It was just a week later when, having for passport my Grand Jury summons,
I presented myself at that prison where we had the privilege of seeing
the existence to which we had assisted so many of the eighty-six.
"I'm afraid," I said to the guardian of the gate, "that I am rather late
in availing myself--the others, no doubt----?"
"Not at all, sir," he said, smiling. "You're the first, and if you'll
excuse me, I think you'll be the last. Will you wait in here while I
send for the chief warder to take you over?"
He showed me then to what he called the Warder's Library--an iron-barred
room, more bare and brown than any I had seen since I left school. While
I stood there waiting and staring out into the prison court-yard, there
came, rolling and rumbling in, a Black Maria. It drew up with a clatter,
and I saw through the barred door the single prisoner--a young girl of
perhaps eighteen--dressed in rusty black. She was resting her forehead
against a bar and looking out, her quick, narrow dark eyes taking in her
new surroundings with a sort of sharp, restless indifference; and her
pale, thin-upped, oval face quite expressionless. Behind those bars she
seemed to me for all the world like a little animal of the cat tribe
being brought in to her Zoo. Me she did not see, but if she had I felt
she would not shrink--only give me the same sharp, indifferent look she
was giving all else. The policeman on the step behind had disappeared at
once, and the driver now got down from his perch and, coming round, began
to gossip with her. I saw her slink her eyes and smile at him, and he
smiled back; a large man; not unkindly. Then he returned to his horses,
and she stayed as before, with her forehead against the bars, just
staring out. Watching her like that, unseen, I seemed to be able to see
right through that tight-lipped, lynx-eyed mask. I seemed to know that
little creature through and through, as one knows anything that one
surprises off its guard, sunk in its most private moods. I seemed to see
her little restless, furtive, utterly unmoral soul, so stripped of all
defence, as if she had taken it from her heart and handed it out to me.
I saw that she was one of those whose hands slip as indifferently into
others' pockets as into their own; incapable of fidelity, and incapable
of trusting; quick as cats, and as devoid of application; ready to
scratch, ready to purr, ready to scratch again; quick to change, and
secretly as unchangeable as a little pebble. And I thought: "Here we
are, taking her to the Zoo (by no means for the first time, if demeanour
be any guide), and we shall put her in a cage, and make her sew, and give
her good books which she will not read; and she will sew, and walk up and
down, until we let her out; then she will return to her old haunts, and
at once go prowling and do exactly the same again, what ever it was,
until we catch her and lock her up once more. And in this way we shall
go on purifying Society until she dies." And I thought: If indeed she had
been created cat in body as well as in soul, we should not have treated
her thus, but should have said: 'Go on, little cat, you scratch us
sometimes, you steal often, you are as sensual as the night. All this we
cannot help. It is your nature. So were you made--we know you cannot
change--you amuse us! Go on, little cat!' Would it not then be better,
and less savoury of humbug if we said the same to her whose cat-soul has
chanced into this human shape? For assuredly she will but pilfer, and
scratch a little, and be mildly vicious, in her little life, and do no
desperate harm, having but poor capacity for evil behind that petty,
thin-upped mask. What is the good of all this padlock business for such
as she; are we not making mountains out of her mole hills? Where is our
sense of proportion, and our sense of humour? Why try to alter the make
and shape of Nature with our petty chisels? Or, if we must take care of
her, to save ourselves, in the name of Heaven let us do it in a better
way than this! And suddenly I remembered that I was a Grand Juryman, a
purifier of Society, who had brought her bill in true; and, that I might
not think these thoughts unworthy of a good citizen, I turned my eyes
away from her and took up my list of indictments. Yes, there she was, at
least so I decided: Number 42, "Pilson, Jenny: Larceny, pocket-picking."
And I turned my memory back to the evidence about her case, but I could
not remember a single word. In the margin I had noted: "Incorrigible
from a child up; bad surroundings." And a mad impulse came over me to go
back to my window and call through the bars to her: "Jenny Pilson! Jenny
Pilson! It was I who bred you and surrounded you with evil! It was I
who caught you for being what I made you! I brought your bill in true!
I judged you, and I caged you! Jenny Pilson! Jenny Pilson!" But just as
I reached the window, the door of my waiting-room was fortunately opened,
and a voice said: "Now, sir; at your service!"...
I sat again in that scoop of the shore by the long rolling seas, burying
in the sand the piece of paper which had summoned me away to my Grand
Jury; and the same thoughts came to me with the breaking of the waves
that had come to me before: How, in every wave was a particle that had
known the shore of every land; and in each sparkle of the hot sunlight
stealing up that bright water into the sky, the microcosm of all change
and of all unity!
1912.