第1章 THE PANEL OF LIGHT(1)

The lids of the girl's eyes lifted slowly, and she stared at the panel of light in the wall.Just at the outset, the act of seeing made not the least impression on her numbed brain.For a long time she continued to regard the dim illumination in the wall with the same passive fixity of gaze.Apathy still lay upon her crushed spirit.In a vague way, she realized her own inertness, and rested in it gratefully, subtly fearful lest she again arouse to the full horror of her plight.In a curious subconscious fashion, she was striving to hold on to this deadness of sensation, thus to win a little respite from the torture that had exhausted her soul.

Of a sudden, her eyes noted the black lines that lay across the panel of light.And, in that instant, her spirit was quickened once again.The clouds lifted from her brain.Vision was clear now.Understanding seized the full import of this hideous thing on which she looked....For the panel of light was a window, set high within a wall of stone.The rigid lines of black that crossed it were bars--prison bars.It was still true, then: She was in a cell of the Tombs.

The girl, crouching miserably on the narrow bed, maintained her fixed watching of the window--that window which was a symbol of her utter despair.Again, agony wrenched within her.She did not weep: long ago she had exhausted the relief of tears.She did not pace to and fro in the comfort of physical movement with which the caged beast finds a mocking imitation of liberty: long ago, her physical vigors had been drained under stress of anguish.Now, she was well-nigh incapable of any bodily activity.There came not even so much as the feeblest moan from her lips.The torment was far too racking for such futile fashion of lamentation.She merely sat there in a posture of collapse.To all outward seeming, nerveless, emotionless, an abject creature.Even the eyes, which held so fixedly their gaze on the window, were quite expressionless.Over them lay a film, like that which veils the eyes of some dead thing.Only an occasional languid motion of the lids revealed the life that remained.

So still the body.Within the soul, fury raged uncontrolled.

For all the desolate calm of outer seeming, the tragedy of her fate was being acted with frightful vividness there in memory.

In that dreadful remembrance, her spirit was rent asunder anew by realization of that which had become her portion....It was then, as once again the horrible injustice of her fate racked consciousness with its tortures, that the seeds of revolt were implanted in her heart.The thought of revenge gave to her the first meager gleam of comfort that had lightened her moods through many miserable days and nights.Those seeds of revolt were to be nourished well, were to grow into their flower--a poison flower, developed through the three years of convict life to which the judge had sentenced her.

The girl was appalled by the mercilessness of a destiny that had so outraged right.She was wholly innocent of having done any wrong.She had struggled through years of privation to keep herself clean and wholesome, worthy of those gentlefolk from whom she drew her blood.And earnest effort had ended at last under an overwhelming accusation--false, yet none the less fatal to her.This accusation, after soul-wearying delays, had culminated to-day in conviction.The sentence of the court had been imposed upon her: that for three years she should be imprisoned....This, despite her innocence.She had endured much--miserably much!--for honesty's sake.There wrought the irony of fate.She had endured bravely for honesty's sake.And the end of it all was shame unutterable.There was nought left her save a wild dream of revenge against the world that had martyrized her.

"Vengeance is mine.I will repay, saith the Lord."...The admonition could not touch her now.Why should she care for the decrees of a God who had abandoned her!

There had been nothing in the life of Mary Turner, before the catastrophe came, to distinguish it from many another.Its most significant details were of a sordid kind, familiar to poverty.

Her father had been an unsuccessful man, as success is esteemed by this generation of Mammon-worshipers.He was a gentleman, but the trivial fact is of small avail to-day.He was of good birth, and he was the possessor of an inherited competence.He had, as well, intelligence, but it was not of a financial sort.

So, little by little, his fortune became shrunken toward nothingness, by reason of injudicious investments.He married a charming woman, who, after a brief period of wedded happiness, gave her life to the birth of the single child of the union, Mary.Afterward, in his distress over this loss, Ray Turner seemed even more incompetent for the management of business affairs.As the years passed, the daughter grew toward maturity in an experience of ever-increasing penury.Nevertheless, there was no actual want of the necessities of life, though always a woful lack of its elegancies.The girl was in the high-school, when her father finally gave over his rather feeble effort of living.Between parent and child, the intimacy had been unusually close.At his death, the father left her a character well instructed in the excellent principles that had been his own.

That was his sole legacy to her.Of worldly goods, not the value of a pin.

Yet, measured according to the stern standards of adversity, Mary was fortunate.Almost at once, she procured a humble employment in the Emporium, the great department store owned by Edward Gilder.To be sure, the wage was infinitesimal, while the toil was body-breaking soul-breaking.Still, the pittance could be made to sustain life, and Mary was blessed with both soul and body to sustain much.So she merged herself in the army of workers--in the vast battalion of those that give their entire selves to a labor most stern and unremitting, and most ill rewarded.