caught him unawares, and overwhelmed him before he
could protect himself. He heard the old voices
of his soul, he saw its old ghosts beckoning to him,
stretching out their arms to him! But they were
far-off and shadowy, and the gulf between them was
black and bottomless; they would fade away into the
mists of the past once more. Their voices would
die, and never again would he hear them—and
so the last faint spark of manhood in his soul would
flicker out.
Chapter 28
After breakfast Jurgis was driven to the court, which
was crowded with the prisoners and those who had come
out of curiosity or in the hope of recognizing one
of the men and getting a case for blackmail. The
men were called up first, and reprimanded in a bunch,
and then dismissed; but, Jurgis to his terror, was
called separately, as being a suspicious-looking case.
It was in this very same court that he had been tried,
that time when his sentence had been “suspended”;
it was the same judge, and the same clerk. The
latter now stared at Jurgis, as if he half thought
that he knew him; but the judge had no suspicions—just
then his thoughts were upon a telephone message he
was expecting from a friend of the police captain
of the district, telling what disposition he should
make of the case of “Polly” Simpson, as
the “madame” of the house was known.
Meantime, he listened to the story of how Jurgis had
been looking for his sister, and advised him dryly
to keep his sister in a better place; then he let
him go, and proceeded to fine each of the girls five
dollars, which fines were paid in a bunch from a wad
of bills which Madame Polly extracted from her stocking.
Jurgis waited outside and walked home with Marija.
The police had left the house, and already there were
a few visitors; by evening the place would be running
again, exactly as if nothing had happened. Meantime,
Marija took Jurgis upstairs to her room, and they sat
and talked. By daylight, Jurgis was able to observe
that the color on her cheeks was not the old natural
one of abounding health; her complexion was in reality
a parchment yellow, and there were black rings under
her eyes.
“Have you been sick?” he asked.
“Sick?” she said. “Hell!”
(Marija had learned to scatter her conversation with
as many oaths as a longshoreman or a mule driver.)
“How can I ever be anything but sick, at this
life?”
She fell silent for a moment, staring ahead of her
gloomily. “It’s morphine,”
she said, at last. “I seem to take more
of it every day.”
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“It’s the way of it; I don’t know
why. If it isn’t that, it’s drink.
If the girls didn’t booze they couldn’t
stand it any time at all. And the madame always
gives them dope when they first come, and they learn
to like it; or else they take it for headaches and
such things, and get the habit that way. I’ve
got it, I know; I’ve tried to quit, but I never
will while I’m here.”
