Through the Shadows with O'Henry

by Эл Дженнингс

  Every man in the pen knew what Dick had done. They talked about it, advancing the most fantastic theories as to Dick's method.

  Bill Porter came over to the warden's office that night. His visits were always welcome. There was in Bill's warm, quiet humor, a sunny cheer, an uplifting happiness that seemed to catch one by the neck of the spirit and shake him free from the harassing pettiness of prison life.

  When Billy Raidler and I could not rouse each other, we kept our ears tuned for Bill's voice at the door. He would come in, sniff the moodiness in the air and breeze it away with a dash of his buoyant gaiety.

  Bill's humor was not the off spark of happiness, but of the truth as he saw it. He was not an incorrigible optimist. There were times when silent gloom hovered like a black wraith about him. But he had an abiding faith in the worth of life and a sane, poised viewpoint that all the cruel injustice of his prison sentence could not distort.

  Bill accepted life on its own terms. There was in him none of the futile cowardice that quarrels with the bargain of existence; mocks and sneers and exhausts itself in self-pity. To him life was but a colossal experiment marked by millions of inevitable failures, but destined, none the less, for an ultimate triumph.

  His heart was crushed in prison, but his mind did not lose its clear, unbiased insight. He would send out a word, a phrase that seemed to puncture through the film of our dissatisfaction. The grotesque world, fabricated of depression, set itself aright and we were compelled to laugh and agree with Bill's droll honesty.

  "Colonel, I surmise you were Pandora's imp when the Post's box of troubles was opened?" He handed me an account he had just read in one of the evening papers. It was the first time I had ever seen him manifest the slightest curiosity.

  I told him about Dick. He wanted to know exactly how the safe had been opened. The thought of a man filing his nails to the quick and then filing until the nerves were exposed bothered him. He had a dozen questions to ask.

  "I should think he could have taken an easier way," he said.

  "Suppose he had sandpapered the ball of his fingers? It would be less cruel, do you think it would be as effective? Did it seem to pain him? He must be a fellow of enormous grit. B-r-r-r! I couldn't do it even if it would open the bars of our little private hell here. What is Dick Price like? What gave him the idea in the beginning?"

  I was amazed at his gossipy quizzing.

  "Hell, man, you must be first cousin to the Spanish Inquisition," I rallied. "Why are you so much interested?"

  "Colonel, this is a wonderful episode," he said. "It will make a great story."

  I had not thought of it in such a light. Bill's mind was ever on the alert. It was like some wizard camera with the lens always in focus. Men, their thoughts and their doings, were snapped in its tireless eye.

  All life, as he tells us in "The Duplicity of Hargraves," belonged to him. He took thereof what he pleased and returned it as he would.

  Once he had taken it, it was his. He stored it up in his mind. When he called upon it, it came forth bearing the stamp of his own originality.

  Bill took no notes. Once in a while he would jot a word or two down on a scrap of paper, a corner of a napkin, but in all of our rambles together I never noticed the pencil much in evidence. He preferred to work his unfailing memory.

  It seemed to have boundless space for his multitudinous ideas. He kept them mentally pigeonholed and tabulated, ready to be taken out and used at a moment's notice. It was years before he made Dick Price immortal in the story of Jimmy Valentine. I asked him why he had not used it before.

  "I've had it in mind, colonel, ever since you told me of it," he answered. "But I was afraid it would not go. Convicts, you know, are not accepted in the best society even in fiction."

  Porter had never met Dick Price. One night I brought them together in the warden's office. It was odd to note the instantaneous sympathy between these two unapproachable men.

  Both held aloof from the other prisoners ; Dick because he was moody, Bill because of his reticence. And yet, between the two there seemed to spring up an immediate understanding.

  Porter had brought over a new magazine. He was privileged to receive as many as he liked. He handed it to Dick. The fellow looked up, a glance of wistful swiftness darting across his flushed face.

  "I've hardly seen one since I've been here," he said, snatching it quickly and sticking it under his coat. Porter did not understand. When Dick left, I told him what his sentence had been—that he could not receive a book, a visit or even a letter.

  "Colonel, do they starve a man's soul and kill his mind like that?" He said nothing more. He seemed shocked and bitter. In a moment he got up to go. At the door he turned.

  "Well for him that he has not much longer to live."

  The words sent a gust of white fury over me. I began to fear again. I went over to the ranges every night to see Dick. He was getting worse. I begged the warden to press his case.

  At last the day came when the Governor was to pass upon it. There was nothing for him to do but to sign it. Dick had performed his part of the bargain. The State could now pay off its obligation. I told Dick.

  "You can have a nice little feed with the old woman day after tomorrow," I said. He didn't answer. He didn't want me to know he hoped, but in spite of himself his breath came hurriedly and he turned his back quickly.

  I knew then that this silent, grateful fellow had been waiting and counting on that pardon. I knew that the thought of freedom and a few years of peace had sustained him in all the suffering of these last months.

  The next morning I got the word from the warden. The pardon had been denied.

  When the warden gave me that word I felt as though a black wall had dropped suddenly before me, cutting off the light and the air. I felt shut-in, smothered, dumb.

  What would poor Dick do now? What would he think of me? If I had not told him it was coming up I might have jollied him along. But he knew. He would be waiting for me. All day he would be thinking of it. I would have to see him in the corridors that night.

  When I went into his range, there he was, pacing up and down the corridor. I looked at the stooped, emaciated form. The prison clothes hung from his bones as though he were a peg. His haggard face turned upon me a look of such pathetic eagerness I felt my courage sinking in a cold, speechless misery.

  I tried to tell him. The words got caught in the gulp in my throat.

  The flush faded from his dark cheek until his skin looked the color of a gray cinder, with the over-brilliant eyes glaring forth like burning coals. He understood. He stood there staring at me like a man who has heard his own death sentence. And I could not say a word to him. After a moment, age-long with its dull agony, he put out his hand.

  "It's all right, Al," his voice was a choking whisper. "I don't care. Hell, it doesn't make any difference to me."

  But it did. It finished him. It broke his heart. He hadn't the courage to fight it out any longer. A month later they took him to the prison hospital.

  He was dying. There was no chance of a cure. I wanted to write to his old mother. But it would only have pained her. They wouldn't have let her come to him. The warden couldn't break the State's law. So I just went to see him every few nights. I sat and talked to him. As I would come up to his cot he would put out his hand and grin. And when I looked into those quick, intelligent, game eyes, a stab of pain went through me. He never spoke of his old mother now.

  At this time I was a somewhat privileged character in the prison. s the warden's secretary, I could visit any department at will. Otherwise Dick Price might have died and I would never have had even one chance to see him.

  When a convict went to the hospital he was cut off from all communication with his former fellows.

  Men lay sometimes for months in their cots without ever a word from the only friends they had. They suffered and died without one touch of human sympathy.

  I was the only visitor Dick had. Men had called him a "stir b
ug" because of his erratic, moody ways because, too, of his uncanny genius as a mechanic. As he lay there coughing his life away, he was the gentlest and the calmest soul in the prison. He viewed his suffering and his certain death as a spectator might have. The queerest, oddest fancies possessed him. One night he turned to me with a whimsical dreaminess in his voice.

  "Al, why do you suppose I was born?" he asked. "Would you say that I had ever lived?"

  I couldn't think of any answer to make. I knew that I had lived and got a lot of joy out of it. I wasn't sure about Dick. He didn't wait for my verdict.

  "Remember that book your friend Bill slipped me? I read every story in it. It showed me just how I stack up. It told me what a real life might mean. I'm 36 years old and I'm dying without ever having lived. Look at this, Al."

  He handed me a scrap of paper with a long list of short phrases on it.

  "Those are the things I've never done. Think of it, Al. I never saw the ocean, never sang, never danced, never went to a theatre, never saw a good painting, never said a real prayer---.

  "Al, do you know that I never talked to a girl in my life? Never had one of them so much as give me a kind look? I'd like to figure out why I was born."

  There came a week when I was so busy I did not go to see him. One night very late I dropped into the post-office to talk to Billy Raidler. Down the alley toward the dead house came the big negro porter, whistling and shuffling along. Billy and I used to look out, inquire the name of the stiff, and pay no further respects. We were familiar with death and suffering. This night the negro rapped at the window.

  "Massa Al, can't nebber guess who I'se got with me to-night?"

  "Who, Sam?" we called out.

  "Little Dick Price."

  Little Dick, thrown into the wheelbarrow, with nothing but an old rag over his body, his head lopped out at one end, his feet hung over the other. Sam rattled the barrow off to the dead house.

  I stayed with Billy that night. Both of us were fond of Dick. We couldn't sleep. Billy sat up in bed.

  " 'Sleep, Al?" he called.

  "Hell, no."

  "God, don't it give you the creeps to think of poor little Dick alone down there in that trough?"

  I went down to the dead house the next morning. Dick was already closed up in the rough wooden box. The one-horse spring wagon that carried off the unclaimed convict dead was waiting to take him to the potter's field. I was the only one who followed him. The wagon started off at a trot. I ran ahead of it to the east gate. Old Tommy, the gateman, stopped me.

  "What you after, Mr. Al?"

  "I'm just coming as far as I can with a friend of mine," I told him.

  The gate swung to. It was a chill, foggy morning. I looked out. Leaning against a tree was a poor, huddled, bent little figure, with an old red shawl drawn tight about the shoulders. She had her hands clasped tight together, her elbows dug into her waist, and she was swinging those hands up and down and shaking her head in a grief so abject, so desolate, it sent a broken sob even into old Tommy's voice.

  "Tommy, go speak to her," I said. "That's Dick's mother."

  "Aw, gee, ain't that hell! The poor old soull"

  The spring wagon rattled by. Tommy put up his hand to the driver. "Go slow there, ye heartless boob. That there is the poor lad's old mother."

  The driver reined in the horse. Dick's mother lurched, against the wagon and looked in at; the wooden box. She was swaying from side to side like a crazy thing.

  All that she had on earth—the boy whose tragic, broken life had been her crucifixion—was in that crude box. The wagon jogged off—the trembling, heart-piercing old figure half running, half falling along the road after it.

  Society had taken the last farthing of its debt from Dick Price and it had beaten his mother into the dust in the cruel bargain.

  CHAPTER XX.

  The Prison Demon; the beast exhibited; magic of kindness; reclamation;tragedy of Ira Maralatt; meeting of father and daughter.

  Such is the story of Jimmy Valentine as it unfolded itself in the Ohio penitentiary. O. Henry takes the one great episode in that futile life and with it he wins the tears and the grateful smiles of the nation. In that throbbing silence, when the ex-con opens the safe and the little sister of the girl he loves is saved from suffocation, Jimmy as he might have been, not Jimmy as he was, is before us. Few who have breathed hard in that gripping moment would have denied Dick Price his chance, would have refused him the pardon he earned, would have doomed him to his forlorn and lonely death in the prison hospital.

  Bill Porter was not the grim artist to paint that harsh picture for the world. He loved a happy ending. He could not even give the exact details of the safe- opening. It was too cruel for his light and winsome fancy.

  That was ever Bill's way. He took the facts, but he twisted them as he would. I asked him about it later. In the story he gives the hero a costly set of tools wherewith to open the vault. He does not have him file his nails.

  "Colonel, it chills my teeth to think of that gritting operation," he said. "I prefer the set of tools. I don't like to make my victims suffer. And then, you see, the tools enable Jimmy to make a present to a friend. That gift illustrates the toleration of the man who has been in prison.

  "Jimmy decided to quit the game himself, but he does not expect the whole world to share his fervor of reform. Instead of burying the instruments of his former profession, as your reformed citizen would have done, he straightway sends them to a former pal. I like that spirit in my character.

  "The ordinary man who makes a New Year's resolution immediately sends down censure on the fellow who isn't perched on the wagon with him. Jimmy does no such thing. That's one of the advantages of spending a few vacations in prison. You grow mellow in your judgments."

  This soft, golden toleration was one of the gracious traits in Porter's character. It won him friends even though his aloof dignity forbade familiarity. In the "pen" he was universally respected. The meanest cutthroat in the ranges felt honored to serve him.

  Porter's "drag" with the prison barber was the subject of raillery at the club. The barber was an artist in his trade. He seemed to take a mean delight in turning out grotesque, futuristic patterns in headdress. But for Porter the most exquisite precision was observed. His thin, yellow hair was trimmed to a nicety. The kind, easy manner of the man had completely captivated, the burly-hearted convict barber.

  If it had not been for this humorous, penetrative understanding in Porter, the Recluse Club would not have endured a month. He was its equilibrium. Many a violent clash ended in a laugh because of an odd fling Bill Porter would interject into the turmoil.

  Men who have been walled off from free contact with their fellows become excessively quarrelsome and "touchy." We were cooped together like children in an over-large family. We had no escape from each other's society.

  The isolation of prison life whets antagonism. Men who could travel to the ends of the earth in friendship would, in a sudden raging bitterness, spring like tigers at each other's throat. Even in the happiness of our Sunday dinners these explosive outbursts would break out among the members.

  It would start with the merest trifle, and all at once there would be fiercely angry taunts flung from one to the other. In one of these uncalled for eruptions I sent in my resignation to the club.

  Billy Raidler had protested that he could taste the soapsuds on the dishes. I was the chief dishwasher. I did not like the imputation. I would not have minded Billy's protest, but old man Carnot backed him up with further criticism.

  "Most assuredly we can taste the soap," he said. "But worse than that, I do not like the garlic. Now, Mr. Jennings, why can you not pick the odious vegetable out of the roast?"

  Carnot was an irascible old epicure. He wanted his napkin folded oblong and his knife and fork laid down in a certain fashion. He never failed to resent the introduction of the garlic Louisa loved.

  Every one at the table took up the issue. They could all taste the
soapsuds, they said. "Damn* pigs, all of you! Take the honor at the dishpan yourselves." I was furious with resentment. I could have hurled the pots and skillets at them. The next Sunday I did not go to the club. I told Billy I was finished with them. Billy had no patience with the sulks and left me in a huff.

  Porter came over to the post-office and knocked at the door. "Colonel," he said, and there was such understanding indulgence in his tone I felt immediately appeased, "don't you think you better reconsider?"

  "You're the very salt of the earth. The club is absolutely flat without your presence. You see, we only agreed with Billy to sustain him. He's a cripple. He can't stand alone."

  It was just the sort of pampering to mollify unreasonable hot temper. Porter was always ready to smooth us down. He was always ready to hear our grievances. His own troubles he bore alone.

  Whenever he did reveal his thoughts it was by an accidental outcropping in a lightsome talk. He and Louisa used to indulge in long discussions on astronomy and evolution. Porter was facetious, Louisa serious and very scientific. Louisa would be mixing up a gravy or a sauce.

  "You're something of a little creator in the culinary line, Louisa," Porter would say. "What do you suppose were the ingredients used in the creation of the world?"

  Louisa's attention was instant. He would talk about protoplasm and the gradual accommodation of living organism to environment.

  "Tut, tut," Porter would mock. "I hold fast to the Biblical story. What else should men be made of but a handful of mud? The Creator was right; men are but dirt. Take Ira Maralatt, the Prison Demon, for instance."

  A queer, yellowish pallor spread over Bill's face. I knew that the name had slipped from Porter's lips unconsciously.

  "Colonel, it is a ghastly thing to see a man degraded into a beast like Maralatt," he said. "Last night they beat him to strips again. I had to go down to the basement to sponge him off. I tell you it would take a floor mop to do the job right he is such a giant."