The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 02, No. 12, October, 1858

Compassion without limit, courageous purpose impatient of inaction, troubled this young girl.

"You behaved like a lady," said Sandy,—"you never looked up. You needn't run now, I'm sure, when he thinks of taking a turn. All we've got to do is to mind our own business, Mr. Laval says. I guess we can. But I did want to let off those chains."

"What chains?" asked Elizabeth, as with a shudder she looked up at Sandy.

"His wrists, you know,—locked," he explained.

"Oh!" groaned the gentle soul, and she walked off, forgetful of the flowers, tools, Sandy, everything. But Sandy followed her; she heard him calling to her, and before the garden-gate she waited for him; he was following on a run.

"I can tell you what it's for," said he, for he had no idea of keeping the secret to himself, and he dared not trust it to any other friend.

"What is it?" she asked,—and she trembled when she asked, and while she waited for his answer.

"For lighting the Church. Would you think that? He did such damage, it wasn't safe for him to be at liberty. That's how it was. I think he must be a Lutheran;—you know they don't believe in the Holy Ghost! Of course,—poor fellow!—it's right he should be shut up for warring with the Church that came down through the holy Apostles, when you know all the rest only started up with Luther and Calvin. He ought to have knowed better."

"Who told you, Sandy?" asked Elizabeth, as if her next words might undertake to extenuate and justify.

"It came straight enough, I understand. But—remember—you don't know anything about it. His name is Manuel, though;—don't dare to mention it;—that's what Mr. Laval calls him. Are you going? I wouldn't have told you a word, but you took his trouble so to heart. You see, now, it's right he should be shut up. But let on that you know anything, all the worse for me,—I mean, him!"

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "you're safe, Sandy. Thank you for telling me."

Sandy walked off with a mind relieved, for he believed in Elizabeth, and had found the facts communicated too great a burden to bear alone.

She passed through the garden-gate most remote from the fort; it opened into a lonely road which ran inland from the coast, between the woods and the prison, and to the woods she went. The shadows were gloomy to-day, for she went among them lamenting the fate of the stranger;—the mystery surrounding him had increased, not lessened, with Sandy's explanation.

Fighting against the Church was an unimagined crime. Of the great conflict in which he had taken part, to the ruin of his fortunes, she knew nothing. The disputes of Christendom, had they been explained, would have seemed almost incredible to her. For, whatever was known and discussed in the circle of the Governor of the island, Drummer Montier, and such as he, kept the peace with all mankind. The Church took care of itself, and appeared neither the oppressor nor the Saviour of the world. What they had fought about in the first years of the possession of Foray, Montier could hardly have told,—and yet he was no fool. He could have given, of course, a partisan version of the struggle; but as to its real cause, or true result, he knew as little as the other five hundred men belonging to the regiment.

While Elizabeth wandered through those gloomy woods, she saw no flowers, gathered no wild fruits,—though flowers and berries were perfect and abundant. Now and then she paused in her walk to look towards the prison, glimpses of whose strong walls were to be had through the trees. At length the sound of her father's horn came loud and clear from the cliffs beyond the wood. It fell upon her sombre meditation and slightly changed the current. She hurried forward to join him, and, as she went, a gracious purpose was shining in her face.

When she returned home, it was by the unfrequented prison-way, her father playing the liveliest tunes he knew. For the first time in their lives they sat down by the side of the lonely road where they had emerged from the wood; Elizabeth's memory served her to recall every air that was sweet to her, and she listened while her father played, endeavoring to understand the sound those notes would have to "Manuel."

Montier could think of no worthier employment than the practice of his music. Especially it pleased him that his daughter should ask so much as she was now asking: he could not discern all that was passing in her heart, nor see how many shadows moved before those sweet, serious eyes.

They went home at night-fall together; and the young girl's step was not more light, now that her heart was troubled by what she must not reveal, even to him.

The next morning Sandy was very busy with Elizabeth, tying up some flowers which had been tossed about, and broken, many of them, in the night gale, when the keeper came through the gate, leading this Manuel, who, grim as a spectral shadow, that had been fearful but for its exceeding pitifulness, stood now between her and all that she rejoiced in. "There!" exclaimed Sandy. Looking up, she saw them approaching straight along the path that led past the flowerbeds.

"Your flowers had a pretty rough time of it in the storm," said Jailer Laval, as he drew near. He addressed the drummer's daughter,—but his eyes were on Sandy, with the suspicious and stern inquiry common to men who have betrayed a secret. But Sandy was busy with his delving.

"Yes," answered Elizabeth, and she looked from the ground up to the faces of these men.

"Is that a rose-bush? That was roughly handled," said Laval, pointing with his stick to the twisted rose-stalk covered with buds, over whose blighted promise she had been lamenting.

"Yes," said Elizabeth again; but she hardly knew what she said, still less was she aware of the expression her face wore when she looked at the prisoner. Yes,—even as Sandy said, big wrists were chained together; he was more like a ghost than a man; his face was pale and hopeless, and woful beyond her understanding was the majesty of his mien.

At such a price he paid for fights against the Church! But in truth he had not the look of an evil, warring man. His gravity, indeed, was such as it seemed impossible to dispel. But only pity stirred the heart of Elizabeth Montier as she looked on him. Surely it was a face that never, in any excess of passion, could have looked malignance. Ah! and at such a price he purchased his sunshine, the fresh air, and a near vision of this flower-garden!—in chains!

When she looked at him, his gaze was on her,—not upon the roses. She smiled, for pity's sake; but the smile met no return. His countenance had not the habit of responding to such glances. Sombre as death was that face. Then Elizabeth turned hastily away; but as the keeper also moved on a step, she detained him with a hurried "Wait a minute," and went on plucking the finest flowers in bloom. Like an iron statue stood the prisoner while she plucked the roses,—it was but a minute's work,—then she tied the flowers together and laid them on his fettered hands; whether he would refuse them, whether the gift pained or pleased him, whether the keeper approved, she seemed afraid to know,—for, having given the flowers, she went away in haste.

It was not long after this first act of friendly courtesy, which had many a repetition,—for the keeper was at bottom a humane man, and not disposed to persecute his charge, while he was equally far from any carelessness in guarding or leniency of treatment that would have excited suspicion as to his purpose, in the minds of the authorities of the island,—not long after this day, when the fine sympathy betrayed for him by Elizabeth fell on Manuel's heart like dew, that the wife of the jailer died.

Her death was sudden and unlooked-for, though neither Nature nor the woman could have been blamed for the shock poor Laval experienced. Death had fairly surrounded her, disarming her at every point, so that when he called her there was no resistance.

Jailer Laval took the bereavement in a remorseful mood. The first thing to be done now was the very last he would have owned to purposing during her life-time. Release from that prison had been the woman's prayer, year in and year out, these ten years, and Death was the bearer of the answer to that prayer,—not her husband.

But now, from the day of her sudden decease, the prison had become to him dreary beyond endurance. The mantle of her discontent fell on him, and, having no other confidant beside honest, stupid Sandy, he talked to him like a man who seriously thought of abandoning his labor, and retiring to that land across the sea for which his wife had pined during ten homesick years.

Sandy, who might have regarded himself in the light of an "humble instrument," had he been capable of a particle of vanity or presumption, told Elizabeth Montier, with whom he had held many a conference concerning prison matters, since Manuel first began to walk along the southern garden-walk, where the flower-beds lay against the prison-wall. What was her answer? It came instantly, without premeditation or precaution,—

"Then we must take his place, Sandy."

"We, Miss?" said Sandy, with even greater consternation than surprise.

"Yes," she replied, too much absorbed by what she was thinking, to mind him and his blunders,—"papa must take the prison."

"Oh!"—and Sandy blushed through his tan at his absurd mistake. Then he laughed, for he saw that she had not noticed it. Then he looked grave, and wondering, and doubtful. The idea of Adolphus Montier's pretty wife and pretty daughter changing their pretty home for life in the dark prison startled him. He seemed to think it no less wrong than strange. But he did not express that feeling out and out; he was hindered, as he glanced sideways at the young girl who gazed so solemnly, so loftily, before her. At what she was looking he could not divine. He saw nothing.

"I wouldn't be overly quick about that," said he, cautiously.

"No danger!" was the prompt reply.

"For I tell you, of all the places I ever see, that prison makes me feel the queerest. I believe it's one reason I let the flower-garden go so long," owned Sandy. He did not speak these words without an effort; and never had Elizabeth seen him so solemn. She also was grave,—but not after his manner of gravity.

"You see what I did with the poor flower-beds, Sandy," said she. "Wait now till you see what happens to the prison."

But it is one thing to purpose, and another to execute. Far easier for Elizabeth to declare than to conduct an heroic design. One thing prevented rest day and night,—the knowledge that Laval's intended resignation must be followed by a new application and appointment. With such a degree of sympathy had the condition of the captive inspired her, that the idea of the bare possibility of cruelty or neglect or brutality assuming the jailer's authority seemed to lay upon her all the responsibility of his future. She must act, for she dared not hesitate.

One evening Adolphus took his horn, and, attended by wife and child, went out to walk. He meant to send a strain from the highest of the accessible coast-rocks. But Elizabeth changed his plan. The time was good for what she had to say. Instead of expending his enthusiasm on a flourish of notes, he was called upon to manifest it in a noble resolution.

When Elizabeth invited her father to a prospect sylvan rather than marine, to the shady path on the border of the wood between it and the prison, Montier, easily drawn from any plan that concerned his own inclination merely, let his daughter lead, and she was responsible for all that followed in the history of that little family. So love defers to love, with divine courtesy, through all celestial movements.

After playing a few airs, Montier's anticipated evening ended, and another set in. The sympathies of a condition, the opposite to that of which he had been so happily conscious, pressed too closely against him. The musician could not, for the life of him, have played with becoming spirit through any one of all the strains of victory he knew.

Near him, under a tulip-tree, sat Pauline, with her knitting in her hand, the image of peace. Not so Elizabeth. She was doubting, troubled. But when the bird her father's music moved to sing was still, she spoke, as she had promised herself she would, asking a question, of whose answer she had not the slightest doubt.

"Papa, do you know that Mr. Laval is going away?"

"Why, yes, that's the talk, I believe."

"Will they get somebody to take his place?"

"Of course. There's a prisoner on hand yet, you know,—and the house to look after."

"A big house, too, and dreadful dreary," remarked the mother of Elizabeth. "Laval's wife used to say, when she came up to see me sometimes, it was like being a prisoner to live in that building. And now she's dead and gone, he begins to think the same."

"Suppose we take Laval's place," suggested Montier, looking very seriously at his wife; but the suggestion did not alarm her. Adolphus often expressed his satisfaction with existing arrangements by making propositions of exchange for other states of life, propositions which never disturbed his wife or daughter. They understood these demonstrations of his deep content. Therefore, at these words of his, Pauline smiled, and for the reason that the words could draw forth such a smile Elizabeth looked grave.

"I wish we could, papa," said she.

"You wish we could, you child?" exclaimed her mother, wondering. "It looks so pleasant, eh?" and the fair face of Pauline turned to the prison, and surveyed it, shuddering.

"For the prisoner's sake," said Elizabeth. "Who knows but a cruel keeper may be put in Laval's place? He is almost dead with grief, that prisoner is,—I know by his face. After he is gone, there won't be any prisoner there,—and we could make it very pleasant."

"Pleasant! What do you mean by pleasant?" asked Pauline, inwardly vexed that her child had suggested the question,—and yet too just, too kindly disposed, to put the subject away with imperative refusal to consider it. "I never was in a place so horrid."

"But if it was our home, and all our things were there," urged Elizabeth, "it would be different. It depends on who lives in a house, you know."

"Yes, that is so; it depends a little, but not entirely. It would be more than your mother could do to make a pleasant-looking place out of that prison. You see it is different in the situation, to begin with. Up where we live the sun is around us all day, if it is anywhere; and then the little rooms are so light! If you put a flower into them, you think you have a whole garden. Besides, it's Home up there, and down here it isn't."—Saying this, Adolphus rose up quickly, as though he had a mind to quit the spot.

"When they select a man to fill Laval's place, of course they will be careful to choose one as good and kind," said Pauline, with mild confidence.

"The jailer before him was not good and kind," remarked her daughter.

"They dismissed him for it," said Adolphus, quickly.

"But they said the prisoners were half-starved, and abused every way. It was a good while before it was found out. That might happen again, and less chance of any one knowing it. He is so near dead now, it wouldn't take much to kill him."

No one replied to this argument. Pauline and Adolphus talked of other things, and the musician returned to his music. But all in good time. Elizabeth was capable of patience, and at last her father said, looking around him to make sure that his remark would have only two listeners,—

"That prisoner isn't a man to be talked of about here. You never heard me mention him. Laval used to give a—a—bad account of him. He had to be kept alive."

"Till he heard your music, papa, and was moved up to the room with a window. Did he tell you that?" asked Elizabeth.

"He said he thought the music did him good," acknowledged Adolphus.

"May-be it was the same as with Saul when David played for him. But he does not look like a bad man, papa. He looks grander than any of our officers. And he has fought battles, they say. He is very brave."

Both Adolphus and Pauline Montier looked at their daughter with the most profound surprise when she spoke thus. Not merely her words, but her manner of speaking, caused this not agreeable perplexity. Her emotion was not only too obvious, it was too deep for their understanding. The mother was the first to speak.

"How did you hear all this, child? I never heard him talked of in this way. They don't talk about him at all,—do they, Adolphus?"

"No," he answered; but he spoke the word very mildly. The tone did not indicate a want of sympathy in the compassion of his daughter.

Elizabeth looked from her mother to her father. What friends had she, if these were not her friends?

"The jailer told Sandy, and Sandy told me," she said. "But they never talk to any other person. Oh! I was afraid to hear about it; but now I have heard, I was afraid not to speak. Would it be so dreadful for you to live here, when we could always have music and the garden? And these woods seem pleasant, when you get acquainted. Day or night I can't get him out of my mind. It is just as if you were shut up that way, papa. I am afraid to be happy when any one is so wretched."

The result was, that Elizabeth's words, and not so much her words as the state of things she contrived to make apparent by them, brought Adolphus Montier to a clear, resistless sense of the prisoner's fate. Over the features of that fate he was for days brooding. Now and then a word that indicated the direction of his thinking would escape him in his wife's hearing. Silently Pauline followed Adolphus to the end of all this thinking. Once she walked alone along the unfrequented road that ran between the prison and the wood, down to the sea; and she looked at the gloomy fortress, and tried to think about it as she should, if certain that within its walls her lot would soon be cast.

And more than once Montier walked home that way; and if it chanced that he had his horn or his drum with him, he marched at quickstep, and played the liveliest tunes, and emerged from the shadows of the wood with a spirit undaunted. He had played for the prisoner, whom he had never yet seen,—but not more for him than for himself.

One Sunday, when the little family walked out together, Adolphus and his wife fell into a pleasant train of thought,—and when they were together, thought and speech were generally simultaneous. As they passed the prison,—for Adolphus had led the way to this path,—Laval was standing in the door. They stopped to speak with him; whereat he invited them into his quarters.

In this walk, Elizabeth had fallen behind her parents. When she saw them going into the prison, she quickened her pace, for her father beckoned to her. But she was in no earnest haste to follow, as became sufficiently manifest when she was left alone.

They had not gone far in their talk, however, when she came to the doorway. Laval, in all his speech, was a deliberate man, and neither Adolphus nor his wife showed any eagerness in the conduct of the conversation now begun. The contrast between the gloom of the apartment and the light and cheerfulness of their own home was apparent to all of them. Elizabeth felt the oppression under which each of the little party seemed to labor, the instant she joined her parents. Susceptible as they all were to the influences of Nature, her sunshine and her shadow, this gloom which fell upon them was nothing more than might have been anticipated.

Jailer Laval was homesick, and innocent of a suspicion of what was passing in the minds of his guests; he was therefore free in making his complaints, and acknowledged that he was not fit to keep the prison,—it required a man of more nerve than he had. The dread of the place which his poor wife had entertained seemed to have taken possession of him since her death. All the arguments which he once used, in the endeavor to bolster her courage, he had now forgotten. He was very cautious when he began to speak of the prisoner, and tried to divert Adolphus from the point by saying that he would much prefer a house full of convicts to one so empty as this. There was at least something like society in that, and something to do.

Adolphus, in spite of his discontent at hearing merely these deductions of experience, when his desire was to know something of Manuel, heard nothing of importance. The speech of the jailer on this subject was not to be had. His mind seemed to be wandering, except when his wife, or his native land, was referred to; then he brightened into speech, but never once into cheerfulness. As he sat there in the middle of his chamber, he seemed to represent the genius of the place,—and anything less enlivening or desirable in the way of human life could hardly be imagined. Pauline looked at him and sighed. She looked at Adolphus;—a pang shot through her heart; the shadow of the man seemed to overshadow him. Out of this place, where all appeared to be fast changing into "goblins damned"!

It was she who led the way; but, pausing in the court-yard, Elizabeth evinced still greater haste to be gone, for she ran on with fleet step, and a heart heavy with foreboding as to the result of this interview. She was also impatient to get into the open sunlight, and did not rest in this progress she was making outward till she had come to the sea-shore. Elizabeth Montier was in a state of dire perplexity just then, and if she had been asked whether she would really choose to effect the change proposed in their way of living, it would have been no easy matter for her to discover her mind.

By the sea-shore she sat down, and her father and mother followed slowly on. They were not talking as they came. But as they approached the beach, Adolphus could not resist the prospect before them. Loud was the blast he blew upon his horn, nor did he cease playing until his music had restored him to a more natural mood than that in which the interview with Laval left him. The prison was becoming a less startling image of desolate dreariness to him. And Adolphus was the master-spirit in his family. If he was gay, it was barely possible for his wife and child to be sad. Of the prison not one word was spoken by either. They had not revealed to each other their inmost mind when they went into Laval's quarters; they did not reveal it when they came thence. But as they strolled along the rocky shore, or returned homeward, they thought of little beside the prison and the prisoner. As to Elizabeth, nothing required of her that she should urge the matter further. She had neither heart nor courage for such urging.

It was Adolphus himself who spoke to Pauline the next day, after he had deliberately thrown himself in the way of the prisoner, that he might with his own eyes see what manner of man he was; for seeing was believing.

"Pauline," said he, almost persuaded of the truth of his own words, "you and Elizabeth would make a different place of that prison from what it is now. I should like to see it tried."

Pauline Montier made no haste to answer; she was afraid that she knew what he expected of her.

"Do you see," continued Adolphus, "Elizabeth won't speak of it again? But what must she think of us? He is a man. They say we are all brothers."

"I know it," said, almost sighed, his wife.

"Looking out for our own comfort!" exclaimed Adolphus. "So mighty afraid of doing what we'd have done for us! Besides, I believe we could make it pretty pleasant. Cool in summer, and warm in winter. I'd whitewash pretty thorough. And if the windows were rubbed up, your way, the light might get through."

"Poor Joan Laval!" said Pauline. "Body and mind gave out. She was different at first."

"Do you think it was the prison?" asked Adolphus, quickly, like a man halting between two opinions,—there was no knowing which way he would jump.

"Something broke her down," replied his wife. She was looking from one window,—he from another.

"Joan Laval was Joan Laval," said Adolphus, with an effort. "Always was. Frightened at her own shadow, I suppose. But—there! we won't think of it. I know how it looks to you, Pauline. Very well,—I don't see why we should make ourselves miserable for the sake of somebody who has got to be miserable anyhow,—and deserves it, I suppose, or he wouldn't be where he is."

"Poor fellow!" sighed Pauline,—as if it were now her turn on the rack.

Here Adolphus let the matter rest. He had overcome his own scruples so far as honestly to make this proposal to his wife. But he would do no more than propose,—not for an instant urge the point. Surely, that could not be required of him. Charity, he remembered, begins at home.