The Daredevil

by Maria Thompson Daviess

“Leave me, Superintendent, for a few minutes. The young man will stay by the door to let you know when I want you,” said that Gouverneur Faulkner to the superintendent, who nodded and left the room as I took a position over beside the heavy iron bars that swung together after him.

“My man,” said the Gouverneur Faulkner in a voice that was so gentle as that which a mother uses to a child in severe illness, “I want you to let me sit down on your cot beside you and talk to you about your trouble.”

“Got nothing to say, parson. I done it and I want to swing as quick as the law sends me,” answered the poor human from behind his hands without even raising his bowed head.

“I am not a minister, and I’ve come to talk to you because some of your neighbors and friends think that there may be a reason why you should not be hanged for the death of your brother. It is my duty to help them keep you from the penalty of the law, which you may not deserve even if you desire it. Can you tell me your story as man to man, with the hope that it will help you to a reprieve?” And as he spoke I observed a tone of command come into the voice of my Gouverneur Faulkner, that was as clear and beautiful as the call of the bugle to men for a battle.

“I done what I had to and I’m ready to die for it. I’ve got nothing to say,” answered the man with still more of the determination of misery in his voice. “My neighbors don’t know nothing about it and I don’t want ’em to. Just let them keep quiet and let it all die when the State swings me.”

“So there is some secret about the matter that you are willing to die to keep, is there?” asked the Gouverneur Faulkner with a quickness of command in his voice. “What had your brother done to Mary Brown that you killed him for doing?”

“Damn you, what’s that to you?” snarled the man as he sprang up from beside the Gouverneur and leaned, crouched and panting, against the bars of the cage in which the three of us were inclosed. “Who are you anyway? My State has said I was to swing for killing him and there’s no more to question about it.”

“I am the Governor of your State,” answered that Gouverneur Faulkner as he rose and stood tall and commanding before the poor human being who was cowering as a dog that had felt the lash of a whip. “You are my son because you are a son of the State of Harpeth, and as a representative of that State I am going to exercise my guardianship and if possible prevent the State from the crime of taking your life if you do not deserve punishment.”

“I’m condemned by the laws of the State. You can’t go back on that, Governor or no Governor,” made answer the man, with a panting of misery in his voice.

“As you know, there are certain unwritten laws which have more influence in some cases as to the guilt of a murderer than any on the statute books,” said the Gouverneur Faulkner with a very great slowness, so that the poor human dog might comprehend him. “If you killed your brother to save—save Mary Brown from worse than death, then you have not the right to demand execution from your State to shelter her from publicity when she is no longer in danger of anything worse. Did you get to her in time to save her or—” “Yes, good God, I did and I had—damn you, now I’ll have to kill you for getting words out of me that all the lawyers have tried to make me say all this time,” and with the oath and a snarl the man made a lunge at my Gouverneur Faulkner with something keen and shining that he had drawn from the top of his coarse boot. But that poor human being of the prison was not of enough quickness to do the killing of his desire in the face of Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, who had twice with her foil pricked the red cloth heart of the young Count de Couertoir, the best swordsman of France, in gay combat in the great hall of the old Chateau de Grez. With my walking cane of a young gentleman of American fashion, which I had taken with me to call upon the beautiful Madam Whitworth before my Cherry had befallen me as a gift, and which I had without thought brought into that prison with me, I parried the blow of the knife at my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, but not in such a manner as to prevent a glancing of that knife, which inflicted a scratch of considerable depth upon my forearm under its sleeve of brown cheviot.