My Fire Opal, and Other Tales

Again the Ohio cast anchor. It was in Boston Harbor, and on a May-day evening. Will Ferguson and John Gravesend went ashore together. The month had, this year, come smiling in, and juvenile Boston had paraded in muslin and greenery to its heart's content. Upon the Common, there still lingered a breath of the May-day festivitiy. A balmy south wind stirred among the new-leaved trees, – a delicious murmuring wind, prophesying violets, jonquils, and endless forthcoming spring delights.

On such bewitching, yet enervating nights, riotous young blood leaps hotly through quickened pulses, and, for the hour, to live in the sweet, sensuous present is enough; the soul craves no higher good. Will Ferguson, thus far, had developed no taste for that reckless youthful procedure, apologetically termed "the sowing of wild oats."

A long sea voyage, and its consequent social limitations, had, however, quickened in the boy a legitimate youthful craving for fun and frolic, and, what with the witchery of this May night, the coming to port, the rapturous thought of home, mother, and that glad greeting of pretty Kate Benson to-morrow at Springfield, he was, as he laughingly averred, "chock full of happiness, and on hand for any sort of a lark." In the heyday of the hour he had not all forgotten that black day at Canton, and had, within himself, resolved to "hold on hard whenever he smelt mischief for Jack."

Sauntering idly into North Street, the pair were abruptly brought to a stand by the gay twang of a violin. "A fiddle; and a waltz!" This set Will's merry feet going; and while he shuffled, boy-fashion, on the sidewalk, a smiling personage, issuing from the door of a certain edifice having over its entrance the sprightly designation of "Dance House," with an "Hullo, there, my hearties!" begged them "Come in a while, and see the fun."

Now, Jack Gravesend was quite aware that in a dance-house "the fun" is of a questionable character. That within it is "the way to hell going down to the chambers of death," and, being a man of clean kernel, he had no lascivious affinity with a dance-house; but here was Will eagerly curious. He liked to humour the lad; and (truth must be told) he, himself, on this May night, was somewhat morally unbraced. Thus it was that, lured on by the merry music, and the cordial solicitations of the doorway panderer, the two crossed the threshhold of this evil place. Bacchus, be it known (no less than Venus and Terpsichore), presides over the festivities of the dance-house, and Will Ferguson, soon weary of the "fun," which was in no wise to his liking, found, to his dismay, that Jack Gravesend was weakly succumbing to the fascinations of the "Jolly God." Unable to coax him from the place, he lingered on, inwardly bemoaning his own inquisitive folly; yet resolved, let what would come, to see Jack well out of the scrape. It was not in John Gravesend's nature to do a thing by halves. Whatsoever he did, was done heartily, and mightily; and, having determined to drink, he drank, until – ah, well! the bestial orgies of a Circean herd are not things for description, albeit they are nightly enacted in the dance-houses of our own metropolis.

It was broad day. Jack Gravesend awoke. He rubbed his eyes, and looked curiously about him. Where was he? Strange! He couldn't have turned in here. He got up, and shook himself wide awake. Two villanous-looking men, having risen from two neighbouring beds, were doing likewise. "Hullo, shipmates!" said Jack, now fairly on his feet; "lend a hand here, and tell me where I am."

The two burglars – for such they were – being well-posted in the leading particulars of his arrest, glanced knowingly at each other, and smirked with sinister significance peculiarly aggravating to Jack, and burglar number one remarked to his associate, "Golly, Bill; he is a green one! Wants to know where he is! do you twig, Bill? Why, my fine tar, you're in the lock-up, to be sure."

"In the lock-up!" said Jack; "and how in thunder came I here?"

"Brung here, of course," responded his informant, "'t ain't a road folks gin'ally travels on their own account, eh, Bill?" Bill assenting, with a prodigious wink, Jack propounded a third query: "And what the deuce may I be here for?"

"Here for?" responded the garrulous ruffian. "Thunderin' black job, my cove! Got drunk last night, and killed a man!"

"Killed a man!" groaned Jack, his eyes dilating, and his flesh creeping with sudden horror. "Killed a man! My God! what will Will Ferguson say?"

"Ferguson? Bill – Bill Ferguson," growled the other burglar. "By jiminy, Tom! he wants to know what Bill Ferguson'll say! Precious little, I'm thinkin'; he's about said his say! Why, grampus, Bill Ferguson's the very indentercal chap you've done for!"

Officer L – long remembered a cry that woke the echoes of the lock-up on that May morning. It might have been the yell of a hunted thing at bay, the outcry of a mortal in fierce extremity, the despairing wail of a hell-tormented soul.

Turning the key in the lock of No. 17, he hastily entered that apartment. On the floor, face downward, lay a man.

"Cove in a fit," explained the facetious Tom. "Bill, here, jes' let on 'bout the killin', an' he gin a howl an' went off in a jiffy."

Officer L – was humane. Good men, thank God! fill many of these humble places of authority. Silencing the bold ruffian, he bade the pair help raise the senseless form and adjust it on the rude cot. This done, he smoothed the tossed hair, wiped the foam from the purple lips, and chafed the great brown hands as helpfully as if they had been little "May's," the dear sick lamb of his own pretty flock. At length, the convulsive throes ceased, and consciousness returned to the stricken man.

Like some dim-remembered dream, the curt, cruel words of the burglar recalled themselves to Gravesend's bewildered brain. One look into the kindly face of the officer reassured him. Feebly rising to his feet, he sank upon his trembling knees, and prayed brokenly to hear it all. He was "all right again, and wanted to know the whole truth. He could bear the very worst, and would thank him for it; indeed, sir, he would." The "very worst" was soon told.

There had been, explained the officer, on the previous night, a drunken row at a dance-house on North Street. The prisoner had, unfortunately, been concerned in the affair, and, in the temporary frenzy of intoxication, had drawn his dirk upon a woman. A young man, who had hitherto looked on, taking no part in the mêlée, now dashed in to arrest the assailant's hand, and himself received the murderous thrust. The brawlers had been duly arrested, the youth carried to the hospital, where, his wound proving mortal, he had, in half an hour, expired.

On his body a small diary had been found. It was inscribed:

"Willie Ferguson, from his mother.

Springfield, Jan. 1, 18 – ."

Will – Fergus-on, Springfield, – 18 – Will – Springfield – from – his – mother. 18 – Will, Willie, Will. Will Ferguson. He had sworn never to forget him. He is keeping his oath! Will – W-i-l-l F-e-r-g-u-s-o-n. There it is; on the walls, on the ceiling, up and down, over and across! Everywhere, everywhere, the name, the weary, weary name!

He has spelt it, over and over, forward and backward, fast and slow, loud and softly, again and again, till his brain spins; and sparks, like wicked little sprites, dance before his strained eyes, and now, cowering among his pillows, he strives to hide from that terrible pursuing name. "Smothering? they mean to smother him, do they?" He starts from his pillow, and, wild and eager, peers about his chamber. Blood! blood everywhere! The bed-spread is dabbled with it; it trickles down the walls; it lies in clotted pools upon the floor! In the window sits an Angora cat, white, mottled with red; she laps hungrily from an ever-brimming basin of blood! A knife is hanging yonder. It is a dirk-knife, bright and new. Its handle is lettered. With aching eyes he spells, "J-a-c-k, f-r-o-m W-i-l-l. C-a-n-t-o-n, 18 – ." Let him but reach that knife and hurl it into the sea! He is bound; he struggles; but cannot get free; and there still is the knife, horribly familiar, with the name staring at him from its heft, until every letter becomes a mocking serpent's tongue, hissing over and over in his tormented ear: "Will! Will! Will Ferguson!" He shivers; his brain is on fire; he can no longer look nor listen; he can but moan piteously: "Mercy! mercy! God have mercy!" They are putting a glass to his lips. He is terribly thirsty; and here is no blood; only an innocent saffron-tinged liquid. He drains it with eager lips. He is cooler now. The room grows dusky. He can no longer see that accursed dirk. Somebody had swabbed the floor, and they have unbound him.

A balmy evening wind, just the very idle land whisper that strayed among the leaves that night while he and Will sauntered through Boston Common, wanders in at the open casement. It winnows the hot air, it breathes upon his fevered brow, "like the benediction that follows after prayer." He sleeps, and, in his dream, is again with Will, and on board the Ohio. Becalmed in the Gulf Stream, hard by the lovely "Land of Flowers," lies the huge, idle craft. It is the Sabbath, and the sailors, – idle as the ship, – gathering in lazy groups, have pleasant talk of wives and sweethearts (for they are homeward bound). Will, half-reclined upon a coil of rope, reads aloud from his red pocket Testament. He has chanced upon this passage, from the dream of the Patmos seer: "And them that had gotten the victory … stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God." The "victory!" Ah! that is a hard thing to get! Shall he, John Gravesend, ever hold in his hand a harp of God? While he turns the text over in his mind, looking wistfully far out across the glassy deep, Will silently rises, walks swiftly astern, and, without a farewell word, drops quietly into the sea. He strives to follow. In vain! His limbs are holden in leaden heaviness. Wrestling with this demon of slumber, he at last awakes. Springing to his feet, he searches eagerly the empty, moonlit room. He calls, softly, "Will, Will!" No answer! He fancies a gentle sigh beneath his window. Will is there, sure enough, waiting for him in the pleasant moonlight. He need but drop softly to the ground to join him. Slight iron bars cross the window; he is strong; he wrenches at them manfully. They yield! They are displaced, and now only this paltry sash and a bit of glass between him and Will! These are soon demolished. The window is low, and, noiselessly dropping into the yard beneath, he calls softly, "Will! Will!" No response. Strange! A moment ago he was there! It is cool and quiet out here beneath the summer moon, and Will cannot be far off, – over that wall, perhaps. He scales it. "Not here? Well, he will run on a bit, and come up with him." And run on he does. On and on, through that long summer night. Across dewy-scented garden-plots, over trim cut lawns, whose tender grass is as velvet to his bare, fleeting feet. Through moist, wide meadows, and across low, babbling brooks, till, at last, he is upon the long, white road. Fleet as a hound upon the flying scent, pausing but to listen, and whisper, huskily, to the heedless night, "Will! Will! Will!" he hurries on. A half-clad, phantom-like form, breathlessly pursuing a phantom. The moon sets. The stars are paling in the still, sweet dawn, when, in the purlieu of a tangled wood, pale and spent, foam gathering on his lips, blood trickling from his torn feet, he pauses; and, tottering feebly into an odorous covert of blossoming underwood, falls prone upon the earth. An angel, with broad and kindly wing, the gentlest of all God's ministering host, descends to brood tenderly this desolate creature, —Sleep, messenger of peace, forerunner of that eternal quietude that somewhere stays for all earth's life-worn children!

On the ensuing morning, sensation craving readers of the Boston Morning Chronicle read, with characteristic relish, the following:

GREAT EXCITEMENT!!!A Murderer Pretends Insanity and Escapes!

The citizens of Taunton and its vicinity were this morning startled by tidings of the escape of a patient from our State Lunatic Hospital. The man was entered, for treatment, from Charles Street Jail, and his name is John Gravesend.

Our readers will, no doubt, recall him to memory as the abandoned wretch who, not long since, was arrested in this city for the murder of young Ferguson, a mere lad, whom he enticed into one of the North Street dens, and there, after robbing his victim of a large sum of money, butchered the ill-fated boy. The mother of Ferguson, as will be remembered, died soon after of a broken heart. While awaiting the award of his crime, Gravesend – having successfully feigned insanity – was consigned to the State asylum. On the night of the 15th, the asylum watchman making his round at ten o'clock, found Gravesend, as he supposed, in a sound sleep. At two, the rascal was gone. Being a man of great muscular power, he had displaced the grating of his window, and thus made good his escape. The wretch has been tracked for several miles, and we are informed that two efficient detectives, assisted by hospital employés, are now in full pursuit. Other outrages are imputed to this daring villain, and it is hinted that he is concerned in a certain mysterious murder, that yet thrills our community with horror. Great alarm prevails in the vicinity, and it is hoped that the fugitive will be speedily secured.

This "bloodthirsty" monster was, on the afternoon succeeding his escape, found slumbering as placidly as the leaf-strewn "Babes in the Wood," in that flowery covert to which we have already tracked him.

From this long trance-like slumber – the crisis of his mental malady – John Gravesend awoke, with strained, aching limbs, and brain yet hazy from delirium. Restored to the asylum and treated for his malady, he gradually returned from that labyrinthian world in which, for more than two months, his mind had wearily wandered.

Mind and body in their normal condition, he was remanded to jail, and subsequently arraigned for the wilful destruction of a life dearer to him than his own. Pleading guilty, and legally condemned for manslaughter, he was sentenced to confinement for life in the State Prison. Unmoved, he hears the terrible mandate that dooms him to life-long banishment from God's wide, beautiful world. With him, the fatal Rubicon is already passed. He has slain the belovèd one. Life holds in reserve no heavier woe; and death has not in store a pang more terrible.

A BUNCH OF VIOLETS

THERE'S Neilson, takin' his afternoon walk," said the good-natured turnkey, making a casual survey of the prison yard from the grated window near the guard-room door, which he was about to open for my exit. Neilson! and in the yard? At last, I must encounter that bad man! I was, be it known, on my way to the prison hospital, carrying a basket of Parma violets for distribution among a score or so of my fellow-sinners, now stretched upon hard beds, or wearily sitting on harder chairs, in that mildly penal department of the institution; and, no doubt, not eminently deserving of agreeable sniffs at Parma violets. At this unlooked-for announcement of the turnkey, a cold shiver ran down my back, for Neilson, even in prison circles, was accounted a desperate man. He was both robber and murderer; and for the last fifteen years had been serving out a life sentence of solitary confinement in one of the dreary cells of the "Upper Arch."

Five of these awful years had he passed in uninterrupted solitude, but, since the advent of the present humane prison warden, Neilson had been permitted to take, daily, an hour's exercise in the prison yard, a sunny enclosure, opening on the workshops, the hospital wing, and indirectly on the "Upper Arch." In the centre of this court, "the new warden" had caused a cheery flower plot to be made, and now, in April, many-hued crocuses already brightened its borders.

It was just before the establishment of the beautiful and helpful Flower Mission that I undertook, not without some discouragement, to try the gracious effect of violets, roses, pinks, and heartsease, behind the bars. In my then limited experience, to be locked out of the friendly guard-room, and sent alone across the prison yard, had not been agreeable to me; and, in deference to my groundless fears, an officer had been detailed to accompany me from the main prison to the hospital wing. As the years went on, my social popularity in the State Prison became well assured, and some surprise at this needless precaution was expressed to me by the convicts; and one attached prison friend (a highway robber) had even assured me that "if anybody in that prison should lay a finger on me, he'd be torn to pieces by the men, afore you could say Jack Robinson."

Though scarcely convinced that the entire demolition of a fellow-being would indemnify me for such "scaith and scart" as might in the mêlée accrue to my own poor person, it was on this assurance that I decided to dispense with official escort to the wing. Thus far, my visits had been so happily timed that the dreaded "Solitary" had never once crossed my path. Looking anxiously from the window, I made a hasty survey of the yard. An officer was just stepping from the door of a distant workshop. Two or three convicts were, at various points of observation, shuffling across the yard. Well, it was too late to show the white feather. The turnkey had already unlocked the door, and stood waiting. I handed him a tiny nosegay (the good man adored flowers, and I never omitted this pretty "Sop to Cerberus"); and now, grasping tightly the handle of my flower basket, "with my heart in my mouth," I thanked him as he held back the heavy door for me, and passed trembling out.

With a hard iron clang, the door closed behind me. Descending a roomy flight of steps, I found myself in the prison yard, and, at the same moment, confronted by, – yes, it must be that dreadful fellow, Neilson, himself! And a sinister-visaged wretch he was, with his small, ferrety eyes, his coarse mouth, and heavy chin. He shuffled as he went, and, with an evil look, stared boldly in my face.

"A tough subject," I mentally determined; but "total depravity" is not an article of my creed, and I do believe in humanity. In a moment, I had dismissed all fear of Neilson, in my zeal for his reformation, and, stepping up to him with a friendly good-afternoon, into which I insinuated all the approval I could conscientiously bestow upon so forbidding a creature, I handed him, from my basket, a bunch of violets. He took them, and, with a clumsy nod, but not a word of thanks, passed on, leaving me with a lightened heart. And, now, I stopped a moment to exchange civilities with the officer whom I had descried from the guard-room window. We were fast friends, and I was indebted to him for many a kind turn. He glanced disparagingly at my flowers, and, as a relief to my chagrin, I said, "Well, I have just given Neilson a bunch of violets; do you imagine that he cares at all for them?"

"Neilson?" he questioned, in evident perplexity.

"Yes, Neilson," I replied, "that short, stout man yonder, there he is now! going into that door!"

"Bless your heart, my good lady," exclaimed the officer, "that ain't Neilson! There he is; can't you see him, the tall fellow with his nose in the air, standing there by the crocus bed? If there's any flowers in the yard, Neilson's about sure to fetch up near 'em."

"Is he?" I said; and from that moment "a fellow-feeling made me kind." I felt sure of the ultimate good-will of Neilson. Meantime, having exhausted the attraction of the crocus bed, he was moving in my direction, but so slowly that I had time to make a critical survey of this famous personage, – a grave, quiet man of slender but firm build, and, even in his coarse prison uniform, bearing himself with a certain air of (if I may so express it) scholarly elegance.

Suitably clothed, he might have been taken for a clergyman, or a Harvard professor. Selecting the very choicest nosegay from my basket, I bade him, as we met, a cheerful good-afternoon, and, offering the flowers, said timidly (for I found this grave, lordly being somewhat unapproachable), "Would you like a bunch of violets to-day?" Absorbed in his own reflections, he had not, until now, observed me. He stopped, came out of his reverie, and, lifting his worn prison cap with a highly ceremonious bow, took the flowers from my hand, composedly smelt them, and said, slowly: "Thank you, madam, they would be very refreshing." Though Neilson's demeanour was eminently stoical, his face was pitiably wan and thin, and in his faded blue eye there was a world of patient pathos that went straight to my heart.

As he was about to pass on, I detained him for a moment, and said, eagerly, "If you like flowers – if you – if you think they would help you, I might bring you a few every Monday, as I come to the hospital."

"Flowers," he replied sententiously, "are refreshing; and if it will not be putting you to too much inconvenience, madam, I would be glad to receive a few from you every week." After this it was arranged with the obliging guard-room turnkey, that every Monday afternoon, along with his own buttonhole posy, a bouquet of "seasonable flowers" should be left on his desk, and should be sent by him to Neilson's cell. And, moreover, ascertaining that Neilson had no "visitor," I obtained permission of the warden to put his name on my visiting list, among those of some forty other unvisited convicts, who, in lieu of dearer company, received me once in three months, in the big guard-room. On these occasions, I was allowed to bring my sorry acquaintances flowers, fruit, drawing and writing materials, books, tracts and magazines, together with such sound moral advice as could be, – like the "sheep in the Vicar's family picture," – "thrown in for nothing." In their turn, my friends confided to me such passages in their lives as might properly be told to a lady; acquainted me with their desires and aspirations, and, almost invariably, craved my intercession with the governor. (For, whatever his crime, each prison convict hopes that, with some friendly go-between to present his case, that mild-hearted executive will promptly "pardon him out.") But of this service I was conscientiously chary. Gladly it was, however, that I undertook the sale of such inlaid boxes, photograph frames, and other articles as the men found time and material to fashion, the proceeds of which enabled them to subscribe for "Harper's," to own a book or two, or, better still, to make an occasional remittance to some dependent mother, wife or child, left in want by their own wicked folly. Of all the convicts on my list, none proved more satisfactory than Neilson. Our conversation, carried on, according to the prison rules, within earshot of an officer, related chiefly to literature; for this sometime robber and murderer was a man of no mean intellect; and his mental energies, now necessarily diverted from more deplorable channels, had, in these years of solitary leisure, been so well applied to self-improvement, that from almost utter ignorance he had come to be, after his own fashion, an educated man.

Before his last sentence (as he told me) he had been scarcely able to read, and could not even write his name. During his residence in the "Upper Arch," he had, single-handed, mastered reading and writing, and had made fair headway in grammar, geography, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and various other branches of education. For general reading he had a decided relish, and a correct appreciation of literary excellence. Fiction he held in supreme contempt, and could have had but a slight acquaintance with it, as he assured me that, in his whole life (he was now fifty years old), he had read but a single story, "The Vicar of Wakefield." As the prison library could not always supply Neilson's favourite mental food, I undertook to furnish him with such reading as he lacked; and his careful use, and prompt return of a book, with his fine appreciation of its contents, made this work a pleasure.

Neilson's story, part of which I had from his own lips and the remainder from the warden himself, runs thus: