Chapter LI: On the Scaffold

“The last hour of my life!” said Nina Strangemore, solemnly, and with an awful shudder.

It was the morning of the 25th of July and already the merciless hands of time were pointing to the seventh hour. She stood trembling among the little group of beloved friends who thronged the narrow cell to bid a last good-by to the lovely girl going forth to meet ignominious death at the strong arm of the law.

She had chosen for her dress this morning a long clinging black velvet gown from which her pale face gleamed with marble whiteness and delicacy. Her rippling, waving, golden hair had been gathered into a gleaming braid at the back of her small head, and the unusual style of coiffure, while it lent added dignity and gravity to her youthful beauty, also showed a new charm in the stately grace of the white neck and delicate shell-like ears. She was changed greatly, but none the less beautiful for the cruel tragedy and the waves of anguish that had swept across her life. Sorrow and suffering had etherealized her beauty until it was almost unearthly.

She lifted her great dark eyes heavy with despair, and looked into the blanched faces of her friends.

“The last hour of my life!” she repeated, solemnly, and with something like awe in her quivering voice.

It was terrible to her, so young, so lovely, so loving, with such a beautiful life lying before her, to be cut off abruptly from it all, to be standing there face to face with death and the other world. They all felt the full force of the fact, and for a moment no one could answer her. Only the silver haired minister said with a quiver in his reverent voice:

“The last of earthly life, dear daughter, but the beginning of a more blessed one eternal in the heavens.”

Then he knelt down and prayed for the young soul about to be torn from its earthly tabernacle, for the husband who was an exile in foreign lands knowing nothing of the terrible doom hanging over his wife, for the friends who were rendered desolate by her loss, and lastly for the judge and jury who had ordered this judicial murder, and for all those concerned in it, and when he had again commended Nina’s soul to heaven and uttered in a quivering voice the last amen, the sheriff came in to conduct his prisoner to the scaffold.

Then there ensued a scene of bitter grief and excitement.

Minnie Fielding and Virgie Mason fell fainting to the floor. Helen Starr went into strong hysterics, Kitty, the maid, sobbed from the depths of a breaking heart, while Miss Drusilla with a heart as sore as any repressed her emotion with an iron will, and stood gravely and tenderly by the side of the girl who was the only creature upon earth she loved and cared for.

“And when they have killed my innocent white lamb I shall die of grief,” she said to herself. “But now I will be calm for my poor Nina’s sake. I will not be fainting and shrieking like these poor hysterical women, and disturbing the child when she is trying to fix her thoughts on heaven.” So she walked to the foot of the scaffold with her arms around the poor trembling child, who whispered forlornly in her ear:

“Dear Aunt Drusilla, I wonder how long it will be after I am dead before Talbot learns the terrible truth? Do you think he will come back soon?”

“He did not talk as if he would ever come back, dear, I believe he will be an exile all his life,” Miss Drusilla answered.

“I hope so. I hope he will never come back after I am dead. I should not like for him to know that I died--like this!” moaned the girl. “I hope he will never know the dreadful truth, never, until he comes to heaven and finds me there waiting.”

“But if he should come home, Nina, and have to hear the cruel truth? What can I say to him, darling? Will you leave him one last word?”

She looked anxiously into the beautiful agitated young face, wondering if in this last terrible hour the young wife’s love and tenderness for the husband who had brought her such sorrow would fail her.

“For myself I shall always hate my nephew, Talbot Strangemore,” the spinster vowed, grimly to herself.

Nina clung to her convulsively, and sobbed through bitter tears:

“Tell him that I loved him and forgave him!”

And then she suddenly lifted her eyes and saw the great black scaffold looming in horrible menace above her head.

* * * * *

A faint cry of mortal agony came from Nina’s lips. Her head drooped a moment on her breast.

* * * * *

A low murmur of pity and sorrow rose upon the soft air of the summer morning from the lips of those who had sought the court yard of the jail to witness the execution that was the theme of every tongue and the topic of every newspaper. Although popular opinion adjudged her guilty of the murder, there was a great amount of pity and sympathy felt for her. She was so young and lovely, and she had had such terrible provocation, they said.

But pity and sorrow and sympathy and even the most faithful love had proved futile to save her from her dreadful fate. Doctor Fielding and her lawyer had done all that lay in human power to secure her pardon, but Governor Steele had steadily refused even a reprieve. He believed that she was guilty, and his stern sense of duty forbade him to temper justice with mercy.

So, on this golden summer morning when the world was at its fairest, when the roses and lillies were blooming, when the birds were singing and the tiniest little brooks were laughing with delight, they had come here to see her die.

And all said to each other that they were sorry for her--that she was too young and beautiful to have been such a sinner and to have to die for her sin. When that low moan of agony issued from her lips and her fair head dropped for a moment on her breast every heart was shaken to its center--every heart save the one that beat in the breast of a slender, blue-eyed lad who had pressed almost to the foot of the scaffold in his eagerness to see and hear all. On the half-averted face of this handsome fair-haired lad there was a glittering smile of almost demoniac triumph. His eyes laughed with delight. He appeared like a human vampire delighting in the scent of blood.

But he took care that no one should catch the expression of evil joy upon his face. He held his white handkerchief over his face, and peered above it with those wicked, laughing blue eyes at the tall scaffold and the shrinking victim whom they were now leading up the steps.

She stood there before them all, a sight to make the angels weep for pity, with that horrible rope about that beautiful white neck that they were about to break, and her face shining above it like a tender white flower crowned with gold, while Kitty May’s loud wails of despair rose up from the foot of the gallows and almost drowned the broken prayer of the aged minister.

From the street outside there suddenly arose a hubbub of noise and confusion. The clatter of a vehicle driven at break-neck pace grated on the flinty pavement, and loud, excited voices were distinctly heard. No one paid much heed to it. All thought that there were some more people clamoring to get in at the iron-barred gate for a peep at the terrible show.

The official advanced shrinkingly to place the black cap over Nina’s face and cover its marvelous beauty, so soon to be blighted, from the view of the curious crowd.

A piercing shriek broke from those death white lips at that awful moment. She tried to lift her poor pinioned hands and wave him off. He retreated a step, full of grief and repugnance at his dreadful task.

“Oh, not yet,” she cried to him, lifting to his her imploring eyes shining like black jewels through a rain of terrified tears, “Oh, not yet! Give me just one minute more of life that I may gaze upon the beautiful world I am going to leave!”

The time was up but he could not refuse that thrilling prayer. He had a daughter of his own at home--a gentle dark-eyed girl no older than this one who pleaded with him so frantically for just one minute more of life. He thought of that child, and his heart swelled within him at the exigencies of his terrible duty.

“One moment, then, my poor girl,” he said, huskily, and stood waiting while she looked with straining, tear-dimmed gaze upon the earth and sky.

In that moment while she gazed the air was rent by a shout from myriad throats outside the prison walls--a shout of triumph and exultation. The iron gates flew open, and three men rushed into the enclosure pushing aside the crowd, and making their way to the scaffold. The prison official and many others recognized the tall form and stern face of Governor Steele in the foremost figure. As he ran he waved a white paper in his upraised hand, and shouted in clarion tones:

“_For God’s sake, hold! The prisoner is pardoned!_”

At that wild shout outside, and the hubbub that arose within the prison yard, Nina’s dark eyes came back in bewilderment from the clear blue heaven where they had yearningly fixed themselves. Her glance fell on the men who were rushing toward her and then for an instant of delirious joy she believed that the longing wish of her heart had embodied itself in a ghostly shape, for she was gazing once more upon the face of her husband, Talbot Strangemore, and he looked more like a dead than a living man, so worn was he with grief and woe, and so pallid with fear and horror.

He gained the scaffold, he ran up the steps, and with a muttered malediction he tore the dreadful rope from her white neck.

“Nina, my darling, I have saved you!” he cried, encircling her frail form with his tender arms, and, dizzy with joy, she fell forward unconscious on his breast.

* * * * *

No one noticed at first in the terrible excitement of the whole affair that Kitty May had suddenly turned around and grappled with a slim, dandy looking youth who had been looking at the prisoner on the scaffold almost over the maid’s shoulder. She had suddenly whirled herself about and grasped the elegant youth by the waist, and despite the frantic efforts he made to escape, Kitty held him tightly in her strong young arms and they rolled upon the ground together, while Kitty shouted, frantically. “Help! help! Don’t let him get away. It’s Sibyl St. Alban, that she-devil dressed up in boy’s clothes! She isn’t dead, but alive, and as wicked as ever!”