God knows how I still shrunk from it! But there was no alternative now; I was bound to remember my duty to the excellent man, whose critical position at that moment was, in some degree at least, due to my hesitation in asserting my authority. Could I allow the Prisoner to presume on his compassionate nature, and to hurry him into a decision which, in his calmer moments, he might find reason to regret? I spoke to him. Does the man live who—having to say what I had to say—could have spoken to the doomed mother?
“I am sorry to have allowed this to go on,” I said. “In justice to yourself, sir, don’t answer!”
She turned on me with a look of fury.
“He shall answer,” she cried.
I saw, or thought I saw, signs of yielding in his face. “Take time,” I persisted—“take time to consider before you decide.”
She stepped up to me.
“Take time?” she repeated. “Are you inhuman enough to talk of time, in my presence?”
She laid the sleeping child on her bed, and fell on her knees before the Minister: “I promise to hear your exhortations—I promise to do all a woman can to believe and repent. Oh, I know myself! My heart, once hardened, is a heart that no human creature can touch. The one way to my better nature—if I have a better nature—is through that poor babe. Save her from the workhouse! Don’t let them make a pauper of her!” She sank prostrate at his feet, and beat her hands in frenzy on the floor. “You want to save my guilty soul,” she reminded him furiously. “There’s but one way of doing it. Save my child!”
He raised her. Her fierce tearless eyes questioned his face in a mute expectation dreadful to see. Suddenly, a foretaste of death—the death that was so near now!—struck her with a shivering fit: her head dropped on the Minister’s shoulder. Other men might have shrunk from the contact of it. That true Christian let it rest.
Under the maddening sting of suspense, her sinking energies rallied for an instant. In a whisper, she was just able to put the supreme question to him.
“Yes? or No?”
He answered: “Yes.”
A faint breath of relief, just audible in the silence, told me that she had heard him. It was her last effort. He laid her, insensible, on the bed, by the side of her sleeping child. “Look at them,” was all he said to me; “how could I refuse?”
CHAPTER V. MISS CHANCE ASSERTS HERSELF.
The services of our medical officer were required, in order to hasten the recovery of the Prisoner’s senses.
When the Doctor and I left the cell together, she was composed, and ready (in the performance of her promise) to listen to the exhortations of the Minister. The sleeping child was left undisturbed, by the mother’s desire. If the Minister felt tempted to regret what he had done, there was the artless influence which would check him! As we stepped into the corridor, I gave the female warder her instructions to remain on the watch, and to return to her post when she saw the Minister come out.
In the meantime, my companion had walked on a little way.
Possessed of ability and experience within the limits of his profession, he was in other respects a man with a crotchety mind; bold to the verge of recklessness in the expression of his opinion; and possessed of a command of language that carried everything before it. Let me add that he was just and merciful in his intercourse with others, and I shall have summed him up fairly enough. When I joined him he seemed to be absorbed in reflection.
“Thinking of the Prisoner?” I said.
“Thinking of what is going on, at this moment, in the condemned cell,” he answered, “and wondering if any good will come of it.”
I was not without hope of a good result, and I said so.
The Doctor disagreed with me. “I don’t believe in that woman’s penitence,” he remarked; “and I look upon the parson as a poor weak creature. What is to become of the child?”
There was no reason for concealing from one of my colleagues the benevolent decision, on the part of the good Minister, of which I had been a witness. The Doctor listened to me with the first appearance of downright astonishment that I had ever observed in his face. When I had done, he made an extraordinary reply:
“Governor, I retract what I said of the parson just now. He is one of the boldest men that ever stepped into a pulpit.”
Was the doctor in earnest? Strongly in earnest; there could be no doubt of it. Before I could ask him what he meant, he was called away to a patient on the other side of the prison. When we parted at the door of my room, I made it a request that my medical friend would return to me and explain what he had just said.
“Considering that you are the governor of a prison,” he replied, “you are a singularly rash man. If I come back, how do you know I shall not bore you?”
“My rashness runs the risk of that,” I rejoined.
“Tell me something, before I allow you to run your risk,” he said. “Are you one of those people who think that the tempers of children are formed by the accidental influences which happen to be about them? Or do you agree with me that the tempers of children are inherited from their parents?”
The Doctor (as I concluded) was still strongly impressed by the Minister’s resolution to adopt a child whose wicked mother had committed the most atrocious of all crimes. Was some serious foreboding in secret possession of his mind? My curiosity to hear him was now increased tenfold. I replied without hesitation:
“I agree with you.”
He looked at me with his sense of humor twinkling in his eyes. “Do you know I rather expected that answer?” he said, slyly. “All right. I’ll come back.”
Left by myself, I took up the day’s newspaper.
My attention wandered; my thoughts were in the cell with the Minister and the Prisoner. How would it end? Sometimes, I was inclined to doubt with the Doctor. Sometimes, I took refuge in my own more hopeful view. These idle reflections were agreeably interrupted by the appearance of my friend, the Chaplain.
“You are always welcome,” I said; “and doubly welcome just now. I am feeling a little worried and anxious.”
“And you are naturally,” the Chaplain added, “not at all disposed to receive a stranger?”
“Is the stranger a friend of yours?” I asked.
“Oh, no! Having occasion, just now, to go into the waiting-room, I found a young woman there, who asked me if she could see you. She thinks you have forgotten her, and she is tired of waiting. I merely undertook, of course, to mention what she had said to me.”
The nurse having been in this way recalled to my memory, I felt some little interest in seeing her, after what had passed in the cell. In plainer words, I was desirous of judging for myself whether she deserved the hostile feeling which the Prisoner had shown toward her. I thanked the Chaplain before he left me, and gave the servant the necessary instructions. When she entered the room, I looked at the woman attentively for the first time.
Youth and a fine complexion, a well-made figure and a natural grace of movement—these were her personal attractions, so far as I could see. Her defects were, to my mind, equally noticeable. Under a heavy forehead, her piercing eyes looked out at persons and things with an expression which was not to my taste. Her large mouth—another defect, in my opinion—would have been recommended to mercy, in the estimation of many men, by her magnificent teeth; white,