Part 4

Jean shrugged her away. She attached no weight to the scrawl's ungrammatical hints of violence. Such vaporings were as common as they were idle. Nor was she moved when, on Friday, during recreation, the matron's alertness checked, though it failed truly to appraise, a catlike dart of Stella's to the rear. She did not escape, however, a certain sympathetic share in the tension which set the last day of the week apart from other days. The nerves of a reformatory are high-pitched. To be always dumb unless bidden to speak, forever aware of a spying eye, eternally the slave of Yea and Nay--such is the common lot. Double the feeling of repression, and you get the prison and hysteria. From the rising-bell, Saturday, till she slept again, Jean's senses were played upon by vague malign influences. All felt them. If sleeve brushed sleeve, a scowl followed; muttered curses sped the passing of every dish at meals; and in the stifling night some one raised the heart-clutching chant against the matron. This was the time Jean hailed it for her own.

Sunday brought no relief. The piping heat held unabated; hard work, the week-day safety-valve, was lacking. Only the matron could muster a smile. That smile! The prison file, passing, chapel bound, in Sunday review, felt the heat hotter and life more bitter because of it. The eyes of one girl blinked nervously; the fingers of a second spread clawlike, then clenched; the jaws of another set. If that woman laughed! The quadrangle peopled rapidly. Every building spun its blue-gray thread into the paths. The earliest comers were quite at the chapel steps when the prison girls, issuing from their frowning archway last, swung reluctantly into the treeless glare. Their smiling matron stood just within the shadow, looking exasperatingly cool in her white linen, and outrageously at peace with herself and her smug, well-ordered world. Then, abruptly, some trifle--perhaps a missing button, possibly a curl where should be puritanic simplicity, nothing more significant--loosed her sarcasm, her laugh and revolt.

A cry, different from the midnight defiance, yet as terrible, burst from one of the prison girls. Shrill, bird-like, prolonged, it was such a sound as the tortured captive at the stake may have heard from the encircling squaws. It was well known in the refuge; decade had bequeathed it to decade; and it was always the signal of mutiny. As throat after throat took it up, the commands of the matrons became mere angry pantomime. Rank upon rank melted in confusion, and the mob, lusting for violence, awaited only its directing fury.

A leader rose. Stella had secretly fomented this outbreak; it was her storm to ride openly if she dared. Yet it was scarcely a question of daring. This was her supreme hour, hers by right of might; and had another seized the lead she would have crushed her. With black locks tumbled, eyes kindled, cheeks afire, wanting only the scarlet gear of anarchy to cap her likeness to those women of other speech who braved barricades like men, she rallied disorder about her as the fiercer flame draws the less. Her following flocked from every quarter of the quadrangle--high-grade girls, girls but just clear of the guardhouse; the mature in years, the tender; the froward, the meek; spawn of the tenements, wayward from the farm; beggars, vagrants, drunkards, felons, wantons, thieves. Hysteria answering to hysteria, madness to madness, like filings to the magnet they came, and, among them, Jean.

[Illustration: And, among them, Jean.]

VI

Stella hailed the recruit with shrill satisfaction, clutched her by the arm lest her allegiance falter, and beckoned on her amazons.

"Smash the prison first," she screamed. "We'll show 'em."

Back into the grim archway they swept, a frenzied, yelling horde, and flung themselves into a fury of destruction. The window-panes crashed first; then followed fusillades of crockery from dining-room and kitchen. Nothing breakable survived; where glass failed, they demolished furniture; lacking wood, they fell upon the plumbing.

Treading close in Stella's vandal wake, Jean laid waste right and left with hands which she hazily perceived were but mere automata under another unknown self's control. She was a dual being, thinking one thing, doing its opposite. The active personality disquieted yet fascinated the critical real self, and she realized, half dismayed, that if Stella Wilkes should waver in her leadership, the mad, alien Jean Fanshaw would in all likelihood leap to replace her.

But Stella harbored no thought of abdication. Her reign had just begun. What was the too brief interval which had sufficed to wreck the hated prison! There was as good pillage in the cottages, she reminded them; better still in the administration buildings and the chapel. The chapel now! What splendid atrocities they could wreak upon the big organ! And after the chapel, why not storm the gatehouse? What were a handful of guards! The gatehouse and liberty! Fired with this dream of conquest, the mob armed itself with scraps of wreckage and trooped back to the entrance to confront a thorough surprise. Bolted doors blocked their triumphal progress--bolted doors and the matron, calm, resolute, unarmed, and absolutely alone.

The quadrangle, too, had had its happenings. With the superintendent absent, her assistant ill, and the few male guards at the gatehouse but mere creatures of routine, wholly incapable of the generalship which the crisis demanded, the outbreak could scarcely have been more effectively timed; yet order somehow issued from confusion. Officials

## acting separately bundled such of their charges as had not yielded to

hysteria into the cottages, and hurried back to cope with the open mutiny. With this the prison matron demanded the right to deal. It had flamed out in her special province; it was hers to quench if her authority was to mean anything thereafter; and she stubbornly declined aid. Not even the guards might enter with her; she would meet the situation single-handed.

The rioters faced the lonely figure stupidly. Their clamor sank to whispers, then silence. Their eyes blinked and shifted under the cold survey which passed deliberately from girl to girl, missing none, condemning all.

Suddenly the matron levelled a finger at a weak-jawed offender in the van.

"Drop that stick!" she commanded.

The culprit sheepishly complied.

"You too!" She indicated the next, and was again obeyed. In the rear some one whispered.

"Stella Wilkes, come here."

Habit swayed the girl a step forward before she realized that she was tamely submitting, but she caught herself up with an oath, and returned stare for stare.

The matron's voice sharpened.

"Stella," she repeated, "come here."

The rebel's grip upon her cudgel tightened.

"Come yourself," she retorted. "Come if you dast!"

The matron dared. Force rather than psychology had ruled the police station of her schooling, and with the loss of her temper she reverted instinctively to its crude argument. A rush, a glint of handcuffs hitherto concealed, a violent brief struggle, a blow, a heavy fall--such were the kaleidoscopic details of a battle whose whole nobody saw perfectly, but from which Stella, the mob incarnate, emerged unmistakably a victor. Moblike, she was also merciless, and continued to rain blows which the half-stunned woman at her feet had power neither to return nor fend. One of them drew blood, a scarlet thread, which by fantastic approaches and doublings traversed the matron's now pallid cheek and stained the whiteness of her dress.

It was then Jean woke. She was no longer among the foremost. Separated from Stella in the sack of the upper floors, she had fallen late upon a mirror of the matron's, miraculously preserved till her coming, and had busied herself with its joyous ruin till the others had surged below and the rencounter at the door had begun. With her first idle moment apart from the common folly she experienced reaction; one glimpse of the scene below effected a cure. She loved the vanquished as little as the victor, but her every instinct for fair play and decency cried out against the wanton blows, and drove her hotly through the press to the dazed woman's side.

The surprise of the attack, more than its strength, disconcerted Stella, and Jean had pulled the matron to her feet before retaliation was possible. Nimble wits likewise counted most in the immediate sequel. Quite in the moment of her charge Jean spied a coil of fire-hose, which, used not half an hour ago for the sake of coolness, lay still connected with its hydrant, and its possibilities flashed instantly upon her. Before the ringleader's slow brain could divine her purpose she had thrust the nozzle into the matron's fingers and sprung to release the flood. Stella saw the advantages of this neglected weapon now, and plunged to capture it, but a stream as thick as a man's wrist took her squarely in the face with the pent energy of a long descent from the hills, and brought her gasping to her knees. Before she fairly caught her breath she was handcuffed and helpless, and the matron, all bustle and resource with the turning of the tide, was issuing crisp orders to as drenched, frightened, and abjectly obedient a band of rebels as ever made unconditional surrender.

To her real conqueror Stella at least made full and volcanic acknowledgment. The guardhouse alone stemmed the sulphurous eruption which she poured out upon Jean's past, present, and future; and the girls who heard shivered thankfully that another than themselves must drag out existence under the blighting fear of such a requital. The official attitude was more dispassionate. Barring now and again a puzzled glance, as at some insoluble riddle, the matron in no wise singled her preserver from the common run of mutineers to whom she meted out added rigors and penalties for their offence. Far from hastening her return to cottage life by her service in the cause of law and order, Jean learned that she had narrowly escaped doubling her prison term, and that the fact that the good in her conduct had been allowed to weigh over against the evil was deemed a piece of extraordinary clemency.

Yet even if that brief reign of unreason had added a half-year of prison to the six months which a brief interval would round, its lesson would not have been dear-bought; for, as she had returned richer by a new conception of her womanhood from the flight of which the prison was the price, so now she wrung sanity from her yielding to madness. It terrified her that she could for one moment have become like these weak pawns in an incomprehensible game, and the recoil intrenched her in a fastness of self-control such as her girlhood had never conceived. Happily there came also at this time another influence no less wholesome and far-reaching.

One morning of early winter she quitted the prison in charge of a clerk from the superintendent's office, who led the way to Cottage No. 6. Jean's heart sank as they crossed the threshold. In the optimism born of new resolutions she had hoped for a different lot. What availed new resolutions here! But she was no sooner within than she was conscious of a changed atmosphere. Bare as they were, the corridors seemed less institutional; the recreation hall, glimpsed in passing, smiled an almost animate greeting; while the room in which she was told to await the cottage matron's leisure resembled the room it had been in nothing save its four walls. Amy Jeffries, dusting the window-seat as if she enjoyed it, was actually humming.

"Howdy!" she called. "Welcome home."

Jean lifted a warning finger.

"Somebody will hear," she cautioned. "Where will be your high grade then?"

Amy grinned broadly.

"Noticed it, did you?" She pivoted complacently before a mirror. "Don't I look for all the world like a trained nurse? Can't you just see me doing the wedding march with the grateful millionaire I've pulled through typhoid! Glory, but I am tickled to get out of checks!"

Jean was vexed at her folly.

"You'll get into them again mighty quick if she hears," she whispered. "Don't be a fool."

"She!" Amy turned to stare. "Well, if you're not in from the backwoods! You don't mean to say you haven't heard that the Holy Terror is gone?"

"Gone? You mean--"

"I mean g-o-n-e, gone--cleared out, skipped, skedaddled. Can't you understand plain English? I thought everybody knew. She left a week ago to be married."

"Married!"

"Ain't it the limit? Fancy _that_ with a husband!"

Jean tried, but failed. Stupendous as it was, this marvel paled in interest beside the fact that Cottage No. 6 had lost its martinet. Small wonder the house beamed.

"And the new matron is different?" she said.

"Different! Dif--" Amy became incoherent with amusement. "Say, but you folks in the jug have been exclusive since the riot! You shouldn't be, really you shouldn't. You miss so many things, you know. There was the Astor ball, and the Vanderbilt dinner, and the swellest little supper at Sherry's I've gone to this seas--"

All Amy's members were pinchable. Jean nipped the nearest.

"Has something happened, or hasn't there?" she demanded.

"Would I be talking here like a human being, not a jailbird, if something corking hadn't happened?" She had a table between them now. "Why, I wouldn't be high grade at all. There's been a new deal in No. 6 with a vengeance. You couldn't guess who's matron if I gave you all day."

Jean's face went suddenly radiant.

"Not Miss Archer!"

"You smart thing," said Amy, crestfallen.

"Then it's true! It's really true?" The news was too wonderful for credence. "I can't make it out."

"Neither can I. Why, she's even come over here at a smaller salary. Ain't that a puzzler? I know because I heard her talking it over with the Supe--the Terror had chased me up to the offices on an errand; and you can bet I listened when I caught on that there was something coming for No. 6. As near as I can figure it out, the riot's at the bottom of it, but just why that should make Miss Archer throw up a better job and better pay to camp down here beats little Amy. I'm no rapping medium."

Where Amy failed, Jean, with the clairvoyance of a finer nature, presently divined the truth. It flashed upon her at the end of an hour alone with the little matron, a wonderful, inspiring hour which she came to look back upon as crucial--a forking of the ways where to have chosen wrongly would have meant to miss life's best. Yet she could never take it apart; its texture was gossamer. It helped nothing to recall that the talk had sprung first from one or another of the room's inanimate objects--some cast, book, picture, or bit of pottery--whose sum mirrored Miss Archer's personality; yet one of them had surely been the key to a Garden of the Spirit where common things underwent magical transformations. The vague longings and aspirations which the forest meeting had sown, seemed rank, uncertain growths no longer; precious, rather, and infinitely desirable.

Jean drew a long breath when they separated.

"At first I could not understand why you came," she said; "but it's plain now. It was to help--to help girls like me."

VII

It was during the second spring that Mrs. Fanshaw came. Because of the little matron Jean had finally broken her resolve to write no letters home, whereupon her mother accepted the change as a sign of repentance which, after a seemly interval, she decided to encourage with her presence. Jean was keenly expectant of the promised visit. With the shifting of her whole point of view she now blamed herself for many of the things, so petty taken one by one, so serious in gross, which had made her home life what it was; and out of the reaction there welled an unguessed tenderness for her mother, shy of written expression, but eager to confess itself in deed.

The official who brought Jean to the waiting-room and remained near during the interview need not have turned a tactful back upon their meeting for Mrs. Fanshaw's sake. That lady was as composed as the best usage of Shawnee Springs's truly genteel could dictate under circumstances so untoward. Her features reflected the most decorous blend of pious resignation and parental compassion when the slender blue-and-white figure flung itself from the doorway into her arms, and she permitted the penitent to remain upon the bosom of her best alpaca for an appreciable space of time with full knowledge that a waterfall of lace, divers silken bows, and a long gold chain were lamentably crushed by the impact.

"Concentrate, child," she admonished firmly. "How often I've told you to aim at self-control at all times!"

Jean clung to her in a passion of homesickness, hearing nothing.

"Mother! Mother!" she repeated.

Mrs. Fanshaw detached herself, repaired the ravages, and turned a critical eye upon her daughter.

"What a fright they've made of you!" she sighed. "The color of that dress is becoming enough, but the pattern! What _have_ you been doing to your hair?"

"My hair?" Jean fingered her braid vaguely. "Oh! You mean at the front? It must be plain, you know."

"And your hands! You never kept them like Amelia's, but now--why, they might be a day-laborer's."

"They are," said Jean.

But Mrs. Fanshaw's interest had fluttered elsewhere.

"I can't be too thankful that I spared Amelia this ordeal," she went on. "Amelia was anxious to come. She said she felt it was her duty, but I refused. She is so sensitive she could not have borne it. To see her own sister in such clothes and in such surroundings would have made an indelible impression."

Jean now had herself only too well in hand.

"I dare say the refuge might tarnish Amelia's girlish bloom," she retorted dryly. "I hope you'll feel no bad effects yourself, mother."

"I'm positive I shall," replied Mrs. Fanshaw, seriously. "My nerves are in a state already. But let that pass. Whatever the cost, I should have come long ago if your behavior had been always what it should. I could not come while you hardened your heart against God's will. Your stubbornness in the beginning--they wrote me fully, Jean; your unwomanly attempt to run away; that shocking riot, all showed--"

"That's past, mother."

"Past, yes; but not forgotten. Shawnee Springs never forgets anything. Your escape was in the papers. I wrote you all that."

"They never let me know. Not in the home papers, the county papers?"

"No." Mrs. Fanshaw drew herself up. "Consideration for me prevented that outrage. The editors preserved the same delicate silence that they kept when you were arrested. But you don't seem to remember that city dailies are read in Shawnee Springs. One vile sheet even printed your picture."

The girl's face crimsoned painfully.

"Oh!" she cried sharply. "How could they! Where could they get it?"

Her mother hesitated.

"Amelia was in a way responsible," she admitted. "She was naturally anxious at your disappearance, and when a nice-mannered young man called and said that if he had your description he could help in the search, the dear girl received him with open arms. How could _she_ know he was a reporter!"

"She gave that man my picture!"

"Like a trusting child. Amelia has felt all our trouble so keenly. For weeks after you were sent away she could scarcely look one of her set in the face. She said she felt like a refuge girl herself. I had to appeal to our pastor to make her see that neither of us was to blame. She shrank from the world even then, but the world came to her."

"Meaning Harry Fargo?" queried Jean, emerging suddenly from the gloom induced by Amelia's imbecility.

"Harry was particularly sweet," admitted Mrs. Fanshaw, archly. "In fact, he has become a son to me in everything but name. If Amelia would only--but I mustn't gossip."

Jean smiled without mirth.

"I think she'll land him," she encouraged.

Her mother frowned.

"What a common expression!" she rebuked. "I thought at first I noticed an improvement in your language. Your voice is certainly better--much lower. It's the prison discipline, I presume. But speaking of Harry, I really think we may regard it as, well, reasonably sure. I must say I'm pleased. Harry is so eligible."

Jean silently reviewed young Mr. Fargo's points; athlete second to none in the gymnasium of the local Y.M.C.A.; gifted with a tenor voice particularly effective at church festivals in ballads of tee-total sentiment; heir presumptive to a mineral spring, a retail coal business, and a seat in the directorate of the First National Bank; clearly destined, in fine, to bloom one of the solid men of his community. Joined to these virtues, present and prospective, he seemed sincerely, if not ardently, fond of Amelia, and Jean with her whole heart wished her sister's long-drawn-out wooing godspeed.

Perhaps she couched this less happily than she might. At all events, Mrs. Fanshaw took warm-offence at some allusion to the suitor's leisured siege.

"Under the circumstances," she remarked severely, "it's a wonder his attentions have continued at all. No eligible young man in Shawnee Springs can be expected to want a sister-in-law whose name everybody mentions in the same breath with Stella Wilkes's, and you know the Fargo family is as proud as Lucifer. I don't see that they have any call to set themselves up as they do--the Tuttles were landowners in the county twenty years before a Fargo was heard of; but there is certainly some excuse for their standing off about Amelia. You don't seem to appreciate how painful her situation has been. People were only just pitching on something else to talk about after you went, when you stirred the scandal up again by running away. That nearly spoiled everything. I had it on the best of authority--Mrs. Fargo's dressmaker is mine now--that Harry and his father actually came to words. Then, to cap the climax, we'd no sooner settled down in peace than the vulgar riot happened. Nobody knew positively whether you were implicated, but they naturally judged you were, and of course I couldn't conscientiously deny it when they asked me point-blank. It has been terrible--terrible."

Jean was swept away upon the flood of egotism. She forgot that she too had a point of view. Their wrongs were the great wrongs.

"I'm sorry," she said humbly. "It's true I didn't realize. I don't want to stand in Amelia's way. You won't have reason to complain again while I am here."

"I don't expect I shall. I can't conceive of another thing you could be up to, even if your disposition to consider _our_ feelings a little should change. If they'll only marry before your term expires!"

Jean's lips tightened.

"There's almost a year and a half yet," she said grimly. "Surely that's time enough."

"It would be for anybody but a Fargo," sighed her mother. "They're slow at everything. We can only hope and wait. It's been very hard."

"I'll try not to make it more so afterward," Jean returned. "I suppose I must go back to the Springs at first. When a girl goes out they take her--home. But I'll not stay. I'll go away at once."

"Go away! There are none of the relatives you can visit. The Tuttles all feel the disgrace as if it were their own. As for your father's folks--"

"I don't mean to visit. I mean to work--to live."

Mrs. Fanshaw focussed her parochial mind upon this outlandish suggestion, assuming, as was her habit with novel impressions, an air of truculent disapproval.

"Perhaps you still think you can gallivant about the country like a man?" she remarked.

"No. I've got over that. I shall find some woman's work."