The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
Springfield and hold long private conferences with him. He was now
between two fires. On the one hand, his niece was imploring him to
pardon her husband; on the other were the leaders, insisting that he
stand to his plain duty as chief magistrate of the State, and place no
further bar to Clayton's execution. Duty won in the struggle, and the
Governor gave his word that he would not again respite the condemned
man. This was two weeks ago. Mrs. Clayton now said:
'Now that you have given your word, my last hope is gone, for I know
you will never go back from it. But you have done the best you could for
John, and I have no reproaches for you. You love him, and you love me,
and we know that if you could honourable save him, you would do it. I
will go to him now, and be what help I can to him, and get what comfort
I may out of the few days that are left to us before the night comes
which will have no end for me in life. You will be with me that day? You
will not let me bear it alone?'
'I will take you to him myself, poor child, and I will be near you to
the last.'
By the governor's command, Clayton was now allowed every indulgence he
might ask for which could interest his mind and soften the hardships of
his imprisonment. His wife and child spent the days with him; I was his
companion by night. He was removed from the narrow cell which he had
occupied during such a dreary stretch of time, and given the chief
warden's roomy and comfortable quarters. His mind was always busy with
the catastrophe of his life, and with the slaughtered inventor, and he
now took the fancy that he would like to have the telelectroscope and
divert his mind with it. He had his wish. The connection was made with
the international telephone-station, and day by day, and night by night,
he called up one corner of the globe after another, and looked upon its
life, and studied its strange sights, and spoke with its people, and
realised that by grace of this marvellous instrument he was almost as
free as the birds of the air, although a prisoner under locks and bars.
He seldom spoke, and I never interrupted him when he was absorbed in
this amusement. I sat in his parlour and read, and smoked, and the
nights were very quiet and reposefully sociable, and I found them
pleasant. Now and then I would her him say 'Give me Yedo;' next, 'Give
me Hong-Kong;' next, 'Give me Melbourne.' And I smoked on, and read in
comfort, while he wandered about the remote underworld, where the
sun was shining in the sky, and the people were at their daily work.
Sometimes the talk that came from those far regions through the
microphone attachment interested me, and I listened.
Yesterday--I keep calling it yesterday, which is quite natural, for
certain reasons--the instrument remained unused, and that also was
natural, for it was the eve of the execution day. It was spent in tears
and lamentations and farewells. The governor and the wife and child
remained until a quarter-past eleven at night, and the scenes I
witnessed were pitiful to see. The execution was to take place at four
in the morning. A little after eleven a sound of hammering broke out
upon the still night, and there was a glare of light, and the child
cried out, 'What is that, papa?' and ran to the window before she could
be stopped and clapped her small hands and said, 'Oh, come and see,
mamma--such a pretty thing they are making!' The mother knew--and
fainted. It was the gallows!
She was carried away to her lodging, poor woman, and Clayton and I
were alone--alone, and thinking, brooding, dreaming. We might have been
statues, we sat so motionless and still. It was a wild night, for winter
was come again for a moment, after the habit of this region in the early
spring. The sky was starless and black, and a strong wind was blowing
from the lake. The silence in the room was so deep that all outside
sounds seemed exaggerated by contrast with it. These sounds were fitting
ones: they harmonised with the situation and the conditions: the boom
and thunder of sudden storm-gusts among the roofs and chimneys, then the
dying down into moanings and wailings about the eaves and angles; now
and then a gnashing and lashing rush of sleet along the window-panes;
and always the muffled and uncanny hammering of the gallows-builders in
the court-yard. After an age of this, another sound--far off, and coming
smothered and faint through the riot of the tempest--a bell tolling
twelve! Another age, and it was tolled again. By-and-by, again. A dreary
long interval after this, then the spectral sound floated to us once
more--one, two three; and this time we caught our breath; sixty minutes
of life left!
Clayton rose, and stood by the window, and looked up into the black sky,
and listened to the thrashing sleet and the piping wind; then he said:
'That a dying man's last of earth should be--this!' After a little he
said: 'I must see the sun again--the sun!' and the next moment he was
feverishly calling: 'China! Give me China--Peking!'
I was strangely stirred, and said to myself: 'To think that it is a
mere human being who does this unimaginable miracle--turns winter into
summer, night into day, storm into calm, gives the freedom of the great
globe to a prisoner in his cell, and the sun in his naked splendour to a
man dying in Egyptian darkness.'
I was listening.
'What light! what brilliancy! what radiance!... This is Peking?'
'Yes.'
'The time?'
'Mid-afternoon.'
'What is the great crowd for, and in such gorgeous costumes? What masses
and masses of rich colour and barbaric magnificence! And how they flash
and glow and burn in the flooding sunlight! What is the occasion of it
all?'
'The coronation of our new emperor--the Czar.'
'But I thought that that was to take place yesterday.'
'This is yesterday--to you.'
'Certainly it is. But my mind is confused, these days: there are reasons
for it.... Is this the beginning of the procession?'
'Oh, no; it began to move an hour ago.'
'Is there much more of it still to come?'
'Two hours of it. Why do you sigh?'
'Because I should like to see it all.'
'And why can't you?'
'I have to go--presently.'
'You have an engagement?'
After a pause, softly: 'Yes.' After another pause: 'Who are these in the
splendid pavilion?'
'The imperial family, and visiting royalties from here and there and
yonder in the earth.'
'And who are those in the adjoining pavilions to the right and left?'
'Ambassadors and their families and suites to the right; unofficial
foreigners to the left.'
'If you will be so good, I--'
Boom! That distant bell again, tolling the half-hour faintly through
the tempest of wind and sleet. The door opened, and the governor and the
mother and child entered--the woman in widow's weeds! She fell upon her
husband's breast in a passion of sobs, and I--I could not stay; I could
not bear it. I went into the bedchamber, and closed the door. I sat
there waiting--waiting--waiting, and listening to the rattling sashes
and the blustering of the storm. After what seemed a long, long time, I
heard a rustle and movement in the parlour, and knew that the clergyman
and the sheriff and the guard were come. There was some low-voiced
talking; then a hush; then a prayer, with a sound of sobbing; presently,
footfalls--the departure for the gallows; then the child's happy voice:
'Don't cry now, mamma, when we've got papa again, and taking him home.'
The door closed; they were gone. I was ashamed: I was the only friend of
the dying man that had no spirit, no courage. I stepped into the room,
and said I would be a man and would follow. But we are made as we are
made, and we cannot help it. I did not go.
I fidgeted about the room nervously, and presently went to the window
and softly raised it--drawn by that dread fascination which the terrible
and the awful exert--and looked down upon the court-yard. By the
garish light of the electric lamps I saw the little group of privileged
witnesses, the wife crying on her uncle's breast, the condemned man
standing on the scaffold with the halter around his neck, his arms
strapped to his body, the black cap on his head, the sheriff at his side
with his hand on the drop, the clergyman in front of him with bare head
and his book in his hand.
'I am the resurrection and the life--'
I turned away. I could not listen; I could not look. I did not know
whither to go or what to do. Mechanically and without knowing it, I put
my eye to that strange instrument, and there was Peking and the Czar's
procession! The next moment I was leaning out of the window, gasping,
suffocating, trying to speak, but dumb from the very imminence of the
necessity of speaking. The preacher could speak, but I, who had such
need of words--'And may God have mercy upon your soul. Amen.'
The sheriff drew down the black cap, and laid his hand upon the lever. I
got my voice.
'Stop, for God's sake! The man is innocent. Come here and see Szczepanik
face to face!'
Hardly three minutes later the governor had my place at the window, and
was saying:
'Strike off his bonds and set him free!'
Three minutes later all were in the parlour again. The reader will
imagine the scene; I have no need to describe it. It was a sort of mad
orgy of joy.
A messenger carried word to Szczepanik in the pavilion, and one could
see the distressed amazement in his face as he listened to the tale.
Then he came to his end of the line, and talked with Clayton and the
governor and the others; and the wife poured out her gratitude upon him
for saving her husband's life, and in her deep thankfulness she kissed
him at twelve thousand miles' range.
The telelectroscopes of the world were put to service now, and for
many hours the kings and queens of many realms (with here and there
a reporter) talked with Szczepanik, and praised him; and the few
scientific societies which had not already made him an honorary member
conferred that grace upon him.
How had he come to disappear from among us? It was easily explained. He
had not grown used to being a world-famous person, and had been forced
to break away from the lionising that was robbing him of all privacy and
repose. So he grew a beard, put on coloured glasses, disguised himself
a little in other ways, then took a fictitious name, and went off to
wander about the earth in peace.
Such is the tale of the drama which began with an inconsequential
quarrel in Vienna in the spring of 1898, and came near ending as a
tragedy in the spring of 1904.
Mark Twain
II
Correspondence of the 'London Times'
Chicago, April 5, 1904
To-day, by a clipper of the Electric Line, and the latter's Electric
Railway connections, arrived an envelope from Vienna, for Captain
Clayton, containing an English farthing. The receiver of it was a good
deal moved. He called up Vienna, and stood face to face with Mr. K., and
said:
'I do not need to say anything: you can see it all in my face. My wife
has the farthing. Do not be afraid--she will not throw it away.'
M.T.
III
Correspondence of the 'London Times'
Chicago, April 23, 1904
Now that the after developments of the Clayton case have run their
course and reached a finish, I will sum them up. Clayton's romantic
escape from a shameful death steeped all this region in an enchantment
of wonder and joy--during the proverbial nine days. Then the sobering
process followed, and men began to take thought, and to say: 'But a man
was killed, and Clayton killed him.' Others replied: 'That is true: we
have been overlooking that important detail; we have been led away by
excitement.'
The telling soon became general that Clayton ought to be tried again.
Measures were taken accordingly, and the proper representations conveyed