'But,' she added hastily as the key turned in the lock, 'although we shun him, he is your father, dearest, and I am his wretched wife. They seek his life, and he will lose it. It must not be by our means; nay, if we could win him back to penitence, we should be bound to love him yet. Do not seem to know him, except as one who fled with you from the jail, and if they question you about him, do not answer them. God be with you through the night, dear boy! God be with you!'
She tore herself away, and in a few seconds Barnaby was alone. He stood for a long time rooted to the spot, with his face hidden in his hands; then flung himself, sobbing, on his miserable bed.
But the moon came slowly up in all her gentle glory, and the stars looked out, and through the small compass of the grated window, as through the narrow crevice of one good deed in a murky life of guilt, the face of Heaven shone bright and merciful. He raised his head; gazed upward at the quiet sky, which seemed to smile upon the earth in sadness, as if the night, more thoughtful than the day, looked down in sorrow on the sufferings and evil deeds of men; and felt its peace sink deep into his heart. He, a poor idiot, caged in his narrow cell, was as much lifted up to God, while gazing on the mild light, as the freest and most favoured man in all the spacious city; and in his ill-remembered prayer, and in the fragment of the childish hymn, with which he sung and crooned himself asleep, there breathed as true a spirit as ever studied homily expressed, or old cathedral arches echoed.
As his mother crossed a yard on her way out, she saw, through a grated door which separated it from another court, her husband, walking round and round, with his hands folded on his breast, and his head hung down. She asked the man who conducted her, if she might speak a word with this prisoner. Yes, but she must be quick for he was locking up for the night, and there was but a minute or so to spare. Saying this, he unlocked the door, and bade her go in.
It grated harshly as it turned upon its hinges, but he was deaf to the noise, and still walked round and round the little court, without raising his head or changing his attitude in the least.
She spoke to him, but her voice was weak, and failed her. At length she put herself in his track, and when he came near, stretched out her hand and touched him.
He started backward, trembling from head to foot; but seeing who it was, demanded why she came there. Before she could reply, he spoke again.
'Am I to live or die? Do you murder too, or spare?'
'My son--our son,' she answered, 'is in this prison.'
'What is that to me?' he cried, stamping impatiently on the stone pavement. 'I know it. He can no more aid me than I can aid him.
If you are come to talk of him, begone!'
As he spoke he resumed his walk, and hurried round the court as before. When he came again to where she stood, he stopped, and said, 'Am I to live or die? Do you repent?'
'Oh!--do YOU?' she answered. 'Will you, while time remains? Do not believe that I could save you, if I dared.'
'Say if you would,' he answered with an oath, as he tried to disengage himself and pass on. 'Say if you would.'
'Listen to me for one moment,' she returned; 'for but a moment. I
am but newly risen from a sick-bed, from which I never hoped to rise again. The best among us think, at such a time, of good intentions half-performed and duties left undone. If I have ever, since that fatal night, omitted to pray for your repentance before death--if I omitted, even then, anything which might tend to urge it on you when the horror of your crime was fresh--if, in our later meeting, I yielded to the dread that was upon me, and forgot to fall upon my knees and solemnly adjure you, in the name of him you sent to his account with Heaven, to prepare for the retribution which must come, and which is stealing on you now--I humbly before you, and in the agony of supplication in which you see me, beseech that you will let me make atonement.'
'What is the meaning of your canting words?' he answered roughly.
'Speak so that I may understand you.'
'I will,' she answered, 'I desire to. Bear with me for a moment more. The hand of Him who set His curse on murder, is heavy on us now. You cannot doubt it. Our son, our innocent boy, on whom His anger fell before his birth, is in this place in peril of his life--
brought here by your guilt; yes, by that alone, as Heaven sees and knows, for he has been led astray in the darkness of his intellect, and that is the terrible consequence of your crime.'
'If you come, woman-like, to load me with reproaches--' he muttered, again endeavouring to break away.
'I do not. I have a different purpose. You must hear it. If not to-night, to-morrow; if not to-morrow, at another time. You MUST
hear it. Husband, escape is hopeless--impossible.'
'You tell me so, do you?' he said, raising his manacled hand, and shaking it. 'You!'