Dr. Sevier Part 38

An officer of the court laid his hand quickly and sternly upon his arm; but the recorder leaned forward and motioned him off. The prisoner darted a single flash of anger at the officer, and then met the eye of the justice.

"If I am a vagrant commit me for vagrancy! I expect no mercy here! I expect no justice! You punish me first, and try me afterward, and now you can punish me again; but you can't do that!"

"Order in court! Sit down in those benches!" cried the deputies. The lawyers nodded darkly or blandly, each to each. The one who had volunteered his counsel wiped his bald Gothic brow. On the recorder's lips an austere satire played as he said to the panting prisoner:--

"You are showing not only your sanity, but your contempt of court also."

The prisoner's eyes shot back a fierce light as he retorted:--

"I have no object in concealing either."

The recorder answered with a quick, angry look; but, instantly restraining himself, dropped his glance upon his desk as before, began again to write, and said, with his eyes following his pen:--

"Parish Prison, for thirty days."

The officer grasped the prisoner again and pointed him to the door in the palings whence he had come, and whither he now returned, without a word or note of distress.

Half an hour later the dark omnibus without windows, that went by the facetious name of the "Black Maria" received the convicted ones from the same street door by which they had been brought in out of the world the night before. The waifs and vagabonds of the town gleefully formed a line across the sidewalk from the station-house to the van, and counted with zest the abundant number of pa.s.sengers that were ushered into it one by one. Heigh ho! In they went: all ages and sorts; both s.e.xes; tried and untried, drunk and sober, new faces and old acquaintances; a man who had been counterfeiting, his wife who had been helping him, and their little girl of twelve, who had done nothing. Ho, ho! Bridget Fury!

Ha, ha! Howling Lou! In they go: the pa.s.sive, the violent, all kinds; filling the two benches against the sides, and then the standing room; crowding and packing, until the officer can shut the door only by throwing his weight against it.

"Officer," said one, whose volunteer counsel had persuaded the reporters not to mention him by name in their thrilling account,--"officer," said this one, trying to pause an instant before the door of the vehicle, "is there no other possible way to"--

"Get in! get in!"

Two hands spread against his back did the rest; the door clapped to like the lid of a bursting trunk, the padlock rattled: away they went!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"OH, WHERE IS MY LOVE?"

At the prison the scene is repeated in reverse, and the Black Maria presently rumbles away empty. In that building, whose exterior Narcisse found so picturesque, the vagrant at length finds food. In that question of food, by the way, another question arose, not as to any degree of criminality past or present, nor as to age, or s.e.x, or race, or station; but as to the having or lacking fifty cents. "Four bits" a day was the open sesame to a department where one could have bedstead and ragged bedding and dirty mosquito-bar, a cell whose window looked down into the front street, food in variety, and a seat at table with the officers of the prison. But those who could not pay were conducted past all these delights, along one of several dark galleries, the turnkeys of which were themselves convicts, who, by a process of reasoning best understood among the harvesters of perquisites, were a.s.sumed to be undergoing sentence.

The vagrant stood at length before a grated iron gate while its bolts were thrown back and it growled on its hinges. What he saw within needs no minute description; it may be seen there still, any day: a large, flagged court, surrounded on three sides by two stories of cells with heavy, black, square doors all a-row and mostly open; about a hundred men sitting, lying, or lounging about in scanty rags,--some gaunt and feeble, some burly and alert, some scarred and maimed, some sallow, some red, some grizzled, some mere lads, some old and bowed,--the sentenced, the untried, men there for the first time, men who were oftener in than out,--burglars, smugglers, house-burners, highwaymen, wife-beaters, wharf-rats, common "drunks," pickpockets, shop-lifters, stealers of bread, garroters, murderers,--in common equality and fraternity. In this resting and refreshing place for vice, this caucus for the projection of future crime, this ghastly burlesque of justice and the protection of society, there was a man who had been convicted of a dreadful murder a year or two before, and sentenced to twenty-one years' labor in the State penitentiary. He had got his sentence commuted to confinement in this prison for twenty-one years of idleness. The captain of the prison had made him "captain of the yard." Strength, ferocity, and a terrific record were the qualifications for this honorary office.

The gate opened. A howl of welcome came from those within, and the new batch, the vagrant among them, entered the yard. He pa.s.sed, in his turn, to a tank of muddy water in this yard, washed away the soil and blood of the night, and so to the cell a.s.signed him. He was lying face downward on its pavement, when a man with a cudgel ordered him to rise. The vagrant sprang to his feet and confronted the captain of the yard, a giant in breadth and stature, with no clothing but a ragged undershirt and pantaloons.

"Get a bucket and rag and scrub out this cell!"

He flourished his cudgel. The vagrant cast a quick glance at him, and answered quietly, but with burning face:--

"I'll die first."

A blow with the cudgel, a cry of rage, a clash together, a push, a sledge-hammer fist in the side, another on the head, a fall out into the yard, and the vagrant lay senseless on the flags.

When he opened his eyes again, and struggled to his feet, a gentle grasp was on his arm. Somebody was steadying him. He turned his eyes. Ah! who is this? A short, heavy, close-shaven man, with a woollen jacket thrown over one shoulder and its sleeves tied together in a knot under the other. He speaks in a low, kind tone:--

"Steady, Mr. Richling!"

Richling supported himself by a hand on the man's arm, gazed in bewilderment at the gentle eyes that met his, and with a slow gesture of astonishment murmured, "Ristofalo!" and dropped his head.

The Italian had just entered the prison from another station-house. With his hand still on Richling's shoulder, and Richling's on his, he caught the eye of the captain of the yard, who was striding quietly up and down near by, and gave him a nod to indicate that he would soon adjust everything to that autocrat's satisfaction. Richling, dazed and trembling, kept his eyes still on the ground, while Ristofalo moved with him slowly away from the squalid group that gazed after them. They went toward the Italian's cell.

"Why are you in prison?" asked the vagrant, feebly.

"Oh, nothin' much--witness in shootin' sc.r.a.pe--talk 'bout aft' while."

"O Ristofalo," groaned Richling, as they entered, "my wife! my wife!

Send some bread to my wife!"

"Lie down," said the Italian, pressing softly on his shoulders; but Richling as quietly resisted.

"She is near here, Ristofalo. You can send with the greatest ease! You can do anything, Ristofalo,--if you only choose!"

"Lay down," said the Italian again, and pressed more heavily. The vagrant sank limply to the pavement, his companion quickly untying the jacket sleeves from under his own arms and wadding the garment under Richling's head.

"Do you know what I'm in here for, Ristofalo?" moaned Richling.

"Don't know, don't care. Yo' wife know you here?" Richling shook his head on the jacket. The Italian asked her address, and Richling gave it.

"Goin' tell her come and see you," said the Italian. "Now, you lay still little while; I be back t'rectly." He went out into the yard again, pushing the heavy door after him till it stood only slightly ajar, sauntered easily around till he caught sight of the captain of the yard, and was presently standing before him in the same immovable way in which he had stood before Richling in Tchoupitoulas street, on the day he had borrowed the dollar. Those who idly drew around could not hear his words, but the "captain's" answers were intentionally audible. He shook his head in rejection of a proposal. "No, n.o.body but the prisoner himself should scrub out the cell. No, the Italian should not do it for him. The prisoner's refusal and resistance had settled that question.

No, the knocking down had not balanced accounts at all. There was more scrubbing to be done. It was scrubbing day. Others might scrub the yard and the galleries, but he should scrub out the tank. And there were other things, and worse,--menial services of the lowest kind. He should do them when the time came, and the Italian would have to help him too.

Never mind about the law or the terms of his sentence. Those counted for nothing there." Such was the sense of the decrees; the words were such as may be guessed or left unguessed. The scrubbing of the cell must commence at once. The vagrant must make up his mind to suffer. "He had served on jury!" said the man in the undershirt, with a final flourish of his stick. "He's got to pay dear for it."

When Ristofalo returned to his cell, its inmate, after many upstartings from terrible dreams, that seemed to guard the threshold of slumber, had fallen asleep. The Italian touched him gently, but he roused with a wild start and stare.

"Ristofalo," he said, and fell a-staring again.

"You had some sleep," said the Italian.

"It's worse than being awake," said Richling. He pa.s.sed his hands across his face. "Has my wife been here?"

"No. Haven't sent yet. Must watch good chance. Git captain yard in good-humor first, or else do on sly." The cunning Italian saw that anything looking like early extrication would bring new fury upon Richling. He knew _all_ the values of time. "Come," he added, "must scrub out cell now." He ignored the heat that kindled in Richling's eyes, and added, smiling, "You don't do it, I got to do it."

With a little more of the like kindly guile, and some wise and simple reasoning, the Italian prevailed. Together, without objection from the captain of the yard, with many unavailing protests from Richling, who would now do it alone, and with Ristofalo smiling like a Chinaman at the obscene ribaldry of the spectators in the yard, they scrubbed the cell.

Then came the tank. They had to stand in it with the water up to their knees, and rub its sides with brickbats. Richling fell down twice in the water, to the uproarious delight of the yard; but his companion helped him up, and they both agreed it was the sliminess of the tank's bottom that was to blame.

"Soon we get through we goin' to buy drink o' whisky from jailer," said Ristofalo; "he keep it for sale. Then, after that, kin hire somebody to go to your house; captain yard think we gittin' mo' whisky."

"Hire?" said Richling. "I haven't a cent in the world."

"I got a little--few dimes," rejoined the other.

"Then why are you here? Why are you in this part of the prison?"