CHAPTER XXVIII.
On Saturday morning I went into the
tombs,—that stone nightmare which
squats upon the breast of New-York,
surrounded by the atmosphere of moral
pestilence.
Ascending the steps, and passing
through those gloomy pillars, whose
very shadows seem to be imbued with
memories of violence and bloodshed, I
soon found myself in the court-room,
where the obscurity of a cloudy day was
relieved by gas-light.
Under the domed ceiling, were lawyers,
witnesses, judges, jurymen and
criminals—a vivid and heterogeneous
picture. From yonder door, criminals
emerge from their cells to receive the
sentence due their crimes; and through
yonder door, once sentenced, they pass
again, to linger a little while in the
Tombs, ere they are consigned to the
living death of the State Prison.
That court of sessions' room is a theatre;
every one who appears there,
whether as lawyer, witness, juryman,
judge, or criminal, is an actor; the only
essential difference between it and the
Park or Bowery, is, that when the actors
have played their parts under this domed
ceiling, some of them retire through
yonder door to be consigned to the moral
death of the State Prison, or to the more
merciful death inflicted by the gallows.
The judge, supported by two aldermen,
was on the bench; and, before him, in
the centre of the scene, a criminal stood
up to receive his sentence. The judge
was a pleasant, mild-faced man, who had
become so accustomed to sentencing
criminals, that he did it very much in the
same manner that a tired clerk at Stewart's
disposes of a dress pattern to a very
troublesome and homely woman.
And, contrasted with the round, pleasant
face of the judge, was the sharp, nervous
visage of the criminal—a swarthy
boy of eighteen, whose matted hair fell
over his forehead, while his small glittering
eyes wandered in defiance over the
crowded court.
It was John Smith, otherwise known
as Edward Cloud, the brother of Eugenia.
The judge expected his pardon from
the governor in the afternoon, but proceeded
to sentence the prisoner as though
there was no thought of pardon in the
case. As for myself, I had thought it
best not to communicate one word concerning
the anticipated pardon to the unfortunate
boy. Eugenia had not seen
him since the day when, from a paragraph
in a daily paper, she had been led
to believe that the young burglar and
her missing brother was the same person,—
when she had gone to the Tombs,
crossed the dreary prison yard, ascended
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to cell “No. —,” and took the wretched
outcast to her arms.
And but a few hours before, I had left
Engenia in her modest home, and came
alone to the Tombs, to hear the law's
last judgment upon her brother.
Well! there was a buzzing noise all
over the room, as the young culprit
stood up to hear his sentence; then the
sharp voice and sharper knuckles of an
officer commanding “Silence!” and then
you might have heard a pin drop.
As the judge began to read the sentence
from a written paper, the young
burglar glanced about the court with an
earnest and softened gaze, glanced over
every face and peered into every corner,
and for a moment his face quivered and
his lips trembled. He was looking for
Eugenia! And when the consciousness
came upon him that her face was not
there,—that there was not one face there
to look upon him with pity and with
love,—the softened look passed from his
countenance; he was sullen, defiant, almost
brutal again. He drew his rough
overcoat closer over his chest, clenched
his right hand, and faced the judge with
an unfaltering gaze.
The remarks with which the judge
prefaced the sentence were of the usual
character,—well meant, without doubt,
but calculated to make the sides of a
devil ache with laughter, that is, if devils
ever laugh when the humbug of this
world is paraded before their eyes.
“Great wrong committed on society,—
shocking depravity in one so young,—
have time to reflect upon your crime,
and atone for it within the walls of the
State Prison;” such were some of the
prominent heads of the judge's brief sermon.
He did not say a word about any duty
which society owed to the miserable outcast;
did not breathe a whisper in regard
to the depraved father who had left his
boy to try the hard battle of the world,
friendless and alone; not the shadow of
a whisper concerning those bitter years
of ragged, half-naked, hungry, tempted
childhood, which the boy had endured
in the great city. O no! such things never
come within the knowledge of the law.
It is simply the business of the law to
imprison and to kill.
The judge concluded his homily with
this brilliant and startling thought—
“John Smith, it is the sentence of the
court that you be imprisoned for the term
of three years at Sing-Sing.” To which
John replied, with a look which showed
that State Prison discipline would do
about as much to reform his soul as a
course of sawdust and brickbats would
to fatten his body.
He was then taken out; the door
closed after him; the court buzzed again;
again an officer cried and rapped, “Order!”
and the judge proceeded to the
dispatch of other business.
That afternoon the pardon came, signed
by the noble-hearted governor, and
Eugenia and myself went to the Tombs,
and brought the young convict from his
gloomy cell into free daylight. No one
who had seen his hard, callous face in
the morning, would have imagined him
to be the same boy. We took him to
Eugenia's home, where he sat on the
edge of a chair, his nether lip quivering,
and his eye roving about the room, as if
he was not altogether certain that he was
awake.
“I thought you'd forget me—I did;”—
he faltered, as he looked into the face
of Eugenia—“I did. Are you, really,
my sister? No you aint—you aint!
You the sister of a cuss like me?” He
turned his face away from the light, toward
the wall, and leaning over the back
of the chair, “wept bitterly”—perhaps
the first tears he shed since he wandered
from his New-England birthplace.
At this moment, Col. Eliphalet Cloud
(whose consent, by the by, I had obtained
the day before to the anticipated
marriage) came into the room, prim and
cadaverous, and “dressed to the death.”
He gazed at the sobbing convict through
his eye-glass.
“This is you, is it? What a bad boy
you've been! A very—very bad boy!
You must have kept shockingly low
company! You young villain, I'm
ashamed of you!”
To which the boy, raising his face,
down which the tears were freely coursing,
made reply, as he gazed at the fossil
specimen of the man of the world before
him—“Get out! Who the — are
you! What are you gassin' at me fur?”
It was an odd picture—the ragged convict
son, and the genteel scoundrel father.
Eugenia came between them, and led the
old gentleman into the back room.
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On the next Monday we were married.
There were no guests at our wedding—
only Eugenia, myself, and the clergyman,
(the same who had officiated at the
marriage of Louis and Evelina,) were
present. In the same parlor where I
had first met Eugenia, she placed her
hand in mine, and called me “husband!”
As for the good old man, her father,
(whose virtues were only surpassed by
those of my own departed parent,) I had
placed him in an establishment of his
own, where he could drink and gamble
to his heart's content. The boy, in
whom traces of a better nature were apparent,
I had sent far into the country,
to the house of a good clergyman, where
he might retrieve the errors of his youth,
in preparation for a bright and useful
manhood.
Happy days now in the grave city
mansion! No thought of hag-wife now—
only a softened and touching memory
of Eva! The place was musical now
with the voice of Eugenia, and the longdeserted
rooms imbued with the glory
of her presence and her beauty. Happy
days! Few women have walked this
earth combining the same qualities as
Eugenia—now, the tenderest child in
her emotions; and now, the proud,
queenly, intellectual woman. And yet,
Why was it that oftentimes, in the very
moment when her face was all radiant
with life and loveliness, a cloud would
come upon it, for an instant only, but the
sadder to behold from its contrast with
her previous joyousness?
Do you see yonder old mansion that
stands upon the heights above the Hudson,
bearing traces of the cannon-shot of
the Revolution on its walls of dark gray
stone—a massive edifice, centred in a
garden, its steep roof overhung by the
boughs of encircling oaks? Between
the garden and the Hudson there is a
steep cliff—a broken link of the Palisades—
and, standing in the garden
walk, by that huge old oak, which has
faced the winter of three centuries, the
broad Hudson, the roof and steeples of
New-York, the Sound, the Heights of
Brooklyn, and the glorious Manhattan
Bay, all lie stretched before you, distinct
as the lines of a map, and as beautiful as
any picture every lighted up by a summer
morning sun.
The mansion itself is very massive and
gloomy, with wings projecting to the
north and south; and within its sombre
walls are many rooms, all bearing the
same appearance of stately grandeur
which they wore in the Revolution—
rooms which, it is said, long ago were
the theatres of crimes which never found
a record in the books of courts of law.
There is a hearthstone there yet red with
the stain of a tragedy enacted seventy
years ago.
Well, this house I purchased, and, as
May came, led Eugenia across its threshhold.
It was a bright, beautiful day;
May rippled over the river's surface, and
scattered her blossoms among the trees.
I was the happiest man alive, and as for
Eugenia, never had she looked so surpassingly
beautiful. We crossed the
threshold. No omen scared us back.
And yet the most terrible event of both
our lives was to happen within those
walls.
I can see Eugenia yet, as she lingered
for a moment on the threshold her face
and form framed in the dark doorway;
the form robed in white, with a shawl
of many colors falling aside from her noble
bust; the face set in the shadow of
her rich black hair. Her bonnet had
fallen to her shoulders, her hand was
lifted to her brow, as she looked forth
upon the spring sunshine, the river, the
city and the bay. Very beautiful! Who,
in this queenly woman, now pausing on
the threshold of the house which, (with
its lands,) I had purchased for her in her
own name, would have recognized the
poor seamstress of New-York?
“Oh, is not the day beautiful, Frank?”
she cried, in the very fullness of her joy.
“Beautiful, Eugenia!” And, all unconscious
of the dark future, we went
over the threshold into the gloomy
house.
Lippard, George, 1822-1854 [1853], The midnight queen, or, Leaves from New York life. (Garrett & Co., 18 Ann street, New York) [word count] [eaf630T].
