MRS1 The Under Dogs (10 page)

I presently made out that a motionless crowd was gathering outside the train gate that I was watching. Many others beside myself had read that item in the newspaper. A hot little spurt of anger rose within me; mere curiosity-seekers, I thought; have they nothing better to do! This was perfectly inconsistent, of course, My nerves were on edge. I had had too much time to think about that case, and not enough to do with it.

Finally I saw the tragic little procession appear from underneath the other end of the balcony on which I stood. It circled around the foot of the great stairway in the middle, and came back towards the train gate. Something less than a score of women walking two and two, with two guards going ahead to force a way through the crowd, and others on either side. Each pair was handcuffed together, and all were trying to conceal it by carrying wraps over their joined wrists. Hundreds came pushing to gape at them with that soulless curiosity, one of the ugliest of human expressions. To men prisoners the crowd would have been indifferent, but at the woman they cruelly grinned. I don't know why. Some of the prisoners kept their heads down; some grinned back cringingly at the crowd. All that I could see were pathetically young.

My mistress, conspicuous for her height, was one of the first two. She was the focus of interest. It was at her that the fingers were pointed, and one sensed the busy whispers: "There she is! There she is!" She had on a dark suit and a little black hat with that amazing blonde frizz of hair sticking out all around. She walked along, untroubled by the stares of the people, her own bright eyes busy. Completely protected by the personality of Jessie Seipp, she was enjoying the novel situation. She was going to prison happy, while I was free, and perfectly wretched on her account.

Her keen glance swept along the balustrade—I think she expected to find me there; she saw me, but gave no sign. Fixing her gaze at the end of the balcony, some thirty or forty feet from where I stood, her face lighted up, and she cried out:

"Bye-bye, ol' gal! There'll be no wash in Heaven!"

The crowd roared with laughter, and every neck was craned to discover whom she was speaking to. I was safe, of course. The train gate swallowed her up.

The sixteen women, handcuffed two and two, occupied eight seats in a row in the day-coach, while their four guards were distributed across the aisle. Since their braceleted wrists were invariably hidden, once they had taken their seats there was nothing to distinguish them from any other passengers, except that it was a little odd to see so many women of such diverse types in a block together. They were for the most part in excellent spirits, the train journey being much better than what lay behind them, and what was to come. On the train there was no attempt to prevent them from talking to each other.

Having taken seats in the order of entering, Jessie Seipp and her companion were in the rearmost of the eight seats, where Jessie was able to watch the backs of all the other heads in the party, and speculate on what was going on inside them. Bobbed heads they were, nearly all of them, and by preference a chemical auburn shade, chosen, no doubt, to suggest the adventurous spirit of the wearer. The oldest still lacked some years of forty; she was a professional shop-lifter, very fashionably dressed, and might have been a rich woman on the way to her country house. Beside her sat one who could have passed as her maid. Nothing was known about the nature of her offence, for she kept her mouth tight shut. Two seats behind them sat an Italian girl with an infantile frightened face. She had been sent up for stabbing a man, and all the others regarded her with respect.

But Jessie's principal interest naturally was in the girl she was chained to. How extraordinary to be chained to an unknown! The backs of their hands lay together, touching. Ordinarily Jessie would have shivered a little at the enforced contact with strange flesh! but now—well, there was no help for it, and one simply did not think about it. This girl was not in good spirits. With her anaemic, rebellious face, and two-seasons-old blue suit, she looked like the young wife of a struggling clerk. Jessie felt a desire to make friends with her.

"Gee! I wish I had a cigarette!" she said cheerfully.

"You may as well make up your mind to cut 'em out now," the other said bitterly.

"Oh, I dunno," said Jessie. "Maybe I'll find a way."

"You're one of the ones that always gets what they want, eh?" said her companion with a sneer.

Jessie refused to be put out. "I gen'ally make out," she said.

"Well, you won't find what you're going to no bed of roses!"

"You been there before, I take it?"

The girl looked out of the window without replying.

"Let's be pals," said Jessie bluntly.

The girl turned her head. She had enormous blue eyes with a world of sullen pain in their depths. "A-ah! you don't mean nottin' by that," she said with a sneer.

"What if I don't!" said Jessie with a shrug. "Let's be pals anyhow. My name's Jessie Seipp. What's yours?"

"Jean Hazard."

"Bet you made that up. Sounds literary."

In her turn Jean shrugged, without the vestige of a smile in her white face.

"What did they get you for?" asked Jessie. It was the customary way of starting an acquaintance.

But Jean looked out of the window again.

"Well, it's nottin' to me," said Jessie. "Me, I cracked Mrs. Cornelius Marquardt on the bean and frisked her em'ralds."

"Yes, I read about in it the paper," said Jean. "Was it your first job?"

"Yep."

"You were lucky," said Jean with a peculiar bitterness; "breaking into the news first-off like that. It'll attract the attention of the big fellows. You'll get a chance at the big money. I never had no luck. Everybody puts on me. Small jobs, and soaked the limit, that's my story."

"Maybe you ain't cut out for this work," said Jessie, in a tone that the hearer might regard as sympathetic or not, as she pleased.

"Too late to think about that," said Jean dejectedly. "I'm in it too deep."

"What you get?" asked Jessie.

"On'y a year this time," said Jean, hanging her head; "they wasn't but twenty-four dollars in the woman's bag. But this time ... you see..." She choked, and tried to carry it off with a piteous swagger. "A-ah, what the hell...!"

"Oh, a year," said Jessie quickly. "With your time off.... Look at me, with three years."

Jean's head went down alarmingly; it was partly turned from Jessie, but the latter saw tears fall in her lap. Big round tears from those big eyes.

"I got a little baby," whispered Jean; "a real little fella. I'm nutty about him ... and this hot weather..."

Jessie's hand turned half-way in the handcuff, and Jean's came pitifully to meet it. They clasped. Jessie felt as if little knives were thrusting in her breast; her eyelids prickled; she almost came out of character.

"A-ah, he'll come through all right!" she said jocosely. "Most of 'em does. Look at all the men there are clutterin' up the wuyld, the loafers! You and me will be out some day; we'll be pals on the level; we'll help each other out; if I have any luck, you'll be in on it, see?"

Jessie rattled on in this vein, and presently the heavy tears ceased to fall in Jean's lap. "Oh, well," she said with her piteous swagger. "I should worry! Ev'y day will be Sunday, by-and-by."

"Yes, and there'll be no wash in Heaven!" said Jessie.

Their hands continued to cling together.

"What d'ye mean, big fellows, that you was talking about just now?" asked Jessie.

"You know, the big operators; the top men. If they take an interest in you, you're fixed for life. Believe me, there's nothing in this independent stuff. You gotta have an organisation behind you."

"Well, I'm not interested for a coupla years anyhow," said Jessie with a laugh.

"They got their scouts in Woburn," said Jean. "They could get you out of there, if they liked your work."

"Did they ever approach you?" asked Jessie.

"Nah!" said Jean bitterly. "They wasn't interested in the likes of me. But I heard the talk."

"Just prison talk, I guess," said Jessie.

Jean shook her head. "There was a girl called Melanie Soupert..."

"Did you know her?" asked Jessie.

"Only by reputation. She wasn't there the same time I was. They got her out."

"I read about it," said Jessie. "But I thought that talk about the organisation for getting prisoners out was just newspaper talk; to fill up space like."

"It got her out," said Jean, "...twice."

"Who are these big men?" asked Jessie carelessly.

"If I knew who they were, I wouldn't be here," said Jean.

"Will we see each other up there?" asked Jessie. "Will we be able to talk?"

"Maybe so; maybe not."

"What's the first thing they do to you?"

"Put you in solitary."

"Solitary!" said Jessie, surprised. "I thought that was just for the hardest cases."

"Oh, they don't call it solitary first-off," said Jean. "They call it detention or somepin. You see, it's this way; when the girls first come, after the trial and all, they're wild, see? They don't care what they do. So they chuck 'em in solitary for ten days or so to cool off. Then they're so glad to get out they obey any rule, see?"

"Gosh!" said Jessie. "And I thought the prisons was reformed!"

When the cell door clanged behind her, Jessie Seipp's stout heart contracted painfully. There was a horrid finality in the sound. Up to this point, surrounded by her fellow prisoners, and by guards, keepers and officials with their amusing foibles, the whole adventure had been extraordinarily interesting, but alone within those narrow stone walls fronted by a steel lattice work, it began to take on a different aspect. She discovered primitive feelings in herself, whose existence she had never suspected.

The arrogant ego who sits enthroned in the centre of each one of us was filled with a sense of outrage. "Put
me
in a cell!" it seemed to cry; "How dare they!" To be sure, the other part of her, the sophisticated part which looks on from the outside, laughed, and answered: "Well, this is what you were after, isn't it?" But the primitive came up with unexpected strength; primitive rage and primitive fear. Of what avail was philosophy against the hard facts of stone and steel; against solitude, silence, and presently the dark?

A single glance around enabled the occupant to take complete stock of her cell. Eight by four in size, and perhaps eight feet high, the stone walls were smooth and unbroken. It contained nothing but a narrow shelf, on one side of which was the bed, a higher shelf on the other side for table, and some primitive water-works at the rear. When both shelves were down, you could not pass between without sitting down; but each was provided with hinges and a hook to fasten it back. On the bed was spread some coarse bedding; that was all. What light there was came from the windows in the corridor; there was no provision for artificial light. Jessie understood that she would be provided with a more comfortable cell later, but even ten days with no one to talk to, nothing to do, and nothing to read, loomed ahead like an eternity.

She wondered if she were in the same row as Melanie Soupert had been confined in solitary. It was a ground tier cell. The windows outside were just such windows as had been described at the time of Melanie's escape. At least thirty feet high, they gave light also to all the tiers of cells above Jessie's head. By turning her face sideways against the lattice, and squinting up, she could just catch a glimpse of the tops of the windows. They had round tops. Jessie saw that in each window an extra row of spikes had been sunk in the round top. These came down below the tops of the ordinary bars, so that the particular manner of Melanie's escape might never be repeated.

The arrival of Jessie's supper made a welcome break. The keepers on duty in the corridor were women, but there was generally a male head-keeper in the offing. Jessie examined her keeper with a particular interest. What sort of woman could it be who would seek a job like this? This one was short and thick through, and might have been any age between thirty-five and fifty. Evidently her physical strength was her principal recommendation here. Her face was indifferent and brutalised. Jessie undertook to chaff her into some semblance of humanity.

"Hello!" she said. "What have we to-night? Patty de foy grass or Russian caviare?"

"Don't get fresh," growled the keeper, "or I'll bean yeh!"

"Good heavens!" thought Jessie; "and she could too, if she wanted to, with impunity. Who would believe me here?"

The supper was not much, as suppers go; merely a cup of coffee, and two thick slices of white bread. But Jessie was not dependent on delicate feasting. It was honest food, and sufficient, and she did not feel at all ill-used on the score of its plainness. She only said to herself: "Just wait till I get out!"

Shortly after the dishes had been taken away, the prisoners were locked in for the night. This was accomplished by closing a steel gate at the end of each corridor. The lever which locked this gate also double-locked every cell in that corridor. All over the prison one could hear the bolts shooting like the rattle of musketry.

"Now for the hardest time," Jessie thought with a shiver. "It's hours too soon to sleep. What shall I do; lie down on my bed, and tell myself a story?"

But it transpired that the real life of the prison was just commencing. Jessie had no sooner thrown herself down on her hard couch than she became aware of a whispering creeping towards her like mice amongst leaves. At first it seemed as if it was in the cell. The disembodied voice was horribly disquieting. Jessie leaped from her bed, and clutching the door of her cell, pressed her body hard against it. Then she comprehended that it was not a single voice, but many whisperings up and down the corridor.

"Are they all mad?" she thought in horror. The impulse to shriek was strong in her throat, and her arms trembled with the desire to rattle the door.

Of one voice close to her—a hurrying, toneless voice, she was presently able to distinguish the words: "... Got him down. He was lying on his back with his neck twisted, and the blood running back into his curly hair. And him on'y a lad with his smooth skin and his red mouth. And they began kickin' him, the whole four of them, with their thick-soled shoes; kickin' his helpless body this way and that; kickin' his face with their dirty, cruel feet; and kickin' his head till he was all twisted up. I knew where the gun was. Would you blame me for snatching it up and firing it at them butchers? Would you blame me? Would you blame me? I'm only human. Yet they give me ten years. A-ah! poor people's got no right to be livin' anyhow.... Him? Yes, he got over it all right. And not a mark on him. Same sly grin. A woman can't stand out against it. And he's free to go about amongst them; that's what I'm thinking. And I'm here...."