Chapter XIV: Book III: I (3)

"Oh, but on the other side!" said Modderwell. "And we all expect so much better things of Mr. Marriott."

"Oh, don't trouble yourselves about me!" said Marriott. "I'm sure I prefer my side of the case to Eades's."

The atmosphere was surcharged with bitterness. Mrs. Ward gave a sidelong glance of pain, deprecating such a _contretemps_.

"And I'm going to try to save him," Marriott was forging on.

"Well," said Eades, looking down on his large oval polished nails, and speaking in a tone that would finally dispose of the problem, "for my part, I revere the law and I want to see it enforced."

"Exactly!" Modderwell agreed. "And if there were fewer delays in bringing these criminals to justice, there would be fewer lynchings and more respect for the law."

Marriott did not even try to conceal the disgust with which he received this hackneyed and conventional formula of thoughtless respectability. He felt that it was useless to argue with Eades or Modderwell; it seemed to him that they had never thought seriously of such questions, and would not do so, but that they were merely echoing speeches they had heard all their lives, inherited speeches that had been in vogue for generations, ages, one might say.

"I am sure it must be a most disagreeable task," Mrs. Ward was saying, looking at her daughter in the hope that Elizabeth might relieve a situation with which she felt herself powerless to deal. Marriott seemed always to be introducing such topics, and she had the distaste of her class for the real vital questions of life. But Elizabeth was speaking.

"I'm sure that Gordon's task isn't more disagreeable than mine."

"Yours?" Mrs. Ward turned toward her daughter, dreading things even worse now.

"Yes," replied Elizabeth, looking about in pleasure at the surprise she had created.

"Why, what problem have you?" asked Modderwell.

"I've been sent for--to come to the prison to see--"

"Not _him_!" said Modderwell.

Eades started suddenly forward.

"No," said Elizabeth calmly, enjoying the situation, "his sister."

"His sister!"

"Yes," she turned to her mother. "You know, dear; Gusta. She's been arrested."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward. "Elizabeth! The idea! What impertinence! Who could have brought such an insolent message!" She looked at Marriott, as did the others.

"The idea!" Mrs. Ward went on. "Why, I had no notion he was _her_ brother. To think of our harboring such people!"

Mrs. Ward stiffened in her chair, with glances from time to time for Marriott and Elizabeth, in an attitude of chilling and austere social disapproval; then, as if she had forgotten to claim the reassurance she felt to be certain, she leaned forward, out of the attitude as it were, to say:

"Of course you sent the reply her assurance deserved."

"No," said Elizabeth in a bird-like tone, "I didn't. What would you do, Mr. Eades?"

"Why, of course you could not go to a prison," replied Eades.

"But you could, couldn't you? And you do?"

"Only when necessary."

"But you do, Mr. Modderwell?"

"Only professionally," said Modderwell solemnly, for once remembering his clerical dignity.

"Oh, professionally!" said Elizabeth with a meaning. "You go professionally, too, Gordon, don't you? And I--I can't go that way. I can go only--what shall I say?--humanly? So I suppose I can't go at all!"

"Certainly not," said Mrs. Ward. "How can you ask such a question?" She was now too disapproving for words. "I can not consent to your going at all, so let that end it."

"But, Mr. Modderwell," said Elizabeth, with a smile for her mother, "we pray, don't we, every Sunday for 'pity upon all prisoners and captives'?"

"That's entirely different," said Modderwell.

"What does it mean,--'I was in prison and ye visited me'?" She sat with her hands folded in humility, as if seeking wisdom and instruction.

"That was in another day," said Modderwell. "Society was not organized then as it is now; it was--all different, of course." Modderwell went on groping for justification. "If these people are repentant--are seeking to turn from their wickedness, the church has appointed the clergy to visit them and give them instruction."

"Then perhaps you'd better go!" Elizabeth's eyes sparkled, and she looked at Modderwell, who feared a joke or a trap; then at Eades, who was almost as deeply distressed as Mrs. Ward, and then at Marriott, whose eyes showed the relish with which he enjoyed the situation.

"I don't think she wishes to see me," said Modderwell, with a significance that did not have a tribute for Gusta. No one disputed him, and there was silence, in which Eades looked intently at Elizabeth, and then, just as he seemed on the point of speaking to her, he turned to Marriott and said:

"You certainly don't think that a proper place for her to go?"

"Oh," said Marriott, "don't refer to me; I'm out of it. I've been, I brought the message--it's--it's up to Elizabeth."

"Well," said Eades, turning to Elizabeth, "you surely can't be seriously considering such a thing. You don't know, of course, what kind of place that is, or what kind of people you would be going among, or what risks you would be exposing yourself to."

"There would be no danger, would there?" said Elizabeth in her most innocent manner. "There would be plenty of policemen at hand, wouldn't there,--in case of need?"

"Well, I don't think you'd willingly elect to go among policemen," said Eades.

"Perhaps you three would go with me?" suggested Elizabeth. "I'd be safe then--all I'd lack would be a physician to make my escort completely representative of the learned professions."

"The newspaper men would be there," said Eades, "you may be sure of that, and the publicity--"

At the word "publicity" Mrs. Ward cringed with genuine alarm.

"Do you find publicity so annoying?" asked Elizabeth, smiling on the three men.

"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, "I do wish you'd stop this nonsense! It may seem very amusing to you, but I assure you it is not amusing to me; I find it very distressing." She looked her distress, and then turned away in the disgust that was a part of her distress. "It would be shocking!" she said, when she seemed to them all to have had her say.

"I'm sorry to shock you all," said Elizabeth meekly. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure, to act as mentors and censors of my conduct. I feel sufficiently put down; you have helped me to a decision. I have decided, after hearing your arguments, and out of deference to your sentiments and opinions, to--"

They all looked up expectantly.

"--to go," she concluded.

She smiled on them all with serenity; and they looked at her with that blank helplessness that came over them whenever they tried to understand her.

X

Though Elizabeth, as long as Eades and Modderwell were there, had chosen to satirize her predicament, and had experienced the pleasure of shocking them by the decision she reached, she found when they had gone that night, and she was alone in her room, that it was no decision at all. The situation presented itself in all seriousness, and she found that she must deal with it, not in any whimsical spirit, but in sober earnestness. She found it to be a real problem, incapable of isolation from those artificialities which were all that made it a problem. She had found it easy and simple enough, and even proper and respectable to visit the poor in their homes, but when she contemplated visiting them in the prisons which seemed made for them alone, and were too often so much better than their homes, obstacles at once arose. As she more accurately imagined these obstacles, they became formidable. She sat by the table in her room, under the reading-lamp that stood among the books she kept beside her, and determined to think it out. She made elaborate preparations, deciding to marshal all the arguments and then make deductions and comparisons, and thus, by a process almost mathematical, determine what to do. But she never got beyond the preparations; her mind worked, after all, intuitively, she felt rather than thought; she imagined herself, in the morning, going to the police station, confronting the officers, finally, perhaps, seeing Gusta. She saw clearly what her family, her friends, her set, the people she knew, would say--how horrified they would be, how they would judge and condemn her. Her mother, Eades and Modderwell accurately represented the world she knew. And the newspapers, in their eagerness for every detail touching the tragedy, however remotely, would publish the fact! "This morning Miss Elizabeth Ward, daughter of Stephen Ward, the broker, called on the Koerner girl. Fashionably dressed--" She could already see the cold black types! It was impossible, unheard of. Gusta had no right--ah, Gusta! She saw the girl's face, pretty as ever, but sad now, and stained by tears, pleading for human companionship and sympathy. She remembered how Gusta had served her almost slavishly, how she had sat up at night for her, and helped her at her toilet, sending delicious little thrills through her by the magnetic touch of her soft fingers. If she should send for Gusta, how quickly she would come, though she had to crawl!

And what, after all, was it that made it hard? What had decreed that she, one girl, should not go to see another girl who was in trouble? Such a natural human action was dictated by the ethics and by the religion of her kind and by all the teachings of her church, and yet, when it was proposed to practise these precepts, she found them treated cynically, as if they were of no worth or meaning. That very evening the representatives of the law and of theology had urged against it!

At breakfast her mother sat at table with her. Mrs. Ward had breakfasted an hour earlier with her husband, but she had a kindly way of following the members of her family one after another to the table, and of entertaining them while they ate. She had told her husband of Elizabeth's contemplated visit to the prison, and then had decided to say nothing of it to Elizabeth, in the hope that the whim would have passed with the night. But Mrs. Ward could not long keep anything in her heart, and she was presently saying:

"I hope, dear, that you have given up that notion of going to see Gusta. I hope," she quickly added, putting it in the way she wished she had put it at first, "that you see your duty more clearly this morning."

"No," said Elizabeth, idly tilting a china cup in her fingers, and allowing the light that came through the tall, broad windows to fill it with the golden luminosity of the sun, "I don't see it clearly at all. I wish I did."

"Don't you think, dear, that you allow yourself to grow morbid, pondering over your duty so much?"

"I don't think I'm morbid." She would as readily have admitted that she was superstitious as that she was morbid.

"You have--what kind of conscience was it that Mr. Parrish was talking about the other night?" Mrs. Ward knitted the brows that life had marked so lightly.

"New England, I suppose," Elizabeth answered wearily. "But I have no New England conscience, mama. I have very little conscience at all, and as for my duty, I almost never do it. I am perfectly aware that if I did my duty I should lead an entirely different life; but I don't; I go on weakly, day after day, year after year, leading a perfectly useless existence, surrounded by wholly artificial duties, and now these same artificial duties keep me from performing my real duty--which, just now, seems to me to go and see poor little Gusta."

Mrs. Ward was more disturbed, now that her daughter saw her duty, than she had been a moment before, when she had declared she could not see it.

"I do wish you could be like other girls," she said, speaking her thought as her habit was.

"I am," said Elizabeth, "am I not?"

"Well," Mrs. Ward qualified.

"In all except one thing."

Mrs. Ward looked her question.

"I'm not getting married very fast."

"No," said Mrs. Ward.

Elizabeth laughed for the first time that morning.

"You dear little mother, I really believe you're anxious to get rid of me!"

"Why, Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, lifting her eyes and then lowering them suddenly, in her reproach. "How can you say such a thing!"

"But never mind," Elizabeth went on:

"'If no one ever marries me I sha'n't mind very much; I shall buy a squirrel in a cage and a little rabbit hutch. I shall have a cottage in a wood, and a pony all my own, And a little lamb quite clean and tame that I can take to town. And when I'm getting really old--at twenty-eight or nine-- I shall buy a little orphan girl and bring her up as mine."

She smiled as she finished her quotation, and then suddenly sobered as she said:

"I'm twenty-seven already!"

"Who wrote that?" asked Mrs. Ward.

"Alma-Tadema."

"Oh! I thought Mr. Marriott might have done it. It's certainly very silly."

Nora had brought her breakfast, and the action recalled Gusta to Elizabeth.

"What did papa say--about my going to the prison?"

"He said," Mrs. Ward began gladly, "that, of course, we all felt very sorry for Gusta, but that you couldn't go _there_. He said it would be absurd; that you don't understand." Mrs. Ward was silent for a moment, knowing how much greater the father's influence was than her own. She was glad that Elizabeth seemed altogether docile and practicable this morning.

"There's a good girl now," Mrs. Ward added in the hope of pressing her advantage home.

Elizabeth gave a little start of irritability.

"I wish you wouldn't talk to me in that way, mama. I'm not a child."

"But surely your father knows best, dear," the mother insisted, "more than--we do."

"Not necessarily," said Elizabeth.

"Why! How can you say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, who bowed to all authority as a part of her religion.

"Papa takes merely the conventional view," Elizabeth went on, "and the conventional view is taken without thought."

"But--surely--" Mrs. Ward stammered, in the impotence of one who, easily convinced without reasons, has no reasons at command--"surely--you heard what Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades said."

"Their view is conventional," said Elizabeth, "and proper." She gave a little curl of her lip as she spoke this last word.

"Well, I'm sure, dear, that we all wish to be proper, and Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades--"

"Oh! Don't quote those two men to me! Two such prigs, such Pharisees, I never saw!"

Mrs. Ward looked at her daughter in a new horror. "Why, Elizabeth! I'm surprised--I thought that Mr. Eades especially--"

"Well, don't you think Mr. Eades especially at all! He's not especially; he thinks he is, no doubt, and so does everybody else, but they have no right to, and hereafter Mr. Eades can't come here--that's all!" Her eyes were flashing.

Mrs. Ward ventured no further just then, but presently resumed:

"Think what people would say!"

"Oh, mother! Please don't use that argument. I have often told you that I don't care at all what people say."

"I only wish you cared more." She looked at Elizabeth helplessly a moment and then broke out with what she had been tempted all along to say.

"It's that Gordon Marriott! That's what it is! He has such strange, wild notions. He defends these criminals, it seems. I don't see how he can approve their actions the way he does."

"Why, mother!" said Elizabeth. "How you talk! You might think I was a little child with no mind of my own. And besides, Gordon does not approve of their actions, he disapproves of their actions, but he recognizes them as people, as human beings, just like us--"

"Just like us!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, withdrawing herself wholly from any contact with the mere suggestion. "Just like us, indeed! Well, I'd have him know they're not like us, at all!"

Elizabeth saw how hopeless it was to try to make her mother understand Marriott's attitude, especially when she found it difficult to understand it herself.

"Just like us, indeed!" Mrs. Ward repeated. "You are certainly the most astonishing girl."

"What's the excitement?"

It was Dick, just entering the room. He was clean-shaved, and glowing from his plunge, his face ruddy and his eyes bright. He was good-humored that morning, for he had had nearly five hours of sleep. His mother poured his coffee and he began eating his breakfast.

"What's the matter, Bess?" he asked, seizing the paper his father had laid aside, and glancing at it in a man's ability to read and converse with women at the same time.

"Why, she threatens to go to the jail," Mrs. Ward hastened to reply, in her eagerness for a partizan in her cause. "And her father and Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades have all advised her that it would be improper--to say nothing of my own wishes in the matter."

Dick, to his mother's disappointment, only laughed.

"What do you want to go there for? Some of your friends been run in?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth calmly.

"That's too bad! Why don't you have Eades let 'em out,--you certainly have a swell pull with him."

"You have just had Mr. Eades's opinion from mama."

"Who is your friend?"

"Gusta."

Dick's face was suddenly swept with scarlet, and he started--looked up, then hastily raised his coffee-cup, drained its last drop, flung his napkin on his plate, and said:

"Oh, that girl that used to work for us?"

"Yes."

"Well, mother's right."

Mrs. Ward looked her gratitude.

"Of course, you can't go."

"I can't?"

He had risen from the table, and Elizabeth's tone impressed him.

"Look here," he said peremptorily. "You just can't go there, that's all there is about it!"

"Why not?"

"Because you can't. It wouldn't do, it wouldn't be the thing; you ought to know that."

"But why?" Elizabeth persisted. "I want a reason."

"You don't mean to say you seriously consider it?" asked Dick in real alarm.

"Yes, I do."

Dick suddenly grew excited, his eyes flamed, and he was very red.

"Look here, Bess," he said. "You just can't, that's all."

"Can't I?" she said, and she gave a little laugh. It was not her usual pleasant laugh.

"No, you can't." He spoke more than insistently, he spoke angrily. He snatched out his thin gold watch and glanced at it. "I've not got time to discuss this thing. You just can't go--that's all there is to it."

Elizabeth rose from the table calmly, went out of the room, and Dick, after a hesitant moment, ran after her.

"Bess! Bess!"

She stopped.

"See here, Bess, you must not go there to see that girl. I'm surprised! She isn't the sort, you understand! You don't know what you're doing. Now look here--wait a minute!" He caught her by the arm. "I tell you it's not the thing, you mustn't!"

He was quite beside himself.

"You seem greatly excited," she said.

He made a great effort, controlled himself, and, still holding her, began to plead.

"Please don't go, Bess!" he said. "Please don't!"

"But why--_why_?" she insisted.

"Because I say so."

"Humph!"

"Because I ask it. Please don't; do it for me, this once. You'll be sorry if you do. Please don't go!"

His eyes were full of the plea he was incoherently stammering. He was greatly moved, greatly agitated.

"Why, Dick," she said, "what is the matter with you? You seem to take this trifle very much to heart. You seem to have some special interest, some deep reason. I wish you'd tell me what it is. Why shouldn't I go to see poor Gusta? She's in trouble--she was always good to me."

There was a sudden strange wild expression in his face, his lips were slightly parted. The moments were flying, and he must be off.

"Oh, Bess," he said, "for God's sake, don't go!"

He implored her in his look, then snatching out his watch ran to the hall, seized his hat and top-coat, and went out, flinging on his coat as he ran, and leaving the door flying wide behind him. Elizabeth stood looking after him. When she turned, her mother was in the room.

"What can be the matter with Dick?" said Elizabeth. "I never saw him so excited before. He seemed--" She paused, and bit her lip.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Ward calmly, "you see now, I hope, just how the world regards such a wild action. It was his love and respect for his sister, of course."

XI

"No, don't say anything more. I've thought it all out; my duty's clear now, I must go." Elizabeth laid her hand on her father's shoulder, and though he turned from the great desk at which he sat in his private office, he hesitated. "Come on."

"That conscience of yours, Bess--" he began, drawing down the lid of his desk.

"Yes, I know, but I can't help it."

"How did you decide at last to go?" asked Ward, as they walked rapidly along in the crowded street.

"Well, it tortured me--I couldn't decide. It seemed so difficult,--every one--mama, our dear Modderwell, Mr. Eades, Dick--he nearly lost his reason, and he did lose his temper--thought it impossible. But at last I decided--"

"Yes?"

"--just to go."

Elizabeth gave a little laugh at this not very illuminating explanation.

"I didn't know what the proprieties were," she went on. "Our little code had not provided rules--what to wear, the chaperonage, and all that, you know. And then,"--she abandoned her irony,--"I thought of you."

"As a last resort, eh?" said Ward, looking fondly into her face, flushing behind her veil in the keen November air. She drew close to him, put her hand on his arm.

"Yes," she said, "and as a first resort, as a constant, never-failing resort."

She gave his arm a little squeeze, and he pressed her hand to his side in silence.

"Do you know where it is?" Elizabeth asked presently.

"Oh, yes, I was there once."

"When?"

"When that boy of mine was arrested--Graves."

"Yes, I remember."

"I wonder," he said after a pause, and he paused again at the question he seemed to fear--"whatever became of him!"

She had never told him of that day at the charity bureau; she wondered if she should do so now, but she heard him sigh, and she let it pass.

"Yes," he went on as if she had been privy to his rapid train of thought, "I suppose such things must be; something must be done with them, of course. I hope I did right."

At the Central Station they encountered a young policeman, who, when he saw Ward, evidently recognized him as a man of affairs, for he came forward with flattering alacrity, touching his helmet in the respect which authority always has ready for the rich, as perhaps the real source of its privilege and its strength. The young policeman, with a smile on his pleasant Irish face, took Ward and Elizabeth in charge.

"I'll take yez to the front office," he said, "and let yez speak to the inspector himself."

When McFee understood who Ward was, he came out instantly, with an unofficial readiness to make a difficult experience easy for them; he implied an instant and delicate recognition of the patronage he saw, or thought it proper to see, in this visit, and he even expressed a sympathy for Gusta herself.

"I'm glad you came, Mr. Ward," he said. "We had to hold the poor girl, of course, for a few days, until we could finish our investigation of the case. Will you go up--or shall I have her brought down?"

"Oh, we'll go up," said Ward, wondering where that was, and discovering suddenly in himself the usual morbid desire to look at the inmates of a prison. The sergeant detailed to conduct them led them up two broad flights of stairs, and down a long hall, where, at his step, a matron appeared, with a bunch of keys hanging at her white apron. Elizabeth went with none of the sensations she had expected. She had been surprised to find the police station a quiet place, and the policemen themselves had been very polite, obliging and disinterested. But when the matron unlocked one of the doors, and stood aside, Elizabeth felt her breast flutter with fear.

The sergeant stood in the hall, silent and unconcerned, and when the matron asked him if he would be present at the interview he shook his head in a way that indicated the occasion as one of those when rules and regulations may be suspended. Ward, though he would have liked to go in, elected to remain outside with the sergeant, and as he did this he smiled reassuringly at Elizabeth, just then hesitating on the threshold.

"Oh, just step right in," said the matron, standing politely aside. And Elizabeth drew a deep breath and took the step.

She entered a small vestibule formed of high partitions of flanged boards that were painted drab; and she waited another moment, with its gathering anxiety and apprehension, for the matron to unlock a second door. The door opened with a whine and there, at the other end of the room in the morning light that struggled through the dirty glass of the grated window, she saw Gusta. The girl sat on a common wooden chair that had once been yellow, her hat on, her hands gloved and folded in her lap, as if in another instant she were to leave the room she somehow had an air of refusing to identify herself with.

"She's sat that way ever since she came," the matron whispered. "She hasn't slep' a wink, nor e't a mouthful."

Elizabeth's glance swept the room which was Gusta's prison, its walls lined higher than her head with sheet-iron; on one side a narrow cot, frowsy, filthy, that looked as if it were never made, though the dirty pillow told how many persons had slept in it--or tried to sleep in it. There was a wooden table, with a battered tin cup, a few crusts and crumbs of rye bread, and cockroaches that raced energetically about, pausing now and then to wave their inquisitive antennae, and, besides, a cheap, small edition of the Bible, adding with a kind of brutal mockery the final touch of squalor to the room.

Gusta moved, looked up, made sure, and then suddenly rose and came toward her.

"I knew you'd come, Miss Elizabeth," the girl said, with a relief that compromised the certainty she had just expressed.

"I came as soon as I could, Gusta," said Elizabeth, with an amused conjecture as to what Gusta might think had the girl known what difficulties she had had in getting there at all.

"Yes," said Gusta, "thank you, I--"

She blushed to her throat. They stood there in the middle of that common prison; a sudden constraint lay on them. Elizabeth, conscious of the difficulty of the whole situation, and with a little palpitating fear at being in a prison at all--a haunting apprehension of some mistake, some oversight, some sudden slip or sliding of a bolt--did not know what to say to Gusta now that she was there. She felt helpless, there was not even a chair to sit in; she shuddered at the thought of contact with any of the mean articles of furniture, and stood rigidly in the middle of the room. She looked at Gusta closely; already, of course, with her feminine instinct, she had taken in Gusta's dress--the clothes that she instantly recognized as being better than Gusta had ever before worn--a hat heavy with plumes, a tan coat, long and of that extreme mode which foretold its early passing from the fashion, the high-heeled boots. Her coat was open and revealed a thin bodice with a lace yoke, and a chain of some sort. An odor of perfume enveloped her. The whole costume was distasteful to Elizabeth, it was something too much, and had an indefinable quality of tawdriness that was hard to confirm, until she saw in it, somehow, the first signs of moral disintegration. And this showed in Gusta's face, fuller--as was her whole figure--than Elizabeth remembered it, and in a certain coarseness of expression that had scarcely as yet gone the length of fixing itself in lines. Elizabeth felt something that she recoiled from, and her attitude stiffened imperceptibly. But not imperceptibly to Gusta, who was a woman, too, and had an instant sense of the woman in Elizabeth shrinking from what the woman in her no longer had to protect itself with, and she felt the woman's rush of anger and rebellion in such a relation. But then, she softened, and looked up with big tears. She had a sudden yearning to fling herself on Elizabeth's breast, but leave was wanting, and then, almost desperately, for she must assert her sisterhood, must touch and cling to her, she seized Elizabeth's hand and held it.

"Oh, Miss Elizabeth," she said, "I oughtn't to 'av' sent for you. I know I had no right; but you was always good to me, and I had no one. I've done nothing. I've done nothing, honest, honest, Miss Elizabeth, I've done nothing. I don't know what I'm here for at all; they won't tell me. And Archie, too, it must have something to do with him, but he's innocent, too. He hasn't done nothing either. Won't you believe me? Oh, say you will!"

She still clung to Elizabeth's hand, and now she pressed it in both her own, and raised it, and came closer, and looked into Elizabeth's face.

"Say you believe me!" she insisted, and Elizabeth, half in fear, as though to pacify a maniac, nodded.

"Of course, of course, Gusta."

"You mean it?"

"Surely I do."

"And you know I'm just as good as I ever was, don't you?"

"Why--of course, I do, Gusta." It is so hard to lie; the truth, in its divine persistence, springs so incautiously to the eyes before it can be checked at the lips.

The tears dried suddenly in Gusta's blue eyes. She spoke fiercely.

"You don't mean it! No, you don't mean it! I see you don't--you needn't say you do! Oh, you needn't say you do!"

She squeezed Elizabeth's hand almost maliciously and Elizabeth winced with pain.

"You--you don't know!" Gusta went on. And then she hesitated, seemed to deliberate on the verge of a certain desperation, to pause for an instant before a temptation to which she longed to yield.

"I could tell you something," she said significantly.

A wonder gathered in Elizabeth's eyes. Her heart was beating rapidly, she could feel it throbbing.

"Do you know why I sent for you--what I had to tell you?"

She was looking directly in Elizabeth's eyes; the faces of both girls became pale. And Elizabeth groped in her startled mind for some clear recognition, some postulation of a fact, a horrible, blasting certitude that was beginning to formulate itself, a certitude that would have swept away in an instant all those formal barriers that had stood in the way of her coming to this haggard prison. She shuddered, and closed her mind, as she closed her eyes just then, to shut out the look in the eyes of this imprisoned girl.

But the moment was too tense to last. Some mercy was in the breast of the girl to whom life had shown so little mercy. Voluntarily, she released Elizabeth, and put up her hands to her face, and shook with sobs.

"Don't, don't, Gusta," Elizabeth pleaded, "don't cry, dear."

The endearment made Gusta cry the harder. And then Elizabeth, who had shrunk from her and from everything in the room, put her arms about her, and supported her, and patted her shoulder and repeated:

"There, dear, there, you mustn't cry."

And then presently:

"Tell me what I can do to help you. I want to help you."

Gusta sobbed a moment longer.

"Nothing, there is nothing," she said. "I just wanted you. I wanted some one--"

"Yes, I understand," said Elizabeth. She did understand many things now that made life clearer, if sadder.

"I wanted you to tell my poor old mother," said Gusta. "That's all--that's what I had to tell you."

She said it so unconvincingly, and looked up suddenly with a wan smile that begged forgiveness, and then Elizabeth did what a while before would have been impossible--she kissed the girl's cheek. And Gusta cuddled close to her in a peace that almost purred, and was contented.

Gusta was held for a week; then released.

XII

Archie was looking well that Monday morning in January on which his trial was to begin. He had slept soundly in his canvas hammock; not even the whimpering of Reinhart, the young sneak thief whom every one in the jail detested, nor the strange noises and startled outcries he made in his sleep--when he did sleep--had disturbed him. The night before, Utter had allowed Archie a bath, though he had broken a rule in doing so, and that morning Archie had borrowed a whisk from Utter, brushed his old clothes industriously, and then he had put on the underwear his mother had washed and patched and mended, and the shirt of blue and white stripes Marriott had provided. Then with scrupulous care he set his cell in order, arranged his few things on the little table--the deck of cards, the yellow-covered dog's-eared novel and a broken comb. Beside these, lay his fresh collar and his beloved blue cravat with the white polka dots; his coat and waistcoat hung over the back of his chair. At seven o'clock Willie Kirkpatrick, alias "Toughie," a boy who, after two terms in the Reform School, was now going to the Intermediate Prison, had brought in the bread and coffee. At eight o'clock Archie was turned into the corridor, and with him Blanco, the bigamist, whose two young wives were being held as witnesses in the women's quarter. Blanco was a barber, and he made himself useful by shaving the other prisoners. This morning, with scissors, razor, lather-brush and cup, he took especial pains with Archie. Now and then he paused, cocked his little head with its plume of black hair, and surveyed his handiwork with honest pride.

"I'll fix you up swell, Dutch, so's they'll have to acquit you."

From the cells came laughter. The prisoners began to josh Blanco--it was one of their few pastimes.

"Don't stand for one of them gilly hair-cuts, Dutch," cried Billy Whee, a porch-climber. "It'll be a fritzer, sure."

"Yes, he'll make your knob look like a mop."

"When I was doing my bit at the Pork Dump," began O'Grady, in the tone that portends a story; the cell doors began to rattle.

"Cheese it," cried the voices. They had grown tired of O'Grady's boasting.

After Archie had returned to his cell, an English thief whom they called the Duke, began to sing in a clear tenor voice, to the tune of _Dixie_:

"I wish there were no prisons,
I do, I does--'cause why?--
This old treadmill makes me feel ill,
I only pinch my belly for to fill,
Wi' me 'ands,
Wi' me dukes,
Wi' me clawrs,
Me mud hooks."

Archie scowled; he wished, for once, the Duke would keep still. He was trying to think, trying to assure himself that his trial would turn out well. Day after day, Marriott had come, and for hours he and Archie had sat in the long gray corridor, in the dry atmosphere of the overheated jail, conferring in whispers, because Archie knew Danner was listening at the peep-hole in the wall. Marriott was perplexed; how could he get Archie's true story before the jury? He had even consulted Elizabeth, told her the story.

"Oh, horrible!" she exclaimed. "But surely, you can tell the jury--surely they will sympathize."

He had shaken his head.

"Why not?"

"Because," said Marriott, "the rules of evidence are designed to keep out the truth."

"But can't Archie tell it?"

"I don't dare to let him take the stand."

"Why?"

"Because he'll be convicted if he does."

"And if he doesn't?"

"The same result--he'll be convicted. He's convicted now--the mob has already done that; the trial is only a conventional formality."

"What mob?"

"The newspapers, the preachers, the great moral, respectable mob that holds a man guilty until he proves himself innocent, and, if he asserts his innocence, looks even on that as a proof of his guilt."

Eades had announced that Archie would be tried for the murder of Kouka, and Elizabeth had been impressed.

"Wasn't that rather fine in him?" she asked.

"Yes," said Marriott, "and very clever."

"Clever?"

"He means to try him for the murder of Kouka, and convict him of the murder of Margaret Flanagan."

This morning then, Archie awaited the hour of his trial. The night before he had played solitaire, trying to read his fate in the fall of the fickle cards. The first game he had lost; then he decided that he was entitled to two out of three chances. He played again, and lost. Then he decided to play another--best three out of five--he might win the other two. He played and won the third game. He lost the fourth. And now he stood and waited. At half-past eight he drew on his waistcoat and his coat, giving them a final brushing. The Duke was singing again:

"An' I wish there were no bobbies,
I do, I does--'cause why?--
This oakum pickin' gives me such a lickin',
But still I likes to do a bit o' nickin',
Wi' me 'ands,
Wi' me dukes,
Wi' me clawrs,
Me mud hooks."

The last words of the song were punctuated by the clanging of the bolts.

"Koerner!" called out Danner's voice.

He was throwing the locks of Archie's cell from the big steel box by the door. Archie sprang to his feet, gave his cravat a final touch, and adjusted his coat. The steel door went gliding back in its hard grooves. He stepped out, thence through the other door, and there Danner waited. Archie held out his right hand, Danner slipped on the handcuff and its spring clicked. As they went out, cries came from the cells.

"So long, Archie! Good luck to ye!"

"Good luck!" came the chorus.

Archie, standing in the strange light outside the prison, seemed to take on a changed aspect. He had grown fat during his two months' idleness in jail; his skin was white and soft. Now in the gray light of the January morning, his face had lost the ruddy glow Blanco's shaving had imparted to it, and was pale. The snow lay on the ground, the air was cold and raw. Archie gasped in the surprise his lungs felt in this atmosphere, startling in its cold and freshness after the hot air of the steam-heated jail. He filled his lungs with the air and blew it out again in frost. A shudder ran through him. Danner was jovial for once.

"Fine day," he said.

Archie did not reply. He hated Danner more than he hated most people, and he hated every one, almost--save Marriott and Gusta, and his father and mother and the kids, and Elizabeth, who, as Marriott had reported to him, wished him well. The air and the light gave him pain--he shrank from them; he had not been outdoors since that day, a month before, when he had been taken over with Curly to be arraigned. He looked on the world again, the world that was so strange and new. Once more there swept over him that queer sensation that always came as he stepped out of prison, the sensation of fear, of uncertainty, a doubt of reality, the blur before his eyes. The streets were deserted, the houses still. The snow crunched frigidly under his heels. The handcuff chain clicked in the frost. A wagon turned the corner; the driver walked beside his steaming horses and flapped his arms about his shoulders; the wheels whined on the snow. Archie looked at the man; it was strange, he felt, that a man should be free to walk the streets and flap his arms that way.

XIII

The court-room was already crowded and buzzed with a pleasant yet excited hum of voices. Mrs. Koerner, the first to appear that morning, had been given a seat directly in front of the bailiff's elevated desk, where she was to sit, a conspicuous figure of sorrow through all the trial. The twenty-four aged men of the special venire were seated inside the bar; the reporters were at their table; two policemen, wearing their heavy overcoats as if they were no discomfort at all, were gossiping together; Giles, the court stenographer, grown old in automatic service, wandered about in a thin coat with ragged sleeves, its shoulders powdered by dandruff. The life that for so many years had been unfolded to him in a series of dramatic tableaux could have interested him but little; he seemed, indeed, to have reduced it to mere symbols--dashes, pothooks, points and outlines. At one of the trial tables sat Marriott. He was nervous, not having slept well the night before. At the table with him was Pennell, the young lawyer with the gift of the gab, who had been so unfortunate as to win the oratorical prize in college. Pennell, at the last moment, somehow--Marriott never knew exactly how--had insinuated himself into the case. He explained his appearance by saying, in his grand, mysterious way, that he had been engaged by "certain influential friends" of Archie's, who preferred to remain unknown. Archie, who did not know that he had any influential friends, could not explain Pennell's presence, but, feeling that the more lawyers he had the better, he was secretly glad, and Marriott, who bowed before the whole situation in a kind of helpless fatalism, made no objection.

But suddenly a change occurred. The atmosphere became electric. Men started up, their eyes glistened, they leaned forward, a low murmur arose; the old bailiff started violently, smote his marble slab with his gavel, and Mark Bentley, very red in the face, was seen striding toward the door, waving his authoritative hand and calling:

"Back there! Get back, I tell you!"

Archie had just been brought in. Danner led him to the trial table, and he took his seat, hid his manacled hands, and sat motionless, gazing straight before him, unconsciously obeying some long-hidden, obscure instinct of the hunted. But Marriott's hand had found his.

"How did you sleep last night?"

"Pretty well," said Archie as politely as possible, the occasion seeming to require those conventionalities of which he was so very uncertain.

"Well, we'll soon be at it now," said Marriott, thinking, however, of his own wretched night.

Archie watched Marriott tumble the papers out of his green bag and arrange his briefs and memoranda; he did not take his eyes from the green bag. Whenever he did, they met other eyes that looked at him with an expression that combined all the lower, brutish impulses--curiosity, fear and hate.

At half-past nine Glassford, having finished his cigar, entered the court-room. Directly behind him came Eades. The bailiff, who if he had been drowsing again, had been drowsing as always, with one eye on Glassford, now got to his feet, and, as Glassford ascended the bench, struck the marble slab with the gavel and in the instant stillness, repeated his worn formula.

"The case of the State _versus_ Archie Koerner," said Glassford, reading from his docket. He glanced over his gold glasses at Marriott.

"Are you ready for trial, Mr. Marriott?"

"We are ready, your Honor."

Danner unlocked the handcuffs from Archie's wrists. The reporters began writing feverishly; already messenger boys were coming and going. Gard, the clerk, was calling the roll of the venire-men, and when he had done, it was time for the lawyers to begin examining them; but before this could be done, it was necessary that a formula be repeated to them, and Gard told them to stand up. As soon as they could comprehend his meaning, they got to their feet with their various difficulties, and Gard proceeded:

"'You and each of you do solemnly swear'--hold up your right hands--'that the answers you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, s'elp you God.'"

And then, in a lower voice, as if the real business were now to begin, he called:

"William C. McGiffert."

An aged man came forward leaning on a crooked cane, and took the witness-stand. Eades began his examination by telling McGiffert about the death of Kouka, and, when he had finished, asked him if he had ever heard of it, or read of it, or formed or expressed an opinion about it, if he were related to Koerner, or to Marriott, or to Pennell, or had ever employed them, or either of them, as attorney. Then he asked McGiffert if Lamborn or himself had acted as his attorney; finally, with an air of the utmost fairness, as if he would not for worlds have any but an entirely unprejudiced jury, he appealed to McGiffert to tell whether he knew of any reason why he could not give Koerner a fair and impartial trial and render a verdict according to the law and the evidence. McGiffert had shaken his head hastily at each one of Eades's questions. Eades paused impressively, then asked a question that sent a thrill through the onlookers.

"Mr. McGiffert, have you any conscientious scruples against capital punishment?"

The suggestive possibility affected men strangely; they leaned forward, hanging on the reply. McGiffert shook his aged head again as if it were a gratuitous reflection on his character to hint at his being in any way unfit for this office.

Eades, having had McGiffert on many juries and knowing that he invariably voted for conviction, with a graceful gesture of his white hand, waved him, as it were, to Marriott.

Marriott, after an examination he knew was hopeless from the start, found no cause for challenge; and after Glassford, as if some deeper possibilities had occurred to his superior mind, had asked McGiffert about his age and his health, McGiffert, with the relief of a man who has passed successfully through an ordeal, climbed hastily into the jury-box and retreated to its farthest corner, as if it were a safe place from which he could not be dislodged.

One by one the venire-men were examined; several were excused. One old man, although he protested, was manifestly deaf, another had employed Eades, another rose and, hanging over the desk, whispered to Glassford, who immediately excused him because of physical disability; finally, by noon, the panel was full.

Marriott scanned the twelve bearded men. Viewed as a whole, they seemed well to typify the great institution of the English law, centuries old; their beards clung to them like the gray moss of a live-oak, hoary with age. But these patriarchal beards could lend little dignity. The old men sat there suggesting the diseases of age--rheumatism, lumbago, palsy--death and decay. Their faces were mere masks of clay; they were lacking in imagination, in humor, in sympathy, in pity, in mercy, all the high human qualities having long ago died within them, leaving their bodies untenanted. He knew they were ready at that moment to convict Archie. He had sixteen peremptory challenges, and as he reflected that these would soon be exhausted and that the men who were thus excused would be replaced by others just like them, a despair seized him. But it was imperative to get rid of these; they were, for the most part, professional jurors who would invariably vote for the state. He must begin to use those precious peremptory challenges and compel the court to issue special venires; in the haste and confusion men might be found who would be less professional and more intelligent. In this case, involving, as it did, the Flanagan case, he needed strong, independent men, whereas Eades required instead weak, subservient and stupid men--men with crystallized minds, dull, orthodox, inaccessible to ideas. Furthermore, Marriott recalled that juries are not made up of twelve men, as the law boasts, but of two or three men, or more often, of one man stronger than the rest, who dominates his fellows, lays his masterful will upon them, and bends them to his wishes and his prejudices. Perhaps, in some special venire, quite by accident, when the sheriff's deputies began to scour the town, there might be found one such man, who, for some obscure reason, would incline to Archie's side. On such a caprice of fate hung Archie's life.

"Mr. Marriott, the court is waiting," said Glassford.

"If your Honor will indulge us a moment." Then Marriott whispered to Archie.

"Je's," said Archie. "Looks cheesy to me. Looks to me like a lot o' rummy blokes. They've got it all framed up now. Them old hoosiers would cop the cush all right." Archie whispered with the sneering cynicism of one who holds the belief of the all-powerful influence of money. "That old harp back there in the corner with the green benny on, he looks like a bull to me. Go after him and knock him off."

Archie had indicated quite openly an aged Irishman who sat huddled in a faded overcoat in the rear row. He had white chin-whiskers and a long, broad, clean-shaven upper lip.

"Mr. McGee," said Marriott, rising, "what business are you in?"

"Oi'm retired, sor."

"Were you ever on the police force?"

"Well, sor," said McGee uneasily, "Oi wor wance, sor--yes, sor."

He looked up now with a nonchalant air.

"How long were you on the force?"

"Twinty-wan years, sor."

Marriott questioned him at length, finally challenged him for cause; Eades objected, they argued, and Glassford overruled the challenge. Then, having certainly offended McGee, there was nothing for Marriott to do but to submit a peremptory challenge.

By night the venire was exhausted and Glassford ordered a special venire. With the serving of the special venires, a difference was noted; whereas the men on the first venire had studied how they should qualify themselves for jury service, the men whom Bentley and his deputies now haled into court, studied how they should disqualify themselves. They were all impatient of the senseless tedium, of the costly interruption, being men with real work to do. They replied like experts; all had read of the case, all had formed and expressed opinions, and their opinions could not be shaken by any evidence that might be adduced. Glassford plied them with metaphysical questions; drew psychological distinctions; but in vain. Many of them had scruples against capital punishment; a score of them, fifty of them swore to this, to the delight but disappointment of Marriott, the discomfiture of Eades, the perplexity of Glassford, and the dull amazement of the men in the jury-box, who had no conscientious scruples against anything. Still others had certificates of various kinds exempting them from jury service, which they exhibited with calm smiles and were excused.

Marriott eked out his precious peremptory challenges for three days; venire after venire was issued, and Bentley was happy, for all this meant fees. The crowd diminished. The lawyers grew weary and no longer exerted themselves to say clever things. The sky, which had sparkled a cold, frosty blue for days, was overcast with gray clouds, the atmosphere was saturated with a chill and penetrating moisture. This atmosphere affected men strangely. Eades and Marriott had a dispute, Danner ordered Archie to sit erect, Glassford sharply rebuked two citizens who did not believe in capital punishment for their lack of a sense of civic duty; then he whirled about in his chair and exclaimed angrily:

"We'll not adjourn to-night until we have a jury!"

Marriott had one peremptory challenge left, and eleven men had been accepted. It was now a matter of luck.

"George Holden," called the clerk.

A broad-shouldered man of medium height came promptly forward, took the oath, leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, folded his strong hands in his lap, and raised a pair of deep blue eyes to Eades. As he sat there, something in the poise of his fine head, with its thick curly hair, claimed attention; interest revived; every one looked at him. He had a smooth-shaven face and a wide white brow, and the collar of his dark flannel shirt was open, freeing his strong neck and ample throat. Marriott suddenly conceived a liking for the man.

"What is your occupation, Mr. Holden?" asked Eades.

"Machinist."

He had read the newspaper accounts of the murder of Kouka and of the Flanagan tragedy, but he had not formed any real opinions; he may have formed impressions, but he could lay them aside; he didn't go much anyway, he said, on what he read in the newspapers.

The formal questions were put and answered to Eades's satisfaction; then came the real question:

"Are you opposed to capital punishment?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

"Are your scruples conscientious ones?"

"Yes, sir."

"And not to be overcome?"

"They are not to be overcome."

Just then Glassford, impatient of all these scruples he was hearing so much about, whirled on Holden with a scowl. Holden turned; his blue eyes met those of Glassford.