Belle Boyd in Camp and Prison

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER X MY F I R S T N I G H T IN P R I S O N The first night in a convent forms the subject of a melancholy, but beautiful picture. My first night in a prison must be painted in dark colors, unrelieved by the radiance that plays upon the features of the sleeping devotee, who has of her own free will cast aside the world, exulting in the belief that the voluntary sacrifice of youth, love, and all the ties of nature, will be more than recompensed by an immortality of bliss. Her dreams are of paradise: enthusiasm comes to the aid of religion, and gives her a foretaste of eternity. Her soul is gone before her dust to heaven. Prophets, angels, and saints people her silent cell; a vision of glory streams in through her narrow window; and the first night in the convent is the night of ecstasy. I said, at the conclusion of my last chapter, that I was comforted by the spontaneous proof of sympathy given by my unknown correspondent ; but my situation was too painful to admit of real, lasting consolation . The medicine administered was at best but a momentary stimulant ; the reaction soon set in; and, as my fatigue gained ground, the sense of my miserable condition prevailed against my bodily energies. I rose from my bed and walked to the window. The moon was shin- 136 B E L L E BOYD IN C A M P AND P R I S O N ing brightly. How I longed that it were in my power to spring through the iron bars that caught and scattered her beams around the room! The city was asleep, but to my disordered imagination its sleep appeared feverish and perturbed. Far away the open country, visible in the clear night, looked the express image of peace and repose. "God made the country, and man made the town," I thought, as I contrasted the close atmosphere of my city prison with the clear air of the fields beyond. What would I not have given to exchange the sound of the sentry's measured tread for the wild shriek of the owl and the drowsy flight of the bat! The room which was appropriated to me had formerly been the committee-room of the old Congress, and had been repeatedly tenanted by Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and other statesmen of their age and mark. A thousand strange fancies filled my brain, and nearly drove me mad. The phantoms of the past rose up before me, and I fancied I could hear the voices of the departed orators as they declaimed against the abuses and errors of the day, and gave their powerful aid to the cause of general liberty. They never dreamed that the very walls which reechoed the eloquence of freedom would ere long confine the victims of an oligarchy. Theirs was the bright day—ours is the dark morrow, of which the evil is more than sufficient. Those great men (for great they unquestionably were) lacked not the gift of prophecy, for they did not fail to discern the little cloud, then no bigger than a man's hand, which was gathering in the horizon—that dark speck which was so soon to generate a tempest far blacker than that from which the chariot ofAhab made haste to escape. Throughout that long dreary night I stood at the window watching, thinking, and praying. It seemed to me that morning would never come. Methought that streak of dawninggray Would never dapple into day, So heavily it rolled away Before the eastern flame. B E L L E BOYD IN C A M P AND P R I S O N 137 But the morning came at last—the herald, let me hope, from a brighter world of another morrow to us. No sooner did the first faint light find its waythrough the windows, than I threw myself again upon my bed,and almost immediately sank into a deep sleep. It was about nine o'clock, I believe, when I was aroused by a loud knocking at my door. "What is it?" I cried, springing up. "The officer calling the roll, to ascertain that no one has escaped." "You do not expect me to get through these iron bars, do you?" "No, indeed," was the chuckling rejoinder; and immediately afterwards I heard the...