Criminals -- Fiction; Social problems -- Fiction; United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 -- Fiction
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 trinkets they had somehow
accumulated while in jail they had distributed that afternoon among
their friends who remained behind in the steel cages; all they had in
the world they had on their backs. Most of them were dressed miserably.
Gunning, indeed, who had been lying in jail since the previous June,
wore a straw hat, which made him so absurd that the Kid laughed when he
saw him, and said:
"That’s a swell lid you’ve got on there, Gunny, my boy. I’m proud to
fill in with your mob."
Gunning tried to smile, and his face, already white with the prison
pallor, seemed to be made more ghastly by the mockery of mirth.
The Kid was well dressed, as well dressed as Graves, who still wore the
good clothes he had always loved. Graves was white, too, but not as yet
with the prison pallor. He tried to bear himself bravely; he did not
wish to break down before his companions, all of whom had longer
sentences to serve than he. He dreaded the ride through the familiar
streets where a short time before he had walked in careless liberty,
full of the joy and hope and ambition of youth. He knew that countless
memories would stalk those streets, rising up unexpectedly at every
corner, following him to the station with mows and jeers; he tried to
bear himself bravely, and he did succeed in bearing himself grimly, but
he had an aching lump in his throat that would not let him speak. It
had been there ever since that hour in the afternoon when his mother had
squeezed her face between the bars of his cell to kiss him good-by again
and again. The prison had been strangely still while she was there, and
for a long time after she went even the Kid had been quiet and had
forgotten his joshing and his ribaldry. Graves had tried to be brave
for his mother’s sake, and now he tried to be brave for appearances’
sake. He envied Delaney and the negro, who took it all stolidly, and he
might have envied the Kid, who took it all humorously, if it had not
been for what the Kid had said to him that afternoon about his own
mother. But now the Kid was cheerful again, and kept up the spirits of
all of them. To Graves it was like some horrible dream; everything in
the room--Danner, the turnkeys, the exhibit of jailer’s instruments on
the wall--was unreal to him--everything save the hat-band that hurt his
temples, and the aching lump in his throat. His eyes began to smart, his
vision was blurred; instinctively he started to lift his hand to draw
his hat farther down on his forehead, but something jerked, and
Schypalski moved suddenly; then he remembered the handcuffs. The Pole
was dumb under it all, but Graves knew how Schypalski had felt that
afternoon when the young wife whom he had married but six months before
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