So the little secretary found her. Miss Archer was born under a more
benignant star than her superior, and habitually tried in such quiet
ways as a wise grand vizier may to leaven the ruling autocracy with
kindness. She told Jean that she had come to transfer her to the
regular routine, bade her bathe her eyes, and made cheerful talk while
she collected her few possessions. They crossed the quadrangle in the
wintry dusk, turning in at a cottage near the prison just as Jean was
gripped by the fear that the monster itself would engulf her.
At the door-sill she felt a hand slip into hers.
"Be willing, dearie, and seem as cheerful as you can," counseled her
guide. "I'm anxious to have you make a good first impression here in
Cottage No. 6. It's immensely important that you stand well with your
matron. Everything depends upon it."
Jean melted before her friendliness.
"I wish I could be under you," she said impulsively. "This place
wouldn't seem--what it is."
She framed this wish anew when she faced the matron herself in the
bleak cleanliness of the hall. This person was a variant of the
superintendent's impersonal type and a slavish plagiarist of her
mannerisms. A bundle of prejudices, she believed herself dowered
with superhuman impartiality; and now, in muddle-headed pursuit
of this notion, she promptly decided that an offender so plainly
superior to the average ought in the fitness of things to receive less
consideration than the average. Jean accordingly went smarting to her
room.
Happily she was given little time to think about it. The incessant
round which, day in and day out, was to fill her waking hours, caught
her into its mechanism. A querulous bell tapped somewhere, her door,
in common with every one in the corridor, was unlocked, and she merged
with a uniformed file which, without words, shuffled down two flights
of stairs and ranged itself about the tables of a desolate dining-hall.
Whereupon the matron, who had taken her station at a small table laid
for herself and another black-garbed official, raised her thin voice
and repeated,
"The eyes of all wait upon Thee, O Lord!"
An unintelligible mumbling followed, which by dint of strained
listening at many ensuing meals Jean finally translated,
"And Thou givest them their meat in due season."
Thirty odd chairs forthwith scraped the bare floor. Thirty odd
appetites attacked the food heaped in coarse earthenware upon the
oilcloth. Jean fasted. Hash she despised; macaroni stood scarcely
higher in her regard; while tea was an essentially feminine beverage
which of principle she had long eschewed. This eliminated everything
save bread, and it chanced that her share of this staple was of the
maiden baking of a young person whose talents till lately had been
exclusively devoted to picking pockets.
Jean surveyed the room. It shared the naked dreariness of the
corridors; not a picture enlivened its terra-cotta wastes of wall.
Another long table, twin in all respects to her own, occupied with hers
the greater part of the floor space; but there remained room near the
door for two smaller tables, the matron's, which she had remarked on
entering, and one occupied by five favorites of fortune, whose uniform,
though similar to the general in color, resembled a trained nurse's in
its striping, and was further distinguished by white collars and cuffs.
This table, like the matron's, was covered with a white cloth and
boasted a small jardinière of ferns.
The matron's voice was again heard.
"You may talk now, girls," she announced. "Quietly, remember."
A score of tongues were instantly loosed. The newcomer was astounded.
How had they the heart to speak? It was strange table-talk, curiously
limited in range, straying little beyond the narrow confines of the
reformatory world. A girl opposite said: "One year and five months
more!" and set afoot a spirited comparison which crisscrossed the board
from end to end and reached its climax in the enviable lot of her
whose release was due in thirty-seven days. Jean observed that the
head of the first speaker was lop-sided; its neighbor was narrow in
the forehead; a third, two places beyond, had peculiar teeth. Nearly
all, in fact, were stamped with some queerness, either natural or
artificially imposed by an institutional régime wherein the graces of
the toilet had no function.
The gossip took another tack, originating this time in some trivial
happening in the gymnasium. Jean listened closely at a mention of
basket-ball, but lost all interest when the talk veered fitfully to the
sewing-school.
"Ain't you hungry?" said a voice at her side.
Jean rounded upon a girl perhaps a year her senior. Her tones were
gentle, with a certain lisping appeal, and her face, if not strong, was
neither abnormal nor coarse. Outside a refuge uniform she would readily
pass as pretty.
"I couldn't stomach it myself, at the start," she went on, without
waiting for an answer, "but I got used to it. We all do. Why, the days
I work in the laundry I'm half starved."
Jean stared.
"They make you do laundry work!"
"Sure. We all take a turn. Everything on the place is done by the
girls, you know--washing, cooking, tailoring, gardening, and a lot
besides."
Her auditor relapsed into gloomy silence, a new horror added to her
plight. At home, even the factotum they styled the hired girl had been
exempt from washing. A strapping negress had come in Mondays for that.
"I'm next door to you upstairs," pursued the new acquaintance, in her
deprecating way. "My name is Amy Jeffries. What's yours?"
She gave it after a moment's debate. The old beloved "Jack" was at
the tip of her tongue, but she suddenly thought better of it. After
all, "Jean" would answer for this place. She regretted that in lieu
of Fanshaw she could not use Jones, or Smith, or--master stroke of
irony--the abominated Tuttle.
"Jean Fanshaw's a nice name," commented Amy sociably.
Dreading further catechising, Jean struck in with a question of her own.
"Why have those girls over there a better uniform and a table to
themselves?" she demanded.
"They're high grade."
"What does that mean?"
"Six months without a mark." Amy Jeffries cast a look of envy upon the
group at the side table. "I'd like awfully to be high grade. It must
seem like living again to sit down to a tablecloth. I should like the
cuffs and collars, too. I just love dress. When I leave here I think
I'll go into a dressmaking establishment, or a milliner's."
Jean was reminded of something.
"Tell me how I can get out of here in a year and a half," she
requested. "Somebody said it could be done."
Amy smiled wanly.
"I wanted to know, too, when I was green. I could just see the guard
holding the gate open as I sailed off the grounds! It was a beautiful
dream."
"Why couldn't you do it?"
"Marks," said Amy sententiously. "Parole in eighteen months means a
perfect record right from the beginning. I thought I'd try for it, but,
mercy, I've never even made high grade! Once I came within six weeks of
it, but I let a dress go down to the laundry with a pin in it."
"They mark for a little thing like that?"
"My stars, yes! For less than that--buttons off, wrong apron in the
recreation-room, and so on. I got my first mark for wearing my hair
'pomp.' They won't stand for it here. They want to make us as hideous
as they can."
A lull threw the remarks of the girl with peculiar teeth into unsought
prominence.
"Jim was a swell-looker," she was saying, "and a good spender when he
was flush, but I used to tell him--"
"Delia!" The matron was on her feet leveling a rebuking finger at Jim's
biographer. "You know better. Leave the room at once. All talking will
cease."
The culprit scuffed sulkily out, and no further word was uttered till
the end of the meal, when at a signal all rose and the matron observed
in pontifical tones,
"Thou openest Thy hand!"
On this occasion Jean caught the response without difficulty. The
words, "And Thou fillest all things living with plenteousness," seemed
to emanate chiefly from the high-grade table, with a faint echo on the
part of Amy Jeffries, in whom the ambition to eat from a cloth still
persisted. At "plenteousness" one bold spirit snickered.
The file tramped up the two flights by which it had come, and scattered
to its rooms. For twenty minutes Jean sat in darkness and dejection.
Then the fretful bell clamored again, the doors yawned as before,
the silent ranks re-formed, and the march below stairs was repeated.
Their destination proved to be the recreation-room. In a dwelling this
chamber would have been shunned. Here, compared with such other parts
of the cottage as Jean had seen, it seemed blithesome. Potted geraniums
made grateful oases of the window-sills. An innocuous print or two hung
upon the walls.
As the girls found seats, the matron handed Jean a letter.
"You will be allowed to answer it next week," she said. "All
letter-writing is done upon the third Friday of the month."
The girl took the missive with burning face. The envelope was already
slit. The letter itself had undergone inspection, and five whole lines
had been expunged. But her anger at this tampering lost itself in the
unspeakable bitterness which jaundiced her to the soul as she read.
Better that they had blotted every syllable.
JEAN: I hope this will find you reconciled to your cross,
and resolved to lead a different life. After talking over this
great affliction with our pastor, and taking it to the Throne of
Grace in prayer, I have come to feel that His hand guides us in
this, as in all things. I cannot understand why I have been so
chastened, but I bow to the rod. If your father were alive, I
should consider it a judgment upon him for his lax principles in
religious matters. I never could comprehend his frivolous
indifference. I am sure I spared no effort to bring him to a
realizing sense of his impiety.
Amelia takes the same view that I do of all that has happened. She
has not felt like going out, poor sensitive child, but.... (The
hand of the censor lay heavy here. Jean readily inferred, however,
that Amelia's retirement had its solace.) The first storm of the
winter came yesterday. Snow is six inches deep on a level, and eggs
are high.
Your devoted mother,