CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH
THOUGHTS IN PRISON
Part 1
The first night in prison she found it impossible to sleep. The
bed was hard beyond any experience of hers, the bed-clothes
coarse and insufficient, the cell at once cold and stuffy. The
little grating in the door, the sense of constant inspection,
worried her. She kept opening her eyes and looking at it. She
was fatigued physically and mentally, and neither mind nor body
could rest. She became aware that at regular intervals a light
flashed upon her face and a bodiless eye regarded her, and this,
as the night wore on, became a torment. . . .
Capes came back into her mind. He haunted a state between hectic
dreaming and mild delirium, and she found herself talking aloud
to him. All through the night an entirely impossible and
monumental Capes confronted her, and she argued with him about
men and women. She visualized him as in a policeman's uniform
and quite impassive. On some insane score she fancied she had to
state her case in verse. "We are the music and you are the
instrument," she said; "we are verse and you are prose.
"For men have reason, women rhyme
A man scores always, all the time."
This couplet sprang into her mind from nowhere, and immediately
begot an endless series of similar couplets that she began to
compose and address to Capes. They came teeming distressfully
through her aching brain:
"A man can kick, his skirts don't tear;
A man scores always, everywhere.
"His dress for no man lays a snare;
A man scores always, everywhere.
For hats that fail and hats that flare;
Toppers their universal wear;
A man scores always, everywhere.
"Men's waists are neither here nor there;
A man scores always, everywhere.
"A man can manage without hair;
A man scores always, everywhere.
"There are no males at men to stare;
A man scores always, everywhere.
"And children must we women bear--
"Oh, damn!" she cried, as the hundred-and-first couplet or so
presented itself in her unwilling brain.
For a time she worried about that compulsory bath and cutaneous
diseases.
Then she fell into a fever of remorse for the habit of bad
language she had acquired.
"A man can smoke, a man can swear;
A man scores always, everywhere."
She rolled over on her face, and stuffed her fingers in her ears
to shut out the rhythm from her mind. She lay still for a long
time, and her mind resumed at a more tolerable pace. She found
herself talking to Capes in an undertone of rational admission.
"There is something to be said for the lady-like theory after
all," she admitted. "Women ought to be gentle and submissive
persons, strong only in virtue and in resistance to evil
compulsion. My dear--I can call you that here, anyhow--I know
that. The Victorians over-did it a little, I admit. Their idea
of maidenly innocence was just a blank white--the sort of flat
white that doesn't shine. But that doesn't alter the fact that
there IS innocence. And I've read, and thought, and guessed, and
looked--until MY innocence--it's smirched.
"Smirched! . . .
"You see, dear, one IS passionately anxious for something--what
is it? One wants to be CLEAN. You want me to be clean. You
would want me to be clean, if you gave me a thought, that is. . .
.
"I wonder if you give me a thought. . . .
"I'm not a good woman. I don't mean I'm not a good woman--I mean
that I'm not a GOOD woman. My poor brain is so mixed, dear, I
hardly know what I am saying. I mean I'm not a good specimen of
a woman. I've got a streak of male. Things happen to women--
proper women--and all they have to do is to take them well.
They've just got to keep white. But I'm always trying to make
things happen. And I get myself dirty . . .
"It's all dirt that washes off, dear, but it's dirt.
"The white unaggressive woman who corrects and nurses and serves,
and is worshipped and betrayed--the martyr-queen of men, the
white mother. . . . You can't do that sort of thing unless you
do it over religion, and there's no religion in me--of that
sort--worth a rap.
"I'm not gentle. Certainly not a gentlewoman.
"I'm not coarse--no! But I've got no purity of mind--no real
purity of mind. A good woman's mind has angels with flaming
swords at the portals to keep out fallen thoughts. . . .
"I wonder if there are any good women really.
"I wish I didn't swear. I do swear. It began as a joke. . . .
It developed into a sort of secret and private bad manners. It's
got to be at last like tobacco-ash over all my sayings and
doings. . . .
" 'Go it, missie,' they said; "kick aht!'
"I swore at that policeman--and disgusted him. Disgusted him!
"For men policemen never blush;
A man in all things scores so much . . .
"Damn! Things are getting plainer. It must be the dawn creeping
in.
"Now here hath been dawning another blue day;
I'm just a poor woman, please take it away.
"Oh, sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!"
