Chapter 47

These had been hours of sunshine for the prisoner and his child, such as seldom visit the precincts of a jail; and soon, too soon, they changed, and the usual gloom returned to the abode of suffering. In misfortune various moods assail us. At first we are struck, stunned, and overwhelmed; then the elastic spirit rises; it tries to shape misery in its own way; it adapts itself to it; it finds unknown consolations arise out of circumstances which, in moments of prosperity, were unregarded. But this temper of mind is not formed for endurance. As a sick person finds comfort in a new posture at first, but after a time the posture becomes restrained and wearisome; thus, after mustering fortitude, patience, the calm spirit of philosophy, and the tender one of piety, and finding relief, suddenly the heart rebels, its old desires and old habits recur, and we are the more dissatisfied from being disappointed in those modes of support in which we trusted.

There was a perpetual struggle in Falkner’s heart. Hatred of life, pride, a yearning for liberty, and a sore, quick spirit of impatience for all the bars and forms that stood between him and it, swelled like a tide in his soul. He hated himself for having brought himself thus low; he was angry that he had exposed Elizabeth to such a scene; he reviled his enemies in his heart; he accused destiny. Then, again, if he but shut his eyes—the stormy river, the desolate sands, and the one fair being dead at his feet, presented themselves, and remorse, like a wind, drove back the flood. He felt that he had deserved it all, that he had himself woven the chain of circumstances which he called his fate, while his innocence of the crime brought against him imparted a lofty spirit of fortitude, and even of repose.

Elizabeth, with an angel’s love, watched the changes of his temper. Her sensibility was often wounded by his sufferings; but her benign disposition was so fertile of compassion and forbearance, that her own mood was never irritated by finding her attempts to console fruitless. She listened meekly when his overladen heart spent itself in invectives against the whole system of life; or, catching a favourable moment, she strove to raise his mind to nobler and purer thoughts—unobtrusive, but never weary—eagerly gathering all good tidings, banishing the ill; her smiles, her tears, her cheerfulness, or calm sadness, by turns relieved and comforted him.

Winter came upon them. It was wild and drear. Their abode, far in the north of the island, was cold beyond their experience, the dark prison-walls were whitened by snow, the bars of their windows were laden; Falkner looked out, the snow drifted against his face, one peep at the dusky sky was all that was allowed him; he thought of the wide steppes of Russia, the swift sledges, and how he longed for freedom! Elizabeth, as she walked home through the frost and sleet, gave a sigh for the soft seasons of Greece, and felt that a double winter gathered round her steps.

Day by day, time passed on. Each evening returning to her solitary fireside, she thought, “Another is gone, the time draws near;” she shuddered, despite her conviction that the trial would be the signal for the liberation of Falkner; she saw the barriers time had placed between him and fate fall off one by one with terror; January and February passed, March had come—the first of March, the very month when all was to be decided, arrived. Poor tempest-tossed voyagers! would the wished-for port be gained—should they ever exchange the uncertain element of danger for the firm land of security?