The Minister's Charge. William Dean Howells

Чтение книги онлайн.

      VI.

      Lemuel stood and leaned his head against the wall of his cell. The tears that had come to his relief in the morning when he found that he was robbed would not come now. He was trembling with famine and weakness, but he could not lie down; it would be like accepting his fate, and every fibre of his body joined his soul in rebellion against that. The hunger gnawed him incessantly, mixed with an awful sickness.

      After a long time a policeman passed his door with another prisoner, a drunken woman, whom he locked into a cell at the end of the corridor. When he came back, Lemuel could endure it no longer. “Say!” he called huskily through his door. “Won't you give me a cup of that coffee upstairs? I haven't had anything but an apple to eat for nearly two days. I don't want you to give me the coffee. You can take my clasp button——”

      The officer went by a few steps, then he came back, and peered in through the door at Lemuel's face. “Oh! that's you?” he said: he was the officer who had arrested Lemuel.

      “Yes. Please get me the coffee. I'm afraid I shall have a fit of sickness if I go much longer.”

      “Well,” said the officer, “I guess I can get you something.” He went away, and came back, after Lemuel had given up the hope of his return, with a saucerless cup of coffee, and a slice of buttered bread laid on the top of it. He passed it in through the opening at the bottom of the door.

      “Oh, my!” gasped the starving boy. He thought he should drop the cup, his hand shook so when he took it. He gulped the coffee, and swallowed the bread in a frenzy.

      “Here—here's the button,” he said, as he passed the empty cup out to the officer.

      “I don't want your button,” answered the policeman. He hesitated a moment. “I shall be round at the court in the morning, and I guess if it ain't right we can make it so.”

      “Thank you, sir,” said Lemuel, humbly grateful.

      “You lay down now,” said the officer. “We shan't put anybody in on you to-night.”

      “I guess I better,” said Lemuel. He crept in upon the lower shelf, and stretched himself out in his clothes, with his arm under his head for a pillow. The drunken woman at the end of the corridor was clamouring to get out. She wished to get out just half a minute, she said, and settle with that hussy; then she would come back willingly. Sometimes she sang, sometimes she swore; but with the coffee still sensibly hot in his stomach, and the comfort of it in every vein, her uproar turned into an agreeable fantastic medley for Lemuel, and he thought it was the folks singing in church at Willoughby Pastures, and they were all asking him who the new girl in the choir was, and he was saying Statira Dudley; and then it all slipped off into a smooth, yellow nothingness, and he heard some one calling him to get up.

      When he woke in the morning he started up so suddenly that he struck his head against the shelf above him, and lay staring stupidly at the iron-work of his door.

      He heard the order to turn out repeated at other cells along the corridor, and he crept out of his shelf, and then sat down upon it, waiting for his door to be unlocked. He was very hungry again, and he trembled with faintness. He wondered how he should get his breakfast, and he dreaded the trial in court less than the thought of going through another day with nothing to eat. He heard the stir of the other prisoners in the cells along the corridors, the low groans and sighs with which people pull themselves together after a bad night; and he heard the voice of the drunken woman, now sober, poured out in voluble remorse, and in voluble promise of amendment for the future, to every one who passed, if they would let her off easy. She said aisy, of course, and it was in her native accent that she bewailed the fate of the little ones whom her arrest had left motherless at home. No one seemed to answer her, but presently she broke into a cry of joy and blessing, and from her cell at the other end of the corridor came the clink of crockery. Steps approached with several pauses, and at last they paused at Lemuel's door, and a man outside stooped and pushed in, through the opening at the bottom, a big bowl of baked beans, a quarter of a loaf of bread, and a tin cup full of coffee. “Coffee's extra,” he said jocosely. “Comes from the officers. You're in luck, young feller.”

      “I ha'n't got anything to pay for it with,” faltered Lemuel.

      “Guess they'll trust you,” said the man. “Any-rate, I got orders to leave it.” He passed on, and Lemuel gathered up his breakfast, and arranged it on the shelf where he had slept; then he knelt down before it, and ate.

      An hour later an officer came and unbolted his door from the outside. “Hurry up,” he said; “Maria's waiting.”

      “Maria?” repeated Lemuel innocently.

      “Yes,” returned the officer. “Other name's Black. She don't like to wait. Come out of here.”

      Lemuel found himself in the corridor with four or five other prisoners, whom some officers took in charge and conducted upstairs to the door of the station. He saw no woman, but a sort of omnibus without windows was drawn up at the curbstone.

      “I thought,” he said to an officer, “that there was a lady waiting to see me. Maria Black,” he added, seeing that the officer did not understand.

      The policeman roared, and could not help putting his head in at the office door to tell the joke.

      “Well, you must introduce him,” called a voice from within.

      “Guess you ha'n't got the name exactly straight, young man,” said the policeman to Lemuel, as he guarded him down the steps. “It's Black Maria you're looking for. There she is,” he continued, pointing to the omnibus, “and don't you forget it. She's particular to have folks recognise her. She's blacker 'n she's painted.”

      The omnibus was, in fact, a sort of aesthetic drab, relieved with salmon, as Lemuel had time to notice before he was hustled into it with the other prisoners, and locked in.

      There were already several there, and as Lemuel's eyes accustomed themselves to the light that came in through the little panes at the sides of the roof, he could see that they were women; and by and by he saw that two of them were the saucy girls who had driven him from his seat in the Common that day, and laughed so at him. They knew him too, and one of them set up a shrill laugh. “Hello, Johnny! That you? You don't say so? What you up for this time? Going down to the Island? Well, give us a call there! Do be sociable! Ward 11's the address.” The other one laughed, and then swore at the first for trying to push her off the seat.

      Lemuel broke out involuntarily in all the severity that was native to him. “You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

      This convulsed the bold things with laughter. When they could get their breath, one of them said, “Pshaw! I know what he's up for: preaching on the Common. Say, young feller! don't you want to hold a prayer-meetin' here?”

      They burst into another shriek of laughter, so wild and shrill that СКАЧАТЬ