Life in a reformatory is an ordeal at its doubtful best. It
approximated its noxious worst under the martinet whom Cottage No. 6
styled "the Holy Terror." The absolutism of the superintendent was at
least founded on a sense of duty; her imitator's was based upon whim.
Jean's chimera of parole after eighteen months was promptly dissipated.
Disciplined at the outset for breaking a rule of which she was not
aware, her obedience became thenceforth a captive's. Scrubwoman,
laundress, seamstress, kitchen-drudge--all rôles in which fate, as
embodied in the matron, cast her--were one in their odiousness. She
slurred their doing where she could, and scorned all such meek spirits
as curried favor by trying their best. At times only the fear of the
prison deterred her from open mutiny.
She learned presently that there was an inferno lower even than the
prison. One day, while clearing paths after a heavy snowfall, she
saw a girl dragged past, handcuffed and struggling, her head muffled
in the brown refuge shawl, but audibly and fluently blasphemous
notwithstanding. Jean recognized Stella Wilkes.
Amy, who was working near, said in furtive undertone:
"I heard she'd cut loose again. She'll get all that's coming to her
this time."
Jean eyed the nearest black-clad watcher before replying.
"But she's in prison, anyhow," she commented, with Amy's trick of the
motionless lips. "She can't get much worse than she has already."
"Can't she, though! It's the guardhouse this trip."
Jean questioned and Amy answered till the matron's approach stopped
communication. It was a lurid saga of the days before the state
abolished corporal punishment, handed down with fresh embellishments
from girl to girl. The air was full of such bizarre folk-lore, she
discovered--tales of superintendents who failed to govern; of matrons,
wise and foolish; of delirious riots and hairbreadth escapes. Amy
Jeffries was always the channel which conveyed these legends to Jean's
willing ears.
From all others Jean held herself aloof. Amy alone seemed a victim of
injustice like herself. Jean invited no confidences, and made none; but
bit by bit, as the winter passed, the story of this pretty moth, whose
world, more than her pleasure-loving self, seemed out of joint, pieced
itself together. It was a common story, too hackneyed to detail, though
it signified the quintessence of tragedy to its narrator. Of itself, it
struck no kindred chord in Jean. Its passions, its temptations, its sin
were without glamour or reason; but she divined that nature, rather
than Amy, had wrought this coil, and that, after the fashion of a
topsy-turvy universe, one was again expiating the lapse of two.
The coming of spring at once brightened and embittered Jean's lot.
Outdoor work was no hardship. She knew the times and seasons of all
growing things; which soil was fattest; when plowshare, harrow, spade,
and hoe should do their appointed parts; when the strawberry-beds
should be stripped of their winter coverlets; when potatoes, shorn of
their pallid cellar sprouts, should be quartered and dropped; when
peas and green corn should be sown; when the drooping tomato plants
should be set out and fostered; and she entered upon this dear toil
with a zest which nothing indoors had inspired. But she knew also--and
here was the pang--precisely what was transpiring out there in the
forest which all but touched the refuge boundary. With a heartache
she visualized the stir of shy life in pond and field and tree-top;
caught in memory the scent of the first arbutus; spied out the earliest
violet; beheld jack-in-the-pulpit unbar his shutter; saw the mandrake
bear its apple, the ferns uncurl, the dogwood bloom.
The call of the woods rang most insistent when she lay in her iron cot
at twilight, for bedtime still came as in the early nights of winter,
at an hour when the play of the outside world had just begun. She
could see the bit of forest from her narrow window, and in fancy made
innumerable forays into its captivating depths with rod or gun. It was
these imaginary outings, ending always behind locks and bars, which
first set her thoughts coursing upon the idea of escape.
There were precedents galore. The undercurrent of reformatory gossip
was rich in these picaresque adventures. But cleverly planned as some
of them had been, daringly executed as were others, all save one ended
in commonplace recapture. The exception enchained Jean's interest. Amy
Jeffries had rehearsed the tale one day when the gardener, concerned
with the ravages of an insect invasion of the distant currant bushes,
left the lettuce-weeding squad to itself.
"I never knew Sophie Powell," Amy prefaced; "she skipped before I came.
But they say she was something on your style--haughty-like and good at
throwing a bluff. I heard that the men down at the gatehouse nicknamed
her the 'Empress-out-of-a-job.' What she was sent here for, I can't
say. She was as close-mouthed as you. Mind you, I'm not criticising.
It's risky business, swapping life histories here. You're the only girl
that's heard my story. If you never feel like telling me yours, all
right. If you do, why, all right, too. I didn't mention names, and you
needn't either. I wonder if _he_ would do as much for me!"
Jean checkmated Amy's maneuver without ceremony.
"I've no man's name to hide," she returned bluntly. "But never mind
that. It's Sophie Powell I want to hear about."
Amy took no offense.
"My," she laughed admiringly; "you _are_ a riddle! Well, as I say,
Sophie had a way with her, and knew how to play her cards. She got high
grade within a year, and worked her matron for special privileges.
The matron let her have the run of her room a good deal, for Sophie
knew to a T just how she liked everything kept; and she wasn't over
particular about locking Sophie's door, which was handy to her own.
One spring night, earlier than this, I guess, for it was still dark
at supper, she played up sick. She timed her spasm for an hour when
the doctor was generally busy at the hospital, and let the matron fuss
round with hot-water bags till the supper bell rang. Then the matron
went downstairs, leaving the door open to give poor Sophie more air. As
soon as she heard the dishes rattle, the invalid got busy. She hopped
in next door, pinched the matron's best black skirt and a swell white
silk shirt-waist she kept for special, grabbed a hat and veil and a
long cloak out of the wardrobe and the big bunch of house-keys from a
hiding-place she'd spotted, tip-toed downstairs and let herself out of
the front door."
Jean drew a long breath.
"But the guards?" she put in.
"She only ran into one--the easy mark at the gate."
"The gate!"
"Sure. Sophie didn't propose to muss her new clothes climbing a
ten-foot fence. She marched over to the gatehouse, bold as brass,
handed in her keys as she'd seen the matrons do, and was out in no
time. Why, the guard even tipped his hat--so he said before they fired
him. That was the most comical thing about it all."
Jean threw a glance over her shoulder. The gardener was still beyond
earshot.
"Go on," she said eagerly. "How did she manage outside? That's the part
I want to hear."
"Then came smoother work still. Sophie hadn't a cent--she missed the
matron's purse in her hurry--but she had her nerve along. She streaked
it over into town, and asked her way to the priest who comes out here
twice a month for confession. She banked on his not remembering her,
for she wasn't one of his girls; and he didn't. His sight was poor,
anyhow. Well, she told him she was a Catholic and a stranger in town,
looking for work, and that she'd just had a telegram from home saying
her mother was dying. She pumped up the tears in good style, and put it
up to him to ante the car fare if he didn't want her heart to break. It
didn't break."
Jean absently fashioned the moist earth beneath her fingers into the
semblance of a priest's face, which she instantly obliterated when it
stirred Amy's interest.
"Why couldn't they trace her?" she asked.
"Because she was too cute to stick to her train. She must have jumped
the express when they slowed up for their first stop."
The fugitive bulked large in Jean's meditations. It occurred to her
that possibly the needless rigor of her own treatment in Cottage No.
6 might originate in her chance resemblance to Sophie Powell. She
wondered how it fared with the girl; whether she had had to make her
way unbefriended; to what she had turned her hand. Was she perhaps
living a blameless life, respected, loved, in all ways another
personality, yet forever hag-ridden with the fear of recapture? She
did not debate whether such freedom were worth its cost, for just
then the pungent invitation of the woods was borne to her across the
lettuce-rows.
A bit of refuse crystallized her resolve. She spied it toward the
end of her day's toil--a large rusty nail half protruding from the
loam--and knew it instantly for the tool which should compass her
release. Her mind acted on its hint with extraordinary lucidity, and
her fingers were scarcely less nimble. Not even Amy at her side saw her
slip the treasure trove into the concealing masses of her hair. From
that moment till the bolts were shot upon her for the night she was
absorbed in her plans.
To duplicate Sophie Powell's exploit was, of course, out of the
question. Her own door was never left unlocked; the Holy Terror's
graceless clothes, for all practical uses, might as well hang in
another planet; while even were these impossibilities surmounted, she
could scarcely hope to hoodwink the men at the gate. She must secure
a disguise somehow, but she cheerfully left that detail to chance. To
escape was the main thing, and if by a rusty nail she might cross that
bridge, surely she need borrow no trouble lest her wits desert her
afterward.
A tedious-toned clock over in the town struck twelve before she dared
begin her attempt. The watchman had just gone beneath her window on
his hourly round, and with the cessation of his slow pace upon the
gravel the peace of midnight overlay everything. For almost two hours
thereafter Jean labored with her rude implement at the staples which
held the woven-wire barrier before her window. The first staple came
hardest, but she had pried it loose by the time the watch repassed. In
a half-hour more she had freed enough of the netting to serve her end,
but she deferred the great moment till the man should again have come
and gone. It was a difficult wait, centuries long, and anxiety began to
cheat and befool her reason. She questioned whether she had not lost
count of time. Suppose she had let him come upon her unheeded! Suppose
he had caught some hint of her employment! Suppose he were even now
lurking, spider-like, in the shadows!
Then the clock struck twice in its deliberative way, the measured
footfall recurred, and her brain cleared. Five minutes later she bent
back the netting and calculated the distance to the ground. She judged
it some sixteen or eighteen feet, all told, or a sheer drop of more
than half that space as she would hang by her finger-tips. There could
be no leaving a telltale rope of bedclothes to dangle. Such folly would
set the telephone wires humming within the hour. She must drop, and
drop with good judgment; since the grass plot, which she counted upon
to break her fall, gave place directly below to an area, grated over to
be sure, but undesirable footing notwithstanding.
She tossed her brown shawl to the ground first, and noted, with some
oddly detached segment of her mind, that it spread itself on the sward
in the shape of a huge bat. A romping girlhood steadying her nerves,
she let herself cautiously over the sill, and for an instant hung
motionless, her eyes below. Then, gathering momentum from a double
swing, she suddenly relaxed her hold, cleared the danger-point, and
alighted, uninjured and almost without sound, upon the springing turf.