willing to comply with this request, she addressed herself directly to the Minister. “Suppose I promise to listen to your exhortations,” she began, “what do you promise to do for me in return?”

      The voice in which she spoke to him was steady and clear; a marked contrast to the tremulous earnestness with which he answered her.

      “I promise to urge you to repentance and the confession of your crime. I promise to implore the divine blessing on me in the effort to save your poor guilty soul.”

      She looked at him, and listened to him, as if he was speaking to her in an unknown tongue, and went on with what she had to say as quietly as ever.

      “When I am hanged to-morrow, suppose I die without confessing, without repenting—are you one of those who believe I shall be doomed to eternal punishment in another life?”

      “I believe in the mercy of God.”

      “Answer my question, if you please. Is an impenitent sinner eternally punished? Do you believe that?”

      “My Bible leaves me no other alternative.”

      She paused for a while, evidently considering with special attention what she was about to say next.

      “As a religious man,” she resumed, “would you be willing to make some sacrifice, rather than let a fellow-creature go—after a disgraceful death—to everlasting torment?”

      “I know of no sacrifice in my power,” he said, fervently, “to which I would not rather submit than let you die in the present dreadful state of your mind.”

      The Prisoner turned to me. “Is the person who watches me waiting outside?”

      “Yes.”

      “Will you be so kind as to call her in? I have a message for her.”

      It was plain that she had been leading the way to the delivery of that message, whatever it might be, in all that she had said up to the present time. So far my poor powers of penetration helped me, and no further.

      The warder appeared, and received her message. “Tell the woman who has come here with my little girl that I want to see the child.”

      Taken completely by surprise, I signed to the attendant to wait for further instructions.

      In a moment more I had sufficiently recovered myself to see the impropriety of permitting any obstacle to interpose between the Minister and his errand of mercy. I gently reminded the Prisoner that she would have a later opportunity of seeing her child. “Your first duty,” I told her, “is to hear and to take to heart what the clergyman has to say to you.”

      For the second time I attempted to leave the cell. For the second time this impenetrable woman called me back.

      “Take the parson away with you,” she said. “I refuse to listen to him.”

      The patient Minister yielded, and appealed to me to follow his example. I reluctantly sanctioned the delivery of the message.

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