The bench was hard, and seemed to grow harder. There was no position in which it could be made to grow soft. Hal got up and paced about, then he lay down for a while, then got up and walked again; and all the while he thought, and all the while the jail-psychology was being impressed upon his mind.
First, he thought about his immediate problem. What were they going to do to him? The obvious thing would be to put him out of camp, and so be done with him; but would they rest content with that, in their irritation at the trick he had played? Hal had heard vaguely of that native American institution, the “third degree,” but had never had occasion to think of it as a possibility in his own life. What a difference it made, to think of it in that way!
Hal had told Tom Olson that he would not pledge himself to organise a union, but that he would pledge himself to get a check-weighman; and Olson had laughed, and seemed quite content—apparently assuming that it would come to the same thing. And now, it rather seemed that Olson had known what he was talking about. For Hal found his thoughts no longer troubled with fears of labour union domination and walking delegate tyranny; on the contrary, he became suddenly willing for the people of North Valley to have a union, and to be as tyrannical as they knew how! And in this change, though Hal had no idea of it, he was repeating an experience common among reformers; many of whom begin as mild and benevolent advocates of some obvious bit of justice, and under the operation of the jail-psychology are made into blazing and determined revolutionists. “Eternal spirit of the chainless mind,” says Byron. “Greatest in dungeons Liberty thou art!”
The poet goes on to add that “When thy sons to fetters are confined—” then “Freedom’s fame finds wings on every wind.” And just as it was in Chillon, so it seemed to be in North Valley. Dawn came, and Hal stood at the window of his cell, and heard the whistle blow and saw the workers going to their tasks, the toil-bent, pallid faced creatures of the underworld, like a file of baboons in the half-light. He waved his hand to them, and they stopped and stared, and then waved back; he realised that every one of those men must be thinking about his imprisonment, and the reason for it—and so the jail-psychology was being communicated to them. If any of them cherished distrust of unions, or doubt of the need of organisation in North Valley—that distrust and that doubt were being dissipated!
—There was only one thing discouraging about the matter, as Hal thought it over. Why should the bosses have left him here in plain sight, when they might so easily have put him into an automobile, and whisked him down to Pedro before daylight? Was it a sign of the contempt they felt for their slaves? Did they count upon the sight of the prisoner in the window to produce fear instead of resentment? And might it not be that they understood their workers better than the would-be check-weighman? He recalled Mary Burke’s pessimism about them, and anxiety gnawed at his soul; and—such is the operation of the jail-psychology—he fought against this anxiety. He hated the company for its cynicism, he clenched his hands and set his teeth, desiring to teach the bosses a lesson, to prove to them that their workers were not slaves, but men!
XVII
Toward the middle of the morning, Hal heard footsteps in the corridor outside, and a man whom he did not know opened the barred door and set down a pitcher of water and a tin plate with a hunk of bread on it. When he started to leave, Hal spoke: “Just a minute, please.”
The other frowned at him.
“Can you give me any idea how long I am to stay in here?”
“I cannot,” said the man.
“If I’m to be locked up,” said Hal, “I’ve certainly a right to know what is the charge against me.”
“Go to blazes!” said the other, and slammed the door and went down the corridor.
Hal went to the window again, and passed the time watching the people who went by. Groups of ragged children gathered, looking up at him, grinning and making signs—until someone appeared below and ordered them away.
As time passed, Hal became hungry. The taste of bread, eaten alone, becomes speedily monotonous, and the taste of water does not relieve it; nevertheless, Hal munched the bread, and drank the water, and wished for more.
The day dragged by; and late in the afternoon the keeper came again, with another hunk of bread and another pitcher of water. “Listen a moment,” said Hal, as the man was turning away.
“I got nothin’ to say to you,” said the other.
“I have something to say to you,” pleaded Hal. “I have read in a book—I forget where, but it was written by some doctor—that white bread does not contain the elements necessary to the sustaining of the human body.”
“Go on!” growled the jailer. “What yer givin’ us?”
“I mean,” explained Hal, “a diet of bread and water is not what I’d choose to live on.”
“What would yer choose?”
The tone suggested that the question was a rhetorical one; but Hal took it in good faith. “If I could have some beefsteak and mashed potatoes—”
The door of the cell closed with a slam whose echoes drowned out the rest of that imaginary menu. And so once more Hal sat on the hard bench, and munched his hunk of bread, and thought jail-thoughts.
When the quitting-whistle blew, he stood at the window, and saw the groups of his friends once again, and got their covert signals of encouragement. Then darkness fell, and another long vigil began.
It was late; Hal had no means of telling how late, save that all the
