The Turn of the Balance. Brand Whitlock
evening?" asked Elizabeth. "Nerves?"
"Yes."
"Been on the wrong side to-day?"
"Yes, decidedly, I fear," said Ward.
"What do you mean?"
"I've sent a boy to the penitentiary." Ward felt a kind of relief, the first he had felt all that day, in dealing thus bluntly, thus brutally, with himself. Elizabeth knit her brows, and her eyes winked rapidly in the puzzled expression that came to them.
"You remember Harry Graves?" asked her father.
"Oh, that young man?"
"Yes, that young man. Well, I've sent him to the penitentiary."
"What is that you say, Stephen?" asked Mrs. Ward, coming just then into the room. She had heard his words, but she wished to hear them again.
"I just said I'd sent Harry Graves to the penitentiary."
"For how long?" asked Mrs. Ward, with a judicial desire for all the facts, usually unnecessary in her judgments.
"For one year."
"Why, how easily he got off!" said Mrs. Ward. "And do hurry now, Stephen. You're late."
Elizabeth saw the pain her mother had been so unconscious of in her father's face, and she gave Ward a little pat on the shoulder.
"You dear old goose," she said, "to feel that way about it. Of course, you didn't send him–it was John Eades. That's his business."
But Ward shook his head, unconvinced.
"Doubtless it will be a good thing for the young man," said Mrs. Ward. "He has only himself to blame, anyway."
But still Ward shook his head, and his wife looked at him with an expression that showed her desire to help him out of his gloomy mood.
"You know you could have done nothing else than what you did do," she said. "Criminals must be punished; there is no way out of it. You're morbid–you shouldn't feel so."
But once more Ward gave that unconvinced shake of the head, and sighed.
"See here," said Elizabeth, with the sternness her father liked to have her employ with him, "you stop this right away." She shook him by the shoulder. "You make me feel as if I had done something wrong myself; you'll have us all feeling that we belong to the criminal classes ourselves."
"I've succeeded in making myself feel like a dog," Ward replied.
VIII
The county jail was in commotion. In the street outside a patrol wagon was backed against the curb. The sleek coats of its bay horses were moist with mist; and as the horses stamped fretfully in the slush, the driver, muffled in his policeman's overcoat, spoke to them, begging them to be patient, and each time looked back with a clouded face toward the outer door of the jail. This door, innocent enough with its bright oak panels and ground glass, was open. Inside, beyond the vestibule, beyond another oaken door, stood Danner. He was in black, evidently his dress for such occasions. He wore new, squeaking shoes, and his red face showed the powder a barber had put on it half an hour before. On his desk lay his overcoat, umbrella, and a small valise. The door of the glass case on the wall, wherein were displayed all kinds of handcuffs, nippers, squeezers, come-alongs and leather strait-jackets, together with an impressive exhibit of monstrous steel keys, was open, and several of its brass hooks were empty. Danner, as he stood in the middle of the room, looked about as if to assure himself that he had forgotten nothing, and then went to the window, drew out a revolver, broke it at the breach, and carefully inspected its loads. That done, he snapped the revolver together and slipped it into the holster that was slung to a belt about his waist. He did not button the coat that concealed this weapon. Then he looked through the window, saw the patrol wagon, took out his watch and shouted angrily:
"For God's sake, Hal, hurry up!"
Danner's impatient admonition seemed to be directed through the great barred door that opened off the other side of the office into the prison, and from within there came the prompt and propitiatory reply of the underling:
"All right, Jim, in a minute."
The open door, the evident preparation, the spirit of impending change, the welcome break in the monotony of the jail's diurnal routine, all were evidenced in the tumult that was going on beyond that huge gate of thick steel bars. The voice of the under-turnkey had risen above the din of other voices proceeding from the depths of hidden cells; there was a constant shuffle of feet on cement floors, the rattle of keys, the heavy tumbling of bolts, the clang and grating of steel as the shifting of a lever opened and closed simultaneously all the doors of an entire tier of cells. These noises seemed to excite the inmates, but presently above the discord arose human cries, a chorus of good-bys, followed in a moment by those messages that conventionally accompany all departures, though these were delivered in all the various shades of sarcasm and bitter irony.
"Good-by!"
"Remember us to the main screw!"
"Think of us when you get to the big house!"
Thus the voices called.
And then suddenly, one voice rose above the rest, a fine barytone voice that would have been beautiful had not it taken on a tone of mockery as it sang:
"We're going home! We're going home!
No more to sin and sorrow."
Then other voices took up the lines they had heard at the Sunday services, and bawled the hymn in a horrible chorus. The sound infuriated Danner, and he rushed to the barred door and shouted:
"Shut up! Shut up!" and he poured out a volume of obscene oaths. From inside came yells, derisive in the safety of anonymity.
"You'll get nothing but bread and water for supper after that!" Danner shouted back. He began to unlock the door, but, glancing at the desk, changed his mind and turned and paced the floor.
But now the noise of the talking, the shuffle of feet on the concrete floors, came nearer. The door of the prison was unlocked; it swung back, and there marched forth, walking sidewise, with difficulty, because they were all chained together, thirteen men. Two of the thirteen, the first and last, were Gregg and Poole, under-turnkeys. Utter, Danner's first assistant, came last, carefully locking the door behind him.
"Line up here," said Danner angrily, "we haven't got all night!"
The men stood in a row, and Danner, leaning over his desk, began to check off their names. There was the white-haired Delaney, who had seven years for burglary; Johnson, a negro who had been given fifteen years for cutting with intent to kill; Simmons, five years for grand larceny; Gunning, four years for housebreaking; Schypalski, a Pole, three years for arson; Graves, the employee of Ward, one year for embezzlement; McCarthy, and Hayes his partner, five years each for burglary and larceny; "Deacon" Samuel, an old thief, and "New York Willie," alias "The Kid," a pickpocket, who had each seven years for larceny from the person; and Brice, who had eight years for robbery. These men were to be taken to the penitentiary. Nearly all of them were guilty of the crimes of which they had been convicted.
The sheriff had detailed Danner to escort these prisoners to the penitentiary, as he sometimes did when he did not care to make the trip himself. Gregg would accompany Danner, while Poole would go only as far as the railway station. Danner was anxious to be off; these trips to the state capital were a great pleasure to him, and he had that nervous dread of missing the train which comes over most people as they are about to start away for a holiday. He was anxious to get away from the jail before anything happened to stay him; he was anxious to be on the moving train, for until then he could not feel himself safe from some sudden recall. He had been thinking all day of the black-eyed girl in a brothel not three blocks from the penitentiary, whom he expected to see that night after he had turned the prisoners over to the warden. He could scarcely keep his mind off her long enough to make his entries in the jail record and to see that he had all his mittimuses in proper order.
The prisoners, standing there in a haggard row, wore the same clothes they had had on when they appeared in court for sentence a few weeks before; the same clothes they had had on when arrested. None of them, of course, had any baggage. The little