Into the gloom of this inferno, this foul-smelling cavern, this
assemblage of beasts, stepped a girl of twenty. A baby wrapped about
with a coarse shawl lay in her arms.
She passed me with eyes averted, and stood before the gate of the last
steel cage--the woman's end of the prison--the turnkey following slowly.
Cries of "Howdy, gal! What did ye git?" wore hurled after her, but she
made no answer. The ominous sound of drawn bolts and the click of a key,
and the girl and baby were inside the bars of the cage. These bars,
foreshortened from where I stood, looked like a row of gun-barrels in an
armory rack.
"That girl a prisoner?" I asked the Warden.
I didn't believe it. I knew, of course, that it couldn't be. I instantly
divined that she had come to comfort some brother or father, or lover,
perhaps, and had brought the baby with her because there was no place to
leave it at home. I only asked the question of the Warden so he could
deny it, and deny it, too, with some show of feeling--this man with the
sliced ear and the gorilla hands.
"Yes, she's been here some time. Judge suspended sentence a while ago.
She's gone after her things."
There was no joy over her release in his tones, nor pity for her
condition.
He spoke exactly, it seemed to me, as he would have done had he been in
charge of the iron-barred gate of the Colosseum two thousand years ago.
All that had saved the girl then from the jaws of his hungriest lion was
the twist of Nero's thumb. All that saved her now was the nod of the
Judge's head--both had the giving of life and death.
A thin mist swam before my eyes, and a great lump started from my heart
and stuck fast in my throat, but I did not answer him; it would have
done no good--might have enraged him, in fact. I walked straight to the
gate through which she had entered and peered in. I could see between
the gun-barrels now.
It was like the other cages, with barred walls and sheet-iron floors.
Built in one corner of the far end was a strong box of steel, six feet
by four by the height of the ceiling, fitted with a low door. This box
was lined with a row of bunks, one above the other. From one was thrust
a small foot covered with a stocking and part of a skirt; some woman
prisoner was ill, perhaps. Against the wall of this main cage sat two
negro women; one, I learned afterward, had stabbed a man the week
before; the other was charged with theft. The older--the murderess--came
forward when she caught sight of me, thrust out her hands between the
bars, and begged for tobacco.
In the corner of the same cage was another steel box. I saw the stooping
figure of the young girl come out of it as a dog comes out of a kennel.
She walked toward the centre of the cage--she still had the baby in her
arms--laid the child on the sheet-iron floor, where the light from the
grimy windows fell the clearer, and returned to the steel box. The child
wore but one garment--a short red-flannel shirt that held the stomach
tight and left the shrivelled legs and arms bare. It lay flat on its
back, its eyes gazing up at the ceiling, its pinched face in high light
against the dull background. Now and then it would fight the air with
its little fists or kick its toes above its head.
The girl took from the kennel a broken paper box and, returning with it,
knelt beside the child and began arranging its wardrobe, the two
negresses watching her listlessly. Not much of a wardrobe--only a
ragged shawl, some socks, a worsted cap, a pair of tiny shoes, and a
Canton-flannel wrapper, once white. This last had little arms and a
short waist. The skirt was long enough to tuck around her baby's feet
when she carried it.
I steadied myself by one of the musket-barrels, watched her while she
folded the few pitiful garments, waited until she had guided the
shrunken arms into the sleeves of the soiled wrapper and had buttoned it
over the baby's chest. Then, when the lump in my throat was about to
stop my breathing, I said:
"Will you come here, please, to the grating? I want to speak to you."
She raised her head slowly, looked at me in a tired, hopeless way, laid
her baby back on the sheet-iron floor, and walked toward me. As she came
into the glow of the overhead light, I saw that she was even younger
than I had first supposed--nearer seventeen than twenty--a girl with
something of the curious look of a young heifer in a face drawn and
lined but with anxiety. Parted over a low forehead, and tucked behind
her ears, streamed two braids of straight yellow hair in two unkempt
strands over her shoulders. Across her bosom and about her slender
figure was hooked a yellow-brown dress made in one piece. The hooks and
eyes showed wherever the strain came, disclosing the coarse chemise and
the brown of the neck beneath. This strain, the strain of an
ill-fitting garment, accentuated all the clearer, in the wrinkles about
the shoulders and around the hips, the fulness of her delicately
modelled lines; quite as would a jacket buttoned over the Milo. On the
third finger of one hand was a flat silver ring, such as is sold by the
country peddlers.
She stood quite close to the bars, patiently awaiting my next question.
She had obeyed my summons like a dog who remembered a former discipline.
No curiosity, not the slightest interest; nothing but blind obedience.
The tightened grasp of these four walls had taught her this.
"Where do you come from?" I asked.