HILIP was a half-breed Indian, his mother the daughter of a famous chief, his father a French-Canadian; he was serving the second year of a life sentence for murder in a Federal penitentiary.
He was now twenty-six; more than six feet, broad shouldered, light-footed, two hundred pounds of solid manhood; black hair, brilliant, commanding eyes, a winning smile.
His cell-mate was a bank clerk named Passavant, a man of forty, quiet and kindly. The two liked each other, and Philip told Passavant this story:
“I was fond of a girl on the reservation; the agent, Steve Maddox, meddled with her. One morning they found Steve with my knife through his heart, and said I did it. Well, I saw it done. A fellow had come down the trail from the mines, and he and Steve played poker for nuggets; Steve passed a card; the other fellow saw it, and grabbed my knife, which I'd just laid on the corner of the table after cutting my bit of plug, and killed him. Then he jumped on his pony, and that's the last I saw of him. Of course they said I did it. The judge was for hanging, but they commuted me to life. Maybe that fellow will own up some day.”
“But,” he added, with his frank smile, “if he hadn't done it, likely I might have; I had it in for Steve!”
Phil had petitioned Congress, written to the President, and friends were working for him—one friend in particular! Probably his appeals still lie in dusty pigeon-holes at the Department. This would not be written if Phil were alive. But documents could not convey the impression of the flesh-and-blood Phil—his noble bearing, the flash of his eyes, the music of his utterance; and neither the Department nor the President ever saw or heard him.
Passavant inclined to believe his story, partly because of its improbability: it would have been so easy to invent a more plausible one. Other convicts who knew him knew also what courts and prisons are, and none of them believed that, innocent or not, Phil would ever get out; but they jollied him along; and hope, especially in lifers, dies hard. A human soul can hardly believe that any punishment can really be life-long. Only a firm heart or a cruel one could disturb this fool's paradise, and even prison guards have been known to foster the delusion.
On the wall of Phil's cell was a cabinet photograph of a young woman in festal attire: her face and figure were very beautiful, but the photograph seemed old and battered. Prisoners are not usually indulged with such privileges; but lifers are sometimes excepted.
From time to time, in intimate moods, Passavant heard the story of this photograph; Philip imparted it in his deep whisper, and also allowed his mate to read a bundle of letters from the photograph's original.
When, at his trial, life and death had hung in the balance for him, this beautiful woman, unknown to and unseen of him, had sat breathless and in tears in the courtroom. A year after his conviction she had written him her first letter, telling him this.
Passavant found her letters singularly impressive. They showed insight and imagination, and something else, which Passavant understood only after Phil had told him that she was a great prima donna. That accounted for a touch in the letters which only the gift of art in a nature can supply. It justified too a fervor and independence of thought, an indifference to conventions, proper to a woman of noble lineage who had conquered the world by her own genius.
She was of foreign and patrician birth. Phil was a prince among his own people. She had personal knowledge of his heroic physical aspect. Perhaps a woman of her breed and race would not have been dismayed even had she believed him guilty; she would not flinch from bloodshed in a fair quarrel. But Phil had assured her as well as others of his innocence, and she had never questioned it.
The Indian nature, dealing with elemental passions, has a likeness to that of the ancient peoples of the Old World. The mutual attraction between these two persons was prompt and explicit, and was not affected by the fact that their letters must be censored by the prison authorities.
Her name was Jocasta Cenci. The Beatrice of history was her ancestor. Her letters told of her Roman birth; she had the title of Contessa, and an independent fortune, but art had called her from society to the stage.
There were more than twenty of her letters. It is not unusual for a sentimental girl, or for a woman of the world, tired of ordinary affairs, to seek novelty in a love intrigue with a convicted murderer. Even a great prima donna may seek in the depths for something missed on the heights. But this adventure of Jocasta's with the Indian proved as strange as her name.