I
The girl heard the key rasp in the lock and the door open, but she did
not turn.
"When I enter the room, rise," directed an even voice.
The new inmate obeyed disdainfully. The superintendent, a middle-aged
woman of precise bearing and crisp accent, took possession of the one
chair, and flattened a note-book across an angular knee.
"Is Jean Fanshaw your full name?" she began.
"I'm called Jack."
"Jack!" The descending pencil paused disapprovingly in mid-air. "You
were committed to the refuge as Jean."
"Everybody calls me Jack," persisted the girl shortly--"everybody."
"Does your mother?"
Her face clouded. "No," she admitted; "but my father did. He began it,
and I like it. Why isn't it as good as Jean? Both come from John."
"It is not womanly," said Miss Blair, as one having authority. "Women
of refinement don't adopt men's names."
"How about George Eliot?" Jean promptly countered. "And that other
George--the French woman?"
The superintendent battled to mask her astonishment. Case-hardened by a
dozen years' close contact with moral perverts, budding criminals, and
the half-insane, she plumed herself that she was not easily taken off
her guard. But the unexpected had befallen. The newcomer had given her
a sensation, and moreover she knew it. Jean Fanshaw's dark eyes exulted
insolently in her victory.
Miss Blair took formal refuge in her notes. "Birthplace?" she continued.
"Shawnee Springs."
"Age?"
"Seventeen, two months ago--September tenth."
The official jotted "American" under the heading of nationality, and
said,--
"Where were your parents born?"
"Father hailed from the South--from Virginia." Her face lighted
curiously. "His people once owned slaves."
"And your mother?"
The girl's interest in her ancestry flagged. "Pure Shawnee Springs."
She flung off the characterization with scorn. "Pure, unadulterated
Shawnee Springs."
But the superintendent was now on the alert for the unexpected. "I
want plain answers," she admonished. "What has been your religious
training?"
"Mixed. Father was an Episcopalian, I think, but he wasn't much of a
churchgoer; he preferred the woods. Mother's a Baptist."
"And you?"
"I don't know what I am. I guess God isn't interested in my case."
The official retreated upon her final routine question.
"Education?"
"I was in my last year at high school when"--her cheek flamed--"when
this happened."
Miss Blair construed the flush as a hopeful sign. "You may sit down,
Jean," she said, indicating the narrow iron bed. "Let me see your
knitting."
The girl handed over the task work which had made isolation doubly
odious.
The superintendent pursed her thin lips.
"Have you never set up a stocking before?" she asked.
"No."
"Can you sew?"
"No."
"Or cook?"
"No."
"'No, Miss Blair,' would be more courteous. Have you been taught any
form of housework whatsoever?"
Jean looked her fathomless contempt. "We kept help for such drudgery,"
she explained briefly.
"You must learn, then. They are things which every woman should know."
"I don't care to learn the things every woman should know. I hate
women's work. I hate women, too, and their namby-pamby ways. I'd give
ten years of my life to be a man."
Her listener contrasted Jean Fanshaw's person with her ideas. Even
the flesh-mortifying, blue-and-white-check uniform of the refuge
became the girl. Immature in outline, she was opulent in promise. Her
features held no hint of masculinity; the mouth, chin, eyes--above
all, the defiant eyes--were hopelessly feminine. Miss Blair's own pale
glance returned again and again upon those eyes. They made her think
of pools which forest leaves have dyed. The brows were brown, too,
and delicately lined, but the thick rope of hair, which fell quite to
the girl's hips, was fair. The other woman touched the splendid braid
covetously.
"You can't escape your sex," she said. "Don't try."
"But I wasn't meant for a girl. They didn't want one when I was born.
They'd had one girl, my sister Amelia, and they counted on a boy. They
felt sure of it. Why, they'd even picked out his name. It was to be
John, after my father. Then I came."
"Nature knew best."
Jean gave a mirthless laugh. "Nature made a botch," she retorted. "What
business has a boy with the body of a girl?"
The superintendent lost patience. "You must rid yourself of this
nonsense," she declared firmly, and said again, "You can't escape your
sex."
"I will if I can."
"But why?"
"Because this is a man's world. Because I mean to do the things men do."
"For some little time to come you'll occupy yourself with the things
women do."
Jean's long fingers clenched at the reminder. The hot color flooded
back. "Oh, the shame of it!" she cried passionately. "The wicked
injustice of it!"
"You did wrong. This is your punishment."
"My punishment!" flashed the girl. "My punishment! Could they punish me
in no other way than this? Am I a Stella Wilkes, a common creature of
the streets, who--"
The superintendent raised her hand. "Don't go into that," she warned
peremptorily. "If you knew Stella Wilkes in Shawnee Springs--"
"I know her!"
"Don't interrupt me. I repeat, if you know anything of Stella's record,
keep it to yourself. A girl turns over a new leaf when she enters here.
Her past is behind her. And let me caution you personally not to speak
of your life to any one but myself. Remember that. Make confidences to
no one--not even the matrons--to no one except me."
Jean searched the enigmatic face hungrily. "I doubt if you'd care
to listen," she stated simply; "or whether, if you did listen, you'd
believe!"
Something in her tone penetrated Miss Blair's official crust. "My
dear!" she protested.
The girl was silent a moment. Then, point-blank, "Do you think a mother
can hate her child?" she asked.
The superintendent, by virtue of her office, felt constrained to take
up the cudgels for humanity. "Of course not," she responded.
"My mother hates me sometimes."
"Nonsense!"
"At other times it's only dislike," Jean went on impassively. "It's
always been so. Dad got over the fact that I was a girl. He said he
would call me his boy, anyhow. That's where the 'Jack' came from.
But mother--she was different. I dare say if I'd been all girl, like
Amelia, she could have stood me. She was forever holding up Amelia
as a pattern. Amelia would get a hundred per cent. in that quiz you
put me through. Amelia can sew; Amelia can embroider; Amelia can make
tea-biscuit and angel-cake."
"And what were you doing while your sister was improving her
opportunities?"
"Improving mine," came back Jean, with conviction. "Why didn't you ask
me if I could swim, and box, and shoot, and hold my own with a gamy
pickerel or trout?"
"Did your father teach you those things?"
"Some of them."
"And to affect mannish clothes, and smoke cigarettes with your feet on
the table?"
Jean flaunted an unregenerate grin. "You've heard more than you let on,
I guess. But you wouldn't have asked that last question if you'd known
him. He wasn't that sort. I did those things after--after he went. I
didn't really care for the cigarettes; I mainly wanted to shock that
sheep, Amelia. Besides, I only smoked in my own room. I had a bully
room--all posters and foils and guns. That reminds me," she added, with
a quick change of tone. "That woman who comes in here--the matron--took
something of mine. I want it back."
"What was it?"
"A little clay bust my father made."
"Was he a sculptor?"
"No, a druggist; but he could model. You'll make her give it back?"
"Is it the likeness of a man?"
"Yes, of dad."
"The matron was right. We allow no men's pictures in the girls' rooms,
and the rule would apply here."
Incredulity, resentment, impotent anger drove in rapid sequence across
the too mobile face. "But it's dad!" she cried. "Why, he did it for me!
I never had a picture. Don't keep it from me; it's only dad."
The official shook her head in stanch conviction of the sacredness of
red tape. "The rule is for everybody. Furthermore, you must not refer
to men in your letters home. If you make such references, they will be
erased. Nor will they be permitted in any letter you may receive from
your family."
"You'll read my letters?"
"Certainly."
Jean silently digested this fresh indignity. "Then I'll never write,"
she declared.
Miss Blair waived discussion. "Never mind about the rules now, my
girl," she returned, not unkindly. "You will appreciate the reasons for
them in time. Go on with your story. Tell me more of your home life."
"It wasn't a home--at least, not for me. I didn't fit into it anywhere
after dad went. Mother couldn't understand me. She said I took after
the Fanshaws, not her folks, the Tuttles. Thank heaven for that! I
never understood her, it's certain. When she wasn't flint, she was
mush. Her softness was all for Amelia, though. They were hand and glove
in everything, and always lined up together in our family rows. I think
that was at the bottom of half the trouble. If mother'd only let us
girls scrap things out by ourselves, we'd have rubbed along somehow,
and probably been better friends. But she couldn't do it. She had to
take a hand for Saint Amelia, as a matter of course. I can't remember
when it wasn't so, from the days when we fought over our toys till the
last big rumpus of all."
"And that last affair?" prompted her inquisitor. "What led to it?"
"A box social."
"A box social!"
"Never heard of one? You're not country-bred, I guess. Shawnee Springs
pretends to be awfully citified when the summer cottagers are in town,
but it's rural enough the rest of the year. Box socials are all the
rage. You see, the girls all bring boxes, packed with supper for two,
which are auctioned off to the highest bidder. The fellows aren't
supposed to know whose box they're buying. Anyhow, that's the theory.
I thought it ought to be the practice, too, and when I found that
Amelia had fixed things beforehand with Harry Fargo, I planned a little
surprise by changing the wrapper. Harry bid in the box she signalled
him to buy, and drew his own little sister for a partner. The man who
bought Amelia's was a bald-headed old widower she couldn't bear. It
wasn't much of a joke, I dare say, and Amelia couldn't see the point of
it at all. She told me she hated me, right before Harry Fargo himself,
and after we came home she followed me up to my room to say it again."
An unofficial smile tempered Miss Blair's austerity. "But go on," she
said, with an access of formality by way of atonement for her lapse.
Jean's own quick-changing eyes gleamed over the memory of Amelia's
undoing, but it was for an instant only. "It was a dear joke for me,"
she continued soberly. "Amelia was sore. She had a nasty way of saying
things, for all her angel-food, and she hadn't lost her voice that
night, I can assure you. I said I was sorry for playing her the trick,
but she kept harping on it like a phonograph, and one of our regular
shindies followed. It would have ended in talk, like all the rest, if
mother hadn't chimed in, but when they both tuned up with the same old
song about my being a hoiden and a family disgrace, why, I got mad
myself, and told them to clear out. When they didn't budge, I grabbed
a Cuban machete that a Rough Rider friend had given me, and went for
them."
"What did you mean to do?"
"Only frighten them. I never knew till afterward that I'd really pinked
Amelia's arm. Of course, I didn't mean to do anything like that. I
swear it."
"And then?"
"Then mother lost her head completely. She tore shrieking downstairs,
Amelia after her, and both of them took to the street. First I knew,
in came the officer. The rest seems a kind of nightmare to me--the
arrest, the station-house cell, the blundering old fool of a magistrate
who sent me here. He said he'd had his eye on me for a long time, and
that I was incorrigible. Incorrigible! What did he know about it? He
couldn't even pronounce the word! What business has such a man with
power to spoil a girl's life! He was only a seedy failure as a lawyer,
and got his job through politics. That's what sent me here--politics!
Mother never intended matters to go this far. I know she didn't, though
she doesn't admit it. She wanted to frighten me, but things slipped out
of her hands. Think of it! Three years among the Stella Wilkeses for a
joke! My God, I can't believe it! I must be dreaming still."
The superintendent ransacked her stock of homilies for an adequate
response, but nothing suggested itself. Jean Fanshaw's case refused to
fit the routine pigeonholes. She could only remind the girl that it lay
with herself to decide whether she would serve out her full term.
"It is possible to earn your parole in a year and a half, remember,"
she charged, rising. "Bear that constantly in mind."
Jean seemed not to hear. "The shame of it!" she repeated numbly. "The
disgrace of it! I shall never live it down."
She brooded long at her window when her visitor had gone, her wrongs
rankling afresh from their rehearsal. The two weeks' isolation had
begun to tell upon the nerves which she had prided herself were of
stoic fibre. Human companionship she did not want. She had not welcomed
the superintendent's coming, nor the physician's before her; and, if
contempt might slay, the drear files of her fellow-inmates which
traversed the snow-bound paths below would have withered in their
tracks. It was the open she craved, and the daily walks under the close
surveillance of a taciturn matron had but whetted her great desire.
She had conned the desolate prospect till she felt she knew its every
hateful inch. Yonder, at the head of the long quadrangle, was the
administration building, whither Miss Blair had taken her precise
way. Flanking the court, ran the red brick cottages--each a replica
of its unlovely neighbor, offspring all of a single architectural
indiscretion--one of which she supposed incuriously would house her in
the lost years of her durance. Quite at the end, closing the group,
loomed the prison, gaunt, iron-barred, sinister in the gathering dusk.
This last structure had come almost to seem a sensate creature,
a grotesque, sprawling monster, with half-human lineaments which
nightfall blurred and modelled. Now, as she watched, the central door,
that formed its mouth, gaped wide and emitted one of the double files
of erring femininity which were continually passing and repassing. She
knew that there were degrees of badness here, and reasoned that these
from the monster's jaws must be the more refractory, but they appeared
to her no worse than the others. Indeed, as looks went, they were,
on the whole, superior. She felt no pity for them, only measureless
disgust--disgust for the brazen and the dispirited alike; all were
despicable. Her pity was for herself that she must breathe the common
air.
Hitherto she had not separated them one from the other. This time,
however, she passed them in review--the hard, the vicious, the frankly
animal, the merely weak; till, coming last of all upon a brunette
face of garish good looks, she shrank abruptly from the window. For
the first time since her arrival she glimpsed the girl whose name had
been a byword in Shawnee Springs, the being who at once symbolized and
made concrete to Jean the bald, terrible fact of her degradation. Till
now she had gone through all things dry-eyed--manfully, as she would
have chosen to say--but the sight of Stella Wilkes plumbed emotional
deeps in the womanhood she would have forsworn, and she flung herself,
sobbing, upon her bed.