"It's all right," he said. "He's gone away." She lifted her veil, removed her cloak, and took in, without seeming to, the stuffy, narrow thickness of the room, his wretched shoes, the cheap, misshapen suit, the iron door behind him leading out into the little yard attached to his cell. Against such a background, with his partially caned chairs visible at the end of the bed, he seemed unnatural, weird even. Her Frank! And in this condition.
She trembled and it was useless for her to try to speak. She could only put her arms around him and stroke his head, murmuring: "My poor boy--my darling. Is this what they have done to you? Oh, my poor darling." She held his head while Cowperwood, anxious to retain his composure, winced and trembled, too. Her love was so full--so genuine. It was so soothing at the same time that it was unmanning, as now he could see, making of him a child again. And for the first time in his life, some inexplicable trick of chemistry--that chemistry of the body, of blind forces which so readily supersedes reason at times--he lost his self-control. The depth of Aileen's feelings, the cooing sound of her voice, the velvety tenderness of her hands, that beauty that had drawn him all the time--more radiant here perhaps within these hard walls, and in the face of his physical misery, than it had ever been before--completely unmanned him. He did not understand how it could; he tried to defy the moods, but he could not. When she held his head close and caressed it, of a sudden, in spite of himself, his breast felt thick and stuffy, and his throat hurt him. He felt, for him, an astonishingly strange feeling, a desire to cry, which he did his best to overcome; it shocked him so. There then combined and conspired to defeat him a strange, rich picture of the great world he had so recently lost, of the lovely, magnificent world which he hoped some day to regain. He felt more poignantly at this moment than ever he had before the degradation of the clog shoes, the cotton shirt, the striped suit, the reputation of a convict, permanent and not to be laid aside. He drew himself quickly away from her, turned his back, clinched his hands, drew his muscles taut; but it was too late. He was crying, and he could not stop.
"Oh, damn it!" he exclaimed, half angrily, half self-commiseratingly, in combined rage and shame. "Why should I cry? What the devil's the matter with me, anyhow?"
Aileen saw it. She fairly flung herself in front of him, seized his head with one hand, his shabby waist with the other, and held him tight in a grip that he could not have readily released.
"Oh, honey, honey, honey!" she exclaimed, pityingly feverishly.
"I love you, I adore you. They could cut my body into bits if it would do you any good. To think that they should make you cry!
Oh, my sweet, my sweet, my darling boy!"
She pulled his still shaking body tighter, and with her free hand caressed his head. She kissed his eyes, his hair, his cheeks. He pulled himself loose again after a moment, exclaiming, "What the devil's got into me?" but she drew him back.
"Never mind, honey darling, don't you be ashamed to cry. Cry here on my shoulder. Cry here with me. My baby--my honey pet!"
He quieted down after a few moments, cautioning her against Bonhag, and regaining his former composure, which he was so ashamed to have lost.
"You're a great girl, pet," he said, with a tender and yet apologetic smile. "You're all right--all that I need--a great help to me; but don't worry any longer about me, dear. I'm all right. It isn't as bad as you think. How are you?"
Aileen on her part was not to be soothed so easily. His many woes, including his wretched position here, outraged her sense of justice and decency. To think her fine, wonderful Frank should be compelled to come to this--to cry. She stroked his head, tenderly, while wild, deadly, unreasoning opposition to life and chance and untoward opposition surged in her brain. Her father--damn him! Her family--pooh! What did she care? Her Frank--her Frank. How little all else mattered where he was concerned. Never, never, never would she desert him--never--come what might. And now she clung to him in silence while she fought in her brain an awful battle with life and law and fate and circumstance. Law--nonsense! People--they were brutes, devils, enemies, hounds! She was delighted, eager, crazy to make a sacrifice of herself. She would go anywhere for or with her Frank now. She would do anything for him. Her family was nothing--life nothing, nothing, nothing. She would do anything he wished, nothing more, nothing less; anything she could do to save him, to make his life happier, but nothing for any one else.
