Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1912-08-08
The Gates of Silence
By Meta Smmtn5, Author Of "Hushed Up"

you're an ANGEL love you for it; but
it's the maddest, most mistaken kindness:
1t Is making an addition to my punish
ment-not a mitigation of it," he said
Boy | owe it to you for the years |
neglected YOU she said, soemnly. 1T
is eXpiation for all the prayers l have
left unsaid; it is bowling voluntarily. as the
Book says, under the almighty hand of
God. We have sore need of that, sinful
woman that I am, far more than you in
your Needless youth
once again Huntington WINGED During
his trial, during the weeks he had lain
waiting for death, he had found it posi-
Bile to bear with fortitude the disbelief
in his innocence of those who had known
him; now it seemed more than he could
bear that this woman, who had known
him since he was a tiny child should
come here and speak to him of resgna-
ton and humility.
Jack she had come as near to him
as the bars permitted: he could see her
face very clearly now, framed in the vol
luminous folds of the crepe veiI-the face
of a woman who for hours had been on
the rack of pain; the great eyes were
surrounded by shadows and full of tears;
as he looked they overf1owed and began
to run down her cheeks; she seemed I'M
CONSCIOUS
dear child it breaks my heart to see you
here behind the bars. like a beast of prey.
on. be patient yet a little longer-re-
lease must come. Pray for us all that.
we may have courage. Jack, don't lose
your faith in US alI--in the girl that loves
you and waits for you
81 Am Happy"
Tell her nothing" cried Rimington,
hoarsely. Tell her nothing of this" He
ran his hands quickly over his motley
dress Tell her 1 am full Of hope-that
that l am happy and well, and-that
it is not half a bad life when you are
used to it. Tell her l love herr
His working face, that was like some
grim travesty of the face she had known
his broken, unfamiliar voice, his outhung
roughened hands with their hideous,
broken natls-these were the picture Mrs
Rimington carried with her out into the
world. A gray world, damp and rank
with the creeping mist from the sea,
through which were stealing figures of
shame. men in gangs who might have
been chained together, so closely were
their ranks set; men who moved to the
word Of command more brisky than any
regiment of soldiers, slaves quick to re
spond to the goad of fear-that knowledge
lay locked away in the breast of every
one of them of the punishment that
waited unfalteringly for every fault-of
the cooked rifle for the runaway, of the
various manaCles in the Jewel room"
where the punishment letters were kept
as eXquisitely as a society beauty's jew
els; of, in the last and most desperate
resort, the cap and the triangle, or the
degrading birch.
The discipline of fear"-she had never
until TODAY rpa1iza1 what that
power that behind a single man enabled
him to keep twenty desperate ruffians in
subsection as easily as a firm mistress
can manage a school class.
This visit Of his aunt, so strange, so
unexpected, involving as it must have
done great trouble to her to procure,
like the change from Norwood Scrubs
10 Bilmouth, was a turning point in Rim
ngton's prison life. Just as the change
from the one prison to the other had
brought an interest into his life that saved
his mentality, so this visit of d woman
and that one who had always stood in
his mind for the embodiment of domestic
beauty and purity and daintiness-sa
his self respect, arrested that deteriora-
ton of personal habit of which he was
beginning himself to be aware.
Will power and strength of mind in
themselves are hardly enough to stand
up against the immense forces arrayed
against the man who knows that, for all
the years he can see stretch before him,
he VIII always be a prisoner; who real
ICES that the brand of the broad arrow
for man in his rank of life is like the
chrism of some priesthood of shame,
marking him as an outcast forever only
some exterior force like the knowledge of
a trusting and waiting woman can aid
him. And to Remington had come the
knowledge of two women who avowed
their life work to be a preparation for
his release.
A Pet Theory.
Sitting there in the ice chill of his cell,
with the dim gas jet burning outside the
corridor window Remington thought
steadily Of Mrs. Rimngton's visit, and as
he thought the singularity of it, which
had at first lComed so large in his mind,
began to diminish. and the beauty and
mercy and charity of it to increase. He
remembered now that Toby and he had
often laughed at pet theory of hers,
which was that widows should be wild
ows indeed devotng their lives after the
death of the beloved to works of charity
and deeds of mercy, cutting themselves
off from the world
To Be Continued in Next Issue.