CHAPTER VIII
THE GREY PLACE
VARGE saw it first, as the horses, toiling up the long hill over the heavy, snow-banked road, gained the summit. A quarter of a mile away and below it lay. Grey—it was all grey—sullen grey. It was early morning; and with the sun, under cloud, just struggling through a rift in the hills to the eastward, it was as though the grim presence mocked and bade defiance even to God's own blessed sunlight that seemed to creep now so timidly to the shadowed walls, pleading warmth and love and hope and divine compassion. Silent—no sound came from it—it was as a vast tomb, from which emanated a terrible, impersonal, immutable sense of isolation; a sepulchre that had neither part nor being in the world around it, that had usurped the very place it held and, usurping, chilled all joy and gladness and stilled all laughter. It was only a thing of stone, inanimate, reared by human hands, but it lived as a cold, dead thing lives, as death lives in its awful finality.
Beside Sheriff Marston in the back seat of the sleigh, Varge felt the quick, questioning scrutiny of the other. No muscle of his face moved, no change came to the grave, sober expression that has been there during the eight-mile drive from Berley Falls—but under the buffalo robe his manacled hands tightened over each other.
For life. Black hour of bitterness! LIFE—it stretched away through the years in a soul-sickening vista. Five years, ten years, twenty years—how many?—he was young yet—but he had already lived his life—what was before him was a living death, years of drear hopelessness, of degradation, of shattered ambitions—he would eat and breath would be in his body, and at command, as a beast obeys its master, he would obey—for the rest of his natural life. Strong man and brave, of tender heart, who loved the flowers and trees and blades of grass, and children with their prattle and their happy mirth, who loved his fellow men, who knew their smiles and tears and was one with them in all, he faltered now. And silently, fervently, reverently, as one asks for an immeasurable boon, he asked for help in simple words.
"God, in Thy mercy, give me strength," he prayed.
And, as though in answer, blotted from his eyes was the reality that lay before him, and in its place he saw again the gentle, patient face, the loving smile, the smoothed-grey hair beneath the old-lace cap, the eyes that looked into his, serene and calm and full of trust—the face of Mrs. Merton. It brought him comfort now and a strange contentment, that blended peace and resignation.
Then slowly the mental picture began to fade away, and loathe to let it go, to hold it with him longer, Varge closed his eyes—when he opened them again another face was before him, a heavy-bearded face with sharp black eyes that were fixed on him with blunt, uncompromising intentness.
A mounted man in uniform had swung his horse to Varge's side and was keeping pace with the sleigh. A short-barrelled carbine lay across the pommel of his saddle. The man did not speak. He edged his horse a little nearer to the sleigh and leaned from the saddle for a long and closer view of Varge's face—as though to note the minutest detail of every feature. And but once, during a full five minutes, did the man remove his eyes from Varge—to pick up his horse as the animal stumbled. Then his eyes came back again instantly.
A slow flush crept to Varge's face—and died away. He understood well enough—too well. It was the first searing touch of the branding iron that marked him as one of a herd—and it was more than that. It was the first touch of the whip—from the master. And it was meant for that—the rude, callous, prolonged, contemptuous stare, meant for that—meant to instil within him even before he passed inside those looming walls, so close now, upon whose tops men paced with carbines on their arms, a fear, a prescience that should break his spirit, bend his will, a grim, subtle, mocking invitation, with an iron-mailed fist behind it, to begin then and there to understand that he was—a convict.
And, in his fine sensitiveness, it roused within Varge a cold merciless fury. After one glance his eyes had dropped and fixed on the driver's back in front of him—he dared not keep his eyes on the other's face. Every instinct within him prompted him to leap to his feet, tear the steel links on his wrists apart—yes, he could break them—and fling himself upon this man who thought so ruthlessly, so readily to rob him, to strip him of his God-given franchise of manhood.
Marston stirred a little uneasily. The tension broke. Varge felt the gaze lifted from him. The man had touched his horse with the spurs and was galloping on ahead.
"It ain't pleasant," said Marston, with gruff kindness. "But you do what they tell you in there—that's the only way to get along. That's Kingman, one of the outside patrol—they say he's never been known to forget a face."
Varge made no reply. They were passing the end of the wall now that flanked the road. A guard stopped in his pacing and, leaning on the iron railing near the little circular guard-house on the corner of the wall, looked down upon them.
The sleigh stopped. Marston took Varge's arm and got out. They were in front of a large stone building set forward a little from the penitentiary walls which joined it on either side. The sheriff led the way up the short flight of steps to the entrance. A key grated in a ponderous lock, the heavy bolt shot back with harsh resonancy, a guard flung open the door and blocked the way for a moment as he stared into Varge's face—it was the same callous stare, galling, contemptuously impersonal—then he stepped aside, allowing them to enter.
A short hallway was before them, and at its end, the entrance to the prison proper, was a massive steel-barred door. Halfway down the hall, a room opened off on the left-hand side. The door of this room was open, and the sheriff, nodding familiarly to the guard and with his hand still on Varge's arm, turned toward it at once and stepped inside.
It was a square, spacious room. Varge's eyes swept it with a quick, comprehensive glance—and for the second time that morning a slow colour mounted to his cheeks. A row of four leather-cushioned chairs stood on one side beneath the windows near a large flat-topped desk that faced the door; on the other side was another desk similar to the first, and behind it and along the wall were large filing cabinets and general office fixtures; at the far end was the open door of a vault, the safe within. Three persons were in the room. A young man in plain, dark uniform was at the side desk; by the other, standing, her back half-turned, a girl leaned close to the chair in which sat a short, broad-shouldered man in gold-trimmed uniform, with clean-shaven face and iron-grey hair. The girl turned quickly, slim and lithe and graceful, as they entered.
Marston was taking some papers from his pocket.
"Good-morning, Warden Rand," he said, as he laid them on the desk.
"Hello, Sheriff!" returned the warden, rising and shoving his hand out cordially to Marston; then, half turning: "Janet, you know Sheriff Mars—"
"Indeed, I do, dad"—the girl was already moving around the desk to meet the big, kindly-faced County officer.
For the bare fraction of a second, blue eyes met Varge's blankly and passed him by—there was neither thought, nor concern, nor cognisance even of his presence in the look, as she quickly asked a few homely questions of the sheriff, of his wife and family, of friends in Berley Falls.
Warden Rand picked up the papers, and glanced through them.
"Here, Stall!" he said, extending them to the clerk at the other desk—but the steel-grey eyes were sweeping Varge from head to foot.
A moment the look held, then the warden pushed a button on his desk and turned to his daughter and Marston.
And as Varge stood there, it was as if suddenly he stood alone in some place of vast expanse, barriered and set apart, where no human being had ever been before, where no human love was known; a place of intense cold where neither life nor green thing was; a place of valleys and chasms and mountains, and one mountain of stupendous height from whose pinnacle he looked out into a great blackness that was everywhere around, and there was no light of stars or moon or sun, and all was utter desolation—and out of this desolation there came at first no sound; then there came one seemingly from far below him, faint at first, that gradually grew more distinct, and the sound clutched at his heart, for of all sounds it had no place there, for there was death—it was the sound of a sweet-toned woman's voice. The imagery was gone. Varge raised his shackled hands and brushed them across his eyes. A woman's voice—here! The warden's daughter was still talking unconcernedly to Sheriff Marston.
The clerk laid a slip of paper on the warden's desk. The warden turned, picked up a pen, bent over the paper, signed it, blotted it, folded it, placed it in an envelope and handed it to Sheriff Marston.
"Here's your receipt, Sheriff," he said.
Some one touched Varge on the shoulder. A guard had entered and was at his elbow.
Marston took a small key from his pocket and stepped to Varge's side.
There was no slow creeping flush of colour now mounting to Varge's face—it came in a hot, mad, burning tide, as he held out his wrists.
Marston pressed his hand as the manacles slipped away.
"Good-bye, Varge," he said in a low, kindly tone; "I'll speak to the warden and do what I can for you."
Varge scarcely heard him. The girl's eyes had followed the operation, lifted from his wrists and looked into his face—indifferently. It was an incident to her. The delicately fibred chivalry of the man, that held all womanhood in reverence apart, leaped now into sudden anger against her—she could have saved him this added hurt so easily—so easily—just to have turned her head. And then the anger died. To him, the end of hope, the portal to that place where life was but a hideous, mocking word; to her, it was but an incident, part of her environment, but another guilt-stained creature facing his just punishment. And yet—and yet—a woman's heart, dead to sympathy, calloused—
The guard led him from the room and out into the hallway. The massive, steel-barred door swung back. A murmur of voices followed him from the warden's office—and then, in a sudden exclamation, a world of pity, of infinite mercy in the low, shocked tones, the girl's voice reached him.
"Oh—for life!"
And behind him, cold, dull, remorseless, ringing like a shuddering echo to the words, the steel-barred door flanged and shut.