At the clanging of the cell door behind the departing lawyer I was to all
intents and purposes a broken reed. The theorists may say what they
please about the fine and courageous quality of resolution which rises
only the higher the harder it is beaten down; but man is human, and there
are limits beyond which the finest resiliency becomes dead and brittle
and there is no rebound.
The temptation to yield was both subtle and compelling. Reason, the kind
of reason which scoffs at ideals, told me that I was foolish to fight for
a principle. On the one hand there were sharp misery, the loss of
freedom, poverty and suffering for Polly: on the other, liberty and a
generous degree of affluence. We could hide ourselves, Polly and I, in
some remote corner of the world where no one knew; and our share of the
five millions, wealth even as wealth is reckoned in the day of wealth,
would put us far enough beyond the reach of want; nay, it would do
more--it would silence the gossiping tongues if there were any to wag.
Up and down the narrow limits of my cell I paced, praying at one moment
for strength to hold out to the end, and at the next cursing myself for
an idiotic splitter of hairs helpless to break away from the manaclings
of an idea. Love, reason, common sense were all ranged on the side of
the compromise with principle; and opposed to them there was only the
stubborn protest against injustice pleading feebly and despairingly for
its final hearing.
In the midst of the struggle the kitchen "trusty" brought the mid-day
meal, and for the first time in forty-eight hours I forced myself to eat.
A sound body, weakened only by anxiety and abstinence, is quick to
respond to a resumption of the normal. Under the food stimulus I felt
better, stronger. But now the strength was all on the side of yielding.
With the quickening pulses came the keen lust of life. To live, to be
free, to enjoy, in the years, few or many, of the little earthly span:
after all, these were the only realities.
Whitredge had left his fountain pen, and the papers--the letter to
Barrett and Gifford and the petition--were lying on the cot where I had
thrown them. For the last time I put the pleading protest under foot.
Freedom, a fortune, and Polly's happiness: the triple bribe was too great
and I uncapped the pen.
It was at this precise moment that footsteps in the corridor warned me
that someone was coming. A bit of the old convict secretiveness made me
hastily thrust the papers out of sight under the cot blankets, and at the
rattling of the key in the lock I stood up to confront--Whitredge.
"You?" I said. "I thought you were going to give me until to-morrow
morning."
He looked strangely perturbed, and the nervousness was also in his voice
when he said: "I meant to, Bert, but I've had a wire, and I've got to go
back to Glendale on this next train"--dragging his watch out of its
pocket and glancing at it hurriedly. "Those papers: you've had time
enough to think things over, and I'm sure you've made up your mind to do
the sensible thing. Let me have them so I can set things in motion
before I leave town."
I wondered why he kept jerking his head around to look over his shoulder
as he talked, and why the turnkey jingled his keys and waited. But the
time for indecision on my part was past and I reached under the blanket
for the two papers. With the three-legged stool for a writing-table I
was kneeling to put my name at the bottom of the letter to my partners
when there were more footsteps in the corridor, hurried ones, this time,
and I looked up to see the squarely built, competent figure of our
Western lawyer, Benedict, standing in the cell doorway, with the deputy
warden, Cummings, backgrounding him.
"Hello, Whitredge; at your old tricks, are you?" snapped the new-comer
brusquely. And then to me: "What are you signing there, Bertrand?"
"Nothing, now--without your advice," I said, getting up and handing him
the letter.
Whitredge couldn't get out, with Benedict filling the doorway, so he had
to stand a cringing second prisoner, looking this way and that, like a
rat searching for a hole, while the big Westerner read calmly through the
letter which had been written out for me. That moment amply repaid me
for much that I had suffered at the hands of Cyrus Whitredge.
"Humph!" said Benedict, folding the letter and thrusting it into his
pocket. "Now what's that other document?"
I gave him the petition for pardon, and again he took his time with the
reading.
"Nice little scheme you were trying to pull off!" he said to Whitredge,
after the petition, accurately refolded, had gone to join the pocketed
letter. "You are certainly an ornament to an honorable profession."
Then, stepping into the cell and standing aside: "You may go. We'll know
where to find you when you're needed."
Whitredge's vanishing was like a trick of legerdemain; one moment he
stood before us, and at the next he was gone. At his going, Cummings and
the turnkey also disappeared and I was left alone with Benedict. There
was a hearty handgrasp to assure me that I was not dreaming, and then I
said:
"I had given you up, Benedict. I thought they had you tied hand and foot
back yonder in the big hills."
"Myers is handling that end of it," he returned. "I had other irons in
the fire, and they've been getting hot in such rapid succession that I
couldn't leave them. But I did what I could by wire--got the warden's
promise that he would hold your case 'in suspension' until I could show
up in person. Have they been treating you well? I'm afraid they
haven't. You're not looking quite up to the mark."