This is repeated with each one separately. He gives everything away,
books, pipe, all. For six months he has been turning over in his mind
just what treasure each of his companions shall receive when the last
night comes. The responses never vary. They are now as they were ten
years ago; they will be the same twenty years from now if that hell on
earth is still in existence.
No one speaks to him or to any one else after that. He is reading and
rereading each of those letters for the last time and destroying them.
We hear him tearing them up one by one. “Swish, swish, swish.” Then it
is quiet, very quiet in the Death-Chamber. I am not sleepy; the other
fellows do not seem to be sleepy. They are reading. I sit up and write
this; to-morrow I will write the other half.
_The Next Morning_
I have often read in the newspapers the supposed meal partaken of by the
departing guest “furnished from the Warden’s table.” No newspaper
reporter seems able to resist a description of the last breakfast, and
no two papers ever publish the same one. Did the wretch gorge himself to
the extent indicated, indigestion and not electricity would carry him
off, and justice be cheated. No, he is not even stimulated to the extent
of a cup of coffee, and for a good reason; a full stomach is not a good
conductor. You will read that “the man was indifferent.” I tell you he
was glad to go. “That he made no trouble.” Why should he? “Our horror,”
how we are affected by our companion’s death, is portrayed. As a matter
of fact, we envy him. Anything, everything is better than existence in
the Death-Chamber.
During the night, if you have lain awake, and one has been known to be
so foolish, you may have felt a very slight vibration, perhaps it is
imagination; perhaps it is the dynamo. If you have slept, and do not
hear the death-watch draw down the curtains in front of all the cells
when the night outside turns gray, you will surely be awakened by the
noise of many feet. It is the priests who have entered. Their ordinary
shoes on the flagging of the corridor sound like thunder, thunder moving
away. Now it subsides to the murmuring of Latin prayers. As you lie in
your cell (the drawn curtains make it resemble a little box) wide-awake,
you know that the last confession is being made, the last sacrament is
being administered. This is another reason why no breakfast is given to
the traveller. I saw it all one morning; the curtain was not quite down
to the floor. I made myself as flat as possible. I saw the priest bless
and kiss him; hold up the cross before his eyes; bid him have faith, and
then back out of the cell. “He,” who is so soon to be “it,” followed.
Then I heard the procession march rapidly into the next room. “Bang!”
said the hungry little door as it closed.
What happens in there, and how it felt three minutes later, I cannot
tell you; but I came very near finding out. Will you believe me that
this day is a long one? _You_ fellows outside can do much to divert the
mind from disagreeable thoughts; _we_ have breakfast, and sit down to
wonder which one of us will be the next to go. Poor Benjamin, you have
the advantage of us now; you have found “Nirvana” while we are worrying;
you are reposing in your bed—of quicklime.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_CHAPTER XIX_
_Impressions—Dawn in the Death-Chamber_
I listened for the shrieking whistle of the milk train. It has come and
gone, and the echoes have died away among the hills of Ossining, those
beautiful hills, just—outside. The little family of sparrows who live in
the skylight of the dead-house—I know each one by name—awake and angrily
pipe their protest at the disturbance. Some of them fly down into the
stale, tobacco-laden air and hop on the floor looking for crumbs.
I can hear Shorty, at the other end of the corridor, in the last cell of
all, talking to himself, or to God. Others are mumbling while they doze.
Larry shrieked twice during the night. And I? I received a visit
yesterday and have lain awake thinking over the incident and of what the
future means to me.