The Jungle, Upton Sinclair [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

down; and she goes and begs at houses with a basket, and people give her food. Only she didn’t get much yesterday; it was too cold for her fingers, and today she was crying⁠—”

So little Stanislovas went on, sobbing as he talked; and Jurgis stood, gripping the table tightly, saying not a word, but feeling that his head would burst; it was like having weights piled upon him, one after another, crushing the life out of him. He struggled and fought within himself⁠—as if in some terrible nightmare, in which a man suffers an agony, and cannot lift his hand, nor cry out, but feels that he is going mad, that his brain is on fire⁠—

Just when it seemed to him that another turn of the screw would kill him, little Stanislovas stopped. “You cannot help us?” he said, weakly.

Jurgis shook his head.

“They won’t give you anything here?”

He shook it again.

“When are you coming out?”

“Three weeks yet,” Jurgis answered.

And the boy gazed around him uncertainly. “Then I might as well go,” he said.

Jurgis nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting, he put his hand into his pocket and drew it out, shaking. “Here,” he said, holding out the fourteen cents. “Take this to them.”

And Stanislovas took it, and after a little more hesitation, started for the door. “Goodbye, Jurgis,” he said, and the other noticed that he walked unsteadily as he passed out of sight.

For a minute or so Jurgis stood clinging to the chair, reeling and swaying; then the keeper touched him on the arm, and he turned and went back to breaking stone.

XVIII

Jurgis did not get out of the Bridewell quite as soon as he had expected. To his sentence there were added “court costs” of a dollar and a half⁠—he was supposed to pay for the trouble of putting him in jail, and not having the money, was obliged to work it off by three days more of toil. Nobody had taken the trouble to tell him this⁠—only after counting the days and looking forward to the end in an agony of impatience, when the hour came that he expected to be free he found himself still set at the stoneheap, and laughed at when he ventured to protest. Then he concluded he must have counted wrong; but as another day passed, he gave up all hope⁠—and was sunk in the depths of despair, when one morning after breakfast a keeper came to him with the word that his time was up at last. So he doffed his prison garb, and put on his old fertilizer clothing, and heard the door of the prison clang behind him.

He stood upon the steps, bewildered; he could hardly believe that it was true⁠—that the sky was above him again and the open street before him; that he was a free man. But then the cold began to strike through his clothes, and he started quickly away.

There had been a heavy snow, and now a thaw had set in; a fine sleety rain was falling, driven by a wind that pierced Jurgis to the bone. He had not stopped for his overcoat when he set out to “do up” Connor, and so his rides in the patrol wagons had been cruel experiences; his clothing was old and worn thin, and it never had been very warm. Now as he trudged on the rain soon wet it through; there were six inches of watery slush on the sidewalks, so that his feet would soon have been soaked, even had there been no holes in his shoes.

Jurgis had had enough to eat in the jail, and the work had been the least trying of any that he had done since he came to Chicago; but even so, he had not grown strong⁠—the fear and grief that had preyed upon his mind had worn him thin. Now he shivered and shrunk from the rain, hiding his hands in his pockets and hunching his shoulders together. The Bridewell grounds were on the outskirts of the city and the country around them was unsettled and wild⁠—on one side was the big drainage canal, and on the other a maze of railroad tracks, and so the wind had full sweep.

After walking a ways, Jurgis met a little ragamuffin whom he hailed: “Hey, sonny!”

The boy cocked one eye at him⁠—he knew that Jurgis was a “jail bird” by his shaven head. “Wot yer want?” he queried.

“How do you go to the stockyards?” Jurgis demanded.

“I don’t go,” replied the boy.

Jurgis hesitated a moment, nonplussed. Then he said, “I mean which is the way?”

“Why don’t yer say so then?” was the response, and the boy pointed to the northwest, across the tracks. “That way.”

“How far is it?” Jurgis asked.

“I dunno” said the other. “Mebby twenty miles or so.”

“Twenty miles!” Jurgis echoed, and his face fell. He had to walk every foot of it, for they had turned him out of jail without a penny in his pockets.

Yet, when he once got started, and his blood had warmed with walking, he forgot everything in the fever of his thoughts. All the dreadful imaginations that had haunted him in his cell now rushed into his mind at once. The agony was almost over⁠—he was going to find out; and he clenched his hands in his pockets as he strode, following his flying desire, almost at a run. Ona⁠—the baby⁠—the family⁠—the house⁠—he would know the truth about them all! And he was coming to the rescue⁠—he was free again! His hands were his own, and he could help them, he could do battle for them against the world.

For an hour or so he walked thus, and then he began to look about him. He seemed to be leaving the city altogether. The street was turning into a country road, leading out to the westward; there were snow-covered fields on either side of him. Soon he met a farmer driving a two-horse wagon loaded with straw, and he stopped him.

“Is this