Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1895 — Ordeal of the Young Seigneur. [ARTICLE]

Ordeal of the Young Seigneur.

BY GILBERT PARKER.

His chief occupation in the daytime was to stand on the bench by the small barred window and watch the pigeons on the roof and in the eaves of the hospital opposite. For five years he had done this, and it was the one thing in his whole life during that time which had a charm for him. Every change of weather and season was registered there as plainly as if he could see the surface of the world. In the summer the slates seemed to have a great fire beneath them, for a quivering hot air rose up from them and the pigeons never alighted on them save in the early morning or in the evening, -Just over the peak of the roof could toe seen the topmost branch of an •oak, too slight to bear the weight of the pigeons, but the eaves under the projecting roof were dark and cool, and there his eyes rested when he tired of the hard blue sky and the glare of the roof. He could also see the top of the hospital windows, barred up and down, but never anything within, for the windows were ever dusty, and all was dark beyond. But now and then he heard bitter ■cries coming through one open window in the summer time, and he listened to them grow fainter and fainter, till they sank to a low moaning, and then ceased altogether.

In winter the roof was covered for months by a blanket of snow, which looked like a shawl of impacted wool, •white and restful, and the hospital windows were spread with frost. But 'the pigeons were the same—almost as gay, and walking on the ledges of the roof or crowding on the shelves •of the lead pipes. He studied them ■much, but he loved them more. His (prison was Jess a prison because of them, and in the long, five years of expiation he found himself more in touch with them than with the wardens of the prison or any of his companions. With the former he was respectful, and he gave them no trouble at all; with the latter he had .nothing in common, for they were 'criminals, and he—he had blundered •when wild and mad with drink, so wild and mad that he had no remembrance, absolutely none, of the incident by which Jean Vigot lost his dife. He remembered that they had played cards far into the night, that they had quarreled, then made their peace again; that the others had left, that they had begun playing cards and drinking again, and then all was blurred, save for a vague recollection that he had won all the money Vigot had and had pocketed it. Then icame a blank. He waked to find two officers of the law beside him, and the bodof Jean Vigot, stark and dreadful, a few feet away. When the officers put their hands upon him he shook them off. When they did it again he would have fought them to the death had it not been for his friend, tall Medallion, who laid a strong hand on his arm and said, “ Steady, Converse, steadyl” and he had yielded to the firm, friendly pressure. Medallion had left no stone unturned to clear him at the trial, had himself played detective unceasingly, but the hard facts remained there, and on a chain of circumstantial evidence Louis Converse, the young Seigneur, was sent to prison for ten years for manslaughter. That was the compromise effected. Louis himself had said only that he didn’t remember, but he could not believe he had committed the crime. Robbery’ He shrugged his shoulders at that—he insisted that his lawyer should not reply to the insulting and foolish suggestion . But the evidence had shown that Vigot had all the winnings when the other members •of the party left tk« two, and this very money had been found in Louis’ Docket. There was only Louis’ woifd

that they had playod cards again. Anger’ Possibly. Louis could not remember, though he knew they had quarreled. The judge himself, charging the jury, said that he never before saw a prisoner so frank and outwardly honest, but warned them that they must not lose sight of the crime itself, the taking of a human life, whereby a woman was made a widow and a child fatherless. And so with the few remarks the judge sentenced the young Seigneur to ten years in prison, and then himself, shaken and pale, left the court room hurriedly, for Louis Converse's father had been his friend from boyhood. Louis took his sentence calmly, looking the judge squarely in the eyes, and when the judge stopped he bowed to him, turned to the jury and said: “Gentlemen, you have ruined my life. You don't know and 1 don’t know who killed the man. You i have guessed, and I take the penalty, i Suppose I'm innocent, how will you feel when the truth comes out? : You've known me more or less these twenty years, and you’ve said with no more knowledge than I've got that ! I did this miserable thing I don’t ' know but that one of you did it, but ■ you are safe, find I take my teq ; years.’’

He turned from them, and as he : did he saw a woman looking at him from a corner of the court room with ■ a strange, wild expression. At the i moment he saw no more than an excited, bewildered face, but afterward ' this face came and went before him, flashing in and out of dark places in a mocking sort of way. As he went from the court room another woman made her way to him in spite of the guards. It was the little chemist’s wife who years before had been his father's housekeeper, who had been present when he first opened his eyes on the world. “My poor boy! My poor boy!” she said, clasping his manacled hands. He kissed her on the cheek, without a word, and hurried on into his prison, and the good world was shut out. In prison he refused to see all visitors, even Medallion, the little chemist’s wife, and the good Father Fabre. Letters, too, he refused to accept and read. He had no contact, wished no contact, with the outer world, but lived his hard, lonely life by himself, silent, brooding, studious—for now books were to him a pleasure. And he wrote, too, but never to any soul outside the prison. This life had nothing to do with the world from which he came, and he meant that it should not.

So perfect a prisoner was he that the warders protected him from visitors. and he was never but once or twice stared at, and then he saw nothing, heard nothing. He had entered his prison a wild, excitable, dissipated youth, and he had become a mature, quiet, cold, brooding man. Five years had done the work of twenty. He had lived the life of the prison, yet he was not a part of it, nor yet was he a part of the world without. And the face of the woman who looked at him so strangely in the court room haunted him now and then, so that at last it became a part of his real life, which was lived standing by the window, where he looked out at the pigeons on the roof of the hospital. “She was sorry for me,” he said many a time to himself. He was sorry for himself, and he was shaken with misery often, so that he rocked to and fro as he sat on his bed, and a warder heard him cry out even in the last days of his imprisonment, “Oh, God, canst Thou do everything but speak?” And again: “That hour! the memory of that hour, in exchange for my ruined life!” But there wete times when he was very quiet and calm, and he spent hours in watching the ways of the pigeons. And he was doing this one daj' when the jailor came to him and said: “Monsieur Converse, you are free. The Governor has cut off five years from your sentence.”

Then he was told that people were waiting without—Medallion, and the little chemist and wife, and others more important. But he would not go to meet them, and he stepped into the old world alone at dawn the next morning, and looked out upon a still, sleeping town. And there was no one stirring in the place, but suddenly there stood before him a woman. who had watched by the prison gates all night, and she put. out a hand in entreaty, and said, with a breaking voice, “You are free at last!” He remembered her—the woman who had looked at him so anxiouslj' and sorrowfully in the court room. He looked at her kindly now, yet he was dazed, too, with his new advent to freedom and good earth. “Why did you come to meet me?” he asked. "I was sorry for you,” she replied. ‘‘But that is no reason.” “I once committed a crime,” she whispered, with shrinking bitterness. “That’s bad,” he said. ‘‘Were you punished?” She shook her head and answered "No.” “That’s worse,” he added. ‘ ‘I let some one else take my crime upon him and be punished for it,” she said, an agony in her eyes. • “Why was that?” he said, looking at her intently. I “I had a little child,” was her ply“And the other? ” “He was alone in the world,” she said. A bitter smile crept to his lips and his eyes were ail afire, for a strange thought came to him. Then he shut his eyes, and when he opened them again discovery was in them. “I remember you now,” he said, “I remember I waked and saw you looking at me that night! Who was the father of your child?” he asked i eagerly. “Jean Vigot,” she replied. “He ' left me to starve.” “I am innocent of his death! ” he I said quietly and gladly. She nodded. He was silent for a moment. i “The child still lives?” he asked. She nodded again. “Well, let it be i so,” he added. “But you owe me five ; years—and a lost reputation.” i “I wish to God I could give them | back,” she cried, tears streaming I down her cheeks. “It was for my | child, he was so young!” ■ “It can’t be helped now,” he said,

t and he turned, away from her. “Won’t you forgive me?” she asked, bitterly. • Won't you give me back those five years?” he replied, meaningly. "If the child did not need me I would give my life,” she answered. “I owe it to you.” Her haggard, hunted face made him sorry. He, too, had ’ suffered. -It’s all right,” he answered, gently. “Take care of your child.” And again he moved away from her and went down the little hill with a cloud gone from his face that had rested there five years. Once he turned around. The woman was gone but over the prison a flock of pigeons were flying. He took off his hat to them. Then he went through the town, looking neither to the right nor left, and came to his own house, where the summer morning was already entering the open wini dows. though he had looked to find 1 the place closed and dark The little chemist’s wife met him in the door- : way. She could not speak, nor could he, but he kissed her, as he had ’ done when he went condemned to I prison. Then he passed on to his ■ own room, and, entering, sat down , before the the open window and | peacefully drank in the glory of a new world But more than once he ’ choked down a sob that rose in his | throat.