MARION WITNESSES A QUEER SIGHT.
“Big Belle, the Confidence Queen,” was a very versatile woman. At
liberty, she was noted for the variety of her accomplishments, and
in prison walls she was equally useful both in her cell and in the
workroom.
But this strange woman’s greatest delight was in the care of the sick,
and as she passed from cot to cot in the prison hospital both her hand
and her voice were as gentle as a mother’s.
She was a large, fine-looking woman, with brilliant black eyes, but the
coarse prison garb did not enhance the beauty of either face or figure.
Belle had “done time” at the “Isle de Blackwell” before, so she felt
very much at home in her present occupation.
There was not a rule or regulation about the prison that she did
not know, and if she ever longed to break one of them there was no
indication of it in her manner.
Rather, it seemed to her associates that Belle was merely “biding
her time,” and, according to all accounts, a goodly portion of her
ill-gotten gains was steadily drawing interest in various banks in
anticipation of her coming.
As Big Belle bent over one of her charges whose face was covered with
bandages, she moistened them as skillfully as any trained nurse could
have done, and as the prison physician entered the ward she went over
to him promptly, standing with calmly folded hands and eyes cast down,
the very embodiment of meekness and servitude.
“How is she this morning?” was the doctor’s first question, asked
without even raising his eyes from the prescription he was writing.
“Worse, Dr. Brookes,” said “Big Belle” in a lady-like voice. “I should
say that the vitriol was still burning deeper, and if I am not much
mistaken there is a considerable fever.”
“I’ll have to get you a thermometer,” said Dr. Brookes, without
thinking; “you can certainly take temperature, Belle, they tell me you
are clever.”
A half-suppressed laugh from the woman startled him. He looked up and
caught her eye, and then he, too, smiled slightly.
“I keep forgetting that you people aren’t to be trusted,” he said,
pleasantly. “When will I ever learn that I am working in a prison!”
The woman did not answer, but she followed him with her eyes as he
moved away. She was by far too clever not to understand his words, and
by far too unhappy not to be secretly pleased by them.
“He’d trust me all right, if he dared,” she thought. “As if there was
any danger of my killing myself, or any one else for that matter!”
“May I come in a minute?” asked a pleasant voice at the door.
Dr. Brookes looked around quickly, and a smile spread over his
features. His visitor was Marion Marlowe, in her nurse’s dress and
bare-headed, except for the light shawl, which she was just slipping to
her shoulders.
“Come right in,” said the young man, as he went quickly forward, then
stopped suddenly at the thought of his professional dignity.
“Oh, Miss Marlowe, what ward do you come from, please? I am almost
afraid to make you welcome.”
“Don’t fear,” said Marion, smilingly, as she stepped into the ward.
“Since I came back from the city, I have only been helping in the linen
room. They have been kind enough to keep me off the wards until I grew
a little stronger.”
“Big Belle” was just passing on her way to the vitriol patient and
Marion watched her movements with a look of wonder.
“The cleverest ‘confidence woman’ in the world,” whispered the doctor.
“She counts the victims she has fleeced by the score, yet see how
gentle she is with my patients.”
“What is the matter with her?” asked Marion, nodding toward the patient
with the bandaged face.
“Why, she was in some drunken fight with another woman. I believe
it was over some man, and as they left Jefferson Market Court her
rival fairly deluged her with vitriol. She only came up from the city
yesterday—sent up as a ‘drunk and disorderly’ for ten days only, but
she’ll never go back. She is slowly dying.”
“Poor thing!” sighed Marion, with tears in her eyes. “But her fate is
the same as dozens that I have seen already. Oh, this awful island!
This awful island!”
She was moving toward the patient when Dr. Brookes stopped her.
“No, Marion!” he said, firmly; “you must not go any nearer. Erysipelas
has set in and you know you are still in a weak condition. If you
should catch any infection in my wards, I would never forgive myself—so
forgive me, please, for being inhospitable!”
“Big Belle” came back and stood quietly beside the doctor. She had
something to say to him and was awaiting his permission to speak.
“She wishes me to send for her father,” she reported as Dr. Brookes
turned to her. “She knows that she is dying, and is anxious to see him.”
“Get his name,” was the doctor’s answer, but “Big Belle” smiled sadly.
“I tried to,” she said, quickly, “but she lapsed into unconsciousness
that minute.”
“They may know his name in the office,” said the doctor. “I’ll go right
down now and see if I can wire him.”
As Dr. Brookes and Marion reached the door of the building, a breath of
salt, fresh air came over the water.
“What a mockery!” said Marion, with a heart-felt sigh. “Oh! this place
is so beautiful with its wonderful, changing scenery, yet how sad are
the hearts that dwell in these buildings. How weary are the eyes that
gaze out on these waters!”
The tramp of many feet came as an echo to her words. Marion turned, and
through the iron grating saw the convicts marching to their luncheon.
“Oh! do let me go in and see them!” she cried, impulsively. “It is the
first time I have been in here, although I have been a month on the
Island.”
Dr. Brookes spoke to the turnkey who at once opened the great guard
doors.
As Marion stepped into the dim corridor, with its small high windows
and bleak gray walls, she shuddered involuntarily as all do at their
first visit to a prison.
Tier after tier of cells rose above her head and now that the convicts
were on their way to the dining-room she stood still for a moment and
gazed morbidly into the blackness.
Suddenly there was a cry from the doctor and a guard came running
toward him.
Dr. Brookes pointed with one hand toward a closed cell just above them,
and with the other tried desperately to push Marion behind him.
But he was a second too late, for Marion’s glance had followed his own,
and for the next few minutes both stood speechless with horror.
A man whose face was so familiar to Marion that her heart almost
stopped beating when she recognized it, was hanging by the neck to the
door of his cell. In the momentary excitement of the meal hour he had
seized his opportunity, and when the guard at last cut him loose he was
too far gone to be resuscitated.
“Who is he?” asked Dr. Brookes, as they brought him down.
Almost automatically the guard muttered the dead man’s number, but with
ashen lips Marion gave the information.
“His name is Lawson,” she said, in a whisper; “and he is the villain
who boarded at my father’s home one summer. He was a hypnotist by
profession, and he abducted my sister Dollie! He was sentenced to Sing
Sing, so I had no idea that I would see him here.”
The guard explained that he had been transferred to the Island by
special order, only a few days previously.
Reginald Brookes bit his lips in a burst of anger.
“Forgive me,” he said, humbly; “I had no idea you bore such sorrow.
Thank Heaven he has paid the penalty and yes—I am glad that you saw it.”
“I am, too,” said Marion, who was deathly pale. “If it had to be—I am
glad that I saw it.”