Part 3

"I quite agree with you," he admitted. "I ought to have a blue ribbon, or a pewter mug, or whatever they give the duffer who lands the biggest catch. Let me help you with those hooks. I hope they haven't torn your dress?"

Then the blue-and-white check drew him. The girl's eyes had held him first; next, her brows; afterward, her contrasting hair. The uniform compelled his gaze to significant details--the shawl, the coarse shoes, the fallen cup.

Jean flushed under his scrutiny, and brusquely declined his help.

"No, but let me," he urged, and so humbly that she relented.

"I know more about these things than you do," she said. "Do you know you're trying several kinds of fishing with one line?"

"Oh, yes," he smiled. "You see I haven't a notion what sort of fish frequent these waters, and fish vary a lot in their tastes. Some prefer worms, some have a cannibal appetite for minnows, and some, I believe, like a little bunch of colored feathers, which can't be very nourishing, I must say. I couldn't make up my mind which bait to use, and so I spread a kind of lunch-counter for all comers."

This was too much for Jean's gravity. The fisherman was unruffled by her laughter. In fact, he laughed with her.

"Is it so preposterous as all that?" he asked. "I didn't know but I'd hit on something new. This tackle doesn't belong to me; it's the other fellow's."

Jean's glance shot past him. The man saw and understood.

"We planned to camp together," he explained, "but a telegram overtook him on the train. It was highly inconsiderate in a mere great-grandmother to pick out just this time for her funeral. I look for him to-morrow or the day after."

Jean freed her dress at length and searched for her belongings. The young man stooped also. He was too late for the shawl, but gravely restored the tin cup. She thanked him, as gravely, and after a little pause added:--

"The least you can do is to say nothing."

"About seeing you?"

"Yes."

"You're from the other side of the county?"

"Yes."

"From the--" he hesitated.

"From the House of Refuge," stated Jean, looking him squarely in the face.

His own gaze was as direct.

"But not that sort," he commented softly, as if thinking aloud--"not that sort."

Jean, boy-like, offered her hand.

"Thank you," she said simply. "You're quite right. That's exactly why I'm running away. Good-by."

"Don't go!" He detained her hand, his face full of sympathy and perplexity. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am. It would be hard lines for a fellow, but when I see a girl"--his eyes added: "And such a girl!"--"roaming the country like a--a homeless--"

"Hobo?" supplied Jean.

He reddened guiltily.

"Hang it all!" he ended, "I can't stand it. You hit the nail on the head when you told me that the least I can do is to say nothing. But I trust that isn't all I can do. I want to help."

The girl's eyes misted.

"You have helped, you believe in me."

"Who wouldn't!" His bearing challenged the world.

"Several people. My family, for instance; most of the officials back there at the refuge. But never mind that."

"No," agreed her new champion. "Never mind that. Let's face the future, the practicalities."

Jean complied with despatch.

"Your bacon is burning," she announced.

He led the way to his camp, and together they surveyed the charred ruin in the spider. Jean could have devoured it as it lay.

"And it's my first warm meal," lamented the camper tragically--"my first warm meal after five days of canned stuff! The other fellow was to be cook as well as fisherman."

Jean promptly mastered the situation.

"Clean that spider while I slice more bacon," she directed, rolling up her sleeves. "If you have potatoes, wash about a dozen."

The victim of a canned diet flung himself blithely into the work, but halted suddenly, halfway to the water, and brandished the spider in air.

"Not a mouthful unless you'll eat too?" he stipulated.

Jean gave a happy laugh.

"Perhaps I can be pressed," she conceded.

With a facility which would have amazed the refuge, and with a secret pride in her new knowledge which she had little dreamed she could come to feel, Jean set the bacon and potatoes frying, evolved a plate of sandwiches from soda crackers and a tin of sardines, discovered a jar of olives which their owner had forgotten, and arranged the whole upon a box-cover laid with a napkin. Nor was this the sum of the miracle. She even garnished the meat with a handful of watercress which she spied and bade her admiring host gather in a neighboring brook.

They said little during the meal, for both were famished; but while they washed the dishes together by the shore Jean, under questioning, sketched the story of her flight. Her listener's ejaculations gained steadily in vigor, till ultimately, moved by a startling thought, he dropped the plate he was polishing.

"Look here!" he cried. "Have you had a wink of sleep?"

"I got in an hour about the middle of the forenoon."

"One hour out of thirty!"

"It was enough."

"I'll sling the hammock anywhere you say."

"I was never more wide awake. There are too many things to think out and plan."

"Take the hammock, anyhow," he urged. "You can plan and rest, too."

She let herself be so far persuaded, and he brought pillows from the tent. As she let herself relax, she first realized how weary she had become, and closed her eyes that she might taste the full luxury of rest. The rhythmic chuckle of the little brook where the watercress grew was ineffably soothing. It seemed almost articulate, an elfish voice to which the small waves, lapping the shore, played a delicate accompaniment. She dreamily fitted words to its chant, and presently, still smiling at the conceit, strayed quite into the delectable land where water-sprites are real, and beautiful impossibilities matter of fact.

The shadows had lengthened when she woke. Her companion sat with his back to a tree trunk as before, but she perceived that he had stretched a bit of canvas to screen her from the slanting sun.

"It was best all round," he said, as she sprang up reproachfully. "It did you good and gave me leisure to think. I felt sorrier than ever while you lay there, smiling and dimpling in your sleep, like a child."

"I despise that dimple," avowed Jean, disgustedly.

"You despise it!"

"It's so--so feminine."

"Of course it is; that is no reason for abusing it."

"I think it's a mighty good reason. A dimple will be a great handicap in my life."

[Illustration: "A dimple will be a great handicap in my life."]

"Great Jupiter!" said the young man softly. "Why, some girls I know would give--But we can't discuss dimples, just now, can we? What I began to say, before you took my breath away, was that I think I've solved the clothes problem. You know there's a town about ten miles to the north--the county seat--and it occurs to me that if I set out to-night, I can be back here early in the morning with everything you'll need. I don't believe they'll suspect me, even if they have happened to read that a refuge girl has escaped. I can buy the skirt in one store, the hat in another, and so on, pretending they're for my sister--or my wife."

Jean's refractory dimple deepened.

"Make it your mother," she advised. "Wives and sisters prefer to do their own shopping."

"Very well, then. If you will jot down the measurements and other technicalities, I'll manage it somehow. As for money," he added, perceiving her falter, "I will take care of that, too, if you'll allow me. You will naturally need a loan."

Jean swallowed a lump.

"You're a brick," she said huskily. "I'll pay you back with the first money I earn."

The brick received her praise with a change of color appropriate to his title.

"Any fellow would be--be glad to help, you know," he stammered. "And you needn't feel that you must hurry to pay up, either. Wait until you're well settled among your friends."

"My friends! I have none."

"No friends!" He stared blankly. "Of course I realized that you could hardly go back home, but I took it for granted that there must be some place--somebody--"

"There isn't."

He sat down abruptly, bewildered with the complexities which beset an apparently simple situation. Jean herself began to entertain some misgiving. For the moment his opinion epitomized the world's.

"Where do you mean to go?" he asked.

"Across the state line first; then to New York."

"New York!"

"Yes; to find work. Why do you stare as if I'd said Timbuctoo?"

"I'm from New York."

"Are you?" She brightened wonderfully. "Then you can tell me where to find work. I'm willing to do anything at the start, but by and by I want to get into some good business. Women are succeeding in business on all sides nowadays. Why do you look so hopeless? Don't you think I can get on?"

"How can I answer you! If there were only some woman to whom I might take you. I've a sister, but--"

"But she wouldn't understand?"

"No, she wouldn't understand. Neither do you understand," he went on anxiously. "To be a stranger in New York, homeless, friendless, without work, the shadow of that place over there dogging your steps; with you what you are--trustful, unsuspicious, open as sunlight--Oh, I daren't advise you. I don't dare."

Jean was awed, but not downcast.

"I'll risk it," she replied stoutly.

Twice he opened his lips to speak, but rose instead and paced among the trees. Finally he confronted her.

"Why not go back?" he asked.

Jean widened her eyes upon him.

"Go back! Go back to the refuge?"

"Yes. Why not go back and see it through? No, no," he entreated, as her lip curled. "Don't think I'm trying to squirm out of my offer. That stands. It's you I'm considering. Remember that no matter how much you may make of yourself those people over there will have the power to take it from you. Should you marry--"

"I shall never marry."

"Should you marry--ah! you will--they can shame you and the man whose name you bear. Could you stand that? After all, isn't the other way better? Wouldn't a clean slate be worth its price?"

She shook her head.

"You don't realize what you ask. I can't go back. I can't. You don't know."

"I suppose I don't," he admitted.

"I'd rather run the risk--the risk of their finding me, the risk, whatever it is, of New York. As for friends--" she smiled upon him radiantly--"well, I'll have you."

"Yes," he promised. "You'll have me."

He accepted her decision, and at once made ready for his tramp across the hills. At parting he reminded her that to him she was still nameless.

"I'm not sure myself," she laughed. "I'll need a new name in New York!"

"But now?"

"Well, then--Jack."

"To offset the dimple, I suppose. Is it short for Jacqueline?"

"No; just Jack."

Jean's knight errant looked back once before the tree-boles shut her wholly away. She had dropped upon a log and was facing the blue reach of the lake. This was about six o'clock in the evening. At nine she had not shifted her position. It was perhaps an hour later when she sprang up abruptly, lit a candle which he had shown her in arranging for the night, and hunting out a pencil and paper, wrote a hurried note which she pinned to the tent-flap.

There were but two lines in all. The first thanked him. The second ran:--

"I've gone back to see it through."

V

The refuge, considered officially, was impressed. That any fugitive, let alone one who had outwitted pursuit, should freely present herself at the gatehouse, spiced its drab annals with originality. Jean Fanshaw, no less than Sophie Powell, had achieved distinction. The refuge dissembled its emotion, however. An escape was an escape, with draconic penalties no more to be stayed than the march of a glacier or the changes of the moon.

But even the refuge--from the vantage-point of a supposed ventilator reached by a secret stair--discerned that the prisoner of the guardhouse was unaccountably not the rebel of Cottage No. 6. The girl who dropped from the window would have found this duress maddening. Four brick walls were its horizon; its furnishing was a mattress thrust through a grudging door at night and withdrawn when the dim glow, filtering through a ground-glass disk in the ceiling, heralded the return of another day. It was always twilight within, for the occupations of a guardhouse require little light. Text-books, no other print, were sometimes permitted, but even these arid pastimes were not for Jean; the school taught nothing she had not mastered. Her resources were two: she might knit or she might think. She usually chose the latter.

Another thing puzzled the refuge--still considered officially. It was no novelty for a song to rise to the pseudo-ventilator (inmates so punished often sang out of bravado when first confined), but it was quite unprecedented for a girl with no couch but the floor, no outlook save the walls, no employment except knitting, companioned solely by her thoughts, to croon the words of a rollicking popular air as if she were content.

Jean, too, wondered unceasingly. Why had her old ideas of life cheapened? Save one chance stranger, men had met her on the footing of boyish good-fellowship which she required of them: why should this no longer seem wholly desirable? Why had she relished a chivalrous insistence on her sex? Why had she taken pride in the practice of a menial feminine art? Why had all things womanly shifted value? Why, above all, did she feel no regret that these things should be? Yet content was scarcely the word for her frame of mind. Her thoughts were a yeasty ferment out of which the unknown youth of the forest, whose very name was a mystery, began presently to emerge as an ideal figure. And this ideal man had on his part a conception of ideal womanhood! Here was the germinal truth at last.

While she pondered, two solitary weeks which by popular account should have been unspeakable, slipped magically away. She dreaded their end, for she knew that in the adamantine scheme of things six months of prison life, at very least, awaited her. Even to the average refuge girl the prison signified degradation; to Jean it also spelled Stella Wilkes. The abhorred contact did not begin at once, however, since it fell out that in runaway cases the powers were wont to decree yet another fortnight of isolation following the transfer from the guardhouse. But isolation in the prison was a relative term. The building's sights could be shut away; its sounds penetrated every cranny.

Such sounds! One of them broke Jean's light slumber her first night under the prison roof. It was a strand in the woof of her dreams at first, a monotonous, tuneless plaint, strangely exotic, like nothing earthly except the wailing of savage women who mourn their dead. She lay half awake for an interval, the weird chant clutching at her heart. Then, as it rose, waxing shriller with each repetition, she sat bolt upright with hair prickling and flesh acreep. It was a menace to the living, not a requiem; a virulent explicit curse.

"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"

The prison stirred.

"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"

Here a woman laughed; there one began softly to echo the cry; cell warily hailed cell.

"The matron to hell! The matron to hell! The matron to hell!"

The pulsing hate of it now filled the corridors. A door opened somewhere, and a metallic footfall began to echo briskly from iron stairs.

"Is it mesilf ye're wantin', darlin'?" called a fat-throated voice. "I'll not keep ye waitin'. With ye in a jiffy!"

There was a sound of shooting bolts, a brief scuffle, the click of handcuffs, and a ragged retreat. Presently a door slammed, and the matron's steps alone retraced the lower corridors. Far in the distance, muffled by intervening walls, its two emphatic words only audible, the eerie defiance still rose and untiringly persisted until it again entered the fabric of Jean Fanshaw's dreams.

That cry somehow struck the dominant note of the prison. Its bitterness, its mental squalor, its agonizing repression, its smouldering revolt, all focussed in that hysterical out-burst against constituted authority. Jean heard it again and again in the ensuing months, and in each instance it broke the stillness of night. The second time it startled, but did not frighten. The third she thrilled to its message, knowing it at last for her own fiery heartache made articulate. But this was afterward.

In the beginning Stella Wilkes overshadowed their background. She and Jean had had a grammar-school acquaintance in the days before respectability and the Wilkes girl--as Shawnee Springs knew her--parted company; and it was to this period of democratic equality and relative innocence to which Stella chose sentimentally to revert when she first found a chance to speak.

"Can't say I feel a day older than I did then," she went on, sociably. "Do I look it?"

Jean made some answer. Stella indeed seemed no different; looking a mature woman at sixteen, she had simply marked time since. A mole, oddly placed near one corner of her mouth where another girl would dimple, still fascinated by its unexpectedness. Stella noticed this and laughed.

"Remember how all you little kids used to rubber at my mole?" she said. "It made me mad. I don't care now when people stare, but I wish it was on my neck. 'Moles on the neck, money by the peck,' you know. Queer, ain't it, that two of us from the old West Street school should strike this joint together? It's just the same as if we'd gone away to college--I don't think! Any Shawnee Springs news to tell?"

"No," Jean answered, stonily.

Stella saw that her advances were unwelcome, and her mood veered.

"That's your game, is it?" She thrust her hard face closer. "So I ain't in your class, my lady--you that was so keen for the boys! You give me a pain. As if near the whole kit of us wasn't pinched for the same reason. Go tell the marines you're any better than the rest!"

It was Jean's first sharp conception of the brutal truth that the stigma of the reformatory was all-embracing. The world presently emphasized the stern lesson. True to her word on learning of the censorship, she had never written home; but her mother's letters, formal and mutilated as they were, had nevertheless meant more to her than she realized until her degradation to the prison lopped this privilege too away. The cumulative effect of Mrs. Fanshaw's correspondence, when finally read, was not tonic. Despite the censor, Jean gathered that Shawnee Springs now linked her name with Stella Wilkes's. A refuge girl was a refuge girl; degrees and shadings of misconduct lost themselves in the murky sameness of the stain. Her grateful wonder grew that her champion of the forest had had the insight to distinguish. His quixotic young faith and a heartening word now and then from Miss Archer, when some infrequent errand brought the little secretary near, between them redeemed humanity.

A torrid summer dragged into an autumn scarcely less enervating. The kitchen-gardens were arid; the grass-plots sere; the scant wisps of ivy wherewith Miss Archer, unsanctioned by the state, had attempted to soften the more glaring shortcomings of the architect, hung dead beyond all hope of resurrection; and the endless reaches of brick wall, soaked in sunshine by day, reeked like huge ovens the live-long night. The officials' tempers grew short, their decisions arbitrary beyond common; obedience became daily more difficult; riot, full-charged, awaited only its galvanizing spark.

This the prison contributed. Conditions were always hardest here, and the rage they fostered had gathered itself into an ominous hatred of the matron. Nor was this wholly due to her chance embodiment of law. That carried weight, of course, but the prime factor in her unpopularity was a stolid cynicism implanted by some years' prior service in a metropolitan police station. Joined to a temperament like the superintendent's, this could have been endured, though detested; but the former matron of a "sunrise court" mixed her doubt with a lumbering joviality against which sincerity beat itself in vain. Her smile was a goad; her laugh a stinging blow.

The revolt turned upon an old grievance. Breakfast was a scant meal in the prison, and the laundry squad, upon which the severest toil fell, had for months clamored for a mid-forenoon luncheon. This request was reasonable, but an intricate knot of red tape, understood clearly by nobody, had balked its granting, and the matron accordingly reaped a whirlwind which others had sown. All the week it threatened. On Monday perhaps half the workers in the laundry, headed by Stella Wilkes, repeated the old demand, and were sent about their business with heavy sarcasm.

"Lunch, is it!" drawled the matron, with her maddening grin. "Sure it's Vassar College, or Bryn Mawr maybe, these swells think they're attendin'! How triggynomtry, an' dead languidges, an' the pianoforty do tire the brain! Wouldn't you find a club sandwich tasty, young ladies? Or a paddy-de-foy-grass, now? Back to your tubs!"

Jean took no part in the demonstration, and as the Wilkes girl returned to her work she cursed her for a chicken-hearted coward. Since the day of her rebuff she had worn her enmity like a chip upon her shoulder. Jean met this, as she now met everything, with apathy. Stella, her unlovely associates bending over the steaming tubs, the nagging matron--one and all had their being in an unreal world, a nightmare country, which must be stoically endured until the awakening. The tomboy had become a mystic.

With this detachment she incuriously watched the rising storm. From Tuesday to Thursday the unrest spent itself in note-writing, a diversion, following Rabelaisian models in style, which was, of course, forbidden. The contraband pencils found ingenious hiding-places, however, and the notes themselves a lively circulation. One of these missives, written by Stella and mailed with a scuttleful of fresh coal in the laundry stove, fell under Jean's eye Thursday afternoon. It was intended for another, but some delay had bungled its delivery, and the flames unfolded it and betrayed its secret. Stella saw and pressed close.

"If you blab, I'll kill you," she threatened hoarsely. "That's straight."