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
a noise 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 door and 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 had to 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; there was 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; then again, “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 attempt to 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’s door 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 who grasped 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 thing
to 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’m almost 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.