[Illustration: “PICKED UP SOME OF THE SHREDS” [P. 150]
THE MISSIONARY SHERIFF
BEING
_INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OF A PLAIN MAN
WHO TRIED TO DO HIS DUTY_
BY
OCTAVE THANET
ILLUSTRATED BY
A. B. FROST AND CLIFFORD CARLETON
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1897
Copyright, 1897, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE MISSIONARY SHERIFF 1
THE CABINET ORGAN 51
HIS DUTY 97
THE HYPNOTIST 131
THE NEXT ROOM 167
THE DEFEAT OF AMOS WICKLIFF 217
ILLUSTRATIONS
“PICKED UP SOME OF THE SHREDS” _Frontispiece_
“TORE THE LETTER INTO PIECES” _Facing p._ 20
THE THANKSGIVING BOX ” 30
“SHE PAUSED BEFORE MRS. SMITH’S SECTION” ” 46
“SHE LEANED HER SHABBY ELBOWS ON THE GATE” ” 56
“‘SOMEBODY THREW THESE THINGS AT OUR WINDOW’” ” 70
“‘NOW, BOYS, LET’S COME AND PLAY ON THE ORGAN’” ” 74
“‘THEY HAVE ENGAGED _ME_’” ” 94
“HARNED HID HIS FACE” ” 116
“‘IT WON’T BE SUCH A BIG ONE IF THE DOOR HOLDS’” ” 126
“‘SHE MUST LOOK AT IT’” ” 146
“‘HE’S SCARED NOW, THE COWARD’” ” 158
“‘I’LL ACT AS HIS VALET’” ” 162
“‘_I’LL_ GIVE THE KITTY SOMETHING TO EAT’” ” 180
THE FAREWELL ” 232
THE MISSIONARY SHERIFF
THE MISSIONARY SHERIFF
Sheriff Wickliff leaned out of his office window, the better to watch the
boy soldiers march down the street. The huge pile of stone that is the
presumed home of Justice for the county stands in the same yard with the
old yellow stone jail. The court-house is ornate and imposing, although a
hundred active chimneys daub its eaves and carvings, but the jail is as
plain as a sledge-hammer. Yet during Sheriff Wickliff’s administration,
while Joe Raker kept jail and Mrs. Raker was matron, window-gardens
brightened the grim walls all summer, and chrysanthemums and roses
blazoned the black bars in winter.
Above the jail the street is a pretty street, with trim cottages and
lawns and gardens; below, the sky-lines dwindle ignobly into shabby one
and two story wooden shops devoted to the humbler handicrafts. It is
not a street favored by processions; only the little soldiers of the
Orphans’ Home Company would choose to tramp over its unkempt macadam.
Good reason they had, too, since thus they passed the sheriff’s office,
and it was the sheriff who had given most of the money for their
uniforms, and their drums and fifes outright.
A voice at the sheriff’s elbow caused him to turn.
“Well, Amos,” said his deputy, with Western familiarity, “getting the
interest on your money?”
Wickliff smiled as he unbent his great frame; he was six feet two inches
in height, with bones and thews to match his stature. A stiff black
mustache, curving about his mouth and lifting as he smiled, made his
white teeth look the whiter. One of the upper teeth was crooked. That
angle had come in an ugly fight (when he was a special officer and
detective) in the Chicago stock-yards, he having to hold a mob at bay,
single-handed, to save the life of a wounded policeman. The scar seaming
his jaw and neck belonged to the time that he captured a notorious gang
of train-robbers. He brought the robbers in—that is, he brought their
bodies; and “That scar was worth three thousand dollars to me,” he was
wont to say. In point of fact it was worth more, because he had invested
the money so advantageously that, thanks to it and the savings which
he had been able to add, in spite of his free hand he was now become a
man of property. The sheriff’s high cheek-bones, straight hair (black
as a dead coal), and narrow black eyes were the arguments for a general
belief that an Indian ancestor lurked somewhere in the foliage of his
genealogical tree. All that people really knew about him was that his
mother died when he was a baby, and his father, about the same time, was
killed in battle, leaving their only child to drift from one reluctant
protector to another, until he brought up in the Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home
of the State. If the sheriff’s eyes were Indian, Indians may have very
gentle eyes. He turned them now on the deputy with a smile.
“Well, Joe, what’s up?” said he.
“The lightning-rod feller wants to see you, as soon as you come back to
the jail, he says. And here’s something he dropped as he was going to his
room. Don’t look much like it could be _his_ mother. Must have prigged
it.”
The sheriff examined the photograph, an ordinary cabinet card. The
portrait was that of a woman, pictured with the relentless frankness
of a rural photographer’s camera. Every sad line in the plain elderly
face, every wrinkle in the ill-fitting silk gown, showed with a brutal
distinctness, and somehow made the picture more pathetic. The woman’s
hair was gray and thin; her eyes, which were dark, looked straight
forward, and seemed to meet the sheriff’s gaze. They had no especial
beauty of form, but they, as well as the mouth, had an expression of
wistful kindliness that fixed his eyes on them for a full minute. He
sighed as he dropped his hand. Then he observed that there was writing on
the reverse side of the carte, and lifted it again to read.
In a neat cramped hand was written:
“To Eddy, from Mother. _Feb. 21, 1889._
“The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make His face to
shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee; the Lord lift up
His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace.”
Wickliff put the carte in his pocket.
“That’s just the kind of mother I’d like to have,” said he; “awful nice
and good, and not so fine she should be ashamed of me. And to think of
_him_!”
“He’s an awful slick one,” assented the deputy, cordially. “Two years
we’ve been ayfter him. New games all the time; but the lightning-rods
ain’t in it with this last scheme—working hisself off as a Methodist
parson on the road to a job, and stopping all night, and then the runaway
couple happening in, and that poor farmer and his wife so excited and
interested, and of course they’d witness and sign the certificate; wisht
I’d seen them when they found out!”
“They gave ’em cake and some currant wine, too.”
“That’s just like women. Say, I didn’t think the girl was much to brag on
for looks—”
“Got a kinder way with her, though,” Wickliff struck in. “Depend on it,
Joseph, the most dangerous of them all are the homely girls with a way
to them. A man’s off his guard with them; he’s sorry for them not being
pretty, and being so nice and humble; and before he knows it they’re
winding him ’round their finger.”
“I didn’t know you was so much of a philosopher, Amos,” said the deputy,
admiring him.
“It ain’t me, Joe; it’s the business. Being a philosopher, I take it,
ain’t much more than seeing things with the paint off; and there’s
nothing like being a detective to get the paint off. It’s a great
business for keeping a man straight, too, seeing the consequences of
wickedness so constantly, especially fool wickedness that gets found
out. Well, Joe, if this lady”—touching his breast pocket—“is that guy’s
mother, I’m awful sorry for her, for I know she tried to train him right.
I’ll go over and find out, I guess.”
So saying, and quite unconscious of the approving looks of his
subordinate (for he was a simple-minded, modest man, who only spoke out
of the fulness of his heart), the sheriff walked over to the jail.
The corridor into which the cells of the unconvicted prisoners opened was
rather full to-day. As the sheriff entered, every one greeted him, even
the sullen-browed man talking with a sobbing woman through the bars, and
every one smiled. He nodded to all, but only spoke to the visitor. He
said, “I guess he didn’t do it this time, Lizzie; he won’t be in long.”
“That’s what I bin tellin’ her,” growled the man, “and she won’t believe
me; I told her I promised you—”
“And God A’mighty bless you, sheriff, for what you done!” the woman
wailed. The sheriff had some ado to escape from her benedictions
politely; but he got away, and knocked at the door of the last cell on
the tier. The inmate opened the door himself.
He was a small man, who still was wearing the clerical habit of his
last criminal masquerade; and his face carried out the suggestion of
his costume, being an actor’s face, not only in the clean-shaven cheeks
and lips, but in the flexibility of the features and the unconscious
alertness of gaze. He was fair of skin, and his light-brown hair was
worn off his head at the temples. His eyes were fine, well shaped, of a
beautiful violet color, and an extremely pleasant expression. He looked
like a mere boy across the room in the shadow, but as he advanced,
certain deep lines about his mouth displayed themselves and raised his
age. The sunlight showed that he was thin; he was haggard the instant he
ceased to smile. With a very good manner he greeted the sheriff, to whom
he proffered the sole chair of the apartment.
“Guess the bed will hold me,” said the sheriff, testing his words by
sitting down on the white-covered iron bedstead. “Well, I hear you wanted
to see me.”
“Yes, sir. I want to get my money that you took away from me.”
“Well, I guess you can’t have it.” The sheriff spoke with a smile, but
his black eyes narrowed a little. “I guess the court will have to decide
first if that ain’t old man Goodrich’s money that you got from the note
he supposed was a marriage certificate. I guess you better not put any
hopes on that money, Mr. Paisley. Wasn’t that the name you gave me?”
“Paisley’ll do,” said the other man, indifferently. “What became of my
friend?”
“The sheriff of Hardin County wanted the man, and the lady—well, the lady
is here boarding with me.”
“Going to squeal?”
“Going to tell all she knows.”
Paisley’s hand went up to his mouth; he changed color. “It’s like her,”
he muttered—“oh, it’s just like her!” And he added a villanous epithet.
“None of that talk,” said Wickliff.
The man had jumped up and was pacing his narrow space, fighting against a
climbing rage. “You see,” he cried, unable to contain himself—“you see,
what makes me so mad is now I’ve got to get my mother to help me—and I’d
rather take a licking!”
“I should think you would,” said Wickliff, dryly. “Say, this your
mother?” He handed him the photograph, the written side upward.
“It came in a Bible,” explained Paisley, with an embarrassed air.
“Your mother rich?”
“She can raise the money.”
“Meaning, I expect, that she can mortgage her house and lot. Look here,
Smith, this ain’t the first time your ma has sent you money, but if I was
you I’d have the last time _stay_ the last. She don’t look equal to much
more hard work.”
“My name’s Paisley, if you please,” returned the prisoner, stolidly, “and
I can take care of my own mother. If she’s lent me money I have paid it
back. This is only for bail, to deposit—”
“There is the chance,” interrupted Wickliff, “of your skipping. Now, I
tell you, I like the looks of your mother, and I don’t mean she shall run
any risks. So, if you do get money from her, I shall personally look out
you don’t forfeit your bail. Besides, court is in session now, so the
chances are you wouldn’t more than get the money before it would be your
turn. See?”
“Anyhow I’ve got to have a lawyer.”
“Can’t see why, young feller. I’ll give you a straight tip. There ain’t
enough law in Iowa to get you out of this scrape. We’ve got the cinch on
you, and there ain’t any possible squirming out.”
“So you say;” the sneer was a little forced; “I’ve heard of your game
before. Nice, kind officers, ready to advise a man and pump him dry,
and witness against him afterwards. I ain’t that kind of a sucker, Mr.
Sheriff.”
“Nor I ain’t that kind of an officer, Mr. Smith. You’d ought to know
about my reputation by this time.”
“They say you’re square,” the prisoner admitted; “but you ain’t so stuck
on me as to care a damn whether I go over the road; expect you’d want
to send me for the trouble I’ve given you,” and he grinned. “Well, what
_are_ you after?”
“Helping your mother, young feller. I had a mother myself.”
“It ain’t uncommon.”
“Maybe a mother like mine—and yours—is, though.”
The prisoner’s eyes travelled down to the face on the carte. “That’s
right,” he said, with another ring in his voice. “I wouldn’t mind half so
much if I could keep my going to the pen from her. She’s never found out
about me.”
“How much family you got?” said Wickliff, thoughtfully.
“Just a mother. I ain’t married. There was a girl, my sister—good sort
too, ’nuff better’n me. She used to be a clerk in the store, type-writer,
bookkeeper, general utility, you know. My position in the first place;
and when I—well, resigned, they gave it to her. She helped mother buy the
place. Two years ago she died. You may believe me or not, but I would
have gone back home then and run straight if it hadn’t been for Mame.
I would, by ⸺! I had five hundred dollars then, and I was going back to
give every damned cent of it to ma, tell her to put it into the bakery—”
“That how she makes a living?”
“Yes—little two-by-four bakery—oh, I’m giving you straight goods—makes
pies and cakes and bread—good, too, you bet—makes it herself. Ruth
Graves, who lives round the corner, comes in and helps—keeps the books,
and tends shop busy times; tends the oven too, I guess. She was a great
friend of Ellie’s—and mine. She’s a real good girl. Well, I didn’t get
mother’s letters till it was too late, and I felt bad; I had a mind to go
right down to Fairport and go in with ma. That—_she_ stopped it. Got me
off on a tear somehow, and by the time I was sober again the money was
’most all gone. I sent what was left off to ma, and I went on the road
again myself. But she’s the devil.”
“That the time you hit her?”
The prisoner nodded. “Oughtn’t to, of course. Wasn’t brought up that way.
My father was a Methodist preacher, and a good one. But I tell you the
coons that say you never must hit a woman don’t know anything about that
sort of women; there ain’t nothing on earth so infernally exasperating
as a woman. They can mad you worse than forty men.”
It was the sheriff’s turn to nod, which he did gravely, with even a
glimmer of sympathy in his mien.
“Well, she never forgave you,” said he; “she’s had it in for you since.”
“And she knows I won’t squeal, ’cause I’d have to give poor Ben away,”
said the prisoner; “but I tell you, sheriff, she was at the bottom of the
deviltry every time, and she managed to bag the best part of the swag,
too.”
“I dare say. Well, to come back to business, the question with you is how
to keep these here misfortunes of yours from your mother, ain’t it?”
“Of course.”
“Well, the best plan for you is to plead guilty, showing you don’t mean
to give the court any more trouble. Tell the judge you are sick of your
life, and going to quit. You are, ain’t you?” the sheriff concluded,
simply; and the swindler, after an instant’s hesitation, answered:
“Damned if I won’t, if I can get a job!”
“Well, that admitted”—the sheriff smoothed his big knees gently as
he talked, his mild attentive eyes fixed on the prisoner’s nervous
presence—“that admitted, best plan is for you to plead guilty, and maybe
we can fix it so’s you will be sentenced to jail instead of the pen.
Then we can keep it from your mother easy. Write her you’ve got a job
here in this town, and have your letters sent to my care. I’ll get you
something to do. She’ll never suspect that you are the notorious Ned
Paisley. And it ain’t likely you go home often enough to make not going
awkward.”
“I haven’t been home in four years. But see here: how long am I likely to
get?”
The sheriff looked at him, at the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes and
narrow chest—all so cruelly declared in the sunshine; and unconsciously
he modulated his voice when he spoke.
“I wouldn’t worry about that, if I was you. You need a rest. You are
run down pretty low. You ain’t rugged enough for the life you’ve been
leading.”
The prisoner’s eyes strayed past the grating to the green hills and the
pleasant gardens, where some children were playing. The sheriff did not
move. There was as little sensibility in his impassive mask as in a
wooden Indian’s; but behind the trained apathy was a real compassion. He
was thinking. “The boy don’t look like he had a year’s life in him. I bet
he knows it himself. And when he stares that way out of the window he’s
thinking he ain’t never going to be foot-loose in the sun again. Kinder
tough, I call it.”
The young man’s eyes suddenly met his. “Well, it’s no great matter, I
guess,” said he. “I’ll do it. But I can’t for the life of me make out why
you are taking so much trouble.”
He was surprised at Wickliff’s reply. It was, “Come on down stairs with
me, and I’ll show you.”
“You mean it?”
“Yes; go ahead.”
“You want my parole not to cut and run?”
“Just as you like about that. Better not try any fooling.”
The prisoner uttered a short laugh, glancing from his own puny limbs to
the magnificent muscles of the officer.
“Straight ahead, after you’re out of the corridor, down-stairs, and turn
to the right,” said Wickliff.
Silently the prisoner followed his directions, and when they had
descended the stairs and turned to the right, the sheriff’s hand pushed
beneath his elbow and opened the door before them. “My rooms,” said
Wickliff. “Being a single man, it’s handier for me living in the jail.”
The rooms were furnished with the unchastened gorgeousness of a Pullman
sleeper, the brilliant hues of a Brussels carpet on the floor, blue
plush at the windows and on the chairs. The walls were hung with the
most expensive gilt paper that the town could furnish (after all, it
was a modest price per roll), and against the gold, photographs of the
district judges assumed a sinister dignity. There was also a photograph
of the court-house, and one of the jail, and a model in bas-relief of
the Capitol at Des Moines; but more prominent than any of these were two
portraits opposite the windows. They were oil-paintings, elaborately
framed, and they had cost so much that the sheriff rested happily content
that they must be well painted. Certainly the artist had not recorded
impressions; rather he seemed to have worked with a microscope, not
slighting an eyelash. One of the portraits was that of a stiff and stern
young man in a soldier’s uniform. He was dark, and had eyes and features
like the sheriff. The other was the portrait of a young girl. In the
original daguerreotype from which the artist worked the face was comely,
if not pretty, and the innocence in the eyes and the timid smile made it
winning. The artist had enlarged the eyes and made the mouth smaller,
and bestowed (with the most amiable intentions) a complexion of hectic
brilliancy; but there still remained, in spite of paint, a flicker of
the old touching expression. Between the two canvases hung a framed
letter. It was labelled in bold Roman script, “Letter of Capt. R. T.
Manley,” and a glance showed the reader that it was the description of a
battle to a friend. One sentence was underlined. “We also lost Private A.
T. Wickliff, killed in the charge—a good man who could always be depended
on to do his duty.”
The sheriff guided his bewildered visitor opposite these portraits and
lifted his hand above the other’s shoulder. “You see them?” said he.
“They’re _my_ father and mother. You see that letter? It was wrote by
my father’s old captain and sent to me. What he says about my father is
everything that I know. But it’s enough. He was ‘a good man who could
always be depended on to do his duty.’ You can’t say no more of the
President of the United States. I’ve had a pretty tough time of it in my
own life, as a man’s got to have who takes up my line; but I’ve tried
to live so my father needn’t be ashamed of me. That other picture is my
mother. I don’t know nothing about her, nothing at all; and I don’t need
to—except those eyes of hers. There’s a look someway about your mother’s
eyes like mine. Maybe it’s only the look one good woman has like another;
but whatever it is, your mother made me think of mine. She’s the kind of
mother I’d like to have; and if I can help it, she sha’n’t know her son’s
in the penitentiary. Now come on back.”
As silently as he had gone, the prisoner followed the sheriff back to his
cell. “Good-bye, Paisley,” said the sheriff, at the door.
“Good-bye, sir; I’m much obliged,” said the prisoner. Not another word
was said.
That evening, however, good Mrs. Raker told the sheriff that, to her
mind, if ever a man was struck with death, that new young fellow was; and
he had been crying, too; his eyes were all red.
“He needs to cry,” was all the comfort that the kind soul received from
the sheriff, the cold remark being accompanied by what his familiars
called his Indian scowl.
Nevertheless, he did his utmost for the prisoner as a quiet intercessor,
and his merciful prophecy was accomplished—Edgar S. Paisley was permitted
to serve out his sentence in the jail instead of the State prison. His
state of health had something to do with the judge’s clemency, and the
sheriff could not but suspect that, in his own phrase, “Paisley played
his cough and his hollow cheeks for all they were worth.”
“But that’s natural,” he observed to Raker, “and he’s doing it partially
for the old lady. Well, I’ll try to give her a quiet spell.”
“Yes,” Raker responds, dubiously, “but he’ll be at his old games the
minute he gits out.”
“You don’t suppose”—the sheriff speaks with a certain embarrassment—“you
don’t suppose there’d be any chance of really reforming him, so as he’d
stick?—he ain’t likely to live long.”
“Nah,” says the unbelieving deputy; “he’s a deal too slick to be
reformed.”
The sheriff’s pucker of his black brows and his slow nod might have meant
anything. Really he was saying to himself (Amos was a dogged fellow):
“Don’t care; I’m going to try. I am sure ma would want me to. I ain’t a
very hefty missionary, but if there is such a thing as clubbing a man
half-way decent, and I think there is, I’ll get him that way. Poor old
lady, she looked so unhappy!”
During the trial, Paisley was too excited and dejected to write to his
mother. But the day after he received his sentence the sheriff found him
finishing a large sheet of foolscap.
It contained a detailed and vivid description of the reasons why he had
left a mythical grocery firm, and described with considerable humor the
mythical boarding-house where he was waiting for something to turn up.
It was very well done, and he expected a smile from the sheriff. The red
mottled his pale cheeks when Wickliff, with his blackest frown, tore the
letter into pieces, which he stuffed into his pocket.
[Illustration: “TORE THE LETTER INTO PIECES”]
“You take a damned ungentlemanly advantage of your position,” fumed
Paisley.
“I shall take more advantage of it if you give me any sass,” returned
Wickliff, calmly. “Now set down and listen.” Paisley, after one helpless
glare, did sit down. “I believe you fairly revel in lying. I don’t.
That’s where we differ. I think lies are always liable to come home to
roost, and I like to have the flock as small as possible. Now you write
that you are here, and you’re helping _me_. You ain’t getting much
wages, but they will be enough to keep you—these hard times any job is
better than none. And you can add that you don’t want any money from
her. Your other letter sorter squints like you did. You can say you are
boarding with a very nice lady—that’s Mrs. Raker—everything very clean,
and the table plain but abundant. Address you in care of Sheriff Amos T.
Wickliff. How’s that?”
Paisley’s anger had ebbed away. Either from policy or some other motive
he was laughing now. “It’s not nearly so interesting in a literary point
of view, you know,” said he, “but I guess it will be easier not to have
so many things to remember. And you’re right; I didn’t mean to hint for
money, but it did look like it.”
“He did mean to hint,” thought the sheriff, “but he’s got some sense.”
The letter finally submitted was a masterpiece in its way. This time the
sheriff smiled, though grimly. He also gave Paisley a cigar.
Regularly the letters to Mrs. Smith were submitted to Wickliff. Raker
never thought of reading them. The replies came with a pathetic
promptness. “That’s from your ma,” said Wickliff, when the first letter
came—Paisley was at the jail ledgers in the sheriff’s room, as it
happened, directly beneath the portraits—“you better read it first.”
Paisley read it twice; then he turned and handed it to the sheriff, with
a half apology. “My mother talks a good deal better than she writes.
Women are naturally interested in petty things, you know. Besides, I used
to be fond of the old dog; that’s why she writes so much about him.”
“I have a dog myself,” growled the sheriff. “Your mother writes a
beautiful letter.” His eyes were already travelling down the cheap thin
note-paper, folded at the top. “I know,” Mrs. Smith wrote, in her stiff,
careful hand—“I know you will feel bad, Eddy, to hear that dear old
Rowdy is gone. Your letter came the night before he died. Ruth was over,
and I read it out loud to her; and when I came to that part where you
sent your love to him, it seemed like he understood, he wagged his tail
so knowing. You know how fond of you he always was. All that evening he
played round—more than usual—and I’m so glad we both petted him, for in
the morning we found him stiff and cold on the landing of the stairs, in
his favorite place. I don’t think he could have suffered any, he looked
so peaceful. Ruth and I made a grave for him in the garden, under the
white rose tree. Ruth digged the grave, and she painted a Kennedy’s
cracker-box, and we wrapped him up in white cotton cloth. I cried, and
Ruth cried too, when we laid him away. Somehow it made me long so much
more to see you. If I sent you the money, don’t you think you could come
home for Christmas? Wouldn’t your employer let you if he knew your mother
had not seen you for four years, and you are all the child she has got?
But I don’t want you to neglect your business.”
The few words of affection that followed were not written so firmly as
the rest. The sheriff would not read them; he handed the letter back to
Paisley, and turned his Indian scowl on the back of the latter’s shapely
head.
Paisley was staring at the columns of the page before him. “Rowdy was
my dog when I was courting Ruth,” he said. “I was engaged to her once.
I suppose mother thinks of that. Poor Rowdy! the night I ran away he
followed me, and I had to whip him back.”
“Oh, you ran away?”
“Oh yes; the old story. Trusted clerk. Meant to return the money. It
wasn’t very much. But it about cleaned mother out. Then she started the
bakery.”
“You pay your ma back?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That’s a lie.”
“What do you ask a man such questions for, then? Do you think it’s
pleasant admitting what a dirty dog you’ve been? Oh, damn you!”
“You do see it, then,” said the sheriff, in a very pleasant, gentle tone;
“that’s one good thing. For you have _got_ to reform, Ned; I’m going to
give your mother a decent boy. Well, what happened then? Girl throw you
over?”
“Why, I ran straight for a while,” said Paisley, furtively wiping first
one eye and then the other with a finger; “there wasn’t any scandal.
Ruth stuck by me, and a married sister of hers (who didn’t know) got
her husband to give me a place. I was doing all right, and—and sending
home money to ma, and I would have been all right now, if—if—I hadn’t
met Mame, and she made a crazy fool of me. Then Ruth shook me. Oh, I
ain’t blaming her! It was hearing about Mame. But after that I just went
a-flying to the devil. Now you know why I wanted to see Mame.”
“You wanted to kill her,” said the sheriff, “or you think you did. But
you couldn’t; she’d have talked you over. Still, I thought I wouldn’t
risk it. You know she’s gone now?”
“I supposed she’d be, now the trial’s over.” In a minute he added: “I’m
glad I didn’t touch her; mother would have had to know that. Look here;
how am I going to get over that invitation?”
“I’ll trust you for that lie,” said Wickliff, sauntering off.
Paisley wrote that he would not take his mother’s money. When he could
come home on his own money he would gladly. He wrote a long affectionate
letter, which the sheriff read, and handed back with the dry comment,
“That will do, I guess.”
But he gave Paisley a brier-wood pipe and a pound of Yale Mixture that
afternoon.
The correspondence threw some side-lights on Paisley’s past.
“You’ve got to write your ma every week,” announced Wickliff, when the
day came round.
“Why, I haven’t written once a month.”
“Probably not, but you have got to write once a week now. Your mother’ll
get used to it. I should think you’d be glad to do the only thing you can
for the mother that’s worked her fingers off for you.”
“I _am_ glad,” said Paisley, sullenly.
He never made any further demur. He wrote very good letters; and more
and more, as the time passed, he grew interested in the correspondence.
Meanwhile he began to acquire (quite unsuspected by the sheriff) a queer
respect for that personage. The sheriff was popular among the prisoners;
perhaps the general sentiment was voiced by one of them, who exclaimed,
one day, after his visit, “Well, I never did see a man as had killed so
many men put on so little airs!”
Paisley began his acquaintance with a contempt for the slow-moving
intellect that he attributed to his sluggish-looking captor. He felt
the superiority of his own better education. It was grateful to his
vanity to sneer in secret at Wickliff’s slips in grammar or information.
And presently he had opportunity to indulge his humor in this respect,
for Wickliff began lending him books. The jail library, as a rule,
was managed by Mrs. Raker. She was, she used to say, “a great reader,”
and dearly loved “a nice story that made you cry all the way through
and ended right.” Her taste was catholic in fiction (she never read
anything else), and her favorites were Mrs. Southworth, Charles Dickens,
and Walter Scott. The sheriff’s own reading seldom strayed beyond the
daily papers, but with the aid of a legal friend he had selected some
standard biographies and histories to add to the singular conglomeration
of fiction and religion sent to the jail by a charitable public. On
Paisley’s request for reading, the sheriff went to Mrs. Raker. She
promptly pulled _Ishmael Worth, or Out of the Depths_, from the shelf.
“It’s beautiful,” says she, “and when he gits through with that he can
have the _Pickwick Papers_ to cheer him up. Only I kinder hate to lend
that book to the prisoners; there’s so much about good eatin’ in it, it
makes ’em dissatisfied with the table.”
“He’s got to have something improving, too,” says the sheriff. “I guess
the history of the United States will do; you’ve read the others, and
know they’re all right. I’ll run through this.”
He told Paisley the next morning that he had sat up almost all night
reading, he was so afraid that enough of the thirteen States wouldn’t
ratify the Constitution. This was only one of the artless comments that
tickled Paisley. Yet he soon began to notice the sheriff’s keenness of
observation, and a kind of work-a-day sense that served him well. He fell
to wondering, during those long nights when his cough kept him awake,
whether his own brilliant and subtle ingenuity had done as much for him.
He could hardly tell the moment of its beginning, but he began to value
the approval of this big, ignorant, clumsy, strong man.
Insensibly he grew to thinking of conduct more in the sheriff’s fashion;
and his letters not only reflected the change in his moral point of
view, they began to have more and more to say of the sheriff. Very soon
the mother began to be pathetically thankful to this good friend of her
boy, whose habits were so correct, whose influence so admirable. In her
grateful happiness over the frequent letters and their affection were
revealed the unexpressed fears that had tortured her for years. She asked
for Wickliff’s picture. Paisley did not know that the sheriff had a
photograph taken on purpose. Mrs. Smith pronounced him “a handsome man.”
To be sure, the unscarred side of his face was taken. “He looks firm,
too,” wrote the poor mother, whose own boy had never known how to be
firm; “I think he must be a Daniel.”
“A which?” exclaimed the puzzled Daniel.
“Didn’t you ever go to Sunday-school? Don’t you know the verses,
“‘Dare to be a Daniel;
Dare to make a stand’?”
The sheriff’s reply was enigmatical. It was: “Well, to think of you
having such a mother as that!”
“I don’t deserve her, that’s a fact,” said Paisley, with his flippant
air. “And yet, would you believe it, I used to be the model boy of the
Sunday-school. Won all the prizes. Ma’s got them in a drawer.”
“Dare say. They thought you were a awful good boy, because you always
kept your face clean and brushed your hair without being told to, and
learned your lessons quick, and always said ‘Yes, ’m,’ and ‘No, ’m,’ and
when you got into a scrape lied out of it, and picked up bad habits as
easy and quiet as a long-haired dog catches fleas. Oh, I know your sort
of model boy! We had ’em at the Orphans’ Home; I’ve taken their lickings,
too.”
Paisley’s thin face was scarlet before the speech was finished. “Some of
that is true,” said he; “but at least I never hit a fellow when he was
down.”
The sheriff narrowed his eyes in a way that he had when thinking; he put
both hands in his pockets and contemplated Paisley’s irritation. “Well,
young feller, you have some reason to talk that way to me,” said he. “The
fact is, I was mad at you, thinking about your mother. I—I respect that
lady very highly.”
Paisley forced a feeble smile over his “So do I.”
But after this episode the sheriff’s manner visibly softened to the young
man. He told Raker that there were good spots in Paisley.
“Yes, he’s mighty slick,” said Raker.
Thanksgiving-time, a box from his mother came to the prisoner, and among
the pies and cakes was an especial pie for Mr. Wickliff, “From his
affectionate old friend, Rebecca Smith.”
[Illustration: THE THANKSGIVING BOX]
The sheriff spent fully two hours communing with a large new _Manual of
Etiquette and Correspondence_; then he submitted a letter to Paisley.
Paisley read:
“DEAR MADAM,—Your favor (of the pie) of the 24th inst. is
received and I beg you to accept my sincere and warm thanks.
Ned is an efficient clerk and his habits are very correct. We
are reading history, in our leisure hours. We have read Fisk’s
Constitutional History of the United States and two volumes of
Macaulay’s History of England. Both very interesting books.
I think that Judge Jeffreys was the meanest and worst judge
I ever heard of. My early education was not as extensive as
I could wish, and I am very glad of the valuable assistance
which I receive from your son. He is doing well and sends his
love. Hoping, my dear Madam, to be able to see you and thank
you personally for your very kind and welcome gift, I am, with
respect,
“Very Truly Yours,
“AMOS T. WICKLIFF.”
Paisley read the letter soberly. In fact, another feeling destroyed any
inclination to smile over the unusual pomp of Wickliff’s style. “That’s
out of sight!” he declared. “It will please the old lady to the ground.
Say, I take it very kindly of you, Mr. Wickliff, to write about me that
way.”
“I had a book to help me,” confessed the flattered sheriff. “And—say,
Paisley, when you are writing about me to your ma, you better say
Wickliff, or Amos. Mr. Wickliff sounds kinder stiff. I’ll understand.”
The letter that the sheriff received in return he did not show to
Paisley. He read it with a knitted brow, and more than once he brushed
his hand across his eyes. When he finished it he drew a long sigh, and
walked up to his mother’s portrait. “She says she prays for me every
night, ma”—he spoke under his breath, and reverently. “Ma, I simply have
_got_ to save that boy for her, haven’t I?”
That evening Paisley rather timidly approached a subject which he had
tried twice before to broach, but his courage had failed him. “You said
something, Mr. Wickliff, of paying me a little extra for what I do,
keeping the books, etc. Would you mind telling me what it will be? I—I’d
like to send a Christmas present to my mother.”
“That’s right,” said the sheriff, heartily. “I was thinking what would
suit her. How’s a nice black dress, and a bill pinned to it to pay for
making it up?”
“But I never—”
“You can pay me when you get out.”
“Do you think I’ll ever get out?” Paisley’s fine eyes were fixed on
Wickliff as he spoke, with a sudden wistful eagerness. He had never
alluded to his health before, yet it had steadily failed. Now he would
not let Amos answer; he may have flinched from any confirmation of his
own fears; he took the word hastily. “Anyhow, you’ll risk my turning out
a bad investment. But you’ll do a damned kind action to my mother; and
if I’m a rip, she’s a saint.”
“_Sure_,” said the sheriff. “Say, do you think she’d mind my sending her
a hymn-book and a few flowers?”
Thus it came to pass that the tiny bakery window, one Christmas-day,
showed such a crimson glory of roses as the village had never seen; and
the widow Smith, bowing her shabby black bonnet on the pew rail, gave
thanks and tears for a happy Christmas, and prayed for her son’s friend.
She prayed for her son also, that he might “be kept good.” She felt that
her prayer would be answered. God knows, perhaps it was.
That night before she went to bed she wrote to Edgar and to Amos. “I am
writing to both my boys,” she said to Amos, “for I feel like _you_ were
my dear son too.”
When Amos answered this letter he did not consult the Manual. It was
one day in January, early in the month, that he received the first bit
of encouragement for his missionary work palpable enough to display
to the scoffer Raker. Yet it was not a great thing either; only this:
Paisley (already half an hour at work in the sheriff’s room) stopped,
fished from his sleeve a piece of note-paper folded into the measure of a
knife-blade, and offered it to the sheriff.
“See what Mame sent me,” said he; “just read it.”
There was a page of it, the purport being that the writer had done what
she had through jealousy, which she knew now was unfounded; she was
suffering indescribable agonies from remorse; and, to prove she meant
what she said, if her darling Ned would forgive her she would get him out
before a week was over. If he agreed he was to be at his window at six
o’clock Wednesday night. The day was Thursday.
“How did you get this?” asked Amos. “Do you mind telling?”
“Not the least. It came in a coat. From Barber & Glasson’s. The one Mrs.
Raker picked out for me, and it was sent up from the store. She got at it
somehow, I suppose.”
“But how did you get word where to look?”
Paisley grinned. “Mame was here, visiting that fellow who was taken up
for smashing a window, and pretended he was so hungry he had to have a
meal in jail. Mame put him up to it, so she could come. She gave me the
tip where to look then.”
“I see. I got on to some of those signals once. Well, did you show
yourself Wednesday?”
“Not much!” He hesitated, and did not look at the sheriff, scrawling
initials on the blotting-pad with his pen. “Did you really think, Mr.
Wickliff, after all you’ve done for me—and my mother—I would go back on
you and get you into trouble for that—”
“’S-sh! Don’t call names!” Wickliff looked apprehensively at the picture
of his mother. “Why didn’t you give me this before?”
“Because you weren’t here till this morning. I wasn’t going to give it to
Raker.”
“What do you suppose she’s after?”
“Oh, she’s got some big scheme on foot, and she needs me to work it. I’m
sick of her. I’m sick of the whole thing. I want to run straight. I want
to be the man my poor mother thinks I am.”
“And I want to help you, Ned,” cried the sheriff. For the first time he
caught the other’s hand and wrung it.
“I guess the Lord wants to help me too,” said Paisley, in a queer dry
tone.
“Why—yes—of course he wants to help all of us,” said the sheriff,
embarrassed. Then he frowned, and his voice roughened as he asked, “What
do you mean by that?”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” said Paisley, smiling; “you’ve always known
it. It’s been getting worse lately. I guess I caught cold. Some mornings
I have to stop two or three times when I dress myself, I have such fits
of coughing.”
“Why didn’t you tell, and go to the hospital?”
“I wanted to come down here. It’s so pleasant down here.”
“Good—” The sheriff reined his tongue in time, and only said, “Look here,
you’ve got to see a doctor!”
Therefore the encouragement to the missionary work was embittered by
divers conflicting feelings. Even Raker was disturbed when the doctor
announced that Paisley had pneumonia.
“Double pneumonia and a slim chance, of course,” gloomed Raker. “Always
so. Can’t have a man git useful and be a little decent, but he’s got to
die! Why couldn’t it ’a’ been that tramp tried to set the jail afire?”
“What I’m a-thinking of is his poor ma, who used to write him such
beautiful letters,” said Mrs. Raker, wiping her kind eyes. “They was so
attached. Never a week he didn’t write her.”
“It’s his mother I’m thinking of, too,” said the sheriff, with a groan;
“she’ll be wanting to come and see him, and how in—” He swallowed an
agitated oath, and paced the floor, his hands clasped behind him, his lip
under his teeth, and his blackest Indian scowl on his brow—plain signs
to all who knew him that he was fighting his way through some mental
thicket.
But he had never looked gentler than he looked an hour later, as he
stepped softly into Paisley’s cell. Mrs. Raker was holding a foaming
glass to the sick man’s lips. “There; take another sup of the good nog,”
she said, coaxingly, as one talks to a child.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Paisley. “Queer how I’ve thought so often
how I’d like the taste of whiskey again on my tongue, and now I can have
all I want, I don’t care a hooter!”
His voice was rasped in the chords, and he caught his breath between his
sentences. Forty-eight hours had made an ugly alteration in his face; the
eyes were glassy, the features had shrunken in an indescribable, ghastly
way, and the fair skin was of a yellowish pallor, with livid circles
about the eyes and the open mouth.
Wickliff greeted him, assuming his ordinary manner. They shook hands.
“There’s one thing, Mr. Wickliff,” said Paisley: “you’ll keep this from
my mother. She’d worry like blazes, and want to come here.”
There was a photograph on the table, propped up by books; the sheriff’s
hand was on it, and he moved it, unconsciously: “‘To Eddy, from Mother.
The Lord bless and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee,
and be gracious unto thee—’” Wickliff cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t
know, Ned,” he said, cheerfully; “maybe that would be a good thing—kind
of brace you up and make you get well quicker.”
Mrs. Raker noticed nothing in his voice; but Paisley rolled his eyes
on the impassive face in a strange, quivering, searching look; then he
closed them and feebly turned his head.
“Don’t you want me to telegraph? Don’t you want to see her?”
Some throb of excitement gave Paisley the strength to lift himself up
on the pillows. “What do you want to rile me all up for?” His voice
was almost a scream. “Want to see her? It’s the only thing in this
damned fool world I do want! But I can’t have her know; it would kill
her to know. You must make up some lie about it’s being diphtheria and
awful sudden, and no time for her to come, and have me all out of the
way before she gets here. You’ve been awful good to me, and you can do
anything you like; it’s the last I’ll bother you—don’t let her find out!”
“For the land’s sake!” sniffed Mrs. Raker, in tears—“don’t she know?”
“No, ma’am, she don’t; and she never will, either,” said the sheriff.
“There, Ned, boy, you lay right down. I’ll fix it. And you shall see her,
too. I’ll fix it.”
“Yes, he’ll fix it. Amos will fix it. Don’t you worry,” sobbed Mrs.
Raker, who had not the least idea how the sheriff could arrange matters,
but was just as confident that he would as if the future were unrolled
before her gaze.
The prisoner breathed a long deep sigh of relief, and patted the strong
hand at his shoulder. And Amos gently laid him back on the pillows.
Before nightfall Paisley was lying in Amos Wickliff’s own bed, while
Amos, at his side, was critically surveying both chamber and parlor under
half-closed eyelids. He was trying to see them with the eyes of the
elderly widow of a Methodist minister.
“Hum—yes!” The result of the survey was, on the whole, satisfactory. “All
nice, high-toned, first-class pictures. Nothing to shock a lady. Liquors
all put away, ’cept what’s needed for him. Pops all put away, so she
won’t be finding one and be killing herself, thinking it’s not loaded. My
bed moved in here comfortable for him, because he thought it was such a
pleasant room, poor boy. Another bed in my room for her. Bath-room next
door, hot and cold water. Little gas stove. Trained nurse who doesn’t
know anything, and so can’t tell. Thinks it’s my friend Smith. _Is_ there
anything else?”
At this moment the white counterpane on the bed stirred.
“Well, Ned?” said Wickliff.
“It’s—nice!” said Paisley.
“That’s right. Now you get a firm grip on what I’m going to say—such a
grip you won’t lose it, even if you get out of your head a little.”
“I won’t,” said Paisley.
“All right. You’re not Paisley any more. You’re Ned Smith. I’ve had you
moved here into my rooms because your boarding-place wasn’t so good.
Everybody here understands, and has got their story ready. The nurse
thinks you’re my friend Smith. You are, too, and you are to call me Amos.
The telegram’s gone. ’S-sh!—what a way to do!”—for Paisley was crying.
“Ain’t I her boy too?”
One weak place remained in the fortress that Amos had builded against
prying eyes and chattering tongues. He had searched in vain for “Mame.”
There was no especial reason, except pure hatred and malice, to dread her
going to Paisley’s mother, but the sheriff had enough knowledge of Mame’s
kind to take these qualities into account.
From the time that Wickliff promised him that he should have his
mother, Paisley seemed to be freed from every misgiving. He was too
ill to talk much, and much of the time he was miserably occupied with
his own suffering; yet often during the night and day before she came
he would lift his still beautiful eyes to Mrs. Raker’s and say, “It’s
to-morrow night ma comes, isn’t it?” To which the soft-hearted woman
would sometimes answer, “Yes, son,” and sometimes only work her chin and
put her handkerchief to her eyes. Once she so far forgot the presence
of the gifted professional nurse that she sniffed aloud, whereupon that
personage administered a scorching tonic, in the guise of a glance, and
poor Mrs. Raker went out of the room and cried.
He must have kept some reckoning of the time, for the next day he varied
his question. He said, “It’s to-day she’s coming, isn’t it?” As the day
wore on, the customary change of his disease came: he was relieved of
his worst pain; he thought that he was better. So thought Mrs. Raker
and the sheriff. The doctor and the nurse maintained their inscrutable
professional calm. At ten o’clock the sheriff (who had been gone for a
half-hour) softly opened the door. The sick man instantly roused. He half
sat up. “I know,” he exclaimed; “it’s ma. Ma’s come!”
The nurse rose, ready to protect her patient.
There entered a little, black-robed, gray-haired woman, who glided swift
as a thought to the bedside, and gathered the worn young head to her
breast. “My boy, my dear, good boy!” she said, under her breath, so low
the nurse did not hear her; she only heard her say, “Now you must get
well.”
“Oh, I _am_ glad, ma!” said the sick man.
After that the nurse was well content with them all. They obeyed her
implicitly. It was she rather than Mrs. Raker who observed that Mr.
Smith’s mother was not alone, but accompanied by a slim, fair, brown-eyed
young woman, who lingered in the background, and would fain have not
spoken to the invalid at all had she not been gently pushed forward by
the mother, with the words, “And Ruth came too, Eddy!”
“Thank you, Ruth; I knew that you wouldn’t let ma come alone,” said Ned,
feebly.
The young woman had opened her lips. Now they closed. She looked at him
compassionately. “Surely not, Ned,” she said.
But why, wondered the nurse, who was observant—it was her trade to
observe—why did she look at him so intently, and with such a shocked pity?
Ned did not express much—the sick, especially the very sick, cannot; but
whenever he waked in the night and saw his mother bending over him he
smiled happily, and she would answer his thought. “Yes, my boy; my dear,
good boy,” she would say.
And the sheriff in his dim corner thought sadly that the ruined life
would always be saved for her now, and her son would be her good boy
forever. Yet he muttered to himself, “I suppose the Lord is helping me
out, and I ought to feel obliged, but I’m hanged if I wouldn’t rather
take the chances and have the boy get well!”