2 The Sentence

I awoke the next morning, when a warden brought me food, and with the waking came realization. The man told me I was to have my examining trial in the afternoon, and his words were like arrows in my flesh. “Trial!” How ominous sounded the word! Truly I had digged a pit for myself, and I had fallen into its uttermost depths! Possibly the night before I had thought it was nothing more than an entanglement of a few hours; I had not taken time then to look for the way out, and now when I sought it there was none; the original cause of concealment remained, as strong as ever. I felt abundant regrets now for the weak life that had thrown me into the pit; certainly there was no lack of suitable remorse.

The hours, heavy footed, followed each other, and I was left to silence and self. In the half darkness of the cell I felt a terror new to me, the fear of the future. I suffered physical pain, too; my throat was dry and hard and my relaxed body ached. I began to have pity on myself; it was not I who was wronged; why did not Alicia, whom I had saved, come to me and save me in turn? But she did not come, and perhaps I was wrong after all; maybe she did love that hulking brute.,

Women, it was said, loved masterful men, even if they were cruel, and she would gladly let me suffer to save her own fair name, which not she, but I, had imperilled.

A warden came for me about the middle of the afternoon, and I was taken to the police court in the same building, a court held in a low, dark room with much of the scum of the city crowded outside the rail—it could not be otherwise—and the officials and criminal lawyers inside.

I think that I am in the main a fastidious man. I was of gentle birth and breeding, and however low I may have fallen in some respects, I had always preserved the neatness of dress, and correctness of bearing and manner, without which none can be a gentleman. Now my soul revolted at the mob outside the rail and the felons who sat with me in the felon’s dock. I say “felons” purposely, because on all their faces, men and women, was the deep stamp of sin and crime. It was not innocence in their cases that had brought them there, nor was it wholly innocence in mine.

The air was close and foul, and it grew fouler as it was breathed over and over again by the horde within the room. Pleas were made, guilty or not guilty, and thieves, thugs and women of the pavement were passed on to their respective fates. Then my own case was called, and I stood up, noticing at the same time a stir in the crowd outside the rail as Grey pushed his big form through it. He was admitted inside, and receiving a courteous nod from the Judge, who seemed to know him well, he sat down on the witness bench.

He turned his gaze at once upon me, and I saw that it was full of scrutiny and doubt. Then little Alicia was yet in danger, and suddenly my resolution hardened. I liked him no better by day; his whole aspect was unpleasing, that of a man who was born to good fortune, who took it as only his desert, who was full of pride and arrogance, and that which goes beyond arrogance, malignity and truculence. He filled me with repulsion and contempt, and to show him that I feared him not, that my will was the equal of his, perhaps the superior, I met his gaze squarely, and fairly looked him down. He let his eyes drop and an angry flush came over his face, which I noticed was stained by dissipation. I knew too well the tale told by the flabby cheeks and the dark lines under the eyes. But I read the character of the man, and again I realized that the plight of Alicia, whom I still called little Alicia, was worse than mine. If I told the truth what would become of her? No, I would stick to my tale for the moment, trusting to happy chance.

“Your name?” asked the Judge, as I stood up. “Charles Johnson,” I replied. I looked at the Judge now, but I knew that the eyes of Grey had returned to my face. I could feel his gaze. He was watching me, as keenly as he could, watching for a sign of something that he dreaded and half believed. But I was resolved that he should not have the sign.

“Your home?” asked the Judge.

I laughed flippantly. “The wide world,” I replied.

He frowned.

“Smartness from one in your position is out of place,” he said; but he added thoughtfully, “yet you do not look like a burglar. Have you any lawyer to defend you?”

“No,” I replied.

“Then the court will appoint one,” and he named a young man, evidently a fresh admission to the bar. Nevertheless, I entered a plea of guilty, and the evidence against me was overwhelming. I had been caught in the room when the hour was past midnight, and under the stress of a pistol muzzle I had produced Mrs. Grey’s purse from my pocket.

“I sprung the catch of a window,” I said, “and entered in that manner. A dim lamp was burning in the hall; by its light, when I looked into the parlor, I saw a purse on the table. Just as I picked it up and put it in my pocket I heard in the hall the step of Mrs. Grey coming to meet her husband. She saw me, and I think that in the shadow she took me for her husband. She stepped forward and spoke to me, but at that moment Mr., Grey came in and held me up. That’s all there is to it, Judge. I was caught with the goods on me, and when I’m caught I know it.”

I spoke in the same flippant tone that I had used all along, and the Judge frowned again—I am confident he was a good man. He looked me over critically, and then spoke slowly:

“I should be glad to think that so frank a confession on your part means repentance, but your manner does not indicate it.”

I felt the rebuke. In reality his words cut me deep. Innocent I was of this crime, yet an innocent man I was not; my course of life, reckless and selfish, had brought me into the prisoner’s stand as truly as if I had gone into George Grey’s house for the purpose of robbery, and not because of a wild desire to see Alicia, on whom I had thought, in my folly, that I had some claim. I know my face turned white as the blood left it, and I lowered my eyes before the reproving gaze of the Judge. When I raised them again I glanced in another direction and met the look of Grey, still bent upon me, still keenly scrutinizing, and—I knew it—still expressive of a lingering doubt. As before, I met his gaze firmly, and again his eyes yielded to mine.

Grey was called to the stand, though the need of his testimony was small after my confession, and he told how he had found me in the parlor, and of my producing his wife’s purse from my pocket. His story agreed with mine—he could not make it otherwise—and his testimony occupied only two or three minutes, after which he stood aside at the fringe of the crowd, his big, aggressive form, his heavy handsome face and his rich clothing making him a conspicuous figure. I saw that he was of the type known as dashing, and before the signs of dissipation appeared upon him he might easily have caught the fancy of a young and inexperienced girl. I was bound over for trial to the Circuit Court, then in session, and was informed that my case would come up three days later. I was sent back to my cell in the jail, and I was left again to the silence, now more oppressive than ever.

I do not think that I yet expected to go to the penitentiary. Conscious of my innocence, at least of this crime, it did not seem possible that I could be punished for a thing I had not done, and a saving hand would yet intervene. Alicia would come, she would tell the truth to that jealous, cruel husband of hers, she would make him believe her, he must believe one so truthful and pure, and I would step again into the clean, bright freedom of the world.

She did not come, and the days were heavy indeed. The world left me alone. I had disappeared, and with my disappearance I was at once forgotten. Yet I had cause to be glad that I was so little known in Louisville. I was afraid at first that some inquisitive reporter stumbling upon a clue might trace my origin and discover my real name; but the case seemed only an ordinary one, and I and it were apparently forgotten together.

But I was not wholly forgotten, because on the day before my final trial the warden, unlocking my cell door, announced a visitor—Alicia at last! She had recognized how I saved her good name, and now she would help me, or at least tell me her appreciation! My heart sprang up, truly I was longing for the sight of Alicia’s face and the sound of her voice.

The step on the stone floor of the hall outside was heavy and aggressive, not that of Alicia, and I sank back on the edge of my cot, seeking to be resigned, although my heart went down with a rush to the depths. But I was bowed for only a moment, I would not show despair before this man, for whom I felt an instinctive and deep aversion.

Grey’s large figure almost filled the doorway, and he said to the warden aggressively:

“I want to speak to the man in private.” Then he came in, and the warden, shutting the door behind him, went away, leaving the two of us together.

The cell, in addition to the cot, contained a small wicker chair, too light to be used as a weapon of offense, and I motioned toward it, but he did not sit down. He stood with his back to the closed door looking at me, and never was the man more offensive, as he slowly looked me up and down, with a brutal, vindictive gaze.

“Well,” I asked, “what do you want?”

“The full truth, if you know how to tell it.”

“I fancy that I am on as good terms with the truth as you are,” I replied, my tone expressing scorn.

He flushed a little, but continued, returning to his bullying, domineering manner:

“You don’t talk like a common burglar, Johnson, and what I want to know is how you got into my house. No lock on door or window shows any signs of tampering—I had a locksmith to go over them to see. Was a door unlocked for you? Speak! It may save you something!”

He leaned forward in his eagerness and breathed hard. I could not hide my repulsion; the man seemed eager to doubt his wife, Alicia, who was as far above him as the angels are above Satan.

“I stood in no need of assistance,” I replied. “You needn’t fear robbery from any member of your household. There was no collusion.”

He seemed baffled by my words and tone, and was silent for a moment or two. Then he burst upon me suddenly with the question:

“Had you ever met Mrs. Grey before that night?”

I could not keep from giving him a look, at which he flushed deeply—at least there was a little shame in the man. It should be understood, too, that both Grey and I divined each other, or at least he suspected, but suspected far too much.

“I never presumed to such an honor as you give me,” I replied.

He flushed again, bit his lip and hesitated. I saw that he was bound to admit himself defeated, and it seemed to me that any man should rejoice in such a defeat, but I marked disappointment in his look.

“Very well,” he said at last, “I presume that you are telling the truth, and in any event I congratulate you on your coming journey to Frankfort; you will have ample opportunity for reflection.”

It was an ignoble speech to make to one who was cast down by fortune and I showed my scorn by turning my back upon him. He then went out, because I would no longer reply to anything that he said, and the door again shut me in to silence and desolation.

My case was called the next day before the Circuit Judge, my indictment by the Grand Jury being returned meanwhile, and it was disposed of so briefly that I was left in a sort of daze. Alicia did not appear, there was no voice raised in my behalf, no explanation was made by anybody, no sudden help dropped from the clouds, there was merely the dry mechanical voice of the Judge saying: “I sentence you Charles Johnson to three years imprisonment with hard labor in the penitentiary at Frankfort,” and then he turned to the consideration of the next case.

I repeat that I was in a daze and the sentence only plunged me into it the more deeply. I, a man of good birth and breeding, who had never been any one’s enemy but his own, to be sent to the penitentiary! to be a convict! to wear a suit of stripes! to be branded before all the world as a criminal! And for a woman who had not said a word to save me. In the stunned silence I felt something hot and damp in the corner of my eye. It was a tear, the first that I had shed since childhood. I wiped it quickly away because in the moment of despair my pride was at its fiercest, and I would have no one to see me in my weakness.

Grey was in the court room where he had testified as before and now he left, casting me one last glance of malignity and doubt. Then a deputy Sheriff put his hand upon my arm.

“Come, Johnson,” he said, though not roughly, “we’ve no time to waste, if we catch that afternoon train for Frankfort.”

I started violently. The thing was done, and nothing could undo it. Alicia had not come, and if she should come yet, it would be too late, because I had told my own tale so convincingly and the evidence was so strong that now the real story would not have been believed. Truly I had been sobered in every sense and I stared blankly at the future which presented only a solid wall of sombre black. Well, there was none to miss me and none to mourn.

But I rose at the touch of the Sheriff and resolutely kept a calm face and a steady hand. I would not look at Grey and whether or not he exulted over me I did not know, nor, at that moment, did I care. I walked in silence beside the deputy to the jail, where I made my few preparations for the journey to a larger prison, in which one seeking seclusion from the world can find it. I moved in a daze within my all too narrow orbit, but there was little to be done and I soon finished it.

“Do you care to send word or a letter to anybody?” asked the deputy.

“No,” I replied bitterly, “I have no relatives and—it seems—no friends.”

He looked at me curiously, but said nothing, and I knew that his curiosity came from the difference in my manner and speech from those of the ordinary criminal. Burglars are not often graduates of our large universities; the educated mind if it turns to crime usually seeks other tools than the jimmy and the dark lantern.

We took the train for Frankfort in the afternoon, four convicts and four deputies sitting quietly in the corner of a day coach, the people who passed in and out of the car at the little way stations, not knowing the nature of our journey. But to me it was far more bitter than the court room and the ominous words of the Judge pronouncing my sentence. A slouching old negro driving his rickety cart on the roadside filled me with envy. He was free.

We arrived at Frankfort late in the afternoon. I had been at the capital of the State once before in my life, years ago, and I looked around fearfully lest some one should recognize me, but there was no familiar face; it was little likely I should see any one who knew me and the journey to the penitentiary was short. Before I passed within the gates I took a last look at the free world, the trim little city embowered in trees and the green hills circling about it. Then the heavy gates closed behind me and my life as a convict began.

I shall pass over many of the humiliations, inseparable from my position, humiliations that neither time nor success can make me forget, but worst of all was the arrayal for my new life, the cropping of the hair, and the striped suit. How those stripes burnt into me!

My cell mate was a tall, thin man from the mountains, Elias Peabody, and I was glad that chance had put me with him, because I saw at once that he was not a bad man. “Moonshining” he told me, that is the illicit making of whiskey, and he could never be persuaded that he had committed any crime. To him the wicked government that oppressed him for doing what he had a right to do was the real criminal. He examined me critically when we first met, and put his hand upon my forehead, then upon my pulse:

“You ain’t well, Johnson,” he said. “Too hot by a long sight.”

I was in a raging fever the next day and for nearly a week I was unconscious. When knowledge returned I was in the prison hospital, and the prison doctor was by my side. “You’ll be up in a few days, Johnson,” he said, “but meanwhile you’ll have to lie quiet.”

“What’s been the matter with me?” I asked.

“Several things,” he replied thoughtfully. “Enforced abstinence, suspense and a great mental shock.”

“So you see that even a burglar can have his feelings,” I said, jesting poorly.

“Criminals are often very sensitive,” he replied. “You will excuse me for using the word ‘criminals’ but you brought up the subject.”

“Don’t apologize.” I said. “It was my fault. I forgot myself and spoke as one man of the world to another.”

He looked rather oddly at me and picked up one of my hands as it lay limply on the bed.

“It’s a hand that’s done little work, honest or dishonest,” he said.

I was always proud of my hands. They are long and slender and, to my mind, that indicates good blood.

“You mean that they don’t look like a burglar’s hands,” I said; “but I confessed, and was promptly convicted. So here I am.”

“I don’t think you are going to give us much trouble,” he said, looking at me, speculatively, “you’ll be a tractable prisoner.”

“I hope so,” I said, and I meant it.

In three or four days I went back to my cell and to Elias Peabody, who said in all sincerity that he had missed me, and I too was glad to see him. I owe much to that ignorant man, and yet not so ignorant either. He had a homely simplicity and piety at which I was at first amused, but which soon impressed me deeply with its genuineness. His imprisonment he felt to be no disgrace, it was merely a period of detention through no fault of his. He had with him in the cell a little Bible from which he read every morning and evening, spelling out the words slowly and painfully.

The strongest thing in him next to his piety was the love of liberty. He knew little of the material restraints of civilization. His front door yard had been the unlimited mountains, and before he came to the penitentiary he had always breathed an air that came over hundreds of miles of clean peaks and ridges. How he chafed between high stone walls and in our narrow cell.

“Oh Charlie, if I could just stand on the top of old Lonesome Peak and take in the wind, gulp after gulp,” he would say to me—he called me Charlie from the very first day, and he seemed always to regard me either as a son or a much younger brother.

When my strength was fully returned a deputy warden, a man named Stone, under whose immediate jurisdiction I was, said to me:

“Johnson, your sentence carried hard labor with it, and we’ll have to see that you don’t neglect your duty. For the next three years you are to work for the benefit of your State.”

His words were not as brusque as they seem on the written page, but they gave me a great shock. I was to be a peon, a slave, and I felt my face turn white. Peabody was with me at the time and with the native intelligence that he possessed, despite his ignorance, and gawkiness, he saw that I was hard hit. He put his hand upon my arm in a paternal, soothing manner.

“It’s better, Charlie,” he said; “you’d go crazy in here if you didn’t work. Get somethin’ good an’ hard, somethin’ that will keep your muscles so busy that your mind won’t have time for anythin’ but to boss ’em.”

“What do you think you are fit for?” asked Deputy Stone, looking me up and down, critically, “You’re a fine big muscular man, an’ we’re willing for you to have some voice in the matter.”

Despite Peabody’s soothing words I writhed mentally in my degradation, and out of an impulse springing from, I know not where, perhaps because it seemed the crudest thing that occurred to my mind, I replied:

“Oh, anything: make me a blacksmith; I guess I’m fit for nothing better.”

“Your choice surprises me,” said Stone, “but we’ll think it over.”

They did not discuss it long, because in a few hours I was told that I could learn to be a blacksmith, and after a while I saw that my impulse had been a wise one in many ways. I had for several weeks a hard time in the blacksmith shop, sustaining many a bruise and burn and what was worse, sharp words of reproof or abuse, but they kept my mind from morbid and unhappy thoughts, and at night I was so tired that after the first week of nervous strain was over I always slept a dreamless and restful sleep until the morning and the time for rising came.

I had never done manual work before and it was good for me now, purifying my blood and hardening the fibre of my frame. All the old grossness was purged away. I knew that my skin was assuming a new and healthier tint, the marks of dissipation were gone, my nerves were steady, and I ate with an appetite that I had not known since boyhood.

“It’s makin’ a man of you, Charlie,” said Peabody one day.

I would not admit it, but neither did I deny it, yet as time passed I began to feel, strange as it may seem, a certain happiness, a sort of content that was perhaps more physical than mental. Naturally of a strong, even powerful constitution my exceeding good health was bound to have a great influence upon me and I had every hour the knowledge that I was innocent, that I was suffering to protect the good name of another, that I was not like those around me perverted morally, the enemies of the State and society—at least not now.

My relations with my fellow prisoners, except with Peabody, who was my comrade, were, as far as they went, non-committal, I did not seek friendship, I saw few who invited it. Do not make mistakes about prisons, the innocent men within their walls are scarce, and while in the penitentiary at Frankfort I saw little of martyrs.

My happiest days were when I was in the blacksmith shop, handling the great sledge hammer, when the fire roared under the rapid pumping of the bellows, and I would bring the heavy mass of steel down on the white hot iron in blow after blow, beating it into the shape that I wished. Then I could feel the muscles in my arm and back swell and my spirit swelled with them. I was a man now, a primitive man maybe, but no longer a weakling, the sport of my own bad desires.

“It’s good for you, Charlie,” Elias said to me. “But I need the mountains.”

He spoke with unmeant pathos, but I knew how true were his words, and I did not forget them.

When my body was settled into its routine of labor and my mind was freed from its task of incessant direction I began to crave mental food. I begged for books and a few were permitted to me. Then as confidence in me was established I was allowed to have a candle in our cell, and at night often after Elias was asleep, I read. I can never make you realize the mighty solace of books to one condemned to a cell and solitude. I can only tell you that it was water to the burning throat and food to the starving. Often after reading them and after the candle was blown out I would sit thinking far into the dark. Then I would wonder how my youth could ever have been so weak and foolish, and I would ponder over the wasted years. A resolution slowly formed itself in my mind and hardened with time. Life was not over for me; on the contrary it had scarcely begun, I should go forth from the penitentiary still a very young man, and taking my own name I would make a place for myself in the world.

I often thought of Alicia, and of her silence, for which I could not account. No word had ever come from her, nor indeed from any one in the outside world, and once it occurred to me that she might be dead. Despite all my wrongs and my resentment against her I felt a pang at the supposition. Poor Alicia! How could she be blamed for anything that she did under the dominance of such a man as George Grey!

After such thoughts as these I would plunge with renewed zeal into the severest kind of toil. I worked far harder than the prison demanded of me, and the State of Kentucky certainly had one inhabitant who gave to it more than he took from it.

Winter came down upon us, gray and cold, and it showed all the signs of being hard and long. It was an odd sensation to me to stand in the prison yard and see above the walls the dead branches of the trees on the hills beyond swaying in the chill wind, and to know that those same hills, so near, were shut from me by an impassable barrier.

I had friends in the penitentiary, and I am proud to think that they were of my own making. The deputy, Stone, under whose immediate charge I was never spoke an unkind word to me, and Dr. Hopkins who had attended me in the attack of brain fever always spoke to me as if I were a gentleman. Nor had I escaped the eye of the warden himself as I was soon to know. One day, about the middle of December, I was summoned to his private office, and I went, wondering on the way, what he could want with me. I was about to stand in the presence of a king—I use the word advisedly as the man, who is the supreme authority in a great prison is almost the lord of life and death, the nearest approach to an autocrat that I know.

The warden was sitting at his desk, but he was not at work. He leaned back in his chair and drew lazy whiffs at his pipe. He looked at me a moment or two in silence when I stood before him, and I said respectfully, “You wished to see me, sir?”

“Yes, Johnson,” he replied at last, “I’ve been hearing good reports of you, and I’ve noticed myself that you work hard and conduct yourself well. You certainly earn your bread here.”

He laughed dryly. Earlier I should have flushed deeply at the allusion, but in a prison, however delicate the sensibilities, one grows hardened to much.

“I have tried to do so,” I replied quietly.

“Yes, I think you have and that is why I’ve had you to come here. You look and act like a man of education and refinement. What caused you to turn burglar I don’t know and I don’t ask, but in this place as well as elsewhere there are rewards, and punishments. You are doing the hardest kind of work in the blacksmith shop, I want to release you from that and put you to keeping the prison books. That at least is work for—for—”

He hesitated and when I smiled he added:

“For a gentleman.”

I was forced to smile again and this time it was at a startling incongruity. He was offering work for a gentleman, and that gentleman a convict within the walls of a penitentiary, yet I saw that he meant it, and I was not ungrateful.

“Is the liberty of choice left to me?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I wish to stick to the blacksmith shop. I am used to the work there, and for certain reasons it suits me. It is healthy.”

“Beyond a doubt it is healthy,” he said, and we both smiled.

“You have made your choice, but you are an odd man, Johnson,” he continued, “I have had few prisoners here—none perhaps—who seemed to me to be just of your type.”

“We are all unlike,” I said, and then I added; “I do not wish you to think, sir, that I am ungrateful for your kindness and consideration.”

“Oh, you’re welcome to it,” he said.

I turned to go and then came an afterthought.

“Could I say a word for a friend?” I asked.

“Yes,” he replied, looking at me in some wonder.

“Then I should like to ask you for your intervention, if possible in behalf of my cell mate, Elias Peabody. He is from the mountains, and there is nothing wicked in him. His crime, if crime it be, had something to do with the revenue laws in such a way that it fell under the jurisdiction of the State and not of the United States. The Governor has the power of pardoning or of commuting a sentence, won’t you say a word to him in behalf of Peabody?”

I spoke rapidly and earnestly because my heart was in the appeal, and the warden, remaining silent a moment or two, gave me so searching a look that I flushed.

“Why don’t you ask for clemency on your own account, Johnson?” he said, “you might get it.”

“Peabody needs it more,” I replied.

“I’ll see that he has it,” he said and he turned back to his desk.

I walked from his office into the prison yard, and stood there a little while before going into the blacksmith shop on the far side. It was a gray day with lowering clouds from the north, but I knew that the world beyond the walls was beautiful. I was tempted to go back to the warden and seek his influence in favor of commutation, but I put down the impulse which would have been a treason to Elias.

When I left the blacksmith shop that evening and returned to our cell I found that Elias was not well. He seemed thin, peaked and sallow, but he assured me it was no sickness.

“I’m just longin’ for the mountains, Charlie, and the chance to stretch my legs over twenty miles of space,” he said.

“I think you’ll be free before long, Elias,” I said, and I really meant it.

He did not ask me my reasons, but his wan face lighted up.

“I hope it’s true,” he said, “and Charlie I wish that we could go together in the spring, away out there in the mountains, where there ain’t any railroads and you can hear the wind singin’ to itself on the ridges. But Charlie I’d hate to go and leave you here.”

The unbidden tears rose to my eyes. Here was somebody who cared for me, only a long-legged ignorant mountaineer, my fellow convict who wore the stripes of disgrace like myself, but the fact moved me and made my heart warm. Yet it was no part of my plan ever to go with him into the mountains. So I shook my head and said:

“No Elias, you’ll go before I will, and it’s better: I couldn’t accompany you into the mountains, I’ve work elsewhere.”

“I guess that’s so, Charlie,” he said, “you an’ me are different. I belong up there in the mountains an’ your place is down here in the lowlands. I guess that we’ll each try to do our work when the time comes.”

He spoke from a heart filled with deep and earnest piety. I have known many good men—I thank God that I can now say it—but never one who had a simpler and better nature than Elias Peabody.

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