Romance Island | Page 7

reply, and the warden's voice suggested
handcuffs by way of hospitality.
"This is St. George of the Sentinel. I want very much to see one of your
people--a mulatto woman. Can you fix it for me?"
"Certainly not," returned the warden promptly. "The Sentinel knows
perfectly that newspaper men can not be admitted here."
"Ah, well now, of course," St. George conceded, "but if you have a
mysterious boarder who talks Patagonian or something, and we think
that perhaps we can talk with her, why then--"
"It doesn't matter whether you can talk every language in South
America," said the warden bruskly. "I'm very busy now, and--"
"See here, Mr. Jeffrey," said St. George, "is no one allowed there but
relatives of the guests?"
"Nobody,"--crisply.

"I beg your pardon, that is literal?"
"Relatives, with a permit," divulged the warden, who, if he had had a
sceptre would have used it at table, he was so fond of his little power,
"and the Readers' Guild."
"Ah--the Readers' Guild," said St. George. "What days, Mr. Jeffrey?"
"To-day and Saturdays, ten o'clock. I'm sorry, Mr. St. George, but I'm a
very busy man and now--"
"Good-by," St. George cried triumphantly.
In half an hour he was at the Grand Central station, boarding a train for
the Reformatory town. It was a little after ten o'clock when he rang the
bell at the house presided over by Chillingworth's "rabble of wild
eagles."
The Reformatory, a boastful, brick building set in grounds that seemed
freshly starched and ironed, had a discoloured door that would have
frowned and threatened of its own accord, even without the printed
warnings pasted to its panels stating that no application for admission,
with or without permits, would be honoured upon any day save
Thursday. This was Tuesday.
Presently, the chains having fallen within after a feudal rattling, an old
man who looked born to the business of snapping up a drawbridge in
lieu of a taste for any other exclusiveness peered at St. George through
absurd smoked glasses, cracked quite across so that his eyes resembled
buckles.
"Good morning," said St. George; "has the Readers' Guild arrived yet?"
The old man grated out an assent and swung open the door, which
creaked in the pitch of his voice. The bare hall was cut by a wall of
steel bars whose gate was padlocked, and outside this wall the door to
the warden's office stood open. St. George saw that a meeting was in
progress there, and the sight disturbed him. Then the click of a key

caught his attention, and he turned to find the old man quietly and
surprisingly swinging open the door of steel bars.
"This way, sir," he said hoarsely, fixing St. George with his buckle eyes,
and shambled through the door after him locking it behind them.
If St. George had found awaiting him a gold throne encircled by
kneeling elephants he could have been no more amazed. Not a word
had been said about the purpose of his visit, and not a word to the
warden; there was simply this miraculous opening of the barred door.
St. George breathlessly footed across the rotunda and down the dim
opposite hall. There was a mistake, that was evident; but for the
moment St. George was going to propose no reform. Their steps
echoed in the empty corridor that extended the entire length of the great
building in an odour of unspeakable soap and superior disinfectants;
and it was not until they reached a stair at the far end that the old man
halted.
"Top o' the steps," he hoarsely volunteered, blinking his little buckle
eyes, "first door to the left. My back's bad. I won't go up."
St. George, inhumanely blessing the circumstance, slipped something
in the old man's hand and sprang up the stairs.
The first door at the left stood ajar. St. George looked in and saw a
circle of bonnets and white curls clouded around the edge of the room,
like witnesses. The Readers' Guild was about leaving; almost in the
same instant, with that soft lift and touch which makes a woman's gown
seem sewed with vowels and sibilants, they all arose and came tapping
across the bare floor. At their head marched a woman with such a
bright bonnet, and such a tinkle of ornaments on her gown that at first
sight she quite looked like a lamp. It was she whom St. George
approached.
"I beg your pardon, madame," he said, "is this the Readers' Guild?"
There was nothing in St. George's grave face and deferential stooping
of shoulders to betray how his heart was beating or what a bound it

gave at her amazing reply.
"Ah," she said, "how do you do?"--and her manner had that violent
absent-mindedness which almost always proves that