Read Ebook: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 02 No. 12 October 1858 A Magazine of Literature Art and Politics by Various

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The gardener knew very well how she prized the pretty flowers;--they appealed to his own rude nature in a very tender way. He loved to see the young girl flying down the narrow paths as swiftly as a bird, if she but spied a bloom from afar. There was a tree whose branches hung over the wall, every one of them growing, with dreadful perversity, away from the cold, hard prison-ground which held the roots so fast. Time was never long enough when she sat in the shade of those branches, watching Sandy at his work.

By-and-by it happened that the flower-garden was given over to the charge of the girl. It was natural that she, who had never seen other flower-beds than these, should, aided by the home-recollections of her mother, imagine far prettier,--that she should dare suggest to Sandy, until his patience and his skill were exhausted,--that the final good result should have come about in a moment when no one looked for it,--he giving up his task with vexation, she accepting it with humility, and both working together thereafter, the most helpful of friends.

It required not many seasons for Elizabeth to prove her skill and diligence in the culture of this garden-ground,--not many for the transformation of square, awkward beds into a mass of bloom. How did those flowers delight the generous heart! With what particular splendor shone the house of Montier through all the summer season! The ladies now began to think about bouquets, and knew where they could find them. From this same blessed nook the Governor's table was daily supplied with its most beautiful ornament. Men tenderly disposed smiled on the young face that from under the broad-brimmed garden-hat smiled back on them. Some deemed her fairer than the flowers she cared for.

One day in the spring of the year that brought her thirteenth birthday, Elizabeth ran down through the morning mist, and plucked the first spring flower. She stayed but to gather the beauty whose budding she had long watched; no one must rob her mother of this gift.

She carried off the prize before the gaze of one who had also hailed it in the bleak, drear dawn. This was not the gardener;--and there was neither man, woman, nor child in sight, during the swift run;--no freeman; but a prisoner in an upper room of the prison. Through its grated window, the only one on that side of the building, he had that morning for the first time looked upon the island which had held him long a prisoner.

The first ray of daylight saw him dragging his feeble body to the window. He did not remove from that post till the rain was over,--nor then, except for a moment. As the clouds rose from the sea, he watched them. How strange was the aspect of all things! Thus, while he had lived and not beheld, these trees had waved, these waters rolled, these clouds gathered,--grass had grown, and flowers unfolded; for he saw the scarlet bloom before Elizabeth plucked it. And all this while he had lived like a dead man, unaware! Not so; but now he remembered not the days, when, conscious of all this life, he had deathly despair in his heart, and stones alone for friends.

Imprisonment and solitude had told upon the man. He was still young, and one whom Nature and culture had fitted for no obscure station in the world. He could, by every evidence he gave, perform no mere commonplaces of virtue or of vice. The world's ways would not assign his limitation. He was capable of devising and of executing great things,--and had proved the power; and to this his presence testified, even in dilapidation and listlessness.

His repose was the repose of helplessness,--not that of grace or nature. The opening of this prospect with the daylight had not the effect to increase his tranquillity. His dejection in the past months had been that of a strong man who yields to necessity; his present mood was not inspired with hope. The waves that leaped in the morning's gloomy light were not so aimless as his life seemed to him. He had heard a bird sing in the branches of a tree whose roots were in the prison-yard,--now he could see her nest; he had heard the dismal pattering of the rain,--and now beheld it, and the clouds from which it fell; he saw the glimpses of the blue beyond, where the clouds were breaking; he saw the fort, the cannon mounted on the walls, the flag that fluttered from the tower, the barracks, the parade-ground, and the surrounding sea, whose boundaries he knew not; he saw the trees, he saw the garden-ground. Slowly his eyes scanned all,--and the soul that was lodged in the emaciated figure grew faint and sick with seeing. But no tears, no sighs, no indications of grief or despair or desperate submission. He had little to learn of suffering;--that he knew. How could he greet the day, hail the light, bless Nature for her beauty, thank God for his life? Oh, the weariness with which he leaned his head against those window-bars, faint and almost dying under the weight of thoughts that rushed upon him, fierce enough to slay, if he showed any resistance! But he manifested none. The day of struggle was over with him. He believed that they had brought him to this room to die. If any thought could give him joy, surely it was this. He was right. Yesterday the Governor of the island, hearing the condition of the prisoner, this one remaining man of all whose sentence had been endured within these walls, had ordered a change of scene for him. His sentence was imprisonment for life. Did they fear his release by the hands of one who hears the sighing of the prisoner, and gives to every bondman the Year of Jubilee? Were they jealous and suspicious of the approach of Death?

Though he had been so long a prisoner, he showed in his person self-respect and dignity of nature. His hair and beard were grown long; many a gray thread shone in his chestnut locks; his mouth was a firm feature; his eyes quiet, but not the mildest; his forehead very ample; he was lofty in stature;--outside the prison, a freeman, his presence would have been commanding. But he needed the free air for his lungs, and the light to surround him,--the light to set him in relief, the sense of life to compel him to stand out in his own powerful individuality, distinct from every other living man.

By-and-by, while he stood at the window, looking forth upon the strange scenes before him, this new heaven and new earth, the landscape became alive. The first human creature he had seen outside his cell since he became an inmate of this prison appeared before his eyes,--the young girl skipping through the garden till she came to the flower-bed and plucked the scarlet blossom. If she had been a spirit or an angel, he could hardly have beheld her with greater surprise.

She was singing when she came. He thought he recognized that voice,--that it was the same he had often heard from the cell below. Many a time the horrible stillness of that cell had been broken by the sound of a child's voice, which, like a spirit, swept unhindered through the walls,--an essence of life, and a power.

It was but a moment that she paused before the flower; she plucked it, and was gone. But his eyes could follow her. She did not really, with her disappearing, vanish. And yet this vision had not to him the significance of the bow seen in the cloud, whose interpreter, and whose interpretation, was the Almighty Love.

All day he stood before that window. The keeper hailed the symptom. The Governor was satisfied with the report. Towards sunset the rain was over, and with the sun came forth abundant indications of the island life. The gardener walked among the garden-beds and measured his morrow's work, calculating time and means within his reach,--and vouchsafing some attention to the flower-garden, as was evident when he paused before it and made his thoughtful survey. The prisoner saw him smile when he took hold of the broken stalk which had been flower-crowned. And Sandy saw the prisoner.

The next day Elizabeth came out with the gardener, and they began their day's work together. They seemed to be in the best spirits. The smell of the fresh-turned earth, the sight of the fresh shoots of tender green springing from bulb and root and branch, acted upon them like an inspiration. The warm sun also held them to their task. Sandy was generous in bestowing aid and counsel,--and also in the matter of his land,--trenching farther on the ground allotted to the vegetables than he had ever done before.

"The land must pay for it," said he. "We'll make a foot give us a yard's worth. Cram a bushel into a peck, though 'The Doctor' said you never could do that! I know how to coax."

"Yes, and you know how to order, if you have not forgotten, Sandy. You frightened me once for taking an inch over my share."

"Why, I was nothing but a baby then, Sandy."

"Yes, yes,--I know; but you're changed since then!"

So they all spoke to Elizabeth, praising her, confiding in her with loving willingness,--the Daughter of the Regiment.

The gardener was proud of his assistant, and seemed to enjoy the part she took in his labor. They worked till noon, Elizabeth stopping hardly a moment to rest. All this while the prisoner stood watching by his window, and the gardener saw him. The sight occasioned him a new perplexity, and he gravely considered the subject. It was a good while before he said to Elizabeth, speaking on conviction, in his usual low and rather mysterious tone,--

"There's some one will enjoy it when all's done."

"Who is that?" asked she, thinking he meant herself, perhaps.

"One up above," was the answer.

But though Sandy spoke thus plainly, he did not look toward the prison,--and the prison was the last place of which Elizabeth was thinking. It was so long a time since the cell with the window had an occupant, that she was almost unconscious of that gloomy neighborhood. So, when the gardener explained that it was one up above who would enjoy her work, her eyes instantly sought the celestial heights. She was thinking of sun, or star, or angel, may-be, and smiling at Sandy's speech, for sympathy.

He saw her new mistake, and made haste to correct this also.

"Not so high," said he, cautiously.

Then, but as it seemed of chance, and not of purpose, the eyes of Elizabeth Montier turned toward the prison-wall, and fixed upon that window, the solitary one visible from the garden, and her face flushed in a manner that told her surprise--when she saw a man behind the iron bars.

"Oh," said she, looking away quickly, as if conscious of a wrong done, "what made you tell me?"

"I guess you will like to think one shut up like him will take a little pleasure looking at what he can't get at," said Sandy, almost sharply,--replying to something he did not quite understand, the pain and the reproof of Elizabeth's speech.

"Oh, yes!" she answered, and went on with her work.

But though she might be pleased to think that her labor would answer another and more serious purpose than her own gratification, or that of the pretty flowers, it was something new and strange for the girl to work under this mysterious sense of oversight.

"You have only got to speak the word," said the gardener, who had perceived her perplexity, and was desirous of bringing her speedily to his view of the case, "just speak, and he will be carried back to his old cell below, t'other side."

"Will he?"

"Yes,--sure's you live, if he troubles you, Miss Elizabeth. Nobody will think of letting him trouble you."

"Oh, me!" she exclaimed, quickly, "I should die quicker than have him moved where he couldn't see the garden."

"I thought so," said Sandy, satisfied.

"Did you think I would complain of his standing by his window, Sandy?"

"How did I know you would like to be stared at?" asked he, with a laugh.

Elizabeth blushed and looked grave; to her the matter seemed too terrible.

"I might have said something," she mused, sadly.

"And if it had been to the wrong person," suggested Sandy;--"for they a'n't very fond of him, I guess."

"Who is he, then? I never heard."

"He has been shut up in that building now a'most five year, Elizabeth," said Sandy, leaning on the handle of the spade he had struck into the ground with emphasis.

"Five years!"

"Summer heat, and winter cold. All the same to him. No wonder he sticks, as if he was glued, to the window, now he's got one worth the glass."

"Oh, let him!"

"If he could walk about the garden, it would be better yet."

"Won't he, Sandy?"

"Oh, Sandy! I might have said something that would have hindered!"

"Didn't I know you wouldn't for the world? That's why I told you."

The gardener now went on with his spading. But Elizabeth's work seemed finished for this day. Above them stood the prisoner. He guessed not what gentle hearts were pitiful with thinking of his sorrow.

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