The Gentleman Who Was Going to Die
Of course he had a name, and we both knew it, yet we invariably spoke of him not as Clarks nor as Mr. Clarks, but as “the gentleman who was going to die.” We must have been a troublesome pair of “little pitchers” to have about, with our widely open ears, in such a place and at such a time; and I remember quite well that our elders were much annoyed when they found that we knew that “the gentleman was going to die.”
I was three years older than my companion, and very, very serious; indeed, he was the only child who ever made me enjoy a game of romps. Pretty, golden-haired, laughing little fellow, no one ever resisted him. He passed through his short life a baby Prince Charming, a little, conquering hero.
His father was the Sheriff of the city, and, for the time being, the Sheriff’s family lived in that portion of the jail reserved for home life; and my mother was paying a long visit to the Sheriff’s wife. That’s how it happened that two young children were living within those sullen walls, taking their exercise in its grim corridors and playing their games within the very shadow of the scaffold.
In pleasant weather we used to play out in the jail-yard; it was small, but not so closed in as it now is by the Court-house. At that time the court stood over in the Park, or Public Square, as it was called. Outthere we played “escaping prisoner.” I, as the Sheriff, had to run down and bring back little Goldy-locks (Charley was his real name) as prisoner. He was very realistic in his struggles for freedom, as certain, big, blue marks on my arms used to testify; but whenever he saw them he would put penitent little lips to them and tell me reassuringly not to mind, “cause he would play Sheriff to-morrow and I cud ’scape,” in which case I knew he would have nearly pounded the life out of me, so I very much preferred to keep my part of Sheriff.
In other weather, and it was mostly “other” weather, we sought the corridors of the jail. The dwelling-rooms were small and crowded, and, besides, the big people were all the time “don’ting” us—“Don’t do this” and “don’t do that”—so Charley would rumple his curls with a small, impatient hand, look very cross for a moment, then come and whisper, “Let’s go to jail,” and straight we went in search of the turnkey, who was Charley’s uncle as well as slave, and he would put a key into a great lock and we would push at the big, heavy door. Then in we would tumble, and the door would be closed behind us, unless some of the prisoners’ cells were open. In that case the turnkey remained inside the corridor with us, but that was unusual.
The first thing we always did was to run to each cell and peer in to see if anyone was lying down. No one had ever made the suggestion to us, but of our own accord we had made it a point of honor never to make anoise there if we found anyone who remained on his cot after our arrival. Generally every one sprang up and came to the barred doors to greet us, always with nice words, sometimes with very gentle ones. Often they would lay wagers on the result of our games. We used to play “tag” and “blind man’s buff,” and we played “puss-in-the-corner” by counting every other cell door a corner.
That corridor had two great attractions for us. One was that the late afternoon sunlight fell through the barred window at its end. The other was that “the gentleman who was going to die” had his cell there, and Charley loved him, while I was filled with terror, dread and pity by the sight of him. There were three long, troubled years between Goldy-locks and me, and I knew dreadful things about Charley’s friend, things I dared not tell him.
With every human being in or about the jail the boy was the pet, the favorite with one single exception—“the gentleman who was going to die.” He favored me almost to the point of adoration, no one guessing why till he himself explained the mystery.
My heavy, brown braids and solemn, saucer eyes seemed to blind him utterly to the touching beauty of Goldy-locks, and when we stood before his cell door while he told wonderful stories, selected especially to suit the boy’s taste, his eyes were on my face, his fingers held a bit of my little, white apron, or he drew one of my long braids between the crossed bars of his doorand stroked and kissed it. Though at that time I loved the stories and liked him, I could never quite make up my mind to kiss him, and Charley used to be angry about it, and once he told me “I wasn’t dratefu’, not one we’est bit on earf, not to kiss dear ‘Mr. No. 3’”; that’s what we always called him before we knew he was going to die—three being the number of the cell in which he was confined.
When I first learned that Mr. Clarks was going to surely die, on a certain positively named day, I was utterly amazed to find that, instead of being frightened and sorry and sending for doctors, everybody seemed to be pleased—that is, everybody out in the streets and in the stores and markets, and being an active, “two-legged why,” I sought information and obtained it in that form known to man as “straight.” He to whom I had applied was a very young man, who knew no reason why a child should be spared such horrible knowledge, and so, with brutal frankness and ample detail, he had explained exactly why Charles Clarks was going to die.
It was the first tale of crime that had been poured into my shrinking, childish ears, and it gave me a distinct shock. I was quite feverish by evening and had to have wet cloths applied to my burning head, while during the night I cried out again and again about the “lightning and the knife,” and the next day found me white and miserable, with only one strong wish, and that was to keep away from “the gentleman who was going to die.”
It was so hard to associate the man with the bright, blue eyes, the manly voice, the gentle hands—ugh! those hands!—with that wretch who had hacked the life out of a fellow creature for a sum of money. It seems curious, but the actual taking of the man’s life had not near the power to torture and torment me that this complete ignoring of a certain sentiment had. The victim had been a fellow-countryman who was unutterably homesick, and whose joy was boundless when he met a friend from the dear, old English home. I would moan aloud when I thought of the awful surprise and horror the man must have felt when he received the first knife-thrust in his breast from the hand of a brother-Englishman in a strange land. Then the shocking details that followed the death! The crime was committed at night during a memorable storm. The body lay upon a railroad bridge; the victim’s identity must be destroyed! The murderer attempted to remove the head; he had but his big clasp-knife, and it was not strong and sharp enough to sever the bone in the neck. He would have to leave the bridge to find a stone to serve as a hammer in this frightful deed! But in that inky darkness how was he to find his way back? He could only wait for the dazzling glare of God’s great flashlight, the lightning; and so with unshaken nerves, bit by bit he worked his unhallowed will. He found the stone and crammed it into his pocket (the other held the dead man’s effects); the knife he carried between his teeth. The mighty wind so tore at him that on the bridge he hadto creep upon his hands and knees. He hacked off the head and tied it in a silk neckerchief, and no man knows more unto this day. The stream was dragged, trees chopped down, open ground carefully plowed, all in vain. The head was never found.
With devilish mirth the murderer would sometimes offer to find the head. “Leave me my hands free and send but two men, your bravest, strongest picked men to guard me, and I will send you back the head—I swear it!” he would say; and to the Sheriff’s smiling question, “And you? You say ‘send,’ not ‘bring.’ Would you not bring the head back?” he would reply, “Oh, I say now, you don’t think me quite a fool, do you?” and though he would laugh heartily enough, there would be a quickening of his breath and a hot spark away back in his eye not very pleasant nor by any means reassuring to the man who was responsible for his safe keeping.
Two days after I had picked this bitter fruit from the tree of knowledge I found myself, under the orders of my yellow-haired, little tyrant, slowly and unwillingly entering the jail corridor again. Holding me by the hand, he pulled me past the turnkey and made straight for the dreaded cell. At our entrance various greetings reached us: “Hello, babies!” “How are you, little ones?” “Come up here, youngster, where I can see you!” while the man with the cough called out, “Sissy, come here and I’ll give you half of my licorice!”
But I stood in silence, my eyes fixed upon the stone pavement, while my little companion, trembling with excitement, put his first, troubled, anxious question: “Dear Mr. No. 3, are you truly a-goin’ to die?”
The silence that came upon the occupants of the other cells at this question might have been the silence of death. Mr. No. 3 made a little sound like that the grown-ups make sometimes, and afterward say: “Oh, I had, a stitch in my side!” and then he answered, “Why—er—yes, my boy—we are all going to die—you know that!”
Charley’s delicate brows knit themselves together distressfully as he slowly murmured, “Yes, evweybody. My papa is the biggest mans in this town and he’s goin’ to die, the whole of him, only, only—” suddenly his brow cleared and he hurried on—“only he and us allis jus’ goin’ to die som’time, not a ’xac’ly day to know about. Are you goin’ to die in free weeks? Please don’t!”
Instead of answering directly, he turned to me with, “What’s the matter, little lass? Why don’t you speak; are you sick, child?”
I thought of the lightning and the knife, and truly I was sick, but I could not speak; I only slipped my hand through one of the openings in the door and clung silently to a bar. Charley turned and looked at me, and said in his important, little way: “I dess she’s got the aches in her head ag’in! But please, Mr. No. 3, what’s a-goin’ to be the matter wiv you, if you are goin’ to die?”
And then No. 3 laughed a laugh that made me cold, and said, “Well, your father and some of his friends think I am going to die of a throat trouble, but I’ll bet five dollars they are mistaken!” and then again he spoke quietly to me: “What is it, child; why are you so pale?”
He gently took my little hand in his. I gave a scream and tore it so roughly from him that it was badly cut in passing the bars. I raised my face—and I suppose some of my loathing fear and horror must have been written there, for never shall I forget that next moment! He was looking down straight into my eyes, when suddenly his own flared wide open, then as quickly narrowing to the merest, glittering slit, he gave the most awful oath I ever heard, and angrily muttered: “They have told her! She knows all, this little child! Oh, how could they do it! How could they do it! What cruel beasts men are!” And then rang through the building one great, appalling cry, like that of some wild beast in pain and rage. At that cry all was wild commotion. The turnkey struck out one peal from the alarm bell, and was tearing open the great lock of the main door. No. 3 suddenly clenched his soft, white hand and drove it with all his force against the iron bars. The blood seemed to leap from his gashed wrist and hand and fall in streams down into his sleeve. He seized the bars of his door and shook them as another man might have shaken a wooden lattice. The turnkey was at the cell; was in; therewas a scuffle of feet. The heavy, wordless breathing of desperate men, two clear, cold-sounding clicks, and No. 3, with white, drawn face, lifted his manacled hands high above his head to strike a killing blow, stopped suddenly, and pitched forward on his cot, face downward, and as the turnkey hurried us out of the corridor I heard that dreadful sound that wrings with pain all there is of womanhood in any female thing, whether she be seventy or seven years old—the sound of a strong man’s sobs.
The next morning at breakfast we learned that we were all invited to visit Charley’s grandmother in the country, and his father was going to send us in a day or two.
Little Goldy-locks raised surprised eyes and remarked, “I fought we always made hot visits to drandma’s?”
Now his adoring grandparent would undoubtedly have admitted that Charley did make his visits warm for her, but what he meant was that their visits had always been paid at the farm in hot weather. Getting no answer, he went on: “What’s the use, there ain’t anything grode yet?”
“Oh, yes,” said his mother, “there’s grass and flowers, and perhaps the peach trees will be in blossom.”
There was a little silence, then lifting his dear eyes to his father’s face, he asked, “Papa, will it be free weeks while we’s away?” No answer came; thenagain, “Papa, I love drandma very much, but—but—the gentleman might die while we’s all away, and I’d be so sorry, papa.” His little head drooped, and the tears ran fast down his cheeks. My mother was nearest to him, and she took him in her arms and stroked his curly hair while exchanging looks with his mother, and his father raised up his six-feet-two of height and simply fled in silence from the sight of that innocent, childish grief.
But I was happy—happy at the thought of getting away from the place where “the gentleman was going to die.” Charley was anxious to go to his friend at once; he said he had “free whole things to tell him, most ’ticular.”
So he dragged me off with him, and lo! there sat a strange man inside the corridor and right beside No. 3’s door. We would not go in while he was there, so we went out and down to the yard together, talking excitedly, and wondering who the strange man was.
There we heard, as we managed to hear everything, that Mr. No. 3 was going to be put into another cell. Back we went to the corridor to ask about that, and there sat the strange man. Then Charley grew quite angry, and, turning to his uncle, said, “Why don’t you give that man a cell and not have ’im settin’ roun’ in the way all the time?”
And, under cover of the shouts of laughter of the prisoners, we retired a second time, defeated. It was late in the afternoon when we made our third attemptto see “the gentleman who was going to die.” We had little hope of success, but suddenly, to Charley’s great joy, we saw in a big, square cell, the strange man, with some others, trying the bars with hammers, and we slipped past and begged the turnkey to let us into our corridor quick. He smiled and said, “All right, chicks; I guess this is your last chance at No. 3 without the watch. Even his wife won’t see him alone next time she comes.”
As we tumbled past the big door the sunlight burst out from behind a cloud. Charley gave a shout, and crying, “You can’t catch me ’fore I touch the sunshine,” bounded away toward the window. He was well ahead, but I started after him, and almost in the same instant I saw him slip and throw out his arms. He did not trip; he slid exactly as though he had been on the ice, and then fell heavily, face down on the stone floor. There were many exclamations of pity as I rushed to him, crying, “Oh, Charley, darling! are you hurt very badly?”
I stooped over to help him, but instead of rising at once, he turned slowly over and sat for a moment on the floor and said, “What made me slip?” I only repeated, “Are you hurt, dear?” and though his lips quivered piteously, he bravely answered, “No; only some places smart some, that’s all.”
And all the time that I was lifting him to his feet and noting the steady spread of that cruel mark on his face, I was conscious, coldly conscious, that at No. 3’sdoor I had seen no face, from No. 3’s cell I had heard no voice. Once again Charley lifted up his puzzled eyes to me and said, “What made me slip?” and putting his arm around my waist to steady himself, he raised his right foot, and resting it on his left knee he looked at the sole of his little slipper and it was wet.
I leaned over and passed my forefinger across it to make sure, then without thought drew my finger down my white apron and left a long red smear. The man in the cell nearest us groaned. I gasped, “Blood!” and Charley hid his face in my garments and trembled like a leaf. Holding him tight with my both arms I looked behind me, and there across the gray, stone floor, slow, sluggish and sinister, there crept a narrow, dark-red stream, silent, so stealthily silent, and yet in that instant’s pause I seemed to understand the excitement it would presently create.
A moment we stood a pair of terror-shaken children; then holding Charley in my arms I rushed madly for the corridor door. The turnkey, peacefully reading his paper, heard us coming and said, “Not through already?”
Then as he turned his head his face went white as he finished with, “What is it?”
I laid my hand upon the smear on my white apron and gasped, “Blood!”
He was unlocking the door as he said, “Where?”
I pointed a flickering forefinger at the slow stream and answered, “No. 3,” and as he rushed past us he cried, “I knew it! God! I knew it!”
Before he reached the cell door he called back to me, “Ring the bell—hard—hard!”
I pulled the big bell and then pandemonium broke loose. The narrow, silent, little stream was beginning to show its power. I hurried down the back stairs and put Charley in the hands of a housemaid, who cared for his hurts and put him in bed and sat by him, while I, making myself as small as possible, crept back through the jail corridors because I could not keep away.
All was excitement. The wildest rumors had already reached the private part of the building. No one noticed me. I crept up the stairs, and for a little while dared go no farther. While I waited there people went and came. One man, tall and bearded, with a black box or case like a big book in his hand, I recognized as a doctor.
I softly followed the path that all had taken to No. 3’s corridor. I stood still in the doorway for the very excellent reason that I had lost all power of movement. Once glance told me the little, red stream I had seen creeping from beneath the door of cell No. 3 was gone, the stones being still wet from their washing, while a second one told me more washing would be required presently. At the far end of the hall, on the floor beneath the window, was stretched the form of “the gentleman who was going to die.” His lower limbs were fully clothed, but from the upper part of his body they had cut the clothing and he was nude. At his feet knelt two men who used all their strength in trying to hold him down. At each shoulder knelt a man whograsped him by wrist and forearm, and with dripping brows bent over him with the same purpose in view. The doctor, on his knees, was leaning across him, while a step away Charley’s mother stood with her face covered with both hands, and each and every one had fearsome, bright red stains upon them. A sudden thought came piercing through my dulled brain, a thought that brought me near to my undoing. I said, “Can this be justice! Are they going to repeat here in this very jail the awful act committed on the railroad bridge that stormy night?” I am certain that a roll of thunder at that moment would have killed me outright. As it was, my eyes closed, and I had a faint feeling of wonder as to whether I was going to fall asleep. Fortunately, I heard certain words that dismissed the grotesque fear and gave me back a little strength; words of advice, of stem command, of argument, and once sobbing words of entreaty. But through them almost continuously there rose a sound of horror. I thought then, and I have never changed the thought since, that it was like the fierce growling and snapping of a mad dog. Encouraged by the words I had heard from all, I opened my eyes. At that same instant the doctor, with a gesture of despair, raised himself, and I was looking full into the awful face of Charles Clarks, murderer and would-be suicide. He had attacked the citadel of his life at his throat. With an almost ludicrously inadequate weapon he had done terrific work, and had almost carried out his purpose. He lay there now, that thingto marvel at—a fighting Englishman brought to bay. And I, a little, shivering child, stood there witness to a savage struggle, awful beyond description, and gathered up and let go of my apron with the regularity of a mechanical toy, while in a whisper I said, and said, and said, perhaps a thousand times—I do not know—“Oh, our Father! Oh, our Father! Oh, our Father!” And one man with a gashed throat and veins nearly empty battled madly for death against six strong fellow-creatures who fought with equal desperation to save him! “Oh, our Father!” What a smile when he heard the doctor say, “Chloroform could not be brought before the light had gone.” The doctor saw, and his face grew like stone, and he said, “He shall be held! The wounds must be stitched at once!”
He bent again to his attempted work, and instantly the ghastly head was jerked this way and that, and there rose again the growling and the snapping. The doctor raised his head and said coldly, “Mrs. B——, you must save us; you must hold his head!”
A cry rang through the jail, and in an instant No. 3 was still. She said, “I can’t! I can’t!”
The doctor insisted. “Your husband will be a ruined man if this prisoner dies before his time. Kneel there!”
She knelt. No. 3 said, in his strange, whistling sort of voice, “You have been good to me, but do this thing and I will curse you here and from the Hell I’m going to.”
The doctor commanded, “Put one hand here, the other there, and hold firmly with all your strength!”Then as five held him the sewing was accomplished, and I turned to fly from the hurt I thought the needle might give him, and stumbled to my mother’s bed. She was not there; all thought I was safe by little Charley, and I fell upon my knees and went right on muttering “Oh, our Father!” until I began to feel very light, and then to float, float, and the next I knew it was morning and I was very sick, but a maid told me that “the gentleman who was going to die” was not dead yet.
The attempted suicide caused the greatest confusion and excitement both inside and outside the jail. People were coming and going at all hours, and the grown-ups were more than ever anxious to get us away to the country. Mrs. B—— would not leave her husband at such a time, so my mother was to take us both the next day.
Little Goldy-locks never gave up his intention of seeing and saying good-bye to the gentleman who was trying so hard to die (in his own way). So through tears and kisses, and by bringing to bear all his graces of body and manner, the little fellow won his way, and just before leaving mother led us (dressed for our journey) to the cell, and the uncle-turnkey let us in. A nurse crossly admonished us all not to talk too much, and then we were standing by the bed. At the first sight of the ghastly face—the grimly bandaged throat and jaws and brow—the little lad gave a cry of terror. But when Mr. No. 3 said softly, “Charley!” he ran and swarmed up the bed with legs and arms, crying, “Oh, dear, dear Mr. No. 3! I fought it wasn’t you!Who hurted you? My papa will find out and he will put the man in a cell, and we won’t never go and see ’im, never!”
Then being told he must not talk so loud and that he must hurry, he said very earnestly, as he brought from his pocket a small, red wad, “Here, Mr. No. 3, here’s my wed stocking; I got it my ownse’f for you. If your froat should get sore, like you said, you dess put it on at night and you’ll come all well in the morning—dess like I did.”
A smile parted the man’s white lips as he said, “Thank you, my boy—I may try it—though I suppose—hemp would suit—my case—better than wool.”
All this time his eyes had gone past Charley and were on me. My mother noticed it, and now he hurriedly whispered “Good-bye,” and as Charley was taken down he motioned to have me lifted up into his place. Then in a whispering voice he said to my mother, “You think—it strange—eh, well!—it’s because she is—so wonderfully like—my child—my only one—my Annie. It’s marvelous—the likeness. It’s not that they both—have that same—surprising length of hair—the same wide, gray-blue eyes—the same tricks—of manner and movement—even to that habit of standing—with hands behind the back—gently pulling at the two great braids. But it’s the voice. I’ve been ready—to swear at times—that my wife—had broken her vow—and had brought—Annie to see me. And though I starve—for the sight of her—until at times I’malmost mad—I’d kill my wife—if she brought—the child here—to know my shame. And this little one—is so like her—so like and yet so different—for Annie loves me—while this child——”
I felt my face flame with hot blood, for my mother did not know I had been told of the murder, and I was frightened, but he went on gently, “Ah, well, there is no reason why this one should—love me—a stranger.”
The nurse exclaimed, “Too much talk.”
Mother moved toward the door, but Charley broke from her and once more climbed up on the bed. “I have dess one ’ticular thing to say, dess one!” he pleaded, and he stooped to whisper to the sick man, “Dear, dear Mr. No. 3—try to get well—and—and—I know you don’t like the preacher man, but I know my own night ‘prays’ my ownse’f, and when I say ‘my soul to keep’ I’ll say ‘your soul to keep,’ too, every time!”
And Clarks groaned, “For God’s sake take him away!” and Goldy-locks put his clean, sweet, little pink lips lovingly to those sin-stained, fever-parched ones and said “Good-bye, good-bye!” and slid down and ran and hid his tears in the folds of my mother’s dress.
I moved to leave the bed, but he laid a detaining hand lightly upon me. I shivered, and looking up I met his gaze and was held by it. It was pleading—commanding, almost compelling. I understood him perfectly, and I tried hard to break away from that controlling glance, but all in vain, until a dimness cameacross his eyes and slow tears gathered there. Then I wrenched my eyes from his and hung my head and whispered, “Good-bye.” As my mother called me I slid off the bed to go to her, but the hoarse whisper came, “Little torment!” and I stopped. Again, “Dear, little torment!” and foolishly I looked at him, and for the last time our struggle was renewed, and now I had to resist not only his pleading, but that of something within me that said, “Think of his little daughter who cannot tell him good-bye, and kiss him for her sake.” Almost I yielded—and then—the homesick friend, the bridge, the knife, and I threw back my head violently and exclaimed, “No! No! I can’t! but——” and I laid my little hand against his lips. He took it gently, gently, and sighing heavily he kissed it, palm and back, and every dimple, including the tiny one in my wrist, and every finger-tip, and then said under his breath, as it were, “Good-bye, little maid who knows her own mind,” and as the key was turning in the lock after we had gone from the cell we heard him give a husky laugh and say, “She’s got a will—it’s stronger than mine—for, mind you, she never kissed me!”
And that was our last sight of “the gentleman who was going to die,” because that bright day, when Charley and I were out making the acquaintance of a very remarkable calf—remarkable because its forequarters were mild and gentle, while its hindquarters stung like an adder—and we were about to play marketing, and we both had a desire to purchase the forequarters of the calf,and as we never quarreled we drew lots for choice, while the calf slowly chewed up our market basket—and at that very moment, in the city, Goldy-locks’ beloved “Mr. No. 3” was heading a procession to the scaffold with many a jest about the “blue funk” he said the men were in about him. He remarked their pale faces and trembling hands, and actually encouraged and advised them, himself directing the proper placing of the fatal knot. Then with alert, springy step, bright eye and cheerful voice he mounted the scaffold, stepped with quick obedience upon the trap, and was hurled out of this world into—what?
White and cold and silent his wife removed her coffined dead, and when we returned “the gentleman who was going to die” had died. He was gone, and his cell and corridor knew him no more.