The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 2

"Beautiful girl!" cried the stranger; "no! I have for months haunted you like your shadow. Your fair face threw the first gleams of suns.h.i.+ne into my heart that have visited it from early manhood. I love you, Magdalena!"

"This is no hour and no place for words like these," replied the captive, coldly.

"Nay!" cried the stranger, with sudden energy. "Beautiful girl, I come to save you!"

"To save me!" cried Magdalena, a sudden, wild hope springing in her breast,"--to save me! It is well done. Believe me, I am innocent. You have bribed the jailer to open my prison doors; you have contrived some means of evasion. I know not--I care not what. I shall be freed!

I shall clasp my father's knees once more. I shall go forth into the blessed air and light of heaven. G.o.d bless you, whoever you are, for your words of hope!"

"You shall go forth, if you will," replied the stranger; "but openly, in the face and eyes of man. At my word the prison bars will fall, the keys will turn, the gates will be unbarred. I have a royal pardon!"

"Give it me! give it me!" almost shrieked Magdalena.

"It is bestowed on one condition: that you become my wife."

"That I become your wife!" repeated Magdalena, as if she but half comprehended the words. "Forsake poor Julio! And yet the bribe, to escape a death of infamy, to save my father's gray hairs from going down to a dishonored grave! Speak! who are you, with power to save me on these terms?"

The stranger tossed aside his sable hat and plume, and dropped his cloak, and stood before her in a rich dress of black velvet, trimmed with point lace, a broadsword belted to his waist. He was a man of middle age, of a fine, athletic figure, and handsome face, but there was an indescribable expression in his dark eyes, in the stern lines about his handsome mouth, that affected the gazer with a strange, shuddering horror.

"Peruse me well, maiden," said the stranger. "I am not deformed. I am as other men. If there be no glow in my cheek, still the blood that flows through my veins is healthy and untainted. Moreover, though I be not n.o.ble, my character is stainless. If to be the wife of an honest man is not too dear a purchase for your life, accept my hand, and you are saved."

"Who are you?" cried Magdalena, intense curiosity mastering her even in that moment.

"I am the executioner of Madrid!" replied the stranger.

Magdalena covered her face with her hands, and uttered a low cry of horror.

"I am the executioner of Madrid!" repeated he. "I have never committed crime in my life, though my blade has been reddened with the blood of my fellow-creatures. Yet no man takes my hand,--no man breaks bread or drinks wine with me. I, the dread minister of justice, a necessity of society, like the soldier on the rampart, or the priest at the altar, am a being lonely, abhorred, accursed. Yet I have the feelings, the pa.s.sions of other men. But what maiden would listen to the suit of one like me? What father would give his daughter to my arms? None, none! And, therefore, the state decrees that when the executioner would wed, he must take to his arms a woman doomed to death. I loved you, Magdalena, hopelessly, ere I dreamed the hour would ever arrive when I might hope to claim you. That hour has now come. I offer you your life and my hand. You must be my bride, or my victim!"

"Your victim! your victim!" cried Magdalena. "Death a thousand times, though a thousand times undeserved, rather than your foul embrace!"

"You have chosen. Your blood be on your own head!" cried the executioner, stamping his foot. "You die unshriven and unblessed!"

"At least, abhorred ruffian," cried Magdalena, "I have some little time for preparation! The hour has not yet arrived."

"Has it not?" cried the executioner. "Behold yon clock!"

And as her eyes were strained upon the dial, he strode out of the cell, and seizing the hands, advanced them to the hour of noon. Then, at a signal from his hand, the prison bell began to toll.

"Mercy; mercy!" cried Magdalena, as he rejoined her. "Slay me not before my time!"

But the hand of the ruffian already grasped her arm, and he dragged her forth into the corridor.

At that moment, however, a loud shout arose, and a group of officials, escorting the goldsmith and Julio, waving a paper in his hand, rushed breathlessly along the pa.s.sage.

"Saved, saved!" cried Magdalena. "Hither, hither, father, Julio!"

The executioner had wreathed his hand in her dark, flowing tresses; already his dreadful weapon was brandished in the air, when it was crossed by the bright Toledo blade of the young cavalier, and flew from his grasp, clanging against the prison wall.

"Unhand her, dog!" cried Julio, "or die the death!"

Sullenly the executioner released his hold, and sullenly listened to the royal pardon.

Magdalena was soon beneath her father's roof,--soon in the arms of her cousin Juanita. Long did she resist the importunities of Julio; for though innocent in fact, judicially she stood convicted of a capital offence. But as time rolled on,--as her innocence became the popular belief,--she finally relented, accepted his hand, and beneath the beautiful sky of Italy, forgot, or remembered only as a dream, the perils and sorrows of her early life.

PHILETUS POTTS.

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Philetus Potts is dead. Like Grimes, he was a "good old man!" A true gentleman of the old school, he clung to many of the fas.h.i.+ons of a by-gone period with a pertinacity, which, to the eyes of the thoughtless, savored somewhat of the ludicrous. It was only of late years that he relinquished his three-cornered hat; to breeches, buckles, and hair powder he adhered to the last. He was also partial to pigtails, though his earliest was shorn from his head by a dangerous rival, who cut him out of the good graces of Miss Polly Martine, a powdered beauty of the past century, by amputating his cue; while his latest one was sacrificed on the altar of humanity--but thereby hangs a tale.

If Mr. Potts was behind his age in dress, he was in advance of it in sentiment. In his breast the milk of human kindness never curdled, and his intelligent mind was ever actively employed in devising ways and means to alleviate the sufferings of humanity, and to change the hearts of evil doers. His comprehensive kindness included the brute creation as well as mankind, in the circle of his active sympathy.

We remember an instance of his sympathy for animals. We had been making an excursion into the country. It was high noon of a sultry summer day; eggs were cooking in the sun, and the mercury in the thermometer stood at the top of the tube. Pa.s.sing out of a small village, we pa.s.sed a young lady pleasantly and coolly attired in white, and carrying a sunshade whose grateful shadow melted into the cool, clear olive of her fine complexion.

Mr. Potts sighed, for she reminded him of Miss Polly Martine at the same age; and Polly Martine reminded him of parasols by some recondite a.s.sociation. Mr. Potts remembered the first umbrella that was brought into Boston. He always carried one that might have been the first, it was so venerable, yet whole and decent, like an old gentleman in good preservation. It was a green silk one, with a plain, mahogany handle, and a ring instead of a ferrule, and very large. Discoursing of umbrellas, we came upon a cow. Mr. Potts was fond of cows--grateful to them--always spoke of them with respect. This particular cow inhabited a small paddock by the roadside, which was enclosed by a Virginia fence, and contained very little gra.s.s, and no provision for shade and shelter. So the cow stood in the suns.h.i.+ne, with her head resting on the fence, and her tongue lolling out of her mouth, and her large, intelligent eyes fixed on the far distance, where a herd of kine were feasting knee-deep in a field of clover, beside a running brook, overshadowed by magnificent walnut trees.

"Poor thing!" said Mr. Potts; and he stopped short and looked at the cow.

The cow looked at Mr. Potts. One had evidently magnetically influenced the other.

"She is a female, like the lady we encountered," said Mr. Potts, "but," added he, with a burst of feeling, "she has no parasol!"

The a.s.sertion was indisputable. It was a truism, cows are never provided with parasols,--but then great men are famous for uttering truisms, and we venerated Mr. Potts for following the example.

"It is now twelve o'clock!" said Mr. Potts, consulting his repeater.

"At half past four, the shadow of the b.u.t.tonwood will fall into this poor animal's pasture. Four hours and a half of torture, rendered more painful by the contemplation of the luxuries of her remote companions!

It is insufferable!"

Then Mr. Potts, with a genial smile on his Pickwickian countenance, expanded his green silk umbrella, mounted the fence, on which he sat astride, and patiently held the umbrella over the cow's head for the s.p.a.ce of four and a half mortal hours. The action was sublime. I regret to add that the animal proved ungrateful, and, when Mr. Potts closed his umbrella on the shadow of the b.u.t.tonwood relieving guard, facilitated his descent from the Virginia fence by an ungraceful application of her horns to the amplitude of his venerable person.

It was in the summer following, that the incident I am about to relate occurred. It was fly-time,--I remember it well. We were again walking together, when we came to a wall-eyed horse, harnessed to a dog's meat cart, and left standing by his unfeeling master while he indulged in porter and pipes in a small suburban pothouse, much affected by Milesians. The horse was much annoyed by flies, and testified his impatience and suffering by stamping and tossing his head. Mr. Potts was the first to notice that the poor animal had no tail,--for the two or three vertebrae attached to the termination of the spine could hardly be supposed to const.i.tute a tail proper. The discovery filled him with horror. A horse in fly-time without a tail! The case was worse than that of the cow.

"And here I am!" exclaimed the great and good man, in a tone of the bitterest self-reproach, "luxuriating in a pigtail which that poor creature would be glad of!"

With these words he produced a penknife, and placing it in my hands, resolutely bade me amputate his cue. I did so with tears in my eyes, and placed the severed ornament in the hands of my companion. With a piece of tape he affixed it to the horse's stump, and the gush of satisfaction he felt at seeing the first fly despatched by the ingenious but costly subst.i.tute for a tail, must have been, I think, an adequate recompense for the sacrifice.

I think it was in that same summer that Mr. Potts laid before the Philanthropic and Humane Society, of which he was an honorable and honorary member, his "plan for the amelioration of the condition of no-tailed horses in fly-time, by the subst.i.tution of feather dusters for the natural appendage, to which are added some hints on the grafting of tails with artificial scions, by a retired farrier in ill health."

During the last year of his life, Mr. Potts offered a prize of five thousand dollars for the discovery of a harmless and indelible white paint, to be used in changing the complexion of the colored population, to place them on an equality with ourselves, or for any chemical process which would produce the same result.

Mr. Potts proposed to subst.i.tute for capital punishment, houses of seclusion for murderers, where, remote from the world, in rural retreats, they might converse with nature, and in the cultivation of the earth, or the pursuit of botany, might become gradually softened and humanized. At the expiration of a few months' probation, he proposed to restore them to society.

A criminal is an erring brother. The object of punishment is reformation, and not vengeance. Hence, Mr. Potts proposed to supply our prisoners with teachers of languages, arts and sciences, dancing and gymnastics. Every prison should have, he contended, a billiard room and bowling saloon, a hairdresser, and a French cook.

Occasionally, accompanied by proper officers, the convicts should be taken to the Italian Opera, or allowed to dance at Papanti's. The object would be so to refine their tastes that they should shrink from theft and murder, simply because they were ungentlemanly. Readmitted to society, these gentlemen would give tone to the upper cla.s.ses.