I answer any remarks directed to me quite at random, for I am waiting, waiting, waiting, and listening.
An hour and a half does not seem such an endless period of time usually. Well, it all depends. When you are in a dark prison cell, waiting for deliverance, it seems a lifetime. I lived through every hour in the minute of that interminable period of five thousand four hundred seconds.
At last I hear a sound--one of the most welcome sounds I ever heard--the six o'clock train blowing off steam over at the New York Central station. I find myself wondering why I am not ready to shout with joy, and I discover it is because I feel as if all power of emotion had been crushed out of me. It is not merely utter and hopeless fatigue; it is as if something had broken inside of me; as if I could never be joyous again; as if I must be haunted forever by a sense of shame and guilt for my own share of responsibility for this iniquitous place. My sensation, when at last I hear the sound of the key in the lock of the outer door, is not one of exultation, only of approaching relief from deadly pain--pain which has become almost insupportable.
Once more we hear the outer door open and steps coming along the passage. I rise from my seat on the floor, and put on my shirt and shoes as I whisper, "Good bye, boys. I wish I could take you with me." Then the inner door is opened, the light is lighted, and my cell door swings out.
Some one stands there--I do not know who--I do not care. Listlessly, like one in a dream, I pick up my cap and coat; and silently, wearily, move out and toward the bench where I changed my clothes last night. Last night!--a thousand years ago. The officer--the keeper--the man, whoever he is, who has come to release me, produces my regular prison uniform; and listlessly, silently, wearily, I make the change, dropping my jail garments upon the floor. I feel as if I should like to grind my heels into the loathsome, hated things.
With a parting look along the row of cells which imprison my comrades, and choking down my feelings as I think of the sick lad we are leaving without water, I stumble along the passage to the jail office, pausing only while my attendant locks behind us the two iron doors. Another moment and I feel my lungs expand with a deep refreshing breath, and find myself out in the ghostly quiet of the prison yard.