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

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.

But Pauline could not let the matter rest here. Her struggle was yet to come. It was she, then, who alone was unwilling to sacrifice her present home for the sake of a stranger and prisoner!

Now Pauline Montier was a good Christian woman, and various words of holy utterance began herewith to trouble her. And from a by no means tranquil musing over them, she began to ask herself, What, after all, was home? Was happiness indeed dependent on locality when the heart of love was hers? Could she not give up so little as a house, in order to secure the comfort of a son of misfortune,—a solitary man,—a dying prisoner? What she would not give up freely might any day be taken from her. If fire did not destroy it, the government, which took delight in interference, might see fit to order that the house they occupied should be used again for the original purpose of storage.