A Resuscitation
AFTER being dead twenty years, he
walked out into the sunshine.
It was as if the bones of a bleached skele-
ton should join themselves on some forgotten
plain, and look about them for the vanished
flesh.
To be dead it is not necessary to be in
the grave. There are places where the
worms creep about the heart instead of the
body.
The penitentiary is one of these.
David Culross had been in the penitentiary
twenty years. Now, with that worm-eaten
heart, he came out into liberty and looked
about him for the habiliments with which
he had formerly clothed himself, -- for
hope, self-respect, courage, pugnacity, and
industry.
But they had vanished and left no trace,
like the flesh of the dead men on the plains,
and so, morally unapparelled, in the hideous
skeleton of his manhood, he walked on down
the street under the mid-June sunshine.
You can understand, can you not, how a
skeleton might wish to get back into its
comfortable grave? David Culross had not
walked two blocks before he was seized
with an almost uncontrollable desire to beg
to be shielded once more in that safe and
shameful retreat from which he had just
been released. A horrible perception of the
largeness of the world swept over him.
Space and eternity could seem no larger
to the usual man than earth -- that snug
and insignificant planet -- looked to David
Culross.
"If I go back," he cried, despairingly,
looking up to the great building that arose
above the stony hills, "they will not take
me in." He was absolutely without a refuge,
utterly without a destination; he did not
have a hope. There was nothing he desired
except the surrounding of those four narrow
walls between which he had lain at night
and dreamed those ever-recurring dreams, --
dreams which were never prophecies or
promises, but always the hackneyed history
of what he had sacrificed by his crime, and
relinquished by his pride.
The men who passed him looked at him
with mingled amusement and pity. They
knew the "prison look," and they knew the
prison clothes. For though the State gives
to its discharged convicts clothes which are
like those of other men, it makes a hundred
suits from the same sort of cloth. The
police know the fabric, and even the citizens
recognize it. But, then, were each man
dressed in different garb he could not be
disguised. Every one knows in what dull
school that sidelong glance is learned, that
aimless drooping of the shoulders, that
rhythmic lifting of the heavy foot.
David Culross wondered if his will were
dead. He put it to the test. He lifted up
his head to a position which it had not held
for many miserable years. He put his hands
in his pockets in a pitiful attempt at non-
chalance, and walked down the street with
a step which was meant to be brisk, but
which was in fact only uncertain. In his
pocket were ten dollars. This much the
State equips a man with when it sends him
out of its penal halls. It gives him also
transportation to any point within reasonable
distance that he may desire to reach. Cul-
ross had requested a ticket to Chicago. He
naturally said Chicago. In the long color-
less days it had been in Chicago that all
those endlessly repeated scenes had been
laid. Walking up the street now with that
wavering ineffectual gait, these scenes came
back to surge in his brain like waters cease-
lessly tossed in a wind-swept basin.
There was the office, bare and clean, where
the young stoop-shouldered clerks sat writ-
ing. In their faces was a strange resem-
blance, just as there was in the backs of the
ledgers, and in the endless bills on the
spindles. If one of them laughed, it was
not with gayety, but with gratification at
the discomfiture of another. None of them
ate well. None of them were rested after
sleep. All of them rode on the stuffy one-
horse cars to and from their work. Sun-
days they lay in bed very late, and ate more
dinner than they could digest. There was
a certain fellowship among them, -- such fel-
lowship as a band of captives among canni-
bals might feel, each of them waiting with
vital curiosity to see who was the next to be
eaten. But of that fellowship that plans in
unison, suffers in sympathy, enjoys vicari-
ously, strengthens into friendship and com-
munion of soul they knew nothing. Indeed,
such camaraderie would have been disap-
proved of by the Head Clerk. He would
have looked on an emotion with exactly the
same displeasure that he would on an error
in the footing of the year's accounts. It was
tacitly understood that one reached the
proud position of Head Clerk by having no
emotions whatever.
Culross did not remember having been
born with a pen in his hand, or even with one
behind his ear; but certainly from the day he
had been let out of knickerbockers his con-
stant companion had been that greatly over-
estimated article. His father dying at a time
that cut short David's school-days, he went
out armed with his new knowledge of double-
entry, determined to make a fortune and a
commercial name. Meantime, he lived in a
suite of three rooms on West Madison Street
with his mother, who was a good woman,
and lived where she did that she might
be near her favorite meeting-house. She
prayed, and cooked bad dinners, principally
composed of dispiriting pastry. Her idea
of house-keeping was to keep the shades
down, whatever happened; and when David
left home in the evening for any purpose of
pleasure, she wept. David persuaded him-
self that he despised amusement, and went
to bed each night at half-past nine in a
folding bedstead in the front room, and, by
becoming absolutely stolid from mere vege-
tation, imagined that he was almost fit to be
a Head Clerk.
Walking down the street now after the
twenty years, thinking of these dead but inno-
cent days, this was the picture he saw; and as
he reflected upon it, even the despoiled and
desolate years just passed seemed richer by
contrast.
He reached the station thus dreaming, and
found, as he had been told when the warden
bade him good-by, that a train was to be at
hand directly bound to the city. A few
moments later he was on that train. Well
back in the shadow, and out of sight of the
other passengers, he gave himself up to the
enjoyment of the comfortable cushion. He
would willingly have looked from the win-
dow, -- green fields were new and wonderful;
drifting clouds a marvel; men, houses, horses,
farms, all a revelation, -- but those haunting
visions were at him again, and would not
leave brain or eye free for other things.
But the next scene had warmer tints. It
was the interior of a rich room, -- crimson
and amber fabrics, flowers, the gleam of a
statue beyond the drapings; the sound of a
tender piano unflinging a familiar melody,
and a woman. She was just a part of all the
luxury.
He himself, very timid and conscious of
his awkwardness, sat near, trying barrenly
to get some of his thoughts out of his brain
on to his tongue.
"Strange, isn't it," the woman broke in
on her own music, "that we have seen each
other so very often and never spoken? I've
often thought introductions were ridiculous.
Fancy seeing a person year in and year
out, and really knowing all about him, and
being perfectly acquainted with his name
-- at least his or her name, you know -- and
then never speaking! Some one comes
along, and says, 'Miss Le Baron, this is Mr.
Culross,' just as if one didn't know that all
the time! And there you are! You cease
to be dumb folks, and fall to talking, and
say a lot of things neither of you care about,
and after five or six weeks of time and sun-
dry meetings, get down to honestly saying
what you mean. I'm so glad we've got
through with that first stage, and can say
what we think and tell what we really like."
Then the playing began again, -- a harp-
like intermingling of soft sounds. Zoe Le
Baron's hands were very girlish. Every-
thing about her was unformed. Even her
mind was so. But all promised a full com-
pletion. The voice, the shoulders, the smile,
the words, the lips, the arms, the whole
mind and body, were rounding to maturity.
"Why do you never come to church in
the morning?" asks Miss Le Baron, wheel-
ing around on her piano-stool suddenly.
"You are only there at night, with your
mother."
"I go only on her account," replies David,
truthfully. "In the morning I am so tired
with the week's work that I rest at home.
I ought to go, I know."
"Yes, you ought," returns the young
woman, gravely. "It doesn't really rest
one to lie in bed like that. I've tried it at
boarding-school. It was no good whatever."
"Should you advise me," asks David,
in a confiding tone, "to arise early on
Sunday?"
The girl blushes a little. "By all means!"
she cries, her eyes twinkling, "and -- and
come to church. Our morning sermons are
really very much better than those in the
evening." And she plays a waltz, and what
with the music and the warmth of the room
and the perfume of the roses, a something
nameless and mystical steals over the poor
clerk, and swathes him about like the fumes
of opium. They are alone. The silence is
made deeper by that rhythmic unswelling
of sound. As the painter flushes the bare
wall into splendor, these emotions illumi-
nated his soul, and gave to it that high cour-
age that comes when men or women suddenly
realize that each life has its significance, --
their own lives no less than the lives of
others.
The man sitting there in the shadow in
that noisy train saw in his vision how the
lad arose and moved, like one under a spell,
toward the piano. He felt again the en-
chantment of the music-ridden quiet, of the
perfume, and the presence of the woman.
"Knowing you and speaking with you
have not made much difference with me,"
he whispers, drunk on the new wine of
passion, "for I have loved you since I saw
you first. And though it is so sweet to hear
you speak, your voice is no more beautiful
than I thought it would be. I have loved
you a long time, and I want to know --"
The broken man in the shadow remem-
bered how the lad stopped, astonished at his
boldness and his fluency, overcome suddenly
at the thought of what he was saying. The
music stopped with a discord. The girl
arose, trembling and scarlet.
"I would not have believed it of you,"
she cries, "to take advantage of me like
this, when I am alone -- and -- everything.
You know very well that nothing but trouble
could come to either of us from your telling
me a thing like that."
He puts his hands up to his face to keep
off her anger. He is trembling with
confusion.
Then she broke in penitently, trying to
pull his hands away from his hot face:
"Never mind! I know you didn't mean
anything. Be good, do, and don't spoil the
lovely times we have together. You know
very well father and mother wouldn't let us
see each other at all if they -- if they thought
you were saying anything such as you said
just now."
"Oh, but I can't help it!" cries the boy,
despairingly. "I have never loved anybody
at all till now. I don't mean not another
girl, you know. But you are the first being
I ever cared for. I sometimes think mother
cares for me because I pay the rent. And
the office -- you can't imagine what that is
like. The men in it are moving corpses.
They're proud to be that way, and so was I
till I knew you and learned what life was like.
All the happy moments I have had have
been here. Now, if you tell me that we are
not to care for each other --"
There was some one coming down the
hall. The curtain lifted. A middle-aged
man stood there looking at him.
"Culross," said he, "I'm disappointed in
you. I didn't mean to listen, but I couldn't
help hearing what you said just now. I
don't blame you particularly. Young men
will be fools. And I do not in any way
mean to insult you when I tell you to stop
your coming here. I don't want to see you
inside this door again, and after a while you
will thank me for it. You have taken a
very unfair advantage of my invitation. I
make allowances for your youth."
He held back the curtain for the lad to
pass out. David threw a miserable glance
at the girl. She was standing looking at
her father with an expression that David
could not fathom. He went into the hall,
picked up his hat, and walked out in
silence.
David wondered that night, walking the
chilly streets after he quitted the house, and
often, often afterward, if that comfortable
and prosperous gentleman, safe beyond the
perturbations of youth, had any idea of
what he had done. How COULD he know
anything of the black monotony of the life
of the man he turned from his door? The
"desk's dead wood" and all its hateful
slavery, the dull darkened rooms where his
mother prosed through endless evenings,
the bookless, joyless, hopeless existence
that had cramped him all his days rose up
before him, as a stretch of unbroken plain
may rise before a lost man till it maddens
him.
The bowed man in the car-seat remem-
bered with a flush of reminiscent misery
how the lad turned suddenly in his walk
and entered the door of a drinking-room
that stood open. It was very comfortable
within. The screens kept out the chill of
the autumn night, the sawdust-sprinkled
floor was clean, the tables placed near
together, the bar glittering, the attendants
white-aproned and brisk.
David liked the place, and he liked better
still the laughter that came from a room
within. It had a note in it a little different
from anything he had ever heard before in
his life, and one that echoed his mood. He
ventured to ask if he might go into the
farther room.
It does not mean much when most young
men go to a place like this. They take
their bit of unwholesome dissipation quietly
enough, and are a little coarser and more
careless each time they indulge in it, perhaps.
But certainly their acts, whatever gradual
deterioration they may indicate, bespeak no
sudden moral revolution. With this young
clerk it was different. He was a worse man
from the moment he entered the door, for
he did violence to his principles; he killed
his self-respect.
He had been paid at the office that night,
and he had the money -- a week's miserable
pittance -- in his pocket. His every action
revealed the fact that he was a novice in
recklessness. His innocent face piqued the
men within. They gave him a welcome
that amazed him. Of course the rest of the
evening was a chaos to him. The throat
down which he poured the liquor was as
tender as a child's. The men turned his
head with their ironical compliments. Their
boisterous good-fellowship was as intoxicat-
ing to this poor young recluse as the liquor.
It was the revulsion from this feeling,
when he came to a consciousness that the
men were laughing at him and not with
him, that wrecked his life. He had gone
from beer to whiskey, and from whiskey to
brandy, by this time, at the suggestion of
the men, and was making awkward lunges
with a billiard cue, spurred on by the mock-
ing applause of the others. One young
fellow was particularly hilarious at his
expense. His jokes became insults, or so
they seemed to David.
A quarrel followed, half a jest on the part
of the other, all serious as far as David was
concerned. And then -- Well, who could
tell how it happened? The billiard cue was
in David's hand, and the skull of the jester
was split, a horrible gaping thing, revolt-
ingly animal.
David never saw his home again. His
mother gave it out in church that her heart
was broken, and she wrote a letter to David
begging him to reform. She said she
would never cease to pray for him, that
he might return to grace. He had an
attorney, an impecunious and very aged
gentleman, whose life was a venerable
failure, and who talked so much about his
personal inconveniences from indigestion
that he forgot to take a very keen interest
in the concerns of his client. David's trial
made no sensation. He did not even have
the cheap sympathy of the morbid. The
court-room was almost empty the dull
spring day when the east wind beat against
the window, jangling the loose panes all
through the reading of the verdict.
Twenty years!
Twenty years in the penitentiary!
David looked up at the judge and smiled.
Men have been known to smile that way
when the car-wheel crashes over their legs,
or a bullet lets the air through their lungs.
All that followed would have seemed
more terrible if it had not appeared to be
so remote. David had to assure himself
over and over that it was really he who was
put in that disgraceful dress, and locked in
that shameful walk from corridor to work-
room, from work-room to chapel. The work
was not much more monotonous than that
to which he had been accustomed in the
office. Here, as there, one was reproved
for not doing the required amount, but never
praised for extraordinary efforts. Here, as
there, the workers regarded each other with
dislike and suspicion. Here, as there, work
was a penalty and not a pleasure.
It is the nights that are to be dreaded in
a penitentiary. Speech eases the brain of
free men; but the man condemned to eter-
nal silence is bound to endure torments.
Thought, which might be a diversion, be-
comes a curse; it is a painful disease which
becomes chronic. It does not take long to
forget the days of the week and the months
of the year when time brings no variance.
David drugged himself on dreams. He
knew it was weakness, but it was the wine
of forgetfulness, and he indulged in it. He
went over and over, in endless repetition,
every scene in which Zoe Le Baron had
figured.
He learned by a paper that she had gone
to Europe. He was glad of that. For there
were hours in which he imagined that his
fate might have caused her distress -- not
much, of course, but perhaps an occasional
hour of sympathetic regret. But it was
pleasanter not to think of that. He pre-
ferred to remember the hours they had
spent together while she was teaching him
the joy of life.
How lovely her gray eyes were! Deep,
yet bright, and full of silent little speeches.
The rooms in which he imagined her as
moving were always splendid; the gowns
she wore were of rustling silk. He never in
any dream, waking or sleeping, associated
her with poverty or sorrow or pain. Gay
and beautiful, she moved from city to city,
in these visions of David's, looking always
at wonderful things, and finding laughter in
every happening.
It was six months after his entrance into
his silent abode that a letter came for him.
"By rights, Culross," said the warden, "I
should not give this letter to you. It isn't
the sort we approve of. But you're in for
a good spell, and if there is anything that
can make life seem more tolerable, I don't
know but you're entitled to it. At least,
I'm not the man to deny it to you."
This was the letter: --
"MY DEAR FRIEND, -- I hope you do not
think that all these months, when you have
been suffering so terribly, I have been think-
ing of other things! But I am sure you
know the truth. You know that I could
not send you word or come to see you, or
I would have done it. When I first heard of
what you had done, I saw it all as it hap-
pened, -- that dreadful scene, I mean, in the
saloon. I am sure I have imagined every-
thing just as it was. I begged papa to help
you, but he was very angry. You see,
papa was so peculiar. He thought more
of the appearances of things, perhaps, than
of facts. It infuriated him to think of me
as being concerned about you or with you.
I did not know he could be so angry, and
his anger did not die, but for days it cast
such a shadow over me that I used to wish
I was dead. Only I would not disobey him,
and now I am glad of that. We were in
France three months, and then, coming home,
papa died. It was on the voyage. I wish
he had asked me to forgive him, for then
I think I could have remembered him with
more tenderness. But he did nothing of
the kind. He did not seem to think he had
done wrong in any way, though I feel that
some way we might have saved you. I am
back here in Chicago in the old home. But
I shall not stay in this house. It is so large
and lonesome, and I always see you and
father facing each other angrily there in the
parlor when I enter it. So I am going to
get me some cosey rooms in another part of
the city, and take my aunt, who is a sweet
old lady, to live with me; and I am going
to devote my time -- all of it -- and all of my
brains to getting you out of that terrible
place. What is the use of telling me that
you are a murderer? Do I not know you
could not be brought to hurt anything?
I suppose you must have killed that poor
man, but then it was not you, it was that
dreadful drink -- it was Me! That is what
continually haunts me. If I had been a
braver girl, and spoken the words that were
in my heart, you would not have gone into
that place. You would be innocent to-day.
It was I who was responsible for it all. I
let father kill your heart right there before
me, and never said a word. Yet I knew
how it was with you, and -- this is what I
ought to have said then, and what I must
say now -- and all the time I felt just as
you did. I thought I should die when I
saw you go away, and knew you would
never come back again. Only I was so
selfish, I was so wicked, I would say nothing.
"I have no right to be comfortable and
hopeful, and to have friends, with you shut
up from liberty and happiness. I will not
have those comfortable rooms, after all.
I will live as you do. I will live alone
in a bare room. For it is I who am guilty!
And then I will feel that I also am being
punished.
"Do you hate me? Perhaps my telling
you now all these things, and that I felt
toward you just as you did toward me, will
not make you happy. For it may be that
you despise me.
"Anyway, I have told you the truth now.
I will go as soon as I hear from you to a
lawyer, and try to find out how you may be
liberated. I am sure it can be done when
the facts are known.
"Poor boy! How I do hope you have
known in your heart that I was not for-
getting you. Indeed, day or night, I have
thought of nothing else. Now I am free to
help you. And be sure, whatever happens,
that I am working for you.
"ZOE LE BARON."
That was all. Just a girlish, constrained
letter, hardly hinting at the hot tears that
had been shed for many weary nights, coyly
telling of the impatient young love and all
the maidenly shame.
David permitted himself to read it only
once. Then a sudden resolution was born --
a heroic one. Before he got the letter he
was a crushed and unsophisticated boy;
when he had read it, and absorbed its full
significance, he became suddenly a man,
capable of a great sacrifice.
"I return your letter," he wrote, without
superscription, "and thank you for your
anxiety about me. But the truth is, I had
forgotten all about you in my trouble. You
were not in the least to blame for what hap-
pened. I might have known I would come
to such an end. You thought I was good,
of course; but it is not easy to find out the
life of a young man. It is rather mortifying
to have a private letter sent here, because
the warden reads them all. I hope you will
enjoy yourself this winter, and hasten to
forget one who had certainly forgotten you
till reminded by your letter, which I return.
"Respectfully,
"DAVID CULROSS."
That night some deep lines came into
his face which never left it, and which made
him look like a man of middle age.
He never doubted that his plan would
succeed; that, piqued and indignant at his
ingratitude, she would hate him, and in a
little time forget he ever lived, or remember
him only to blush with shame at her past
association with him. He saw her happy,
loved, living the usual life of women, with
all those things that make life rich.
For there in the solitude an understand-
ing of deep things came to him. He who
thought never to have a wife grew to know
what the joy of it must be. He perceived
all the subtle rapture of wedded souls. He
learned what the love of children was, the
pride of home, the unselfish ambition for
success that spurs men on. All the emo-
tions passed in procession at night before
him, tricked out in palpable forms.
A burst of girlish tears would dissipate
whatever lingering pity Zoe felt for him.
How often he said that! With her sensi-
tiveness she would be sure to hate a man
who had mortified her.
So he fell to dreaming of her again as
moving among happy and luxurious scenes,
exquisitely clothed, with flowers on her
bosom and jewels on her neck; and he saw
men loving her, and was glad, and saw her
at last loving the best of them, and told
himself in the silence of the night that
it was as he wished.
Yet always, always, from weary week to
weary week, he rehearsed the scenes. They
were his theatre, his opera, his library, his
lecture hall.
He rehearsed them again there on the
cars. He never wearied of them. To be
sure, other thoughts had come to him at
night. Much that to most men seems com-
plex and puzzling had grown to appear
simple to him. In a way his brain had
quickened and deepened through the years
of solitude. He had thought out a great
many things. He had read a few good
books and digested them, and the visions in
his heart had kept him from being bitter.
Yet, suddenly confronted with liberty,
turned loose like a pastured colt, without
master or rein, he felt only confusion and
dismay. He might be expected to feel ex-
ultation. He experienced only fright. It
is precisely the same with the liberated colt.
The train pulled into a bustling station,
in which the multitudinous noises were
thrown back again from the arched iron
roof. The relentless haste of all the people
was inexpressibly cruel to the man who
looked from the window wondering whither
he would go, and if, among all the thousands
that made up that vast and throbbing city,
he would ever find a friend.
For a moment David longed even for
that unmaternal mother who had forgotten
him in the hour of his distress; but she had
been dead for many years.
The train stopped. Every one got out.
David forced himself to his feet and followed.
He had been driven back into the world.
It would have seemed less terrible to have
been driven into a desert. He walked
toward the great iron gates, seeing the
people and hearing the noises confusedly.
As he entered the space beyond the grat-
ing some one caught him by the arm. It
was a little middle-aged woman in plain
clothes, and with sad gray eyes.
"Is this David?" said she.
He did not speak, but his face answered
her.
"I knew you were coming to-day. I've
waited all these years, David. You didn't
think I believed what you said in that letter
did you? This way, David, -- this is the
way home."
-THE END-
Elia W. Peattie's short story: A Resuscitation
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