A Hero and Some Other Folks. William A. Quayle
even penury has spurred many a sluggish life to conquering moods. When a man lies with his face to the wall, paralytic, helpless, useless, a burden to himself and others, and hears the rub of his wife washing for a livelihood—and he loves her so; took her to his home in her fair girlhood, when her beauty bloomed like a garden of roses, and promised to keep her, and now she works for him all day and into the dark night, and loves to; but he turns his face to the wall, puts his one movable hand against his face, sobs so that his tears wash through his fingers and wet his pillow as with driving rain—then poverty is pitiful. Or, when one sees his children hungry, tattered, with lean faces and eyes staring as with constant fear; sees them huddling under rags or cowering at a flicker meant for flame—then poverty is hard; and then, "The poor always ye have with you," said our Christ, which remember and be pitiful!
But such penury, even, does not require crime. Valjean became a criminal from poverty; but himself felt now, as the days slipped from his life-store, that crime was not necessary. Theft is bad economics. The criminals on the dockets are not those pinched with poverty, as one may assure himself if he gives heed to criminal dockets. People prefer crime as a method of livelihood. These are criminals. The "artful dodger," in "Oliver Twist," is a picture of the average criminal. Honest poverty need not steal. In the writer's own city, the other day, a man accused of theft pleaded his children's poverty as palliative of his crime; but in that city was abundant help for worthy poverty. That man lacked an absolute honesty. He and his could have been fed and clothed, and himself maintained his manly dignity and uncorrupted honesty. To blame society with criminality is a current method, but untrue and unwise; for thus we will multiply, not decimate, criminals. The honest man may be in penury; but he will have help, and need not shelter in a jail. Thus, then, these two items of modernity paint background for Jean Valjean's portrait; and in Jean Valjean, To-day has found a voice.
This man is a criminal and a galley slave, with yellow passport—his name, Jean Valjean. Hear his story. An orphan; a half-sullen lad, reared by his sister; sees her husband dead on a bed of rags, with seven orphans clinging in sobs to the dead hands. Jean Valjean labors to feed this motley company; denies himself bread, so that he may slip food into their hands; has moods of stalwart heroism; and never having had a sweetheart—pity him!—toils on, hopeless, under a sky robbed of blue and stars; leading a life plainly, wholly exceptional, and out of work in a winter when he was a trifle past twenty-six; hears his sister's children crying, "Bread, bread, give bread;" rises in sullen acerbity; smites his huge fist through a baker's window, and steals a loaf; is arrested, convicted, sent to the galleys, and herded with galley slaves; attempts repeated escapes, is retaken, and at the age of forty-six shambles out of his galley slavery with a yellow passport, certifying this is "a very dangerous man;" and with a heart on which brooding has written with its biting stylus the story of what he believes to be his wrongs, Jean Valjean, bitter as gall against society, has his hands ready, aye, eager, to strike, no matter whom. Looked at askance, turned from the hostel, denied courtesy, food, and shelter, the criminal in him rushes to the ascendant, and he thrusts the door of the bishop's house open. Listen, he is speaking now, look at him! The bishop deals with him tenderly, as a Christian ought; sentimentally, but scarcely wisely. He has sentimentality rather than sentiment in his kindness; he puts a premium on Jean Valjean becoming a criminal again. To assume everybody to be good, as some philanthropists do, is folly, being so transparently false. The good bishop—bless him for his goodness!—who prays God daily not to lead him into temptation, why does he lead this sullen criminal into temptation? Reformatory methods should be sane. The bishop's methods were not sane. He meant well, but did not quite do well. Jean Valjean, sleeping in a bed of comfort, grows restless, wakens, rises, steals what is accessible, flees, is arrested, brought back, is exonerated by the bishop's tenderness, goes out free; steals from the little Savoyard, cries after the retreating lad to restore him his coin, tails to bring him back; fights with self, and with God's good help rises in the deep dark of night from the bishop's steps; walks out into a day of soul, trudges into the city of M——, to which he finds admission, not by showing the criminal's yellow passport, but by the passport of heroism, having on entrance rescued a child from a burning building; becomes a citizen, invents a process of manufacturing jet, accumulates a fortune, spends it lavishly in the bettering of the city where his riches were acquired; is benefactor to employee and city, and is called "Monsieur;" and after repeated refusals, becomes "Monsieur the Mayor;" gives himself up as a criminal to save a man unjustly accused, is returned to the galleys for the theft of the little Savoyard's forty-sous coin; by a heroic leap from the yardarm, escapes; seeks and finds Cossette, devotes his life to sheltering and loving her; runs his gauntlet of repeated perils with Javert, grows steadily in heroism, and sturdy, invigorating manhood; dies a hero and a saint, and an honor to human kind—such is Jean Valjean's biography in meager outline. But the moon, on a summer's evening, "a silver crescent gleaming 'mid the stars," appears hung on a silver cord of the full moon's rim; and, as the crescent moon is not the burnished silver of the complete circle, so no outline can include the white, bewildering light of this heroic soul. Jean Valjean is the biography of a redeemed life. The worst life contains the elements of redemption, as words contain the possibility of poetry. He was a fallen, vicious, desperate man; and from so low a level, he and God conspired to lift him to the levels where the angels live, than which a resurrection from the dead is no more potent and blinding miracle. Instead of giving this book the caption, "Jean Valjean," it might be termed the "History of the Redemption of a Soul;" and such a theme is worthy the study of this wide world of women and of men.
Initial in this redemptive work was the good bishop, whose words, "Jean Valjean, my brother, you belong no longer to evil, but to good," never lost their music or might to Valjean's spirit. Some man or woman stands on everybody's road to God. And Jean Valjean, with the bishop's words sounding in his ears—voices that will not silence—goes out with his candlesticks, goes trembling out, and starts on his anabasis to a new life; wandered all day in the fields, inhaled the odors of a few late flowers, his childhood being thus recalled; and when the sun was throwing mountain shadows behind hillocks and pebbles, as Jean Valjean sat and pondered in a dumb way, a Savoyard came singing on his way, tossing his bits of money in his hands; drops a forty-sous piece near Jean Valjean, who, in a mood of inexplicable evil, places his huge foot upon it, nor listened to the child's entreaty, "My piece, monsieur;" and eager and more eager grows a child whose little riches were invaded, "My piece, my white piece, my silver;" and in his voice are tears—and what can be more touching than a child's voice touched with tears? "My silver;" and the lad shook the giant by the collar of his blouse—"I want my silver, my forty-sous piece"—and began to cry. A little lad a-sobbing! Jean Valjean, you who for so many years "have talked but little and never laughed;" Jean Valjean, pity the child; give him his coin. You were bought of the bishop for good. But in terrible voice he shouts: "Who is there? You here yet? You had better take care of yourself;" and the little lad runs, breathless and sobbing. Jean Valjean hears his sobbing, but made no move for restitution until the little Savoyard has passed from sight and hearing, when, waking as from some stupor, he rises, cries wildly through the night, "Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais!" and listened, and—no answer. Then he ran, ran toward restitution. Too late! too late! "Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais! Petit Gervais!" and, to a priest passing, "Monsieur, have you seen a child go by—a little fellow—Petit Gervais is his name?" And he calls him again through the empty night; and the lad hears him not. There is no response, and for the first time since he passed to the galleys, Jean Valjean's heart swells, and he bursts into tears; for he was horrified at himself. His hardness had mastered him, even when the bishop's tenderness had thawed his winter heart. Jean Valjean was now afraid of himself, which is where moral strength has genesis. He goes back—back where? No matter, wait. He sees in his thought—in his thought he sees the bishop, and wept, shed hot tears, wept bitterly, with more weakness than a woman, with more terror than a child, and his life seemed horrible; and he walks—whither? No matter. But, past midnight, the stage-driver saw, as he passed, a man in the attitude of prayer, kneeling upon the pavement in the shadow before the bishop's door; and should you have spoken, "Jean Valjean!" he would not have answered you. He would not have heard. He is starting on a pilgrimage of manhood toward God. He saw the bishop; now he sees God, and here is hope; for so is God the secret of all good and worth, a thing to be set down as the axiom of religion and life. A conscience long dormant is now become regnant. Jean Valjean is a man again!
Goodness begets goodness.