Me■decine intensive, re■animation, urgences et de■faillances visce■rales aigue■s 6e édition. Edition Cemir Collège Des Enseignants De Médecine Intensive
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Liste des collaborateurs
■ Pierre Auloge, interne, service d'imagerie, CHU de Reims
■ Marie-Pierre Baron-Sarrabère, PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Alain Bonafé, PU-PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Gui de Chauliac, CHU de Montpellier
■ David Byl, PH, service de neuroradiologie, Hôpital Gui de Chauliac, CHU de Montpellier
■ Kathia Chaumoitre, PU-PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Nord, AP-HM, CHU de Marseille
■ Arthur Coget, CCA, service de neuroradiologie, Hôpital Gui de Chauliac, CHU de Montpellier
■ Stéphanie Coze, PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Nord, AP-HM, CHU de Marseille
■ Catherine Cyteval, PU-PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Alexia Dabadie, CCA, service de radiopédiatrie, Hôpital Timone Enfant, AP-HM, CHU de Marseille
■ Claire Faget, PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Aymeric Hamard, CCA, service de neuroradiologie, Hôpital Gui de Chauliac, CHU de Montpellier
■ Jean-Francois Heautot, PH, service d'imagerie, CHU de Rennes
■ Damien Laneelle, PH, service de médecine vasculaire, CHU de Caen
■ Ahmed Larbi, PH, service d'imagerie, CHU de Nîmes
■ Antoine Larralde, PH, service d'imagerie, CHU de Rennes
■ Mathieu Lederlin, PU-PH, service d'imagerie, CHU de Rennes
■ Guillaume Mahe, PU-PH, service de médecine vasculaire, CHU de Caen
■ Caroline Mandoul, CCA, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Nicolas Menjot de Champfleur, MCU-PH, service de neuroradiologie, Hôpital Gui de Chauliac, CHU de Montpellier
■ Ingrid Millet, PU-PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Hélène Mohammad, AH, service d'imagerie digestive, Hôpital Pontchaillou, CHU de Rennes
■ Céline Orliac, CCA, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Michel Panuel, PU-PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Nord, AP-HM, CHU de Marseille
■ Ugo Scemama, CCA, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Nord, AP-HM, CHU de Marseille
■ Xavier Stefanovic, CCA, service de neuroradiologie, Hôpital Gui de Chauliac, CHU de Montpellier
■ Patrice Taourel, PU-PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Marine Tas, interne, service d'imagerie, CHU de Rennes
■ Yann Thouvenin, PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Cécile Verheyden, PH, service d'imagerie médicale, Hôpital Lapeyronie, CHU de Montpellier
■ Marc Zins, chef de service, service d'imagerie médicale, Groupe Hospitalier Paris Saint-Joseph
EMETCG état de mal épileptique tonicoclonique généralisé
EP embolie pulmonaire
EPR encéphalopathie postérieure réversible
ETO échocardiographie transœsophagienne
ETT échocardiographie transthoracique
EVA échelle visuelle analogique
FSMA fracture séparation du massif articulaire
HAS Haute autorité de santé
HED hématome extradural
HIV hémorragie intraventriculaire
HSA hémorragie sous-arachnoïdienne
HSD hématome sous-dural
HTAP hypertension artérielle pulmonaire
IIA invagination intestinale aiguë
IR index de résistance
IRM imagerie par résonance magnétique
LAD lésions axonales diffuses
LCR liquide céphalorachidien
LCS liquide cérébrospinal
LEC lithotripsie extracorporelle
LLP ligament longitudinal postérieur
LPAC low phospholipid-associated cholelithiasis
ME mort encéphalique
MIP maximum intensity projection
MPR multi-planar resolution
MTEV maladie thrombo-embolique veineuse
NORSE new onset refractory status epilepticus
OMG occlusion mécanique du grêle
PDC produit de contraste
PIC pression intracrânienne
SCIWORA spinal cord injury without radiographic abnormality
SDRA syndrome de détresse respiratoire aiguë
SHP sténose hypertrophique du pylore
SVCR syndrome de vasoconstriction cérébrale réversible
SWI susceptibility-weighted imaging
TDM tomodensitométrie
TTA tubérosité tibiale antérieure
TVC thrombose veineuse cérébrale
TVP thrombose veineuse profonde
UIV urographie intraveineuse
VD ventricule droit
VG ventricule gauche
VIH virus de l'immunodéficience humaine
VRS virus respiratoire syncytial
Avant-propos
L'imagerie d'urgence constitue un champ très particulier dans le domaine de l'imagerie médicale :
■ c'est en urgence que sont réalisés le plus d'examens avec un impact fort, mais également le plus d'examens inutiles ;
■ ce sont souvent les plus jeunes qui officient en imagerie d'urgence, comme d'ailleurs dans les autres domaines de l'urgence, alors que la prise en charge des urgences nécessite de l'expérience pour être interventionniste quand il le faut, et seulement quand il le faut ;
■ l'imagerie d'urgence demande des connaissances et des compétences très spécifiques en même temps qu'une grande polyvalence ;
■ les questions posées par le demandeur d'imagerie sont très ouvertes, il ne s'agit pas de simplement mesurer une cible tumorale. Pourtant les réponses doivent être rapides afin de pouvoir s'adapter à l'éventuel caractère vital de l'urgence mais aussi à la pression due au flux des patients. On relève en effet plus de trente scanners par nuit dans cer taines grosses structures ;
■ enfin, si la question de la pertinence de l'imagerie est de plus en plus prégnante et très largement relayée par les pouvoirs publics, c'est bien dans le domaine de l'imagerie d'urgence que le nombre d'examens réalisés a le plus augmenté ces dernières années.
Ainsi, parce que les besoins sont multiples et qu'aux urgences il faut faire juste, vite et simple, nous avons conçu ce livre en suivant un cahier des charges très précis :
■ des auteurs qui, s'ils sont des spécialistes d'organe, ont gardé une polarité forte en imagerie d'urgence et restent très impliqués dans la prise de gardes et astreintes ;
■ des phrases courtes, des tableaux synthétiques, des encarts soulignant les points importants, des stratégies, des pièges diagnostiques bien montrés et surtout plus de 1000 illustrations ;
■ le traitement de tous les domaines de l'imagerie d'urgence, adulte et enfant, imagerie non traumatique et traumatique, urgences vitales ou fonctionnelles ;
■ des chapitres construits à partir de situations cliniques quotidiennes ;
■ une part belle donnée à la TDM et à l'IRM, en perpétuelle augmentation en urgence, mais sans oublier l'échographie (en particulier en pédiatrie et chez l'adulte jeune) ainsi que la radiologie générale (en imagerie ostéoarticulaire notamment).
Nous espérons que cet ouvrage, dont le format lui permet d'être glissé dans la poche d'une blouse, saura rencontrer ses lecteurs, et surtout qu'il apportera des réponses aux questions que nous nous posons toutes et tous à deux heures du matin, seul(e)s derrière notre console d'imagerie.
Patrice Taourel
Épidémiologie des douleurs abdominales
PLAN DU CHAPITRE
■ GÉNÉRALITÉS
■ ORIENTATION DIAGNOSTIQUE EN FONCTION DU SIÈGE DE LA DOULEUR
Les douleurs abdominales aiguës non traumatiques sont définies comme des douleurs abdominales évoluant depuis moins d'une semaine. Il s'agit d'un motif de consultation qui peut représenter jusqu'à 10 % des admissions dans un service d'urgences, avec une sanction chirurgicale chez moins de 10 % de ces patients. L'enjeu est d'identifier les patients qui nécessitent cette chirurgie en urgence, dont la mortalité et la morbidité seront augmentées en cas de retard diagnostique.
Les douleurs abdominales aiguës répondent à des causes variées. La fréquence respective de ces différentes causes n'est approchée que de façon imparfaite par deux enquêtes multicentriques, l'une britannique (OMGE), l'autre française (ARC), datant du début des années 1980. Ces études sont imparfaites car réalisées en milieu chirurgical et donc ne reflétant pas la prévalence des douleurs abdominales aiguës vues aux urgences dans lesquelles dominent les causes urinaires : colique néphrétique en première intention, mais aussi pyélonéphrite et, de façon plus accessoire, globe vésical.
Les résultats de ces deux enquêtes sont colligés dans le tableau 1.1.
Cette prévalence dépend aussi beaucoup de l'âge des patients : après 50 ans, les cholécystites sont plus fréquentes que les appendicites et les occlusions et diverticulites augmentent en fréquence.
Tableau 1.1.
Répartition diagnostique des douleurs abdominales aiguës selon les études OMGE et ARC .
097 cas)
772 cas) Douleur abdominale non spécifique
gastroduodénal perforé
ORIENTATION
DIAGNOSTIQUE EN FONCTION
DU SIÈGE DE LA DOULEUR
Le diagnostic de la cause d'une douleur abdominale aiguë par la seule clinique est parfois difficile, et la plupart des études publiées dans la littérature qui n'incluent pas l'imagerie retrouvent un pourcentage d'erreurs supérieur à 50 %. Les hypothèses cliniques sont en grande partie fondées sur le siège de la douleur abdominale. En fonction de ce siège, une hypothèse diagnostique prioritaire sera formulée parce qu'elle correspond à une pathologie fréquente et/ou parce qu'elle nécessite une prise en charge thérapeutique spécifique ou urgente, et un certain nombre de diagnostics différentiels seront discutés (tableau 1.2).
Tableau 1.2.
syndrome douloureux abdominal aigu – orientation diagnostique selon le siège de la douleur . siège
Hypochondre droit
Diagnostic principal Diagnostic différentiel
Complication de la lithiase biliaire :
– colique hépatique
– cholécystite
– angiocholite
Épigastre Pancréatite
Lombaire
Fosse iliaque droite
Colique néphrétique sur calcul
– Hépatite virale, alcoolique ou toxique
–
Abcès hépatique
– Congestion hépatique
– Ulcère gastroduodénal
– Appendicite sous-hépatique
– Pancréatite
– Périhépatite
– Colique néphrétique et pyélonéphrite
– Pleuropneumopathie de la base droite
– Colique hépatique et cholécystite
– Atteinte inflammatoire ou ulcéreuse gastroduodénale
– Perforation digestive
– Infarctus du myocarde
– Torsion du grand épiploon
– Pyélonéphrite non compliquée ou compliquée (néphrite bactérienne focale, abcès)
– Atteinte rachidienne ou discale
– Appendicite rétrocæcale (à droite)
– Colite diverticulaire (à gauche)
– Fissuration d'anévrisme de l'aorte
– Pathologie gynécologique
Appendicite
– Adénolymphite mésentérique
– Iléite inflammatoire
– Diverticulite
– Colite neutropénique
– Torsion d'appendice épiploïque ou du grand épiploon
– Colique néphrétique et pyélonéphrite
– Pathologie gynécologique
– Colopathie fonctionnelle
(
Tableau 1.2. suite
Fosse iliaque gauche
Sigmoïdite
Pelvis Grossesse
extra-utérine
Diffuse + état de choc Rupture d'anévrisme de l'aorte
– Colite infectieuse, inflammatoire
– ou ischémique
– Néoplasie sigmoïdienne
– Torsion d'appendice épiploïque ou du grand épiploon
– Colique néphrétique et pyélonéphrite
– Pathologie gynécologique
– Colopathie fonctionnelle
– Dysménorrhée
– Torsion/rupture de kyste de l'ovaire
– Nécrobiose d'un fibrome
– Infection uretéro-annexielle
– Appendicite pelvienne
– Colite
– Colique néphrétique
– Globe vésical chez le sujet âgé
– Saignement rétropéritonéal d'une tumeur rénale ou surrénalienne
– Saignement intrapéritonéal d'une tumeur hépatique ou gastrique
– Rupture d'anévrisme des artères digestives
– Grossesse extra-utérine rompue
– Hématome pariétal diffusant en sous-péritonéal
– Infarctus du myocarde
– Infarctus du mésentère
– Perforation digestive
– Pancréatite
– Insuffisance surrénalienne aiguë
En plus de la prévalence de la maladie et du siège de la douleur, un certain nombre de signes cliniques permettent de différencier quelques grands cadres nosologiques :
■ abdomen urgent infecté ;
■ abdomen urgent occlus ;
■ abdomen urgent ischémique ;
■ abdomen urgent hémorragique. Le contexte épidémiologique (sexe, âge), le siège de la douleur et l'intégration du tableau clinique dans ces cadres nosologiques seront la base de la stratégie diagnostique.
Douleurs aiguës de l'hypochondre droit –éliminer une lithiase biliaire compliquée
PLAN DU CHAPITRE
■ RAPPEL ÉPIDÉMIOLOGIQUE
■ TECHNIQUES D'IMAGERIE
• Abdomen sans préparation
• Échographie
• Tomodensitométrie
• Cholangio-IRM et écho-endoscopie
■ RÉSULTATS DE L'IMAGERIE
• Lithiase biliaire symptomatique ou compliquée
• Douleurs sans rapport avec une pathologie biliaire
Les douleurs de l'hypochondre droit représentent une situation extrêmement fréquente en pratique clinique quotidienne. Elles orientent vers une atteinte de la sphère hépatobiliaire et en premier lieu vers une lithiase biliaire symptomatique ou compliquée. La prévalence de la lithiase biliaire est importante, touchant 15 % des adultes en France et augmentant régulièrement avec l'âge. Un quart des sujets ayant un calcul biliaire présenteront des symptômes (colique hépatique) et/ou des complications (cholécystite aiguë, migration cholédocienne). La recherche d'une cholécystite et d'une angiocholite est donc le premier objectif de l'imagerie devant des douleurs fébriles de l'hypochondre droit.
TECHNIQUES D'IMAGERIE
ABDOMEN SANS PRÉPARATION
Cet examen n'a plus d'intérêt dans la recherche d'une cause biliaire à une douleur abdominale.
ÉCHOGRAPHIE
L'échographie est l'examen de première intention pour l'exploration de la vésicule biliaire et des voies biliaires intra- et extrahépatiques. La voie biliaire principale, toujours bien explorée à l'étage pédiculaire haut, peut être plus difficile à examiner dans sa partie basse du fait de superpositions gazeuses digestives. Chez les patients minces, lorsque la vésicule biliaire est superficielle, l'examen de la vésicule biliaire, voire de la voie biliaire principale, peut être affiné par l'utilisation d'une sonde de haute fréquence, plus performante pour la recherche de petits calculs ou de petits amas de boue biliaire.
TOMODENSITOMÉTRIE
La tomodensitométrie (TDM) a des performances inférieures à celles de l'échographie pour la recherche de calculs vésiculaires, puisqu'environ 30 % des calculs ont la même densité que la bile et ne sont donc pas individualisés. La TDM a l'intérêt de permettre l'exploration, souvent plus facile qu'en échographie, de la partie basse de la voie biliaire principale, et de l'environnement périvésiculaire. Elle est surtout utilisée dans les cholécystites compliquées ou dans la recherche de certains diagnostics différentiels d'origine pancréatique ou digestive (appendicite sous-hépatique, perforation d'un ulcère gastroduodénal). Si un scanner est indiqué après une échographie non contributive, il doit être réalisé dans un premier temps sans injection de produit de contraste pour mieux identifier un calcul de la voie biliaire principale s'il est peu calcifié.
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see the clothes toss, and hear the hard breathing, and know that it was starving.
Ten, twelve days, a fortnight passed, and it still lived. The pulsations of the heart, however, were daily growing fainter, and had now nearly ceased altogether. It was evident that the creature was dying for want of sustenance. While this terrible life-struggle was going on, I felt miserable. I could not sleep of nights. Horrible as the creature was, it was pitiful to think of the pangs it was suffering.
At last it died. Hammond and I found it cold and stiff one morning in the bed. The heart had ceased to beat, the lungs to inspire. We hastened to bury it in the garden. It was a strange funeral, the dropping of that viewless corpse into the damp hole. The cast of its form I gave to Doctor X——, who keeps it in his museum in Tenth Street.
As I am on the eve of a long journey from which I may not return, I have drawn up this narrative of an event the most singular that has ever come to my knowledge.
NOTE.
[It is rumored that the proprietors of a well-known museum in this city have made arrangements with Dr. X—— to exhibit to the public the singular cast which Mr. Escott deposited with him. So extraordinary a history cannot fail to attract universal attention.]
FRANCIS BRET HARTE
1839–1902
BRET HARTE will always be associated with the California of the “forty-niners.” Gold digger, teacher, express messenger by turns, he was setting up his own sketches among the compositors of the San Francisco Golden Era while still in his ’teens. The sketches brought him into the editorial room, and then to his own chair of the Weekly Californian, where he vindicated his title by the clever Condensed Novels. A secretaryship in the United States Branch Mint gave him leisure to gain wide popularity in verse. On this he mounted to his height. The year 1868 is cardinal in his life and in the history of American literature; for in that year was founded The Overland Monthly; and the young man of the hour was made its editor. Its second number (August, 1868) contained the most widely known, perhaps, of all American short stories, The Luck of Roaring Camp. The three years of his editorship include his most popular work, and perhaps his most enduring. He made the whole country laugh and weep by his verse, he established a magazine of solid merit, and he gave new life to the short story.
To this growth his removal to the East in 1871 put a period. Continuing his production pretty steadily on the Atlantic seaboard, in his consulships at Crefeld (1878) and at Glasgow (1880), and finally during seventeen years in London (1885–1902), he hardly advanced in art. That his art survived the transplanting is sufficiently proved by the long list of his books; but it did not thrive. His constant recurrence to the old themes suggests that he missed the strong western soil.
The familiar tale reprinted here is typical of Bret Harte’s field, geographical and artistic. His local color no longer keeps the separate value attached to it alike by many of his admirers and by himself. The California of his stories, sometimes drawn to the life, as in Johnson’s Old Woman, is often that California, made of stock desperadoes, stage-drivers, and gulches, which is the delight of melodrama. Melodramatic Harte is incorrigibly. Mrs. Skaggs is the Dumas adventuress; and the people of her story can hardly be seen off the boards. The Iliad of Sandy Bar shows that cheap shifting from farce humor to false pathos which catches the throats of the gallery. Though in fact he had the knowledge of actual contact, he saw California as his master Dickens saw London, through a haze of romance. The
stories of both are woven from the suggestions of actual places; but in the weaving the actuality has faded.
Rather Bret Harte’s best stories prevail by something not extraneous, by focusing the primary emotions on a single imaginative situation. Poker Flat is almost allegory the gambler, the thief, the harlot, the innocents, not so artificially grouped as in Hawthorne’s Seven Vagabonds, but quite as artfully. It is convincing, not as a transcript of pioneer society, but as a unified conception of unhindered human emotions. The same is true of the famous Luck of Roaring Camp, of Tennessee’s Partner, and of his best work in general. For all its scientific aloofness and worship of fact, is La maison Tellier ultimately as human as The Outcasts of Poker Flat?
THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT
[From “The Overland Monthly,” January, 1869; copyright, 1871, by Fields,Osgood & Co.; 1899, by Bret Harte; reprinted here by special arrangement with Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.,authorizedpublishersofallBretHarte’sworks]
AS Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, stepped into the main street of Poker Flat on the morning of the twenty-third of November, 1850, he was conscious of a change in its moral atmosphere since the preceding night. Two or three men, conversing earnestly together, ceased as he approached, and exchanged significant glances. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.
Mr. Oakhurst’s calm, handsome face betrayed small concern of these indications. Whether he was conscious of any predisposing cause, was another question. “I reckon they’re after somebody,” he reflected; “likely it’s me.” He returned to his pocket the handkerchief with which he had been whipping away the red dust of Poker Flat from his neat boots, and quietly discharged his mind of any further conjecture.
In point of fact, Poker Flat was “after somebody.” It had lately suffered the loss of several thousand dollars, two valuable horses, and a prominent citizen. It was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it. A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons. This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable characters. I regret to say that some of these were
ladies. It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment.
Mr. Oakhurst was right in supposing that he was included in this category. A few of the committee had urged hanging him as a possible example, and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the sums he had won from them. “It’s agin justice,” said Jim Wheeler, “to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp—an entire stranger—carry away our money.” But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the breasts of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice.
Mr. Oakhurst received his sentence with philosophic calmness, none the less coolly that he was aware of the hesitation of his judges. He was too much of a gambler not to accept Fate. With him life was at best an uncertain game, and he recognized the usual percentage in favor of the dealer.
A body of armed men accompanied the deported wickedness of Poker Flat to the outskirts of the settlement. Besides Mr. Oakhurst, who was known to be a coolly desperate man, and for whose intimidation the armed escort was intended, the expatriated party consisted of a young woman familiarly known as “The Duchess”; another, who had gained the infelicitous title of “Mother Shipton”; and “Uncle Billy,” a suspected sluice-robber and confirmed drunkard. The cavalcade provoked no comments from the spectators, nor was any word uttered by the escort. Only, when the gulch which marked the uttermost limit of Poker Flat was reached, the leader spoke briefly and to the point. The exiles were forbidden to return at the peril of their lives.
As the escort disappeared, their pent-up feelings found vent in a few hysterical tears from “The Duchess,” some bad language from Mother Shipton, and a Parthian volley of expletives from Uncle Billy. The philosophic Oakhurst alone remained silent. He listened calmly
to Mother Shipton’s desire to cut somebody’s heart out, to the repeated statements of “The Duchess” that she would die in the road, and to the alarming oaths that seemed to be bumped out of Uncle Billy as he rode forward. With the easy good-humor characteristic of his class, he insisted upon exchanging his own riding-horse, “Five Spot,” for the sorry mule which the Duchess rode. But even this act did not draw the party into any closer sympathy. The young woman reädjusted her somewhat draggled plumes with a feeble, faded coquetry; Mother Shipton eyed the possessor of “Five Spot” with malevolence, and Uncle Billy included the whole party in one sweeping anathema.
The road to Sandy Bar—a camp that, not having as yet experienced the regenerating influences of Poker Flat, consequently seemed to offer some invitation to the emigrants—lay over a steep mountain range. It was distant a day’s severe journey. In that advanced season, the party soon passed out of the moist, temperate regions of the foot-hills into the dry, cold, bracing air of the Sierras. The trail was narrow and difficult. At noon the Duchess, rolling out of her saddle upon the ground, declared her intention of going no farther, and the party halted.
The spot was singularly wild and impressive. A wooded amphitheatre, surrounded on three sides by precipitous cliffs of naked granite, sloped gently toward the crest of another precipice that overlooked the valley. It was undoubtedly the most suitable spot for a camp, had camping been advisable. But Mr. Oakhurst knew that scarcely half the journey to Sandy Bar was accomplished, and the party were not equipped or provisioned for delay. This fact he pointed out to his companions curtly, with a philosophic commentary on the folly of “throwing up their hand before the game was played out.” But they were furnished with liquor, which in this emergency stood them in place of food, fuel, rest, and prescience. In spite of his remonstrances, it was not long before they were more or less under its influence. Uncle Billy passed rapidly from a bellicose state into one of stupor, the Duchess became maudlin, and Mother Shipton
snored. Mr. Oakhurst alone remained erect, leaning against a rock, calmly surveying them.
Mr. Oakhurst did not drink. It interfered with a profession which required coolness, impassiveness, and presence of mind, and, in his own language, he “couldn’t afford it.” As he gazed at his recumbent fellow-exiles, the loneliness begotten of his pariah-trade, his habits of life, his very vices, for the first time seriously oppressed him. He bestirred himself in dusting his black clothes, washing his hands and face, and other acts characteristic of his studiously neat habits, and for a moment forgot his annoyance. The thought of deserting his weaker and more pitiable companions never perhaps occurred to him. Yet he could not help feeling the want of that excitement which, singularly enough, was most conducive to that calm equanimity for which he was notorious. He looked at the gloomy walls that rose a thousand feet sheer above the circling pines around him; at the sky, ominously clouded; at the valley below, already deepening into shadow. And, doing so, suddenly he heard his own name called.
A horseman slowly ascended the trail. In the fresh, open face of the new-comer Mr. Oakhurst recognized Tom Simson, otherwise known as “The Innocent” of Sandy Bar. He had met him some months before over a “little game,” and had, with perfect equanimity, won the entire fortune—amounting to some forty dollars —of that guileless youth. After the game was finished, Mr. Oakhurst drew the youthful speculator behind the door and thus addressed him: “Tommy, you’re a good little man, but you can’t gamble worth a cent. Don’t try it over again.” He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.
There was a remembrance of this in his boyish and enthusiastic greeting of Mr. Oakhurst. He had started, he said, to go to Poker Flat to seek his fortune. “Alone?” No, not exactly alone; in fact—a giggle —he had run away with Piney Woods. Didn’t Mr. Oakhurst remember Piney? She that used to wait on the table at the Temperance House?
They had been engaged a long time, but old Jake Woods had objected, and so they had run away, and were going to Poker Flat to be married, and here they were. And they were tired out, and how lucky it was they had found a place to camp and company. All this the Innocent delivered rapidly, while Piney—a stout, comely damsel of fifteen—emerged from behind the pine-tree, where she had been blushing unseen, and rode to the side of her lover.
Mr. Oakhurst seldom troubled himself with sentiment, still less with propriety; but he had a vague idea that the situation was not felicitous. He retained, however, his presence of mind sufficiently to kick Uncle Billy, who was about to say something, and Uncle Billy was sober enough to recognize in Mr. Oakhurst’s kick a superior power that would not bear trifling. He then endeavored to dissuade Tom Simson from delaying further, but in vain. He even pointed out the fact that there was no provision, nor means of making a camp. But, unluckily, “The Innocent” met this objection by assuring the party that he was provided with an extra mule loaded with provisions, and by the discovery of a rude attempt at a log-house near the trail. “Piney can stay with Mrs. Oakhurst,” said the Innocent, pointing to the Duchess, “and I can shift for myself.”
Nothing but Mr. Oakhurst’s admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the cañon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in apparently amicable conversation. Piney was actually talking in an impulsive, girlish fashion to the Duchess, who was listening with an interest and animation she had not shown for many days. The Innocent was holding forth, apparently with equal effect, to Mr. Oakhurst and Mother Shipton, who was actually relaxing into amiability. “Is this yer a d—d picnic?” said Uncle Billy, with inward scorn, as he surveyed the sylvan group, the glancing fire-light, and the tethered animals in the foreground. Suddenly an idea mingled with the alcoholic fumes
that disturbed his brain. It was apparently of a jocular nature, for he felt impelled to slap his leg again and cram his fist into his mouth.
As the shadows crept slowly up the mountain, a slight breeze rocked the tops of the pine-trees, and moaned through their long and gloomy aisles. The ruined cabin, patched and covered with pine boughs, was set apart for the ladies. As the lovers parted, they unaffectedly exchanged a kiss, so honest and sincere that it might have been heard above the swaying pines. The frail Duchess and the malevolent Mother Shipton were probably too stunned to remark upon this last evidence of simplicity, and so turned without a word to the hut. The fire was replenished, the men lay down before the door, and in a few minutes were asleep.
Mr. Oakhurst was a light sleeper. Toward morning he awoke benumbed and cold. As he stirred the dying fire, the wind, which was now blowing strongly, brought to his cheek that which caused the blood to leave it,—snow!
He started to his feet with the intention of awakening the sleepers, for there was no time to lose. But turning to where Uncle Billy had been lying, he found him gone. A suspicion leaped to his brain and a curse to his lips. He ran to the spot where the mules had been tethered; they were no longer there. The tracks were already rapidly disappearing in the snow.
The momentary excitement brought Mr. Oakhurst back to the fire with his usual calm. He did not waken the sleepers. The Innocent slumbered peacefully, with a smile on his good-humored, freckled face; the virgin Piney slept beside her frailer sisters as sweetly as though attended by celestial guardians, and Mr. Oakhurst, drawing his blanket over his shoulders, stroked his mustachios and waited for the dawn. It came slowly in a whirling mist of snowflakes, that dazzled and confused the eye. What could be seen of the landscape appeared magically changed. He looked over the valley, and summed up the present and future in two words, —“Snowed in!”
A careful inventory of the provisions, which, fortunately for the party, had been stored within the hut, and so escaped the felonious fingers of Uncle Billy, disclosed the fact that with care and prudence they might last ten days longer. “That is,” said Mr. Oakhurst, sotto voce to the Innocent, “if you’re willing to board us. If you ain’t—and perhaps you’d better not—you can wait till Uncle Billy gets back with provisions.” For some occult reason, Mr. Oakhurst could not bring himself to disclose Uncle Billy’s rascality, and so offered the hypothesis that he had wandered from the camp and had accidentally stampeded the animals. He dropped a warning to the Duchess and Mother Shipton, who of course knew the facts of their associate’s defection. “They’ll find out the truth about us all, when they find out anything,” he added, significantly, “and there’s no good frightening them now.”
Tom Simson not only put all his worldly store at the disposal of Mr. Oakhurst, but seemed to enjoy the prospect of their enforced seclusion. “We’ll have a good camp for a week, and then the snow’ll melt, and we’ll all go back together.” The cheerful gayety of the young man and Mr. Oakhurst’s calm infected the others. The Innocent, with the aid of pine boughs, extemporized a thatch for the roofless cabin, and the Duchess directed Piney in the reärrangement of the interior with a taste and tact that opened the blue eyes of that provincial maiden to their fullest extent. “I reckon now you’re used to fine things at Poker Flat,” said Piney. The Duchess turned away sharply to conceal something that reddened her cheek through its professional tint, and Mother Shipton requested Piney not to “chatter.” But when Mr. Oakhurst returned from a weary search for the trail, he heard the sound of happy laughter echoed from the rocks. He stopped in some alarm, and his thoughts first naturally reverted to the whiskey, which he had prudently cachéd. “And yet it don’t somehow sound like whiskey,” said the gambler. It was not until he caught sight of the blazing fire through the still blinding storm, and the group around it, that he settled to the conviction that it was “square fun.”
Whether Mr. Oakhurst had cachédhis cards with the whiskey as something debarred the free access of the community, I cannot say. It was certain that, in Mother Shipton’s words, he “didn’t say cards once” during that evening. Haply the time was beguiled by an accordeon, produced somewhat ostentatiously by Tom Simson, from his pack. Notwithstanding some difficulties attending the manipulation of this instrument, Piney Woods managed to pluck several reluctant melodies from its keys, to an accompaniment by the Innocent on a pair of bone castinets. But the crowning festivity of the evening was reached in a rude camp-meeting hymn, which the lovers, joining hands, sang with great earnestness and vociferation. I fear that a certain defiant tone and Covenanter’s swing to its chorus, rather than any devotional quality, caused it speedily to infect the others, who at last joined in the refrain:
“I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord, And I’m bound to die in His army.”
The pines rocked, the storm eddied and whirled above the miserable group, and the flames of their altar leaped heavenward, as if in token of the vow.
At midnight the storm abated, the rolling clouds parted, and the stars glittered keenly above the sleeping camp. Mr. Oakhurst, whose professional habits had enabled him to live on the smallest possible amount of sleep, in dividing the watch with Tom Simson, somehow managed to take upon himself the greater part of that duty. He excused himself to the Innocent, by saying that he had “often been a week without sleep.” “Doing what?” asked Tom. “Poker!” replied Oakhurst, sententiously; “when a man gets a streak of luck,—niggerluck,—he don’t get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck,” continued the gambler, reflectively, “is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it’s bound to change. And it’s finding out when it’s going to change that makes you. We’ve had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it,
too. If you can hold your cards right along you’re all right. For,” added the gambler, with cheerful irrelevance, “‘I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord, And I’m bound to die in His army.’”
The third day came, and the sun, looking through the whitecurtained valley, saw the outcasts divide their slowly decreasing store of provisions for the morning meal. It was one of the peculiarities of that mountain climate that its rays diffused a kindly warmth over the wintry landscape, as if in regretful commiseration of the past. But it revealed drift on drift of snow piled high around the hut; a hopeless, uncharted, trackless sea of white lying below the rocky shores to which the castaways still clung. Through the marvellously clear air, the smoke of the pastoral village of Poker Flat rose miles away. Mother Shipton saw it, and from a remote pinnacle of her rocky fastness, hurled in that direction a final malediction. It was her last vituperative attempt, and perhaps for that reason was invested with a certain degree of sublimity. It did her good, she privately informed the Duchess. “Just you go out there and cuss, and see.” She then set herself to the task of amusing “the child,” as she and the Duchess were pleased to call Piney. Piney was no chicken, but it was a soothing and ingenious theory of the pair thus to account for the fact that she didn’t swear and wasn’t improper.
When night crept up again through the gorges, the reedy notes of the accordeon rose and fell in fitful spasms and long-drawn gasps by the flickering camp-fire. But music failed to fill entirely the aching void left by insufficient food, and a new diversion was proposed by Piney—story-telling. Neither Mr. Oakhurst nor his female companions caring to relate their personal experiences, this plan would have failed, too, but for The Innocent. Some months before he had chanced upon a stray copy of Mr. Pope’s ingenious translation of the Iliad. He now proposed to narrate the principal incidents of that poem—having thoroughly mastered the argument and fairly
forgotten the words—in the current vernacular of Sandy Bar. And so for the rest of that night the Homeric demigods again walked the earth. Trojan bully and wily Greek wrestled in the winds, and the great pines in the cañon seemed to bow to the wrath of the son of Peleus. Mr. Oakhurst listened with quiet satisfaction. Most especially was he interested in the fate of “Ash-heels,” as the Innocent persisted in denominating the “swift-footed Achilles.”
So with small food and much of Homer and the accordeon, a week passed over the heads of the outcasts. The sun again forsook them, and again from leaden skies the snow-flakes were sifted over the land. Day by day closer around them drew the snowy circle, until at last they looked from their prison over drifted walls of dazzling white, that towered twenty feet above their heads. It became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half-hidden in the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and looked into each other’s eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton —once the strongest of the party—seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. “I’m going,” she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, “but don’t say anything about it. Don’t waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and open it.” Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton’s rations for the last week, untouched. “Give ’em to the child,” she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. “You’ve starved yourself,” said the gambler. “That’s what they call it,” said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again, and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.
The accordeon and the bones were put aside that day, and Homer was forgotten. When the body of Mother Shipton had been committed to the snow, Mr. Oakhurst took The Innocent aside, and showed him a pair of snow-shoes, which he had fashioned from the old pack-saddle. “There’s one chance in a hundred to save her yet,” he said, pointing to Piney; “but it’s there,” he added, pointing toward
Poker Flat. “If you can reach there in two days she’s safe.” “And you?” asked Tom Simson. “I’ll stay here,” was the curt reply.
The lovers parted with a long embrace. “You are not going, too?” said the Duchess, as she saw Mr. Oakhurst apparently waiting to accompany him. “As far as the cañon,” he replied. He turned suddenly, and kissed the Duchess, leaving her pallid face aflame, and her trembling limbs rigid with amazement.
Night came, but not Mr. Oakhurst. It brought the storm again and the whirling snow. Then the Duchess, feeding the fire, found that some one had quietly piled beside the hut enough fuel to last a few days longer. The tears rose to her eyes, but she hid them from Piney.
The women slept but little. In the morning, looking into each other’s faces, they read their fate. Neither spoke; but Piney, accepting the position of the stronger, drew near and placed her arm around the Duchess’s waist. They kept this attitude for the rest of the day. That night the storm reached its greatest fury, and, rending asunder the protecting pines, invaded the very hut.
Toward morning they found themselves unable to feed the fire, which gradually died away. As the embers slowly blackened, the Duchess crept closer to Piney, and broke the silence of many hours: “Piney, can you pray?” “No, dear,” said Piney, simply. The Duchess, without knowing exactly why, felt relieved, and, putting her head upon Piney’s shoulder, spoke no more. And so reclining, the younger and purer pillowing the head of her soiled sister upon her virgin breast, they fell asleep.
The wind lulled as if it feared to waken them. Feathery drifts of snow, shaken from the long pine boughs, flew like white-winged birds, and settled about them as they slept. The moon through the rifted clouds looked down upon what had been the camp. But all human stain, all trace of earthly travail, was hidden beneath the spotless mantle mercifully flung from above.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had sinned. Even the Law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away, leaving them still locked in each other’s arms.
But at the head of the gulch, on one of the largest pine trees, they found the deuce of clubs pinned to the bark with a bowie knife. It bore the following, written in pencil, in a firm hand:
BENEATH THIS TREE LIES THE BODY OF JOHN OAKHURST,
WHO STRUCK A STREAK OF BAD LUCK ON THE 23D OF NOVEMBER, 1850, AND HANDED IN HIS CHECKS ON THE 7TH DECEMBER, 1850.
And pulseless and cold, with a Derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life, beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
ALBERT FALVEY WEBSTER
1848–1876
READERS of “Appleton’s Journal” in the early ’70’s must have looked forward from week to week to the stories of Albert Webster. For, often as he wrote, he always had a story to tell. It might be merely a romance of incident; it was usually a situation of very human significance; it always showed narrative instinct. With this native sense he was experimenting variously toward his art, while through his investigations of prisons, courts, and medical advice he was developing a serious and definite philosophy of life. But his own life was doomed. The quest of health, very like Stevenson’s, may be read in the titles of his descriptive essays during 1875 and 1876: Spring Days in Aiken, From New York to Aspinwall, The Isthmus andPanama, Up the Mexican Coast, Winter Days in California, etc. On the steamer from San Francisco to Honolulu he died, and was buried in the Pacific. He was betrothed to Una, eldest daughter of Hawthorne.
Of his many stories perhaps the most striking is An Operation in Money (“Appleton’s Journal,” September 27, 1873, volume x, page 387); the nicest in adjustment, Miss Eunice’s Glove, printed below. The Daphne (“Appleton’s Journal,” 1873, volume x, page 290) and A Fool’s Moustache (ibid., 1874, volume xii, page 259) read as if sketched for the stage. How he kept at his work appears pathetically in his leaving behind a tale laid at Santa Barbara and published after his death, The Owner of “Lara”(ibid., 1877, new series, volume ii, page 350).
MISS EUNICE’S GLOVE
[Fromthe“AtlanticMonthly,”July,1873]
IFOR a long time blithe and fragile Miss Eunice, demure, correct in deportment, and yet not wholly without enthusiasm, thought that day the unluckiest in her life on which she first took into her hands that unobtrusive yet dramatic book, “Miss Crofutt’s Missionary Labors in the English Prisons.”
It came to her notice by mere accident, not by favor of proselyting friends; and such was its singular material, that she at once devoured it with avidity. As its title suggests, it was the history of the ameliorating endeavors of a woman in criminal society, and it contained, perforce, a large amount of tragic and pathetic incident. But this last was so blended and involved with what Miss Eunice would have skipped as commonplace, that she was led to digest the whole volume,—statistics, philosophy, comments, and all. She studied the analysis of the atmosphere of cells, the properties and waste of wheaten flour, the cost of clothing to the general government, the whys and wherefores of crime and evil-doing; and it was not long before there was generated within her bosom a fine and healthy ardor to emulate this practical and courageous pattern.
She was profoundly moved by the tales of missionary labors proper. She was filled with joy to read that Miss Crofutt and her lieutenants sometimes cracked and broke away the formidable husks which enveloped divine kernels in the hearts of some of the
wretches, and she frequently wept at the stories of victories gained over monsters whose defences of silence and stolidity had suddenly fallen into ruin above the slow but persistent sapping of constant kindness. Acute tinglings and chilling thrills would pervade her entire body when she read that on Christmas every wretch seemed to become for that day, at least, a gracious man; that the sight of a few penny tapers, or the possession of a handful of sweet stuff, or a spray of holly, or a hot-house bloom, would appear to convert the worst of them into children. Her heart would swell to learn how they acted during the one poor hour of yearly freedom in the prisonyards; that they swelled their chests; that they ran; that they took long strides; that the singers anxiously tried their voices, now grown husky; that the athletes wrestled only to find their limbs stiff and their arts forgotten; that the gentlest of them lifted their faces to the broad sky and spent the sixty minutes in a dreadful gazing at the clouds.
The pretty student gradually became possessed with a rage. She desired to convert some one, to recover some estray, to reform some wretch.
She regretted that she lived in America, and not in England, where the most perfect rascals were to be found; she was sorry that the gloomy, sin-saturated prisons which were the scenes of Miss Crofutt’s labors must always be beyond her ken.
There was no crime in the family or the neighborhood against which she might strive; no one whom she knew was even austere; she had never met a brute; all her rascals were newspaper rascals. For aught she knew, this tranquillity and good-will might go on forever, without affording her an opportunity. She must be denied the smallest contact with these frightful faces and figures, these bars and cages, these deformities of the mind and heart, these curiosities of conscience, shyness, skill, and daring; all these dramas of reclamation, all these scenes of fervent gratitude, thankfulness, and intoxicating liberty,—all or any of these things must never come to
be the lot of her eyes; and she gave herself up to the most poignant regret.
But one day she was astonished to discover that all of these delights lay within half an hour’s journey of her home; and moreover, that there was approaching an hour which was annually set apart for the indulgence of the inmates of the prison in question. She did not stop to ask herself, as she might well have done, how it was that she had so completely ignored this particular institution, which was one of the largest and best conducted in the country, especially when her desire to visit one was so keen; but she straightway set about preparing for her intended visit in a manner which she fancied Miss Crofutt would have approved, had she been present.
She resolved, in the most radical sense of the word, to be alive. She jotted on some ivory tablets, with a gold pencil, a number of hints to assist her in her observations. For example: “Phrenological development; size of cells; ounces of solid and liquid; tissueproducing food; were mirrors allowed? if so, what was the effect? jimmy and skeleton-key, character of; canary birds: query, would not their admission into every cell animate in the human prisoners a similar buoyancy? to urge upon the turnkeys the use of the Spanish garrote in place of the present distressing gallows; to find the proportion of Orthodox and Unitarian prisoners to those of other persuasions.” But besides these and fifty other similar memoranda, the enthusiast cast about her for something practical to do.
She hit upon the capital idea of flowers. She at once ordered from a gardener of taste two hundred bouquets, or rather nosegays, which she intended for distribution among the prisoners she was about to visit, and she called upon her father for the money.
Then she began to prepare her mind. She wished to define the plan from which she was to make her contemplations. She settled that she would be grave and gentle. She would be exquisitely careful not to hold herself too much aloof, and yet not to step beyond the
bounds of that sweet reserve that she conceived must have been at once Miss Crofutt’s sword and buckler.
Her object was to awaken in the most abandoned criminals a realization that the world, in its most benignant phase, was still open to them; that society, having obtained a requital for their wickedness, was ready to embrace them again on proof of their repentance.
She determined to select at the outset two or three of the most remarkable monsters, and turn the full head of her persuasions exclusively upon them, instead of sprinkling (as it were) the whole community with her grace. She would arouse at first a very few, and then a few more, and a few more, and so on adinfinitum.
It was on a hot July morning that she journeyed on foot over the bridge which led to the prison, and there walked a man behind her carrying the flowers.
Her eyes were cast down, this being the position most significant of her spirit. Her pace was equal, firm, and rapid; she made herself oblivious of the bustle of the streets, and she repented that her vanity had permitted her to wear white and lavender, these making a combination in her dress which she had been told became her well. She had no right to embellish herself. Was she going to the races, or a match, or a kettle-drum, that she must dandify herself with particular shades of color? She stopped short, blushing. Would Miss Cro——. But there was no help for it now. It was too late to turn back. She proceeded, feeling that the odds were against her.
She approached her destination in such a way that the prison came into view suddenly. She paused with a feeling of terror. The enormous gray building rose far above a lofty white wall of stone, and a sense of its prodigious strength and awful gloom overwhelmed her. On the top of the wall, holding by an iron railing, there stood a man with a rifle trailing behind him. He was looking down into the yard inside. His attitude of watchfulness, his weapon, the unseen
thing that was being thus fiercely guarded, provoked in her such a revulsion that she came to a standstill.
What in the name of mercy had she come here for? She began to tremble. The man with the flowers came up to her and halted. From the prison there came at this instant the loud clang of a bell, and succeeding this a prolonged and resonant murmur which seemed to increase. Miss Eunice looked hastily around her. There were several people who must have heard the same sounds that reached her ears, but they were not alarmed. In fact, one or two of them seemed to be going to the prison direct. The courage of our philanthropist began to revive. A woman in a brick house opposite suddenly pulled up a window-curtain and fixed an amused and inquisitive look upon her.
This would have sent her into a thrice-heated furnace. “Come, if you please,” she commanded the man, and she marched upon the jail.
She entered at first a series of neat offices in a wing of the structure, and then she came to a small door made of black bars of iron. A man stood on the farther side of this, with a bunch of large keys. When he saw Miss Eunice he unlocked and opened the door, and she passed through.
She found that she had entered a vast, cool, and lofty cage, one hundred feet in diameter; it had an iron floor, and there were several people strolling about here and there. Through several grated apertures the sunlight streamed with strong effect, and a soft breeze swept around the cavernous apartment.
Without the cage, before her and on either hand, were three more wings of the building, and in these were the prisoners’ corridors.
At the moment she entered, the men were leaving their cells, and mounting the stone stairs in regular order, on their way to the chapel above. The noisy files went up and down and to the right and to the left, shuffling and scraping and making a great tumult. The
men were dressed in blue, and were seen indistinctly through the lofty gratings. From above and below and all around her there came the metallic snapping of bolts and the rattle of moving bars; and so significant was everything of savage repression and impending violence, that Miss Eunice was compelled to say faintly to herself, “I am afraid it will take a little time to get used to all this.”
She rested upon one of the seats in the rotunda while the chapel services were being conducted, and she thus had an opportunity to regain a portion of her lost heart. She felt wonderfully dwarfed and belittled, and her plan of recovering souls had, in some way or other, lost much of its feasibility. A glance at her bright flowers revived her a little, as did also a surprising, long-drawn roar from over her head, to the tune of “America.” The prisoners were singing.
Miss Eunice was not alone in her intended work, for there were several other ladies, also with supplies of flowers, who with her awaited until the prisoners should descend into the yard and be let loose before presenting them with what they had brought. Their common purpose made them acquainted, and by the aid of chat and sympathy they fortified each other.
Half an hour later the five hundred men descended from the chapel to the yard, rushing out upon its bare broad surface as you have seen a burst of water suddenly irrigate a road-bed. A hoarse and tremendous shout at once filled the air, and echoed against the walls like the threat of a volcano. Some of the wretches waltzed and spun around like dervishes, some threw somersaults, some folded their arms gravely and marched up and down, some fraternized, some walked away pondering, some took off their tall caps and sat down in the shade, some looked towards the rotunda with expectation, and there were those who looked towards it with contempt.
There led from the rotunda to the yard a flight of steps. Miss Eunice descended these steps with a quaking heart, and a turnkey shouted to the prisoners over her head that she and others had flowers for them.
No sooner had the words left his lips, than the men rushed up pell-mell.
This was a crucial moment.
There thronged upon Miss Eunice an army of men who were being punished for all the crimes in the calendar. Each individual here had been caged because he was either a highwayman, or a forger, or a burglar, or a ruffian, or a thief, or a murderer. The unclean and frightful tide bore down upon our terrified missionary, shrieking and whooping. Every prisoner thrust out his hand over the head of the one in front of him, and the foremost plucked at her dress.
She had need of courage. A sense of danger and contamination impelled her to fly, but a gleam of reason in the midst of her distraction enabled her to stand her ground. She forced herself to smile, though she knew her face had grown pale.
She placed a bunch of flowers into an immense hand which projected from a coarse blue sleeve in front of her; the owner of the hand was pushed away so quickly by those who came after him that Miss Eunice failed to see his face. Her tortured ear caught a rough “Thank y’, miss!” The spirit of Miss Crofutt revived in a flash, and her disciple thereafter possessed no lack of nerve.
She plied the crowd with flowers as long as they lasted, and a jaunty self-possession enabled her finally to gaze without flinching at the mass of depraved and wicked faces with which she was surrounded. Instead of retaining her position upon the steps, she gradually descended into the yard, as did several other visitors. She began to feel at home; she found her tongue, and her color came back again. She felt a warm pride in noticing with what care and respect the prisoners treated her gifts; they carried them about with great tenderness, and some compared them with those of their friends.
Presently she began to recall her plans. It occurred to her to select her two or three villains. For one, she immediately pitched
upon a lean-faced wretch in front of her. He seemed to be old, for his back was bent and he leaned upon a cane. His features were large, and they bore an expression of profound gloom. His head was sunk upon his breast, his lofty conical cap was pulled over his ears, and his shapeless uniform seemed to weigh him down, so infirm was he.
Miss Eunice spoke to him. He did not hear; she spoke again. He glanced at her like a flash, but without moving; this was at once followed by a scrutinizing look. He raised his head, and then he turned toward her gravely.
The solemnity of his demeanor nearly threw Miss Eunice off her balance, but she mastered herself by beginning to talk rapidly. The prisoner leaned over a little to hear better. Another came up, and two or three turned around to look. She bethought herself of an incident related in Miss Crofutt’s book, and she essayed its recital. It concerned a lawyer who was once pleading in a French criminal court in behalf of a man whose crime had been committed under the influence of dire want. In his plea he described the case of another whom he knew who had been punished with a just but short imprisonment instead of a long one, which the judge had been at liberty to impose, but from which he humanely refrained. Miss Eunice happily remembered the words of the lawyer: “That man suffered like the wrong-doer that he was. He knew his punishment was just. Therefore there lived perpetually in his breast an impulse toward a better life which was not suppressed and stifled by the five years he passed within the walls of the jail. He came forth and began to labor. He toiled hard. He struggled against averted faces and cold words, and he began to rise. He secreted nothing, faltered at nothing, and never stumbled. He succeeded; men took off their hats to him once more; he became wealthy, honorable, God-fearing. I, gentlemen, am that man, that criminal.” As she quoted this last declaration, Miss Eunice erected herself with burning eyes and touched herself proudly upon the breast. A flush crept into her cheeks, and her nostrils dilated, and she grew tall.
She came back to earth again, and found herself surrounded with the prisoners. She was a little startled.
“Ah, that was good!” ejaculated the old man upon whom she had fixed her eyes. Miss Eunice felt an inexpressible sense of delight.
Murmurs of approbation came from all of her listeners, especially from one on her right hand. She looked around at him pleasantly.
But the smile faded from her lips on beholding him. He was extremely tall and very powerful. He overshadowed her. His face was large, ugly, and forbidding; his gray hair and beard were cropped close, his eyebrows met at the bridge of his nose and overhung his large eyes like a screen. His lips were very wide, and, being turned downwards at the corners, they gave him a dolorous expression. His lower jaw was square and protruding, and a pair of prodigious white ears projected from beneath his sugar-loaf cap. He seemed to take his cue from the old man, for he repeated his sentiment.
“Yes,” said he, with a voice which broke alternately into a roar and a whisper, “that was a good story.”
“Y-yes,” faltered Miss Eunice, “and it has the merit of being true.”
He replied with a nod, and looked absently over her head while he rubbed the nap upon his chin with his hand. Miss Eunice discovered that his knee touched the skirt of her dress, and she was about to move in order to destroy this contact, when she remembered that Miss Crofutt would probably have cherished the accident as a promoter of a valuable personal influence, so she allowed it to remain. The lean-faced man was not to be mentioned in the same breath with this one, therefore she adopted the superior villain out of hand.
She began to approach him. She asked him where he lived, meaning to discover whence he had come. He replied in the same mixture of roar and whisper, “Six undered un one, North Wing.”
Miss Eunice grew scarlet. Presently she recovered sufficiently to pursue some inquiries respecting the rules and customs of the prison. She did not feel that she was interesting her friend, yet it seemed clear that he did not wish to go away. His answers were curt, yet he swept his cap off his head, implying by the act a certain reverence, which Miss Eunice’s vanity permitted her to exult at. Therefore she became more loquacious than ever. Some men came up to speak with the prisoner, but he shook them off, and remained in an attitude of strict attention, with his chin on his hand, looking now at the sky, now at the ground, and now at Miss Eunice.
In handling the flowers her gloves had been stained, and she now held them in her fingers, nervously twisting them as she talked. In the course of time she grew short of subjects, and, as her listener suggested nothing, several lapses occurred; in one of them she absently spread her gloves out in her palms, meanwhile wondering how the English girl acted under similar circumstances.
Suddenly a large hand slowly interposed itself between her eyes and her gloves, and then withdrew, taking one of the soiled trifles with it.
She was surprised, but the surprise was pleasurable. She said nothing at first. The prisoner gravely spread his prize out upon his own palm, and after looking at it carefully, he rolled it up into a tight ball and thrust it deep in an inner pocket.
This act made the philanthropist aware that she had made progress. She rose insensibly to the elevation of patron, and she made promises to come frequently and visit her ward and to look in upon him when he was at work; while saying this she withdrew a little from the shade his huge figure had supplied her with.
He thrust his hands into his pockets, but he hastily took them out again. Still he said nothing and hung his head. It was while she was in the mood of a conqueror that Miss Eunice went away. She felt a touch of repugnance at stepping from before his eyes a free
woman, therefore she took pains to go when she thought he was not looking.
She pointed him out to a turnkey, who told her he was expiating the sins of assault and burglarious entry. Outwardly Miss Eunice looked grieved, but within she exulted that he was so emphatically a rascal.
When she emerged from the cool, shadowy, and frowning prison into the gay sunlight, she experienced a sense of bewilderment. The significance of a lock and a bar seemed greater on quitting them than it had when she had perceived them first. The drama of imprisonment and punishment oppressed her spirit with tenfold gloom now that she gazed upon the brilliancy and freedom of the outer world. That she and everybody around her were permitted to walk here and there at will, without question and limit, generated within her an indefinite feeling of gratitude; and the noise, the colors, the creaking wagons, the myriad voices, the splendid variety and change of all things excited a profound but at the same time a mournful satisfaction.
Midway in her return journey she was shrieked at from a carriage, which at once approached the sidewalk. Within it were four gay maidens bound to the Navy-Yard, from whence they were to sail, with a large party of people of nice assortment, in an experimental steamer, which was to be made to go with kerosene lamps, in some way. They seized upon her hands and cajoled her. Wouldn’t she go? They were to sail down among the islands (provided the oil made the wheels and things go round), they were to lunch at Fort Warren, dine at Fort Independence, and dance at Fort Winthrop. Come, please go. Oh, do! The Germanians were to furnish the music.
Miss Eunice sighed, but shook her head. She had not yet got the air of the prison out of her lungs, nor the figure of her robber out of her eyes, nor the sense of horror and repulsion out of her sympathies.
At another time she would have gone to the ends of the earth with such a happy crew, but now she only shook her head again and was resolute. No one could wring a reason from her, and the wondering quartet drove away.
II
Before the day went, Miss Eunice awoke to the disagreeable fact that her plans had become shrunken and contracted, that a certain something had curdled her spontaneity, and that her ardor had flown out at some crevice and had left her with the dry husk of an intent.
She exerted herself to glow a little, but she failed. She talked well at the tea-table, but she did not tell about the glove. This matter plagued her. She ran over in her mind the various doings of Miss Crofutt, and she could not conceal from herself that that lady had never given a glove to one of her wretches; no, nor had she ever permitted the smallest approach to familiarity.
Miss Eunice wept a little. She was on the eve of despairing.
In the silence of the night the idea presented itself to her with a disagreeable baldness. There was a thief over yonder that possessed a confidence with her.
They had found it necessary to shut this man up in iron and stone, and to guard him with a rifle with a large leaden ball in it.
This villain was a convict. That was a terrible word, one that made her blood chill.
She, the admired of hundreds and the beloved of a family, had done a secret and shameful thing of which she dared not tell. In these solemn hours the madness of her act appalled her.
She asked herself what might not the fellow do with the glove? Surely he would exhibit it among his brutal companions, and perhaps allow it to pass to and fro among them. They would laugh
and joke with him, and he would laugh and joke in return, and no doubt he would kiss it to their great delight. Again, he might go to her friends, and, by working upon their fears and by threatening an exposure of her, extort large sums of money from them. Again, might he not harass her by constantly appearing to her at all times and all places and making all sorts of claims and demands? Again, might he not, with terrible ingenuity, use it in connection with some false key or some jack-in-the-box, or some dark-lantern, or something, in order to effect his escape; or might he not tell the story times without count to some wretched curiosity-hunters who would advertise her folly all over the country, to her perpetual misery?
She became harnessed to this train of thought. She could not escape from it. She reversed the relation that she had hoped to hold toward such a man, and she stood in his shadow, and not he in hers.
In consequence of these ever-present fears and sensations, there was one day, not very far in the future, that she came to have an intolerable dread of. This day was the one on which the sentence of the man was to expire. She felt that he would surely search for her; and that he would find her there could be no manner of doubt, for, in her surplus of confidence, she had told him her full name, inasmuch as he had told her his.
When she contemplated this new source of terror, her peace of mind fled directly. So did her plans for philanthropic labor. Not a shred remained. The anxiety began to tell upon her, and she took to peering out of a certain shaded window that commanded the square in front of her house. It was not long before she remembered that for good behavior certain days were deducted from the convicts’ terms of imprisonment. Therefore, her ruffian might be released at a moment not anticipated by her. He might, in fact, be discharged on any day. He might be on his way towards her even now.
She was not very far from right, for suddenly the man did appear.
He one day turned the corner, as she was looking out at the window fearing that she should see him, and came in a diagonal direction across the hot, flagged square.
Miss Eunice’s pulse leaped into the hundreds. She glued her eyes upon him. There was no mistake. There was the red face, the evil eyes, the large mouth, the gray hair, and the massive frame.
What should she do? Should she hide? Should she raise the sash and shriek to the police? Should she arm herself with a knife? or what? In the name of mercy, what? She glared into the street. He came on steadily, and she lost him, for he passed beneath her. In a moment she heard the jangle of the bell. She was petrified. She heard his heavy step below. He had gone into the little reception room beside the door. He crossed to a sofa opposite the mantel. She then heard him get up and go to a window, then he walked about, and then sat down; probably upon a red leather seat beside the window.
Meanwhile the servant was coming to announce him. From some impulse, which was a strange and sudden one, she eluded the maid, and rushed headlong upon her danger. She never remembered her descent of the stairs. She awoke to cool contemplation of matters only to find herself entering the room.
Had she made a mistake, after all? It was a question that was asked and answered in a flash. This man was pretty erect and selfassured, but she discerned in an instant that there was needed but the blue woollen jacket and the tall cap to make him the wretch of a month before.
He said nothing. Neither did she. He stood up and occupied himself by twisting a button upon his waistcoat. She, fearing a threat or a demand, stood bridling to receive it. She looked at him from top to toe with parted lips.
He glanced at her. She stepped back. He put the rim of his cap in his mouth and bit it once or twice, and then looked out at the
