"Not to load you with reproaches," she replied; "not to aggravatethe tortures and miseries of your condition, not to give you onehard word, but to restore you to peace and hope. Husband, dearhusband, if you will but confess this dreadful crime; if you willbut implore forgiveness of Heaven and of those whom you havewronged on earth; if you will dismiss these vain uneasy thoughts,which never can be realised, and will rely on Penitence and on theTruth, I promise you, in the great name of the Creator, whose imageyou have defaced, that He will comfort and console you. And formyself," she cried, clasping her hands, and looking upward, "Iswear before Him, as He knows my heart and reads it now, that fromthat hour I will love and cherish you as I did of old, and watchyou night and day in the short interval that will remain to us, andsoothe you with my truest love and duty, and pray with you, thatone threatening judgment may be arrested, and that our boy may bespared to bless God, in his poor way, in the free air and light!"
He fell back and gazed at her while she poured out these words, asthough he were for a moment awed by her manner, and knew not whatto do. But anger and fear soon got the mastery of him, and hespurned her from him.
"Begone!" he cried. "Leave me! You plot, do you! You plot toget speech with me, and let them know I am the man they say I am.
A curse on you and on your boy."
"On him the curse has already fallen," she replied, wringing herhands.
"Let it fall heavier. Let it fall on one and all. I hate youboth. The worst has come to me. The only comfort that I seek or Ican have, will be the knowledge that it comes to you. Now go!"
She would have urged him gently, even then, but he menaced her withhis chain.
"I say go--I say it for the last time. The gallows has me in itsgrasp, and it is a black phantom that may urge me on to somethingmore. Begone! I curse the hour that I was born, the man I slew,and all the living world!"
In a paroxysm of wrath, and terror, and the fear of death, he brokefrom her, and rushed into the darkness of his cell, where he casthimself jangling down upon the stone floor, and smote it with hisironed hands. The man returned to lock the dungeon door, andhaving done so, carried her away.
On that warm, balmy night in June, there were glad faces and lighthearts in all quarters of the town, and sleep, banished by the latehorrors, was doubly welcomed. On that night, families made merryin their houses, and greeted each other on the common danger theyhad escaped; and those who had been denounced, ventured into thestreets; and they who had been plundered, got good shelter. Eventhe timorous Lord Mayor, who was summoned that night before thePrivy Council to answer for his conduct, came back contented;observing to all his friends that he had got off very well with areprimand, and repeating with huge satisfaction his memorabledefence before the Council, "that such was his temerity, he thoughtdeath would have been his portion."
On that night, too, more of the scattered remnants of the mob weretraced to their lurking-places, and taken; and in the hospitals,and deep among the ruins they had made, and in the ditches, andfields, many unshrouded wretches lay dead: envied by those who hadbeen active in the disturbances, and who pillowed their doomedheads in the temporary jails.
And in the Tower, in a dreary room whose thick stone walls shut outthe hum of life, and made a stillness which the records left byformer prisoners with those silent witnesses seemed to deepen andintensify; remorseful for every act that had been done by every manamong the cruel crowd; feeling for the time their guilt his own,and their lives put in peril by himself; and finding, amidst suchreflections, little comfort in fanaticism, or in his fancied call;sat the unhappy author of all--Lord George Gordon.
He had been made prisoner that evening. "If you are sure it"s meyou want," he said to the officers, who waited outside with thewarrant for his arrest on a charge of High Treason, "I am ready toaccompany you--" which he did without resistance. He was conductedfirst before the Privy Council, and afterwards to the HorseGuards, and then was taken by way of Westminster Bridge, and backover London Bridge (for the purpose of avoiding the main streets),to the Tower, under the strongest guard ever known to enter itsgates with a single prisoner.
Of all his forty thousand men, not one remained to bear himcompany. Friends, dependents, followers,--none were there. Hisfawning secretary had played the traitor; and he whose weakness hadbeen goaded and urged on by so many for their own purposes, wasdesolate and alone.
