The Turn of the Balance
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Title: The Turn of the Balance
Creator: Brand Whitlock
Illustrator: Jay Hambidge
Release date: February 19, 2013 [eBook #40398]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40398
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TURN OF THE BALANCE ***
Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover]
[Illustration: Gordon Marriott Page 38]
THE TURN OF THE BALANCE
By
BRAND WHITLOCK
Author of The Happy Average
Her Infinite Variety
The 13th District
With Illustrations by
JAY HAMBIDGE
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1907
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
MARCH
TO THE MEMORY OF
SAMUEL M. JONES
Died July 12, 1904
On the other hand, a boy was bound to defend them against anything that
he thought slighting or insulting; and you did not have to verify the
fact that anything had been said or done; you merely had to hear that it
had. It once fell to my boy to avenge such a reported wrong from a boy
who had not many friends in school, a timid creature whom the mere
accusation frightened half out of his wits, and who wildly protested his
innocence. He ran, and my boy followed with the other boys after him,
till they overtook the culprit and brought him to bay against a high
board fence; and there my boy struck him in his imploring face. He
tried to feel like a righteous champion, but he felt like a brutal
ruffian. He long had the sight of that terrified, weeping face, and
with shame and sickness of heart he cowered before it. It was pretty
nearly the last of his fighting; and though he came off victor, he felt
that he would rather be beaten himself than do another such act of
justice. In fact, it seems best to be very careful how we try to do
justice in this world, and mostly to leave retribution of all kinds to
God, who really knows about things; and content ourselves as much as
possible with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irreparable.
_From_ "A BOY'S TOWN"
_By_ WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
THE TURN OF THE BALANCE
BOOK I
THE TURN OF THE BALANCE
I
As Elizabeth Ward stood that morning before the wide hearth in the
dining-room, she was glad that she still could find, in this first snow
of the season, the simple wonder and delight of that childhood she had
left not so very far behind. Her last glimpse of the world the night
before had been of trees lashed by a cold rain, of arc-lamps with globes
of fog, of wet asphalt pavements reflecting the lights of Claybourne
Avenue. But now, everywhere, there was snow, heaped in exquisite drifts
about the trees, and clinging in soft masses to the rough bark of their
trunks. The iron fence about the great yard was half buried in it, the
houses along the avenue seemed far away and strange in the white
transfiguration, and the roofs lost their familiar outlines against the
low gray sky that hung over them.
"Hurry, Gusta!" said Elizabeth. "This is splendid! I must go right
out!"
The maid who was laying the breakfast smiled; "It was a regular
blizzard, Miss Elizabeth."
"Was it?" Elizabeth lifted her skirt a little, and rested the toe of
her slipper on the low brass fender. The wood was crackling cheerfully.
"Has mama gone out?"
"Oh, yes, Miss Elizabeth, an hour ago."
"Of course," Elizabeth said, glancing at the little clock on the
mantelpiece, ticking in its refined way. Its hands pointed to half-past
ten. "I quite forgot the dinner." Her brow clouded. "What a bore!"
she thought. Then she said aloud: "Didn't mama leave any word?"
"She said not to disturb you, Miss Elizabeth."
Gusta had served the breakfast, and now, surveying her work with an
expression of pleasure, poured the coffee.
Beside Elizabeth's plate lay the mail and a morning newspaper. The
newspaper had evidently been read at some earlier breakfast, and because
it was rumpled Elizabeth pushed it aside. She read her letters while
she ate her breakfast, and then, when she laid her napkin aside, she
looked out of the windows again.
"I must go out for a long walk," she said, speaking as much to herself
as to the maid, though not in the same eager tone she had found for her
resolution a while before. "It must have snowed very hard. It wasn't
snowing when I came home."
"It began at midnight, Miss Elizabeth," said Gusta, "and it snowed so
hard I had an awful time getting here this morning. I could hardly find
my way, it fell so thick and fast."
Elizabeth did not reply, and Gusta went on: "I stayed home last
night--my brother just got back yesterday; I stayed to see him."
"Your brother?"
"Yes; Archie. He's been in the army. He got home yesterday from the
Phil'pines."
"How interesting!" said Elizabeth indifferently.
"Yes, he's been there three years; his time was out and he came home.
Oh, you should see him, Miss Elizabeth. He looks so fine!"
"Does he look as fine as you, Gusta?"
Elizabeth smiled affectionately, and Gusta's fair German skin flushed to
her yellow hair.
"Now, Miss Elizabeth," she said in an embarrassment that could not hide
her pleasure, "Archie's really handsome--he put on his soldier clothes
and let us see him. He's a fine soldier, Miss Elizabeth. He was the
best shooter in his regiment; he has a medal. He said it was a
sharp-shooter's medal."
"Oh, indeed!" said Elizabeth, her already slight interest flagging.
"Then he must be a fine shot."
Though Elizabeth in a flash of imagination had the scene in Gusta's home
the night before--the brother displaying himself in his uniform, his old
German father and mother glowing with pride, the children gathered
around in awe and wonder--she was really thinking of the snow, and
speculating as to what new pleasure it would bring, and with this she
rose from the table and went into the drawing-room. There she stood in
the deep window a moment, and looked out. The Maceys' man, clearing the
walk over the way, had paused in his labor to lean with a discouraged
air on his wooden shovel. A man was trudging by, his coat collar turned
up, his shoulders hunched disconsolately, the snow clinging tenaciously
to his feet as he plowed his way along. At the sight, Elizabeth
shrugged her shoulders, gave a little sympathetic shiver, turned from
her contemplation of the avenue that stretched away white and still, and
went to the library. Here she got down a book and curled herself up on
a divan near the fireplace. Far away she heard the tinkle of some
solitary sleigh-bell.
When the maid came into the adjoining room a few moments later,
Elizabeth said: "Gusta, please hand me that box of candy."
Elizabeth arranged herself in still greater comfort, put a bit of the
chocolate in her mouth, and opened her book. "Gusta, you're a comfort,"
she said. "Catch me going out on a day like this!"
Mrs. Ward came home at noon, and when she learned that Elizabeth had
spent the morning in the library, she took on an air of such superiority
as was justified only in one who had not allowed even a blizzard to
interfere with the serious duties of life. She had learned several new
signals at the whist club and, as she told Elizabeth with a reproach for
her neglect of the game, she had mastered at last Elwood's new system.
But Elizabeth, when she had had her luncheon, returned to the library
and her book. She stayed there an hour, then suddenly startled her
mother by flinging the volume to the floor in disgust and running from
the room and up the stairs. She came down presently dressed for the
street.
"Don't be put long, dear; remember the dinner," Mrs. Ward called after
her.
As she turned in between the high banks of snow piled along either side
of the walk, Elizabeth felt the fine quality of the air that sparkled
with a cold vitality, as pure as the snow that seemed to exhale it. She
tossed her head as if to rid it of all the disordered fancies she had
gathered in the unreal world of the romance with which she had spent the
day. Then for the first time she realized how gigantic the storm had
been. Long processions of men armed with shovels, happy in the temporary
prosperity this chance for work had brought, had cleared the sidewalks.
On the avenue the snow had been beaten into a hard yellow track by the
horses and sleighs that coursed so gaily over it. The cross-town
trolley-cars glided along between the windrows of the snow the big plow
had whirled from the tracks. Little children, in bright caps and
leggings, were playing in the yards, testing new sleds, tumbling about
in the white drifts, flinging snowballs at one another, their laughter
and screams harmonizing with the bells. Claybourne Avenue was alive;
the solitary bell that Elizabeth had heard jingling in the still air
that morning had been joined by countless strings of other bells, until
now the air vibrated with their musical clamor. Great Russian sledges
with scarlet plumes shaking at their high-curved dashboards swept by,
and the cutters sped along in their impromptu races, the happy faces of
their occupants ruddy in their furs, the bells on the excited horses
chiming in the keen air. At the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, a park
policeman, sitting his magnificent bay horse, reviewed the swiftly
passing parade. The pedestrians along the sidewalk shouted the racers
on; as the cutters, side by side, rose and fell over the street-crossing
a party of school-boys assailed them with a shower of snowballs.
Elizabeth knew many of the people in the passing sleighs; she knew all
of those in the more imposing turnouts. She bowed to her acquaintances
with a smile that came from the exhilaration of the sharp winter air,
more than from any joy she had in the recognition. But from one of the
cutters Gordon Marriott waved his whip at her, and she returned his
salute with a little shake of her big muff. Her gray eyes sparkled and
her cheeks against her furs were pink. Every one was nervously exalted
by the snow-storm that afternoon, and Elizabeth, full of health and
youthful spirit, tingled with the joy the snow seemed to have brought to
the world.
II
His house was all illumined; the light streaming from its windows
glistened on the polished crust of the frozen snow, and as Stephen Ward
drove up that evening, he sighed, remembering the dinner. He sprang
out, slammed the door of his brougham and dashed indoors, the wheels of
his retreating carriage giving out again their frosty falsetto. The
breath of cold air Ward inhaled as he ran into the house was grateful to
him, and he would have liked more of it; it would have refreshed and
calmed him after his hard day on the Board.
As he entered the wide hall, Elizabeth was just descending the stairs.
She came fresh from her toilet, clothed in a dinner gown of white, her
round arms bare to the elbow, her young throat just revealed, her dark
hair done low on her neck, and the smile that lighted her gray eyes
pleased Ward.
As she went for her father's kiss Elizabeth noted the cool outdoor
atmosphere, and the odor of cigar smoke and Russia leather that always
hung about his person.
"You are refreshing!" she said. "The frost clings to you."
He smiled as she helped him with his overcoat, and then he backed up to
the great fire, and stood there shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his
hands in the warmth. His face was fresh and ruddy, his white hair was
rumpled, his stubbed mustache, which ordinarily gave an effect of saving
his youth in his middle years, seemed to bristle aggressively, and his
eyes still burned from the excitement of the day.
"What have you been doing all day?" Elizabeth asked, standing before
him, her hands on his shoulders. "Battling hard for life in the wheat
pit?" Her eyes sparkled with good humor.
Ward took Elizabeth's face between his palms as he said jubilantly:
"No, but I've been making old Macey battle for his life--and I've won."
His gray eyes flashed with the sense of victory, he drew himself erect,
tilted back on his heels. He did not often speak of his business
affairs at home, and when he did, no one understood him. During the
weeks indeed, in which the soft moist weather and constant rains had
prevented the rise in the wheat market on which he had so confidently
gambled, he had resolutely and unselfishly kept his fear and his
suspense to himself, and now even though at last he could indulge his
exultation, he drew a long, deep breath.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed. "The snow came just in the nick of time for
me!"
"Well, you march right up-stairs and get your clothes on," said
Elizabeth as she took her father by the arm, gathering up the train of
her white gown, heavy with its sequins and gracefully impeding her
progress, and led him to the stairs. She smiled up into his face as she
did so, and, as he turned the corner of the wide staircase, he bent and
kissed her again.
Though the guests whom Mrs. Ward had asked to her dinner that night all
came in closed carriages, bundled in warm and elegant furs, and though
they stepped from their own doors into their carriages and then alighted
from them at the door of the Wards', they all, when they arrived, talked
excitedly of the storm and adjured one another to confess that they had
never known such cold. The women, who came down from the dressing-room
in bare arms and bare shoulders, seemed to think less of the cold than
the men, who were, doubtless, not so inured to exposure; but they were
more excited over it and looked on the phenomenon in its romantic light,
and began to celebrate the poetic aspects of the winter scene. But the
men laughed at this.
"There isn't much poetry about it down town," said Dick Ward. "No poet
would have called that snow beautiful if he'd seen it piled so high as
to blockade the street-cars and interrupt business generally." He spoke
with the young pride he was finding in himself as a business man, though
it would have been hard to tell just what his business was.
"Oh, but Dick," said Miss Bonnell, her dark face lighting with a fine
smile, "the poet wouldn't have thought of business!"
"No, I suppose not," admitted Dick with the contempt a business man
should feel for a poet.
"He might have found a theme in the immense damage the storm has
done--telegraph wires all down, trains all late, the whole country in
the grip of the blizzard, and a cold wave sweeping down from Medicine
Hat."
The slender young man who spoke was Gordon Marriott, and he made his
observation in a way that was almost too serious to be conventional or
even desirable in a society where seriousness was not encouraged. He
looked dreamily into the fire, as if he had merely spoken a thought
aloud rather than addressed any one; but the company standing about the
fireplace, trying to make the talk last for the few moments before
dinner was announced, looked up suddenly, and seemed to be puzzled by
the expression on his smooth-shaven delicate face.
"Oh, a theme for an epic!" exclaimed Mrs. Modderwell, the wife of the
rector. Her pale face was glowing with unusual color, and her great
dark eyes were lighting with enthusiasm. As she spoke, she glanced at
her husband, and seemed to shrink in her black gown.
"But we have no poet to do it," said Elizabeth.
"Oh, I say," interrupted Modderwell, speaking in the upper key he
employed in addressing women, and then, quickly changing to the deep,
almost gruff tone which, with his affected English accent, he used when
he spoke to men, "our friend Marriott here could do it; he's dreamer
enough for it--eh, Marriott?" He gave his words the effect of a joke,
and Marriott smiled at them, while the rest laughed in their readiness
to laugh at anything.
"No," said Marriott, "I couldn't do it, though I wish I could. Walt
Whitman might have done it; he could have begun with the cattle on the
plains, freezing, with their tails to the wind, and catalogued
everything on the way till he came to the stock quotations and--"
"The people sleighing on Claybourne Avenue," said Elizabeth, remembering
her walk of the afternoon. "And he would have gone on tracing the more
subtle and sinister effects--perhaps suggesting something tragic."
"Well, now, really, when I was in Canada, you know--" began Modderwell.
Though he had been born in Canada and had lived most of his life there,
he always referred to the experience as if it had been a mere visit; he
wished every one to consider him an Englishman. And nearly every one
did, except Marriott, who looked at Modderwell in his most innocent
manner and began:
"Oh, you Canadians--"
But just then dinner was announced, and though Elizabeth smiled at
Marriott with sympathy, she was glad to have him interrupted in his
philosophizing, or poetizing, or whatever it was, to take her out to the
dining-room, where the great round table, with its mound of scarlet
roses and tiny glasses of sherry glowing ruddy in the soft light of the
shaded candelabra, awaited them. And there they passed through the long
courses, at first talking lightly, but excitedly, of the snow,
mentioning the pleasure and the new sensations it would afford them;
then of their acquaintances; of a new burlesque that had run for a year
in a New York theater; then of a new romance in which a great many
people were killed and imprisoned, though not in a disagreeable manner,
and, in short, talked of a great many unimportant things, but talked of
them as if they were, in reality, of the utmost importance.
The butler had taken off the salad; they were waiting for the dessert.
Suddenly from the direction of the kitchen came a piercing scream,
evidently a woman's scream; all the swinging doors between the
dining-room and the distant kitchen could not muffle it. Mrs.
Modderwell started nervously, then, at a look from her husband, composed
herself and hung her head with embarrassment. The others at the table
started, though not so visibly, and then tried to appear as if they had
not done so. Mrs. Ward looked up in alarm, first at Ward, who hastily
gulped some wine, and then at Elizabeth. Wonder and curiosity were in
all the faces about the board--wonder and curiosity that no
sophistication could conceal. They waited; the time grew long; Mrs.
Ward, who always suffered through her dinners, suffered more than ever
now. Her guests tried bravely to sit as if nothing were wrong, but at
last their little attempts at conversation failed, and they sat in
painful silence. The moments passed; Ward and his wife exchanged
glances; Elizabeth looked at her mother sympathetically. At last the
door swung and the butler entered; the guests could not help glancing at
him. But in his face there was a blank and tutored passivity that was
admirable, almost heroic.
When the women were in the drawing-room, Mrs. Ward excused herself for a
moment and went to the kitchen. She returned presently, and Elizabeth
voiced the question the others were too polite to ask.
"What on earth's the matter?"
"Matter!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward. "Gusta's going, that's all." She said
it with the feeling such a calamity merited.
"When?"
"Now."
"But the scream--what was it?"
"Well, word came about her father; he's been hurt, or killed, or
something, in the railroad yards."
"Oh, how dreadful!" the women politely chorused.
"Yes, I should think so," said Mrs. Ward. "To be left like this without
a moment's warning! And then that awful _contretemps_ at dinner!" Mrs.
Ward looked all the anguish and shame she felt.
"But Gusta couldn't help that," said Elizabeth.
"No," said Mrs. Ward, lapsing from her mood of exaggeration, "I know
that, of course. The poor girl is quite broken up. I hope it is
nothing really serious. And yet," she went on, her mind turning again to
her own domestic misfortunes, "people of her class seem to have the most
unerring faculty for calamity. They're always getting hurt, or sick, or
dying, or something. The servants in my house suffer more bereavement in
the course of a month than all the rest of my acquaintance in a
lifetime."
And then the ladies took up the servant-girl problem, and canvassed it
hopelessly until the men were heard entering the library.
III
While Mrs. Ward was discussing her maid with her guests, Gusta was
hurrying homeward alone, the prey of fears, omens and forebodings.
There was the shock of this sudden news from home, and her horror of
what awaited her there; besides she had a strange feeling about leaving
the Wards in this way. The night had grown bitterly cold. The frozen
snow crunched with a whining noise under her heels as she passed swiftly
along. In the light of the arc-lamps that swung at the street
crossings, the trees along the curb cast their long shadows before her,
falling obliquely across the sidewalk and stretching off into the yard;
as she passed on, they wheeled, lost themselves in gloom, then appeared
again, stretching the other way. The shadows confused and frightened
her. She thought of Elizabeth and all her kindness; when would she see
Elizabeth again? With this horrible thing at home all had changed; her
mother would need her now. She thought of the hard work, with the
children crying about, and the ugly kitchen, with none of the things
there were at the Wards' to make the work easy. She would have to lug
the water in from the cistern; the pump would be frozen, and the water
would splash on her hands and make them red and raw and sore; they could
never be white and soft like Elizabeth's. She would have to shovel the
snow, and make paths, and split kindlings, and carry wood and coal, and
make fires. And then the house would never be warm like the Wards'; they
would eat in the kitchen and sit there all day long. The storm, which
had made no change at all at the Wards', would make it all so much
harder at home. Her father would be sick a long time; and, of course,
he would lose his job; the house would be gloomy and sad; it would be
worse than the winter he had been on strike.
The keen wind that was blowing from the northwest stung Gusta's face;
she felt the tears in her eyes, and when they ran on to her cheeks they
froze at once and made her miserable. She shuddered with the cold, her
fingers were numb, her feet seemed to be bare on the snow, her ears were
burning. The wind blew against her forehead and seemed as if it would
cut the top of her head off as with a cold blade. She tried to pull her
little jacket about her; the jacket was one Elizabeth had given her, and
she had always been proud of it and thought that it made her look like
Elizabeth, but it could not keep her warm now. She ran a few steps,
partly to get warm, partly to make swifter progress homeward, partly for
no reason at all. She thought of her comfortable room at the Wards' and
the little colored pictures Elizabeth had given her to hang about the
walls. An hour before she had expected to go to that room and rest
there,--and now she was going home to sickness and sorrow and ugly work.
She gave a little sob and tried to brush away her tears, but they were
frozen to her eye-lashes, and it gave her a sharp pain above her eyes
when she put her hand up to her face.
Gusta had now reached the poorer quarter of the town, which was not far
from Claybourne Avenue, though hidden from it. The houses were huddled
closely together, and their little window-panes were frosty against the
light that shone through the holes in their shades. There were many
saloons, as many as three on a corner; the ice was frozen about their
entrances, but she could see the light behind the screens. They seemed
to be warm--the only places in that neighborhood that were warm. She
passed one of them just as the latch clicked and the door opened, and
three young men came out, laughing loud, rough, brutal laughs. Gusta
shrank to the edge of the sidewalk; when she got into the black shadow
of the low frame building, she ran, and as she ran she could hear the
young men laughing loudly behind her. She plunged on into the shadows
that lay so thick and black ahead.
But as she drew near her home, all of Gusta's other thoughts were
swallowed up in the thought of her father. She forgot how cold she was;
her fingers were numb, but they no longer ached; a kind of physical
insensibility stole through her, but she was more than ever alive
mentally to the anguish that was on her. She thought of her father, and
she remembered a thousand little things about him,--all his ways, all
his sayings, little incidents of her childhood; and the tears blinded
her, because now he probably would never speak to her again, never open
his eyes to look on her again. She pictured him lying on his bed,
broken and maimed, probably covered with blood, gasping his few last
breaths. She broke into a little run, the clumsy trot of a woman, her
skirts beating heavily and with dull noises against her legs, her shoes
crunching, crunching, on the frozen snow. At last she turned another
corner, and entered a street that was even narrower and darker than the
others. Its surface, though hidden by the snow, was billowy where the
ash piles lay; there was no light, but the snow seemed to give a gray
effect to the darkness. This was Bolt Street, in which Gusta's family,
the Koerners, lived.
The thin crackled shade was down at the front window, but the light
shone behind it. Gusta pushed open the front door and rushed in. She
took in the front room at a glance, seeking the evidence of change; but
all was unchanged, familiar--the strips of rag carpet on the floor, the
cheap oak furniture upholstered in green and red plush, the rough,
coarse-grained surface of the wood varnished highly; the photograph of
herself in the white dress and veil she had worn to her first communion,
the picture of Archie sent from the Presidio, the colored prints of
Bismarck and the battle of Sedan--all were there. The room was just as
it had always been, clean, orderly, unused--save that some trinkets
Archie had brought from Manila were on the center-table beside the lamp,
which, with its round globe painted with brown flowers, gave the room
its light.
Gusta had taken all this in with a little shock of surprise, and in the
same instant the children, Katie and little Jakie, sprang forth to meet
her. They stood now, clutching at her skirts; they held up their little
red, chapped faces, all dirty and streaked with tears; their lips
quivered, and they began to whimper. But Gusta, with her wild eyes
staring above their little flaxen heads, pressed on in, and the
children, hanging on to her and impeding her progress, began to cry
peevishly.
Gusta saw her mother sitting in the kitchen. Two women of the
neighborhood sat near her, dull, silent, stupid, their chins on their
huge breasts, as if in melancholia. Though the room was stiflingly warm
with the heat from the kitchen stove, the women kept their shawls over
their heads, like peasants. Mrs. Koerner sat in a rocking-chair in the
middle of her clean white kitchen floor. As she lifted her dry eyes and
saw Gusta, her brows contracted under her thin, carefully-parted hair,
and she lifted her brawny arms, bare to the elbows, and rocked backward,
her feet swinging heavily off the floor.
"Where's father?" Gusta demanded, starting toward her mother.
Mrs. Koerner's lips opened and she drew a long breath, then exhaled it
in a heavy sigh.
"Where is he?" Gusta demanded again. She spoke so fiercely that the
children suddenly became silent, their pale blue eyes wide. One of the
neighbors looked up, unwrapped her bare arms from her gingham apron and
began to poke the kitchen fire. Mrs. Koerner suddenly bent forward, her
elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and began to cry, and to
mumble in German. At this, the two neighbor women began to speak to
each other in German. It always irritated Gusta to have her mother
speak in German. She had learned the language in her infancy, but she
grew ashamed of it when she was sent to the public schools, and never
spoke it when she could help it. And now in her resentment of the whole
tragic situation, she flew into a rage. Her mother threw her apron over
her face, and rocked back and forth.
"Aw, quit, ma!" cried Gusta; "quit, now, can't you?"
Mrs. Koerner took her apron from her face and looked at Gusta. Her
expression was one of mute appealing pain. Gusta, softened, put her
hand on her mother's head.
"Tell me, ma," she said softly, "where is he?"
Mrs. Koerner rocked again, back and forth, flinging up her arms and
shaking her head from side to side. A fear seized Gusta.
"Where is he?" she demanded.
"He goes on der hospital," said one of the women. "He's bad hurt."
The word "hospital" seemed to have a profound and sinister meaning for
Mrs. Koerner, and she began to wail aloud. Gusta feared to ask more.
The children were still clinging to her. They hung to her skirts, tried
to grasp her legs, almost toppling her over.
"Want our supper!" Jakie cried; "want our supper!"
"Gusta," said Katie, "did the pretty lady send me something good?"
Gusta still stood there; her cheeks were glowing red from their exposure
to the wind that howled outside and rattled the loose sash in the
window. But about her bluish lips the skin was white, her blue eyes
were tired and frightened. She dropped a hand to each of the children,
her knees trembled, and she gave little lurches from side to side as she
stood there, with the children tugging at her, in their fear and hunger.
"Where's Archie?" she asked.
"He's gone for his beer," said one of the neighbors, the one who had not
spoken. As she spoke she revealed her loose teeth, standing wide apart
in her gums. "Maybe he goes on der hospital yet."
Every time they spoke the word "hospital," Mrs. Koerner flung up her
arms, and Gusta herself winced. But she saw that neither her mother nor
these women who had come in to sit with her could tell her anything; to
learn the details she would have to wait until Archie came. She had
been drawing off her gloves as she stood there, and now she laid aside
her hat and her jacket, and tied on one of her mother's aprons. Then
silently she went to work, opened the stove door, shook the ashes down,
threw in coal, and got out a skillet. The table spread with its red
cloth stood against the window-sill, bearing cream pitcher and sugar
bowl, and a cheap glass urn filled with metal spoons. She went to the
pantry, brought out a crock of butter and put it on the table, then cut
pieces of side-meat and put them in a skillet, where they began to swim
about and sizzle in the sputtering grease. Then she set the coffee to
boil, cut some bread, and, finding some cold potatoes left over from
dinner, she set these on the table for the supper. It grew still,
quiet, commonplace. Gusta bustled about, her mother sat there quietly,
the neighbors looked on stolidly, the children snuffled now and then.
The tragedy seemed remote and unreal.
Gusta took a pail and whisked out of the kitchen door; the wind rushed
in, icy cold; she was back in a moment, her golden hair blowing. She
poured some of the water into a pan, and called the children to her.
They stood as stolidly as the women sat, their hands rigid by their
sides, their chins elevated, gasping now and then as Gusta washed their
dirty faces with the rag she had wrung out in the icy water. The odor
of frying pork was now filling the room, and the children's red,
burnished faces were gleaming with smiles, and their blue eyes danced as
they stood looking at the hot stove. When the pork was fried, Gusta,
using her apron to protect her hand, seized the skillet from the stove,
scraped the spluttering contents into a dish and set it on the table.
Then the children climbed into chairs, side by side, clutching the edge
of the table with their little fingers. Mrs. Koerner let Gusta draw up
her rocking-chair, leaned over, resting her fat forearms on the table,
holding her fork in her fist, and ate, using her elbow as a fulcrum.
When the meal was done, Mrs. Koerner began to rock again, the children
stood about and watched Gusta pile the dishes on the table and cover
them with the red cloth, and then, when she told them they must go to
bed, they protested, crying that father had not come home yet. Their
eyes were heavy and their flaxen heads were nodding, and Gusta dragged
them into a room that opened off the kitchen, and out of the dark could
be heard their small voices, protesting sleepily that they were not
sleepy.
After a while a quick, regular step was heard outside, some one stamped
the snow from his boots, the door opened, and Archie entered. His face
was drawn and flaming from the cold, and there was shrinking in his
broad military shoulders; a shiver ran through his well-set-up figure;
he wore no overcoat; he keenly felt the exposure to weather he was so
unused to. He flung aside his gray felt soldier's hat--the same he had
worn in the Philippines--strode across the room, bent over the stove and
warmed his red fingers.
"It's a long hike over to the hospital this cold night," he said,
turning to Gusta and smiling. His white teeth showed in his smile, and
the skin of his face was red and parched. He flung a chair before the
stove, sat down, hooked one heel on its rung, and taking some little
slips of rice paper from his pocket, and a bag of tobacco, began rolling
himself a cigarette. He rolled the cigarette swiftly and deftly,
lighted it, and inhaled the smoke eagerly. Gusta, meanwhile, sat
looking at him in a sort of suppressed impatience. Then, the smoke
stealing from his mouth with each word he uttered, he said:
"Well, they've cut the old man's leg off."
Gusta and the neighbor women looked at Archie in silence. Mrs. Koerner
seemed unable to grasp the full meaning of what he had said.
"_Was sagst du?_" she asked, leaning forward anxiously.
"_Sie haben sein Bein amputiert_," replied Archie.
"_Sein Bein--was?_" inquired Mrs. Koerner.
"What the devil's 'cut off'?" asked Archie, turning to Gusta.
She thought a moment.
"Why," she said, "let's see. _Abgeschnitten_, I guess."
"Je's," said Archie impatiently, "I wish she'd cut out the Dutch!"
Then he turned toward his mother and speaking loudly, as if she were
deaf, as one always speaks who tries to make himself understood in a
strange tongue:
"_Sie haben sein Bein abgeschnitten--die Doctoren im Hospital._"
Mrs. Koerner stared at her son, and Archie and Gusta and the two women
sat and stared at her, then suddenly Mrs. Koerner's expression became
set, meaningless and blank, her eyes slowly closed and her body slid off
the chair to the floor. Archie sprang toward her and tried to lift her.
She was heavy even for his strong arms, and he straightened an instant,
and shouted out commands:
"Open the door, you! Gusta, get some water!"
One of the women lumbered across the kitchen and flung wide the door,
Gusta got a dipper of water and splashed it in her mother's face. The
cold air rushing into the overheated kitchen and the cool water revived
the prostrate woman; she opened her eyes and looked up, sick and
appealing. Archie helped her to her chair and stood leaning over her.
Gusta, too, bent above her, and the two women pressed close.
"Stand back!" shouted Archie peremptorily. "Give her some air, can't
you?"
The two women slunk back--not without glances of reproach at Archie. He
stood looking at his mother a moment, his hands resting on his hips. He
was still smoking his cigarette, tilting back his head and squinting his
eyes to escape the smoke. Gusta was fanning her mother.
"Do you feel better?" she asked solicitously.
"_Ja_," said Mrs. Koerner, but she began to shake her head.
"Oh, it's all right, ma," Archie assured her. "It's the best place for
him. Why, they'll give him good care there. I was in the hospital a
month already in Luzon."
The old woman was unconvinced and shook her head. Then Archie stepped
close to her side.
"Poor old mother!" he said, and he touched her brow lightly,
caressingly. She looked at him an instant, then turned her head against
him and cried. The tears began to roll down Gusta's cheeks, and Archie
squinted his eyes more and more.
"We'd better get her to bed," he said softly, and glanced at the two
women with a look of dismissal. They still sat looking on at this effect
of the disaster, not altogether curiously nor without sympathy, yet
claiming all the sensation they could get out of the situation. When
Archie and Gusta led Mrs. Koerner to her bed, the two women began
talking rapidly to each other in German, criticizing Archie and the
action of the authorities in taking Koerner to the hospital.
IV
Gusta cherished a hope of going back to the Wards', but as the days went
by this hope declined. Mrs. Koerner was mentally prostrated and Gusta
was needed now at home, and there she took up her duties, attending the
children, getting the meals, caring for the house, filling her mother's
place. After a few days she reluctantly decided to go back for her
clothes. The weather had moderated, the snow still lay on the ground,
but grimy, soft and disintegrating. The sky was gray and cold, the mean
east wind was blowing in from the lake, and yet Gusta liked its cool
touch on her face, and was glad to be out again after all those days she
had been shut in the little home. It was good to feel herself among
other people, to get back to normal life, and though Gusta did not
analyze her sensations thus closely, or, for that matter, analyze them
at all, she was all the more happy.
Before Nussbaum's saloon she saw the long beer wagon; its splendid
Norman horses tossing their heads playfully, the stout driver in his
leathern apron lugging in the kegs of beer. The sight pleased her; and
when Nussbaum, in white shirt-sleeves and apron, stepped to the door for
his breath of morning air, she smiled and nodded to him. His round
ruddy face beamed pleasantly.
"Hello, Gustie," he called. "How are you this morning? How's your
father?"
"Oh, he's better, thank you, Mr. Nussbaum," replied Gusta, and she
hastened on. As she went, she heard the driver of the brewery wagon
ask:
"Who's that?"
And Nussbaum replied:
"Reinhold Koerner's girl, what got hurt on the railroad the other day."
"She's a good-looker, hain't she?" said the driver.
And Gusta colored and felt proud and happier than before.
She was not long in reaching Claybourne Avenue, and it was good to see
the big houses again, and the sleighs coursing by, and the carriages,
and the drivers and footmen, some of whom she knew, sitting so stiffly
in their liveries on the boxes. At sight of the familiar roof and
chimneys of the Wards' house, her heart leaped; she felt now as if she
were getting back home.
It was Gusta's notion that as soon as she had greeted her old friend
Mollie, the cook, she would rush on into the dining-room; but no sooner
was she in the kitchen than she felt a constraint, and sank down weakly
on a chair. Molly was busy with luncheon; things were going on in the
Ward household, going on just as well without her as with her, just as
the car shops were going on without her father, the whistle blowing
night and morning. It gave Gusta a little pang. This feeling was
intensified when, a little later, a girl entered the kitchen, a thin
girl, with black hair and blue eyes with long Irish lashes. She would
have been called pretty by anybody but Gusta, and Gusta herself must
have allowed her prettiness in any moment less sharp than this. The new
maid inspected Gusta coldly, but none of the glances from her eyes could
hurt Gusta half as much as her presence there hurt her; and the hurt was
so deep that she felt no personal resentment; she regarded the maid
merely as a situation, an unconscious and irresponsible symbol of
certain untoward events.
"Want to see Mrs. Ward?" the maid inquired.
"Yes, and Miss Elizabeth, too," said Gusta.
"Mrs. Ward's out and Miss Ward's busy just now."
Mollie, whose broad back was bent over her table, knew how the words
hurt Gusta, and, without turning, she said:
"You go tell her Gusta's here, Nora; she'll want to see her."
"Oh, sure," said Nora, yielding to a superior. "I'll tell her."
Almost before Nora could return, Elizabeth stood in the swinging door,
beaming her surprise and pleasure. And Gusta burst into tears.
"Why Gusta," exclaimed Elizabeth, "come right in here!"
She held the door, and Gusta, with a glance at Nora, went in. Seated by
the window in the old familiar dining-room, with Elizabeth before her,
Gusta glanced about, the pain came back, and the tears rolled down her
cheeks.
"You mustn't cry, Gusta," said Elizabeth.
Gusta sat twisting her fingers together, in and out, while the tears
fell. She could not speak for a moment, and then she looked up and
tried to smile.
"You mustn't cry," Elizabeth repeated. "You aren't half so pretty when
you cry."
Gusta's wet lashes were winking rapidly, and she took out her
handkerchief and wiped her face and her eyes, and Elizabeth looked at
her intently.
"Poor child!" she said presently. "What a time you've had!"
"Oh, Miss Elizabeth!" said Gusta, the tears starting afresh at this
expression of sympathy, "we've had a dreadful time!"
"And we've missed you awfully," said Elizabeth. "When are you coming
back to us?"
Gusta looked up gratefully. "I don't know, Miss Elizabeth; I wish I
did. But you see my mother is sick ever since father--"
"And how is your father? We saw in the newspaper how badly he had been
hurt."
"Was it in the paper?" said Gusta eagerly, leaning forward a little.
"Yes, didn't you see it? It was just a little item; it gave few of the
details, and it must have misspelled--" But Elizabeth stopped.
"I didn't see it," said Gusta. "He was hurt dreadfully, Miss Elizabeth;
they cut his leg off at the hospital."
"Oh, Gusta! And he's there still, of course?"
"Yes, and we don't know how long he'll have to stay. Maybe he'll have
to go under another operation."
"Oh, I hope not!" said Elizabeth. "Tell me how he was hurt."
"Well, Miss Elizabeth, we don't just know--not just exactly. He had
knocked off work and left the shops and was coming across the yards--he
always comes home that way, you know--but it was dark, and the snow was
all over everything, and the ice, and somehow he slipped and caught his
foot in a frog, and just then a switch-engine came along and ran over
his leg."
"Oh, horrible!" Elizabeth's brows contracted in pain.
"The ambulance took him right away to the Hospital. Ma felt awful bad
'cause they wouldn't let him be fetched home. She didn't want him taken
to the hospital."
"But that was the best place for him, Gusta; the very best place in the
world."
"That's what Archie says," said Gusta, "but ma doesn't like it; she
can't get used to it, and she says--" Gusta hesitated,--"she says we
can't afford to keep him there."
"But the railroad will pay for that, won't it?"
"Oh, do you think it will, Miss Elizabeth? It had ought to, hadn't it?
He's worked there thirty-seven years."
"Why, surely it will," said Elizabeth. "I wouldn't worry about that a
minute if I were you. You must make the best of it. And is there
anything I can do for you, Gusta?"
"No, thank you, Miss Elizabeth. I just came around to see you,"--she
looked up with a fond smile,--"and to get my clothes. Then I must go.
I want to go see father before I go back home. I guess I'll pack my
things now, and then Archie'll come for my trunk this afternoon."
"Oh, I'll have Barker haul it over; he can just as well as not. And,
Gusta,"--Elizabeth rose on the impulse--"I'll drive you to the hospital.
I was just going out. You wait here till I get my things."
Gusta's face flushed with pleasure; she poured out her thanks, and then
she waited while Elizabeth rang for the carriage, and ran out to prepare
for the street, just as she used to.
It was a fine thing for Gusta to ride with Elizabeth in her brougham.
She had often imagined how it would be, sitting there in the exclusion
of the brougham's upholstered interior, with the little clock, and the
mirror and the bottle of salts before her, and the woven silk tube
through which Elizabeth spoke to Barker when she wished to give him
directions. The drive to the hospital was all too short for Gusta, even
though Elizabeth prolonged it by another impulse which led her to drive
out of their way to get some fruit and some flowers.
In the street before the hospital, and along the driveway that led to
the suggestively wide side door, carriages were being slowly driven up
and down, denoting that the social leaders who were patronesses of the
hospital were now inside, patronizing the superintendent and the head
nurse. Besides these there were the high, hooded phaetons of the
fashionable physicians. It was the busy hour at the hospital. The
nurses had done their morning work, made their entries on their charts,
and were now standing in little groups about the hall, waiting for their
"cases" to come back from the operating-rooms. There was the odor of
anesthetics in the air, and the atmosphere of the place, professional
and institutional though it was, was surcharged with a heavy human
suspense--the suspense that hung over the silent, heavily breathing,
anesthetized human forms that were stretched on glass tables in the hot
operating-rooms up-stairs, some of them doomed to die, others to live
and prolong existence yet a while. The wide slow elevators were waiting
at the top floor; at the doors of the operating-rooms stood the
white-padded rubber-tired carts, the orderlies sitting on them swinging
their legs off the floor, and gossiping about the world outside, where
life did not hover, but throbbed on, intent, preoccupied. In private
rooms, in vacant rooms, in the office down-stairs, men and women, the
relatives of those on the glass tables above, waited with white,
haggard, frightened faces.
As Elizabeth and Gusta entered the hospital they shuddered, and drew
close to each other like sisters. Koerner was in the marine ward, and
Gusta dreaded the place. On her previous visits there, the nurses had
been sharp and severe with her, but this morning, when the nurses saw
Elizabeth bearing her basket of fruit and her flowers--which she would
not let Gusta carry, feeling that would rob her offering of the personal
quality she wished it to assume--they ran forward, their starched,
striped blue skirts rustling, and greeted her with smiles.
"Why, Miss Ward!" they cried.
"Good morning," said Elizabeth, "we've come to see Mr. Koerner."
"Oh, yes," said Koerner's nurse, a tall, spare young woman with a large
nose, eye-glasses, and a flat chest. "He's so much better this morning."
She said this with a patronizing glance aside at Gusta, who tried to
smile; the nurse had not spoken so pleasantly to her before.
The nurse led the girls into the ward, and they passed down between the
rows of white cots. Some of the cots were empty, their white sheets
folded severely, back, awaiting the return of their occupants from the
rooms up-stairs. In the others men sprawled, with pallid, haggard
faces, and watched the young women as they passed along, following them
with large, brilliant, sick eyes. But Elizabeth and Gusta did not look
at them; they kept their eyes before them. One bed had a white screen
about it; candles glowed through the screen, silhouetting the bending
forms of a priest, a doctor and a nurse.
Koerner was at the end of the ward. His great, gaunt, heavy figure was
supine on the bed; the bandaged stump of his leg made a heavy bulk under
the counterpane; his broad shoulders mashed down the pillow; his
enormous hands, still showing in their cracks and crevices and around
the cuticle of his broken nails the grime that all the antiseptic
scrubbings of a hospital could not remove, lay outside the coverlid,
idle for the first time in half a century. His white hair was combed,
its ragged edges showing more obviously, and his gaunt cheeks were
covered by a stubble of frosty beard. His blue eyes were unnaturally
bright.
Elizabeth fell back a little that Gusta might greet him first, and the
strong, lusty, healthy girl bent over her father and laid one hand on
his.
"Well, pa, how're you feeling to-day?"
"Hullo, Gustie," said the old man, "you gom' again, huh? Vell, der oldt
man's pretty bad, I tel' you."
"Why, the nurse said you were better."
"Why, yes," said the nurse, stepping forward with a professional smile,
"he's lots better this morning; he just won't admit it, that's all. But
we know him here, we do!"
She said this playfully, with a lateral addition to her smile, and she
bent over and passed her hand under the bed-clothes and touched his
bandages here and there. Elizabeth and Gusta stood looking on.
"Isn't the pain any better?" asked the nurse, still smilingly,
coaxingly.
"Naw," growled the old German, stubbornly refusing to smile. "I toldt
you it was no besser, don't I?"
The nurse drew out her hand. The smile left her face and she stood
looking down on him with a helpless expression that spread to the faces
of Elizabeth and Gusta. Koerner turned his head uneasily on the pillow
and groaned.
"What is it, pa?" asked Gusta.
"Der rheumatiz'."
"Where?"
"In my leg. In der same oldt blace. Ach!"
An expression of puzzled pain came to Gusta's face.
"Why," she said half-fearfully, "how can it--now?" She looked at the
nurse. The nurse smiled again, this time with an air of superior
knowledge.
"They often have those sensations," she said, laughing. "It's quite
natural." Then she bent over Koerner and said cheerily: "I'm going now,
and leave you with your daughter and Miss Ward."
"Yes, pa," said Gusta, "Miss Elizabeth's here to see you."
She put into her tone all the appreciation of the honor she wished her
father to feel. Elizabeth came forward, her gloved hands folded before
her, and stood carefully away from the bed so that even her skirts
should not touch it.
"How do you do, Mr. Koerner?" she said in her soft voice--so different
from the voices of the nurse and Gusta.
Koerner turned and looked at her an instant, his mouth open, his tongue
playing over his discolored teeth.
"Hullo," he said, "you gom' to see der oldt man, huh?"
Elizabeth smiled.
"Yes, I came to see how you were, and to know if there is anything I
could do for you."
"_Ach_," he said, "I'm all right. Dot leg he hurts yust der same efery
day. Kesterday der's somet'ing between der toes; dis time he's got der
damned oldt rheumatiz', yust der same he used to ven he's on dere all
right."
The old man then entered into a long description of his symptoms, and
Elizabeth tried hard to smile and to sympathize. She succeeded in
turning him from his subject presently, and then she said:
"Is there anything you want, Mr. Koerner? I'd be so glad to get you
anything, you know."
"Vell, I like a schmoke alreadty, but she won't let me. You know my
oldt pipe, Gusta? Vell, I lose him by der accident dot night. He's on
der railroadt, I bet you."
"Oh, we'll get you another pipe, Mr. Koerner," said Elizabeth, laughing.
"Isn't there anything else?"
"Naw," he said, "der railroadt gets me eferyt'ing. I work on dot roadt
t'irty-seven year now a'readty. Dot man, dot--vat you call him?--dot
glaim agent, he kum here kesterday, undt he say he get me eferyt'ing.
He's a fine man, dot glaim agent. He laugh undt choke mit me; he saidt
der roadt gif me chob flaggin' der grossing. All I yust do is to sign
der baper--"
"Oh, Mr. Koerner," cried Elizabeth in alarm, and Gusta, at her
expression, started forward, and Koerner himself became all attention,
"you did not sign any paper, did you?"
The old man looked at her an instant, and then a soft shadowy smile
touched his lips.
"Don't you vorry," he said; "der oldt man only got von leg, but he don't
sign no damned oldt baper." He shook his head on the pillow sagely, and
then added: "You bet!"
"That's splendid!" said Elizabeth. "You're very wise, Mr. Koerner."
She paused and thought a moment, her brows knit. Then her expression
cleared and she said:
"You must let me send a lawyer."
"Oh, der been blenty of lawyers," said Koerner.
"Yes," laughed Elizabeth, "there are plenty of lawyers, to be sure, but
I mean--"
"Der been more as a dozen here alreadty," he went on, "but dey don't let
'em see me."
"I don't think a lawyer who would come to see you would be the kind you
want, Mr. Koerner."
"Dot's all right. Der been blenty of time for der lawyers."
"Oh, pa," Gusta put in, "you must take Miss Elizabeth's advice. She
knows best. She'll send you a good lawyer."
"Vell, ve see about dot," said Koerner.
"I presume, Mr. Koerner," said Elizabeth, "they wouldn't let a lawyer
see you, but I'll bring one with me the next time I come--a very good
one, one that I know well, and he'll advise you what to do; shall I?"
"Vell, ve see," said Koerner.
"Now, pa, you must let Miss Elizabeth bring a lawyer," and then she
whispered to Elizabeth: "You bring one anyway, Miss Elizabeth. Don't
mind what he says. He's always that way."
Elizabeth brought out her flowers and fruit then, and Koerner glanced at
them without a word, or without a look of gratitude, and when she had
arranged the flowers on his little table, she bade him good-by and took
Gusta with her and went.
As they passed out, the white rubber-tired carts were being wheeled down
the halls, the patients they bore still breathing profoundly under the
anesthetics, from which it was hoped they would awaken in their clean,
smooth beds. The young women hurried out, and Elizabeth drank in the
cool wintry air eagerly.
"Oh, Gusta!" she said, "this air is delicious after that air in there!
I shall have the taste of it for days."
"Miss Elizabeth, that place is sickening!"--and Elizabeth laughed at the
solemn deliberation with which Gusta lengthened out the word.
[Illustration: Elizabeth]
V
"Come in, old man." Marriott glanced up at Dick Ward, who stood smiling
in the doorway of his private office.
"Don't let me interrupt you, my boy," said Dick as he entered.
"Just a minute," said Marriott, "and then I'm with you." Dick dropped
into the big leather chair, unbuttoned his tan overcoat, arranged its
skirts, drew off his gloves, and took a silver cigarette-case from his
pocket. Marriott, swinging about in his chair, asked his stenographer
to repeat the last line, picked up the thread, went on:
"And these answering defendants further say that heretofore, to wit, on
or about--"
Dick, leaning back in his chair, inhaling the smoke of his cigarette,
looked at the girl who sat beside Marriott's desk, one leg crossed over
the other, the tip of her patent-leather boot showing beneath her skirt,
on her knee the pad on which she wrote in shorthand. The girl's
eyelashes trembled presently and a flush showed in her cheeks, spreading
to her white throat and neck. Dick did not take his eyes from her. When
Marriott finished, the girl left the room hurriedly.
"Well, what's the news?" asked Marriott.
"Devilish fine-looking girl you've got there, old man!" said Dick, whose
eyes had followed the stenographer.
"She's a good girl," said Marriott simply.
Dick glanced again at the girl. Through the open door he could see her
seating herself at her machine. Then he recalled himself and turned to
Marriott.
"Say, Bess was trying to get you by 'phone this morning."
"Is that so?" said Marriott in a disappointed tone. "I was in court all
morning."
"Well, she said she'd give it up. She said that old man Koerner had
left the hospital and gone home. He sent word to her that he wanted to
see you."
"Oh, yes," said Marriott, "about that case of his. I must attend to
that, but I've been so busy." He glanced at his disordered desk, with
its hopeless litter of papers. "Let's see," he went on meditatively, "I
guess"--he thought a moment, "I guess I might as well go out there this
afternoon as any time. How far is it?"
"Oh, it's 'way out on Bolt Street."
"What car do I take?"
"Colorado Avenue, I think. I'll go 'long, if you want me."
"I'll be delighted," said Marriott. He thought a moment longer, then
closed his desk, and said, "We'll go now."
When they got off the elevator twelve floors below, Dick said:
"I've got to have a drink before I start. Will you join me?"
"I just had luncheon a while ago," said Marriott; "I don't really--"
"I never got to bed till morning," said Dick. "I sat in a little game
at the club last night, and I'm all in."
Marriott, amused by the youth's pride in his dissipation, went with him
to the cafe in the basement. Standing before the polished bar, with one
foot on the brass rail, Dick said to the white-jacketed bartender:
"I want a high-ball; you know my brand, George. What's yours, Gordon?"
"Oh, I'll take the same." Marriott watched Dick pour a generous
libation over the ice in the glass.
"Don't forget the imported soda," added Dick with an air of the utmost
seriousness and importance, and the bartender, swiftly pulling the
corks, said:
"I wouldn't forget you, Mr. Ward."
The car for which they waited in the drifting crowd at the corner was
half an hour in getting them out to the neighborhood in which the
Koerners lived. They stood on the rear platform all the way, because,
as Dick said, he had to smoke, and as he consumed his cigarettes, he
discoursed to Marriott of the things that filled his life--his card
games and his drinking at the club, his constant attendance at theaters
and cafes. His cheeks were fresh and rosy as a girl's, and smooth from
the razor they did not need. Marriott, as he looked at him, saw a
resemblance to Elizabeth, and this gave the boy an additional charm for
him. He studied this resemblance, but he could not analyze it. Dick
had neither his sister's features nor her complexion; and yet the
resemblance was there, flitting, remote, revealing itself one instant to
disappear the next, evading and eluding him. He could not account for
it, yet its effect was to make his heart warm toward the boy, to make
him love him.
Marriott let Dick go on in his talk, but he scarcely heard what the boy
said; it was the spirit that held him and charmed him, the spirit of
youth launching with sublime courage into life, not yet aware of its
significance or its purpose. He thought of the danger the boy was in
and longed to help him. How was he to do this? Should he admonish him?
No,--instantly he recognized the fact that he could not do this; he
shrank from preaching; he could take no priggish or Pharisaical
attitude; he had too much culture, too much imagination for that;
besides, he reflected with a shade of guilt, he had just now encouraged
Dick by drinking with him. He flung away his cigarette as if it
symbolized the problem, and sighed when he thought that Dick, after all,
would have to make his way alone and fight his own battles, that the
soul can emerge into real life only through the pains and dangers that
accompany all birth.
Marriott's knock at the Koerners' door produced the sensation visits
make where they are infrequent, but he and Dick had to wait before the
vague noises died away and the door opened to them. Mrs. Koerner led
them through the parlor--which no occasion seemed ever to merit--to the
kitchen at the other end of the house. The odor of carbolic acid which
the two men had detected the moment they entered, grew stronger as they
approached the kitchen, and there they beheld Koerner, the stump of his
leg bundled in surgical bandages, resting on a pillow in a chair before
him. His position constrained him not to move, and he made no attempt to
turn his head; but when the young men stood before him, he raised to
them a bronzed and wrinkled face. His white hair was rumpled, and he
wore a cross and dissatisfied expression; he held by its bowl the new
meerschaum pipe Elizabeth had sent him, and waved its long stem at
Marriott and Dick, as he waved it scepter-like in ruling his household.
"My name is Marriott, Mr. Koerner, and this is Mr. Ward, Miss
Elizabeth's brother. She said you wished to see me."
"You gom', huh?" said Koerner, fixing Marriott with his little blue
eyes.
"Yes, I'm here at last," said Marriott. "Did you think I was never
going to get here?" He drew up a chair and sat down. Dick took another
chair, but leaned back and glanced about the room, as if to testify to
his capacity of mere spectator. Mrs. Koerner stood beside her husband
and folded her arms. The two children, hidden in their mother's skirts,
cautiously emerged, a bit at a time, as it were, until they stood
staring with wide, curious blue eyes at Marriott.
"You bin a lawyer, yet, huh?" asked Koerner severely.
"Yes, I'm a lawyer. Miss Ward said you wished to see a lawyer."
"I've blenty lawyers alreadty," said Koerner. "Der bin more as a dozen
hier." He waved his pipe at the clock-shelf, where a little stack of
professional cards told how many lawyers had solicited Koerner as a
client. Marriott could have told the names of the lawyers without
looking at their cards.
"Have you retained any of them?" asked Marriott.
"Huh?" asked Koerner, scowling.
"Did you hire any of them?"
"No, I tell 'em all to go to hell."
"That's where most of them are going," said Marriott.
But Koerner did not see the joke.
"How's your injury?" asked Marriott.
Koerner winced perceptibly at Marriott's mere glance at his amputated
leg, and stretched the pipe-stem over it as if in protection.
"He's hurt like hell," he said.
"Why, hasn't the pain left yet?" asked Marriott in surprise.
"No, I got der rheumatiz' in dot foot," he pointed with his pipe-stem at
the vacancy where the foot used to be.
"_That_ foot!" exclaimed Marriott.
"Bess told us of that," Dick put in. "It gave her the willies."
"Well, I should think so," said Marriott.
Koerner looked from one to the other of the two young men.
"That's funny, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "that foot's cut off."
"I wish der tamn doctors cut off der rheumatiz' der same time! Dey cut
off der foot all right, but dey leave der rheumatiz'." He turned the
long stem of his pipe to his lips and puffed at it, and looked at the
leg as if he were taking up a problem he was working on daily.
"Well, now, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott presently, "tell me how it
happened and I'll see if I can help you."
Koerner, just on the point of placing his pipe-stem between his long,
loose, yellow teeth, stopped and looked intently at Marriott. Marriott
saw at once from his expression that he had once more to contend with
the suspicion the poor always feel when dealing with a lawyer.
"So you been Mr. Marriott, huh?" asked Koerner.
"Yes, I'm Marriott."
"Der lawyer?"
"Yes, the lawyer."
"You der one vot Miss Ward sent alreadty, aind't it?"
"Yes, I'm the one." Marriott smiled, and then, thinking suddenly of an
incontrovertible argument, he waved his hand at Dick. "This is her
brother. She sent him to bring me here."
The old man looked at Dick, and then turned to Marriott again.
"How much you goin' charge me, huh?" His little hard blue eyes were
almost closed.
"Oh, if I don't get any damages for you, I won't charge you anything."
The old man made him repeat this several times, and when at last he
understood, he seemed relieved and pleased. And then he wished to know
what the fee would be in the event of success.
"Oh," said Marriott, "how would one-fifth do?"
Koerner, when he grasped the idea of the percentage, was satisfied; the
other lawyers who had come to see him had all demanded a contingent fee
of one-third or one-half. When the long bargaining was done and
explained to Mrs. Koerner, who sat watchfully by trying to follow the
conversation, and when Marriott had said that he would draw up a
contract for them to sign and bring it when he came again, the old man
was ready to go on with his story. But before he did so he paused with
his immeasurable German patience to fill his pipe, and, when he had
lighted it, he began.
"Vell, Mr. Marriott, ven I gom' on dis gountry, I go to vork for dot
railroadt; I vork dere ever since--dot's t'irty-seven year now
alreadty." He paused and puffed, and slowly winked his eyes as he
contemplated those thirty-seven years of toil. "I vork at first for
t'irty tollar a month, den von day Mister Greene, dot's der
suberintendent in dose tays, he call me in, undt he say, 'Koerner, you
can read?' I say I read English some, undt he say, 'Vell, read dot,'
undt he handt me a telegram. Vell I read him--it say dot Greene can
raise der vages of his vatchman to forty tollar a month. Vell, I handt
him der telegram back undt I say, 'I could read two t'ree more like dot,
Mister Greene.' He laugh den undt he say, 'Vell, you read dot von
twicet.' Vell, I got forty tollar a month den; undt in ten year dey
raise me oncet again to forty-five. That's purty goodt, I t'ink." The
old man paused in this retrospect of good fortune. "Vell," he went on,
"I vork along, undt dey buildt der new shops, undt I vork like a dog
getting dose t'ings moved, but after dey get all moved, he calls me in
von tay, undt he say my vages vould be reduced to forty tollar a month.
Vell, I gan't help dot--I haind't got no other chob. Den, vell, I vork
along all right, but der town get bigger, an' der roadt got bigger, an'
dere's so many men dere at night dey don't need me much longer. Undt Mr.
Greene--he's lost his chob, too, undt Mr. Churchill--he's der new
suberintendent--he's cut ever't'ing down, undt after he gom' eferbody
vork longer undt get hell besides. He cut me down to vere I vas at der
first blace--t'irty tollar a month. So!"
The old man turned out his palms; and his face wrinkled into a strange
grimace that expressed his enforced submission to this fate. And he
smoked on until Marriott roused him.
"Vell," he said, "dot night it snows, undt I start home again at five
o'clock. It's dark undt the snow fly so I gan't hardly see der svitch
lights. But I gom' across der tracks yust like I always do goming
home--dot's the shortest way I gom', you know--undt I ben purty tired,
undt my tamned old rheumatiz' he's raisin' hell for t'ree days because
dot storm's comin'--vell, I gom' along beside dere segond track over
dere, undt I see an engine, but he's goin' on dot main track, so I gets
over--vell, de snow's fallin' undt I gan't see very well, undt somehow
dot svitch-engine gom' over on der segond track, undt I chump to get
away, but my foot he's caught in der frog--vell, I gan't move, but I
bent vay over to one side--so"--the old man strained himself over the
arm of his chair to illustrate--"undt der svitch-engine yust cut off my
foot nice undt glean. Vell, dot's all der was aboudt it."
Marriott gave a little shudder; in a flash he had a vision of Koerner
there in the wide switch-yard with its bewildering red and green lights,
the snow filling the air, the gloom of the winter twilight, his foot
fast in the frog, bending far over to save his body, awaiting the
switch-engine as it came stealing swiftly down on him.
"Did the engine whistle or ring its bell?"
"No," said the old man.
"And the frog--that was unblocked?"
Koerner leaned toward Marriott with a cunning smile.
"Dot's vere I got 'em, aind't it? Dot frog he's not blocked dere dot
time; der law say dey block dose frog all der time, huh?"
"Yes, the frog must be blocked. But how did your foot get caught in the
frog?"
"Vell, I shlipped, dot's it. I gan't see dot frog. You ask Charlie
Drake; he's dere--he seen it."
"What does he do?" asked Marriott as he scribbled the name on an old
envelope.
"He's a svitchman in der yard; he tol' you all aboudt it; he seen it--he
knows. He say to me, 'Reinhold, you get damage all right; dot frog
haind't blocked dot time.'"
Just then the kitchen door opened and Gusta came in. When she saw
Marriott and Ward, she stopped and leaned against the door; her face,
ruddy from the cool air, suddenly turned a deeper red.
"Oh, Mr. Dick!" she said, and then she looked at Marriott, whom she had
seen and served so often at the Wards'.
"How do you do, Gusta?" said Marriott, getting up and taking her hand.
She flushed deeper than ever as she came forward, and her blue eyes
sparkled with pleasure. Dick, too, rose and took her hand.
"Hello, Gusta," he said, "how are you?"
"Oh, pretty well, Mr. Dick," she answered. She stood a moment, and then
quietly began to unbutton her jacket and to draw the pins from her hat.
Marriott, who had seen her so often at the Wards', concluded as she
stood there before him that he had never realized how beautiful she was.
She removed her wraps, then drew up a chair by her father and sat down,
lifting her hands and smoothing the coils of her golden hair, touching
them gently.
"You've come to talk over pa's case, haven't you, Mr. Marriott?"
"Yes," said Marriott.
"I'm glad of that," the girl said. "He has a good case, hasn't he?"
"I think so," said Marriott, and then he hastened to add the
qualification that is always necessary in so unexact and whimsical a
science as the law, "that is, it seems so now; I'll have to study it
somewhat before I can give you a definite opinion."
"I think he ought to have big damages," said Gusta. "Why, just think!
He's worked for that railroad all his life, and now to lose his foot!"
She looked at her father, her affection and sympathy showing in her
expression. Marriott glanced at Dick, whose eyes were fixed on the
girl. His lips were slightly parted; he gazed at her boldly, his eyes
following every curve of her figure. Her yellow hair was bright in the
light, and the flush of her cheeks spread to her white neck. And
Marriott, in the one moment he glanced at Dick, saw in his face another
expression--an expression that displeased him; and as he recalled the
resemblance to Elizabeth he thought he had noted, he impatiently put it
away, and became angry with himself for ever imagining such a
resemblance; he felt as if he had somehow done Elizabeth a wrong. All
the while they were there Dick kept his bold gaze on Gusta, and
presently Gusta seemed to feel it; the flush of her face and neck
deepened, she grew ill at ease, and presently she rose and left the
room.
When they were in the street Marriott said to Dick:
"I don't know about that poor old fellow's case--I'm afraid--"
"Gad!" said Dick. "Isn't Gusta a corker! I never saw a prettier girl."
"And you never noticed it before?" said Marriott.
"Why, I always knew she was good-looking, yes," said Dick; "but I never
paid much attention to her when she worked for us. I suppose it was
because she was a servant, don't you know? A man never notices the
servants, someway."
VI
Ward had not been in the court-house for years, and, as he entered the
building that morning, he hoped he might never be called there again if
his mission were to be as sad as the one on which he then was bent.
Eades had asked him to be there at ten o'clock; it was now within a
quarter of the hour. With a layman's difficulty he found the criminal
court, and as he glanced about the high-ceiled room, and saw that the
boy had not yet been brought in, he felt the relief that comes from the
postponement of an ordeal. With an effect of effacing himself, he
shrank into one of the seats behind the bar, and as he waited his mind
ran back over the events of the past four weeks. He calculated--yes,
the flurry in the market had occurred on the day of the big snow-storm;
and now, so soon, it had come to this! Ward marveled; he had always
heard that the courts were slow, but this--this was quick work indeed!
The court-room was almost empty. The judge's chair, cushioned in
leather, was standing empty behind the high oaken desk. The two trial
tables, across which day after day lawyers bandied the fate of human
beings, were set with geometric exactness side by side, as if the
janitors had fixed them with an eye to the impartiality of the law,
resolved to give the next comers an even start. A clerk was writing in
a big journal; the bailiff had taken a chair in the fading light of one
of the tall southern windows, and in the leisure he could so well afford
in a life that was all leisure, was reading a newspaper. His spectacles
failed to lend any glisten of interest to his eyes; he read
impersonally, almost officially; all interest seemed to have died out of
his life, and he could be stirred to physical, though never to mental
activity, only by the judge himself, to whom he owed his sinecure. The
life had long ago died out of this man, and he had a mild, passive
interest in but one or two things, like the Civil War, and the judge's
thirst, which he regularly slaked with drafts of ice-water.
Presently two or three young men entered briskly, importantly, and went
at once unhesitatingly within the bar. They entered with an assertive
air that marked them indubitably as young lawyers still conscious of the
privileges so lately conferred. Then some of the loafers came in from
the corridor and sidled into the benches behind the bar. Their
conversation in low tones, and that of the young lawyers in the higher
tones their official quality permitted them, filled the room with a busy
interest. From time to time the loafers were joined by other loafers,
and they all patiently waited for the sensation the criminal court could
dependably provide.
It was not long before there was a scrape and shuffle of feet and a
rattle of steel, and then a broad-shouldered man edged through the door.
With his right hand he seized a Scotch cap from a head that bristled
with a stubble of red hair. His left hand hung by his side, and when he
had got into the court-room, Ward saw, that a white-haired man walked
close beside him, his right hand manacled to the left hand of the
red-haired man. The red-haired man was Danner, the jailer. Behind him
in sets of twos marched half a dozen other men, each set chained
together. The rear of the little procession was brought up by Utter, a
stalwart young man who was one of Danner's assistants.
The scrape of the feet that were so soon to shuffle into the
penitentiary, and leave scarce an echo of their hopeless fall behind,
roused every one in the court-room. Even the bailiff got to his
rheumatic feet and hastily arranged a row of chairs in front of the
trial tables. The prisoners sat down and tried to hide their manacles
by dropping their hands between their chairs.
There were seven of these prisoners, the oldest the man whom Danner had
conducted. He sat with his white head cast down, but his blue eyes
roamed here and there, taking in the whole court-room. The other
prisoners were young men, one of them a negro; and in the appearance of
all there was some pathetic suggestion of a toilet. All of them had
their hair combed carefully, except the negro, whose hair could give no
perceptible evidence of the comb, unless it were the slight, almost
invisible part that bisected his head. But he gave the same air of
trying somehow to make the best appearance he was capable of on this
eventful day.
Ward's eyes ran rapidly along the row, and rested on the brown-haired,
well-formed head of the youngest of the group. He was scarcely more
than a boy indeed, and he alone, of all the line, was well dressed. His
linen was white, and he wore his well-fitting clothes with a certain
vanity and air of style that even his predicament could not divest him
of. As Ward glanced at him, an expression of pain came to his face; the
color left it for an instant, and then it grew redder than it had been
before.
These prisoners were about to be sentenced for various felonies. Two of
them, the old man with the white hair and the negro, had been tried, the
one for pocket-picking, the other for burglary. The others were to
change their pleas from not guilty to guilty and throw themselves on the
mercy of the court. They sat there, whispering with one another, gazing
about the room, and speculating on what fate awaited them, or, as they
would have phrased it, what sentences they would draw. Like most
prisoners they were what the laws define as "indigent," that is, so poor
that they could not employ lawyers. The court in consequence had
appointed counsel, and the young lawyers who now stood and joked about
the fates that were presently to issue from the judge's chambers, were
the counsel thus appointed. Now and then the prisoners looked at the
lawyers, and some of them may have indulged speculations as to how that
fate might have been changed--perhaps altogether avoided--had they been
able to employ more capable attorneys. Those among them who had been
induced by their young attorneys to plead guilty--under assurances that
they would thus fare better than they would if they resisted the law by
insisting on their rights under it--probably had not the imagination to
divine that they might have fared otherwise at the hands of the law if
these lawyers had not dreaded the trial as an ordeal almost as great to
them as to their appointed clients, or if they had not been so indigent
themselves as to desire speedily to draw the fee the State would allow
them for their services. Most of the prisoners, indeed, treated these
young lawyers with a certain patience, if not forbearance, and now they
relied on them for such mercy as the law might find in its heart to
bestow. Most of them might have reflected, had they been given to the
practice, that on former experiences they had found the breast of the
law, as to this divine quality, withered and dry. They sat and glanced
about, and now and then whispered, but for the most part they were still
and dumb and hopeless. Meanwhile their lawyers discussed and compared
them, declaring their faces to be hard and criminal; one of the young
men thought a certain face showed particularly the marks of crime, and
when his fellows discovered that he meant the face of Danner, they
laughed aloud and had a good joke on the young man. The young man
became very red, almost as red as Danner himself, whom, he begged, they
would not tell of his mistake.
At that moment the door of the judge's chambers opened, and instant
silence fell. McWhorter, the judge, appeared. He was a man of middle
size, with black curly hair, smooth-shaven face, and black eyes that
caught in the swiftest glance the row of prisoners, who now straightened
and fixed their eyes on him. McWhorter advanced with a brisk step to the
bench, mounted it, and nodding, said:
"You may open court, Mr. Bailiff."
The bailiff let his gavel fall on the marble slab, and then with his
head hanging, his eyes roving in a self-conscious, almost silly way, he
said:
"Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, this honorable court is now in session."
The bailiff sat down as in relief, but immediately got up again when the
judge said:
"Bring me the criminal docket, Mr. Bailiff."
The bailiff's bent figure tottered out of the court-room. The
court-room was very still; the ticking of the clock on the wall could be
heard. The judge swung his chair about and glanced out of the windows.
Never once did he permit his eyes to rest on the prisoners.
There was silence and waiting, and after a while the bailiff came with
the docket. The judge opened the book, put on a pair of gold glasses,
and, after a time, reading slowly, said:
"The State _versus_ Patrick Delaney."
The white-haired prisoner patiently held out two hands, marvelously
tatooed, and Danner unlocked the handcuffs. At the same moment one of
the young lawyers stood forth from the rest, and Lamborn, an assistant
prosecutor, rose.
McWhorter was studying the docket. Presently he said:
"Stand up, Delaney."
Delaney rose, kept his eyes on the floor, clasped a hand about his red
wrist. Then, for the first time, the judge looked at him.
"Delaney," he said, "have you anything to say why the sentence of this
court should not be passed upon you?"
Delaney looked uneasily at the judge and then let his eyes fall.
"No, Judge, yer Honor," he said, "nothing but that I'm an innocent man.
I didn't do it, yer Honor."
The remark did not seem to impress the judge, who turned toward the
lawyer. This young man, with a venturesome air, stepped a little
farther from the sheltering company of his associates and, with a face
that was very white and lips that faltered, said in a confused, hurried
way:
"Your Honor, we hope your Honor'll be as lenient as possible with this
man; we hope your Honor will be as--lenient as possible." The youth's
voice died away and he faded back, as it were, into the shelter of his
companions. The judge did not seem to be more impressed with what the
lawyer had said than he had with what the client had said, and twirling
his glasses by their cord, he turned toward the assistant prosecutor.
Lamborn, with an affectation of great ease, with one hand in the pocket
of his creased trousers, the other supporting a book of memoranda,
advanced and said:
"May it please the Court, this man is an habitual criminal; he has
already served a term in the penitentiary for this same offense, and we
understand that he is wanted in New York State at this present time. We
consider him a dangerous criminal, and the State feels that he should be
severely punished."
McWhorter studied the ceiling of the court-room a moment, still swinging
his eye-glasses by their cord, and then, fixing them on his nose, looked
wisely down at Delaney. Presently he spoke:
"It is always an unpleasant duty to sentence a man to prison, no matter
how much he may deserve punishment." McWhorter paused as if to let
every one realize his pain in this exigency, and then went on: "But it
is our duty, and we can not shirk it. A jury, Delaney, after a fair
trial, has found you guilty of burglary. It appears from what the
prosecutor says that this is not the first time you have been found
guilty of this offense; the experience does not seem to have done you
any good. You impress the Court as a man who has abandoned himself to a
life of crime, and the Court feels that you should receive a sentence in
this instance that will serve as a warning to you and to others. The
sentence of the Court is--" McWhorter paused as if to balance the
scales of justice with all nicety, and then he looked away. He did not
know exactly how many years in prison would expiate Delaney's crime;
there was, of course, no way for him to tell. He thought first of the
number ten, then of the number five; then, as the saying is, he split
the difference, inclined the fraction to the prisoner and said:
"The sentence of the Court is that you be confined in the penitentiary
at hard labor for the period of seven years, no part of your sentence to
be in solitary confinement, and that you pay the costs of this
prosecution."
Delaney sat down without changing expression and held out his hands for
the handcuffs. The steel clicked, and the scratch of the judge's pen
could be heard as he entered the judgment in the docket.
These proceedings were repeated again and again. McWhorter read the
title of the case, Danner unshackled the prisoner, who stood up, gazing
dumbly at the floor, his lawyer asked the Court to be lenient, Lamborn
asked the Court to be severe, McWhorter twirled his gold glasses, looked
out of the window, made his little speech, guessed, and pronounced
sentence. The culprit sat down, held out his hands for the manacles,
then the click of the steel and the scratch of the judicial pen. It
grew monotonous.
But just before the last man was called to book, John Eades, the
prosecutor, entered the court-room. At sight of him the young lawyers,
the loafers on the benches, even the judge looked up.
Eades's tall figure had not yet lost the grace of youth, though it was
giving the first evidence that he had reached that period of life when
it would begin to gather weight. He was well dressed in the blue
clothes of a business man, and he was young enough at thirty-five to
belong to what may not too accurately be called the new school of
lawyers, growing up in a day when the law is changing from a profession
to a business, in distinction from the passing day of long coats of
professional black, of a gravity that frequently concealed a certain
profligacy, and, wherever it was successful, of native brilliancy that
could ignore application. Eades's dark hair was carefully parted above
his smooth brow; he had rather heavy eyebrows, a large nose, and thin,
tightly-set lips that gave strength and firmness to a clean-shaven face.
He whispered a word to his assistant, and then said:
"May it please the Court, when the case of the State _versus_ Henry C.
Graves is reached, I should like to be heard."
"The Court was about to dispose of that case, Mr. Eades," said the
judge, looking over his docket and fixing his glasses on his nose.
"Very well," said Eades, glancing at the group of young attorneys. "Mr.
Metcalf, I believe, represents the defendant."
The young lawyer thus indicated emerged from the group that seemed to
keep so closely together, and said:
"Yes, your Honor, we'd like to be heard also."
"Graves may stand up," said the judge, removing his glasses and tilting
back in his chair as if to listen to long arguments.
Danner had been unlocking the handcuffs again, and the young man who had
been so frequently remarked in the line rose. His youthful face flushed
scarlet; he glanced about the court-room, saw Ward, drew a heavy breath,
and then fixed his eyes on the floor.
Eades looked at Metcalf, who stepped forward and began:
"In this case, your Honor, we desire to withdraw the plea of not guilty
and substitute a plea of guilty. And I should like to say a few words
for my client."
"Proceed," said McWhorter.
Metcalf, looking at his feet, took two or three steps forward, and then,
lifting his head, suddenly began:
"Your Honor, this is the first time this young man has ever committed
any crime. He is but twenty-three years old, and he has always borne a
good reputation in this community. He is the sole support of a widowed
mother, and--yes, he is the sole support of a widowed mother.
He--a--has been for three years employed in the firm of Stephen Ward and
Company, and has always until--a--this unfortunate affair enjoyed the
confidence and esteem of his employers. He stands here now charged in
the indictment with embezzlement; he admits his guilt. He has, as I
say, never done wrong before--and I believe that this will be a lesson
to him which he will not forget. He desires to throw himself on the
mercy of the Court, and I ask the Court--to--a--be as lenient as
possible."
"Has the State anything to say?" asked the judge.
"May it please the Court," said Eades, speaking in his low, studied
tone, "we acquiesce in all that counsel for defense has said. This
young man, so far as the State knows, has never before committed a
crime. And yet, he has had the advantages of a good home, of an
excellent mother, and he had the best prospects in life that a young man
could wish. He was, as counsel has said, employed by Mr. Ward--who is
here--" Eades turned half-way around and indicated Ward, who rose and
felt that the time had come when he should go forward. "He was one of
Mr. Ward's trusted employees. Unfortunately, he began to speculate on
the Board himself, and it seems, in the stir of the recent excitement in
wheat, appropriated some nine hundred dollars of his employer's money.
Mr. Ward is not disposed to ideal harshly or in any vengeful spirit with
this young man; he has shown, indeed, the utmost forbearance. Nor is the
State disposed to deal in any such spirit with him; he, and especially
his mother, have my sympathy. But we feel that the law must be
vindicated and upheld, and while the State is disposed to leave with the
Court the fixing of such punishment as may be appropriate, and has no
thought of suggesting what the Court's duty shall be, still the State
feels that the punishment should be substantial."
Eades finished and seated himself at the counsel table. The young
lawyers looked at him, and, whispering among themselves, said that they
considered the speech to have been very fitting and appropriate under
the circumstances.
McWhorter deliberated a moment, and then, glancing toward the young man,
suddenly saw Ward, and, thinking that if Ward would speak he would have
more time to guess what punishment to give the boy, he said:
"Mr. Ward, do you care to be heard?"
Ward hesitated, changed color, and slowly advanced. He was not
accustomed to speaking in public, and this was an ordeal for him. He
came forward, halted, and then, clearing his throat, said:
"I don't know that I have anything much to say, only this--that this is
a very painful experience to me. I"--he looked toward the youthful
culprit--"I was always fond of Henry; he was a good boy, and we all
liked him." The brown head seemed to sink between its shoulders. "Yes,
we all liked him, and I don't know that anything ever surprised me so
much as this thing did, or hurt me more. I didn't think it of him. I
feel sorry for his mother, too. I--" Ward hesitated and looked down at
the floor.
The situation suddenly became distressing to every one in the
court-room. And then, with new effort, Ward went on: "I didn't like to
have him prosecuted, but we employ a great many men, many of them young
men, and it seemed to be my duty. I don't know; I've had my doubts. It
isn't the money--I don't care about that; I'd be willing, so far as I'm
concerned, to have him go free now. I hope, Judge, that you'll be as
easy on him, as merciful as possible. That's about all I can say."
Ward sat down in the nearest chair, and the judge, knitting his brows,
glanced out of the window. Nearly every one glanced out of the window,
save Graves, who stood rigid, his eyes staring at the floor. Presently
McWhorter turned and said:
"Graves, have you anything to say why the sentence of this court should
not be passed on you?"
The youth raised his head, looked into McWhorter's eyes, and said:
"No, sir."
McWhorter turned suddenly and looked away.
"The Court does not remember in all his career a more painful case than
this," he began. "That a young man of your training and connections, of
your advantages and prospects, should be standing here at the bar of
justice, a self-confessed embezzler, is sad, inexpressibly sad. The
Court realizes that you have done a manly thing in pleading guilty; it
speaks well for you that you were unwilling to add perjury to your other
crime. The Court will take that into consideration." McWhorter nodded
decisively.
"The Court will also take into consideration your youth, and the fact
that this is your first offense. Your looks are in your favor. You are
a young man who, by proper, sober, industrious application, might easily
become a successful, honest, worthy citizen. Your employer speaks well
of you, and shows great patience, great forbearance; he is ready to
forgive you, and he even asks the Court to be merciful. The Court will
take that fact into consideration as well."
Again McWhorter nodded decisively, and then, feeling that much was due
to a man of Ward's position, went on:
"The Court wishes to say that you, Mr. Ward," he gave one of his nods in
that gentleman's direction, "have acted the part of a good citizen in
this affair. You have done your duty, as every citizen should, painful
as it was. The Court congratulates you."
And then, having thought again of the painfulness of this duty,
McWhorter went on to tell how painful his own duty was; but he said it
would not do to allow sympathy to obscure judgment in such cases. He
talked at length on this theme, still unable to end, because he did not
know what sort of guess to make. And then he began to discuss the evils
of speculation, and when he saw that the reporters were scribbling
desperately to put down all he was saying, he extended his remarks and
delivered a long homily on speculation in certain of its forms,
characterizing it as one of the worst and most prevalent vices of the
day. After he had said all he could think of on this topic, he spoke to
Graves again, and explained to him the advantages of being in the
penitentiary, how by his behavior he might shorten his sentence by
several months, and how much time he would have for reflection and for
the formation of good resolutions. It seemed, indeed, before he had
done, that it was almost a deprivation not to be able to go to a
penitentiary. But finally he came to an end. Then he looked once more
out of the window, once more twirled his eye-glasses on their cord, and
then, turning about, came to the reserved climax of his long address.
"The sentence of the Court, Mr. Graves, is that you be confined in the
penitentiary at hard labor for the term of one year, no part of said
sentence to consist of solitary confinement, and that you pay the costs
of this prosecution."
The boy sat down, held out his wrists for the handcuffs, the steel
clicked, the pen scratched in the silence.
Danner got up, marshaled his prisoners, and they marched out. The eyes
of every one in the court-room followed them, the eyes of Ward fixed on
Graves. As he looked, he saw a woman sitting on the last one of the
benches near the door. Her head was bowed on her hand, but as the
procession passed she raised her face, all red and swollen with weeping,
and, with a look of love and tenderness and despair, fixed her eyes on
Graves. The boy did not look at her, but marched by, his head
resolutely erect.
VII
Ward returned to his office and to his work, but all that day, in the
excitement on the floor of the exchange, during luncheon at the club, at
his desk, in his carriage going home at evening, he saw before him that
row of heads--the white poll of old Delaney, the woolly pate of the
negro, but, more than all, the brown head of Harry Graves. And when he
entered his home at evening the sadness of his reflections was still in
his face.
"What's the matter this evening?" asked Elizabeth. "Nerves?"
"Yes."
"Been on the wrong side to-day?"
"Yes, decidedly, I fear," said Ward.
"What do you mean?"
"I've sent a boy to the penitentiary." Ward felt a kind of relief, the
first he had felt all that day, in dealing thus bluntly, thus brutally,
with himself. Elizabeth knit her brows, and her eyes winked rapidly in
the puzzled expression that came to them.
"You remember Harry Graves?" asked her father.
"Oh, that young man?"
"Yes, that young man. Well, I've sent him to the penitentiary."
"What is that you say, Stephen?" asked Mrs. Ward, coming just then into
the room. She had heard his words, but she wished to hear them again.
"I just said I'd sent Harry Graves to the penitentiary."
"For how long?" asked Mrs. Ward, with a judicial desire for all the
facts, usually unnecessary in her judgments.
"For one year."
"Why, how easily he got off!" said Mrs. Ward. "And do hurry now,
Stephen. You're late."
Elizabeth saw the pain her mother had been so unconscious of in her
father's face, and she gave Ward a little pat on the shoulder.
"You dear old goose," she said, "to feel that way about it. Of course,
you didn't send him--it was John Eades. That's his business."
But Ward shook his head, unconvinced.
"Doubtless it will be a good thing for the young man," said Mrs. Ward.
"He has only himself to blame, anyway."
But still Ward shook his head, and his wife looked at him with an
expression that showed her desire to help him out of his gloomy mood.
"You know you could have done nothing else than what you did do," she
said. "Criminals must be punished; there is no way out of it. You're
morbid--you shouldn't feel so."
But once more Ward gave that unconvinced shake of the head, and sighed.
"See here," said Elizabeth, with the sternness her father liked to have
her employ with him, "you stop this right away." She shook him by the
shoulder. "You make me feel as if I had done something wrong myself;
you'll have us all feeling that we belong to the criminal classes
ourselves."
"I've succeeded in making myself feel like a dog," Ward replied.
VIII
The county jail was in commotion. In the street outside a patrol wagon
was backed against the curb. The sleek coats of its bay horses were
moist with mist; and as the horses stamped fretfully in the slush, the
driver, muffled in his policeman's overcoat, spoke to them, begging them
to be patient, and each time looked back with a clouded face toward the
outer door of the jail. This door, innocent enough with its bright oak
panels and ground glass, was open. Inside, beyond the vestibule, beyond
another oaken door, stood Danner. He was in black, evidently his dress
for such occasions. He wore new, squeaking shoes, and his red face
showed the powder a barber had put on it half an hour before. On his
desk lay his overcoat, umbrella, and a small valise. The door of the
glass case on the wall, wherein were displayed all kinds of handcuffs,
nippers, squeezers, come-alongs and leather strait-jackets, together
with an impressive exhibit of monstrous steel keys, was open, and
several of its brass hooks were empty. Danner, as he stood in the middle
of the room, looked about as if to assure himself that he had forgotten
nothing, and then went to the window, drew out a revolver, broke it at
the breach, and carefully inspected its loads. That done, he snapped the
revolver together and slipped it into the holster that was slung to a
belt about his waist. He did not button the coat that concealed this
weapon. Then he looked through the window, saw the patrol wagon, took
out his watch and shouted angrily:
"For God's sake, Hal, hurry up!"
Danner's impatient admonition seemed to be directed through the great
barred door that opened off the other side of the office into the
prison, and from within there came the prompt and propitiatory reply of
the underling:
"All right, Jim, in a minute."
The open door, the evident preparation, the spirit of impending change,
the welcome break in the monotony of the jail's diurnal routine, all
were evidenced in the tumult that was going on beyond that huge gate of
thick steel bars. The voice of the under-turnkey had risen above the
din of other voices proceeding from the depths of hidden cells; there
was a constant shuffle of feet on cement floors, the rattle of keys, the
heavy tumbling of bolts, the clang and grating of steel as the shifting
of a lever opened and closed simultaneously all the doors of an entire
tier of cells. These noises seemed to excite the inmates, but presently
above the discord arose human cries, a chorus of good-bys, followed in a
moment by those messages that conventionally accompany all departures,
though these were delivered in all the various shades of sarcasm and
bitter irony.
"Good-by!"
"Remember us to the main screw!"
"Think of us when you get to the big house!"
Thus the voices called.
And then suddenly, one voice rose above the rest, a fine barytone voice
that would have been beautiful had not it taken on a tone of mockery as
it sang:
"We're going home! We're going home!
No more to sin and sorrow."
Then other voices took up the lines they had heard at the Sunday
services, and bawled the hymn in a horrible chorus. The sound
infuriated Danner, and he rushed to the barred door and shouted:
"Shut up! Shut up!" and he poured out a volume of obscene oaths. From
inside came yells, derisive in the safety of anonymity.
"You'll get nothing but bread and water for supper after that!" Danner
shouted back. He began to unlock the door, but, glancing at the desk,
changed his mind and turned and paced the floor.
But now the noise of the talking, the shuffle of feet on the concrete
floors, came nearer. The door of the prison was unlocked; it swung
back, and there marched forth, walking sidewise, with difficulty,
because they were all chained together, thirteen men. Two of the
thirteen, the first and last, were Gregg and Poole, under-turnkeys.
Utter, Danner's first assistant, came last, carefully locking the door
behind him.
"Line up here," said Danner angrily, "we haven't got all night!"
The men stood in a row, and Danner, leaning over his desk, began to
check off their names. There was the white-haired Delaney, who had
seven years for burglary; Johnson, a negro who had been given fifteen
years for cutting with intent to kill; Simmons, five years for grand
larceny; Gunning, four years for housebreaking; Schypalski, a Pole,
three years for arson; Graves, the employee of Ward, one year for
embezzlement; McCarthy, and Hayes his partner, five years each for
burglary and larceny; "Deacon" Samuel, an old thief, and "New York
Willie," alias "The Kid," a pickpocket, who had each seven years for
larceny from the person; and Brice, who had eight years for robbery.
These men were to be taken to the penitentiary. Nearly all of them were
guilty of the crimes of which they had been convicted.
The sheriff had detailed Danner to escort these prisoners to the
penitentiary, as he sometimes did when he did not care to make the trip
himself. Gregg would accompany Danner, while Poole would go only as far
as the railway station. Danner was anxious to be off; these trips to
the state capital were a great pleasure to him, and he had that nervous
dread of missing the train which comes over most people as they are
about to start away for a holiday. He was anxious to get away from the
jail before anything happened to stay him; he was anxious to be on the
moving train, for until then he could not feel himself safe from some
sudden recall. He had been thinking all day of the black-eyed girl in a
brothel not three blocks from the penitentiary, whom he expected to see
that night after he had turned the prisoners over to the warden. He
could scarcely keep his mind off her long enough to make his entries in
the jail record and to see that he had all his mittimuses in proper
order.
The prisoners, standing there in a haggard row, wore the same clothes
they had had on when they appeared in court for sentence a few weeks
before; the same clothes they had had on when arrested. None of them,
of course, had any baggage. The little trinkets they had somehow
accumulated while in jail they had distributed that afternoon among
their friends who remained behind in the steel cages; all they had in
the world they had on their backs. Most of them were dressed miserably.
Gunning, indeed, who had been lying in jail since the previous June,
wore a straw hat, which made him so absurd that the Kid laughed when he
saw him, and said:
"That's a swell lid you've got on there, Gunny, my boy. I'm proud to
fill in with your mob."
Gunning tried to smile, and his face, already white with the prison
pallor, seemed to be made more ghastly by the mockery of mirth.
The Kid was well dressed, as well dressed as Graves, who still wore the
good clothes he had always loved. Graves was white, too, but not as yet
with the prison pallor. He tried to bear himself bravely; he did not
wish to break down before his companions, all of whom had longer
sentences to serve than he. He dreaded the ride through the familiar
streets where a short time before he had walked in careless liberty,
full of the joy and hope and ambition of youth. He knew that countless
memories would stalk those streets, rising up unexpectedly at every
corner, following him to the station with mows and jeers; he tried to
bear himself bravely, and he did succeed in bearing himself grimly, but
he had an aching lump in his throat that would not let him speak. It
had been there ever since that hour in the afternoon when his mother had
squeezed her face between the bars of his cell to kiss him good-by again
and again. The prison had been strangely still while she was there, and
for a long time after she went even the Kid had been quiet and had
forgotten his joshing and his ribaldry. Graves had tried to be brave
for his mother's sake, and now he tried to be brave for appearances'
sake. He envied Delaney and the negro, who took it all stolidly, and he
might have envied the Kid, who took it all humorously, if it had not
been for what the Kid had said to him that afternoon about his own
mother. But now the Kid was cheerful again, and kept up the spirits of
all of them. To Graves it was like some horrible dream; everything in
the room--Danner, the turnkeys, the exhibit of jailer's instruments on
the wall--was unreal to him--everything save the hat-band that hurt his
temples, and the aching lump in his throat. His eyes began to smart, his
vision was blurred; instinctively he started to lift his hand to draw
his hat farther down on his forehead, but something jerked, and
Schypalski moved suddenly; then he remembered the handcuffs. The Pole
was dumb under it all, but Graves knew how Schypalski had felt that
afternoon when the young wife whom he had married but six months before
was there; he had wept and grown mad until he clawed at the bars that
separated them, and then he had mutely pressed his face against them and
kissed the young wife's lips, just as Graves's mother had kissed him.
And then the young wife would not leave, and Danner had to come and drag
her away across the cement floor.
Johnson was stupefied; he had not known until that afternoon that he was
to be taken away so soon, and his wife had not known; she was to bring
the children on the next day to see him. For an hour Johnson had been
on the point of saying something; his lips would move, and he would lift
his eyes to Danner, but he seemed afraid to speak.
Meanwhile, Danner was making his entries and looking over his commitment
papers. The Kid had begun to talk with Deacon Samuel. He and the
Deacon had been working together and had been arrested for the same
crime, but Danner had separated them in the jail so they could not
converse, and they were together now for the first time since their
arrest. The Kid bent his body forward and leaned out of the line to
look down at the Deacon. The old thief was smooth-faced and wore
gold-rimmed spectacles. When the Kid caught his mild, solemn eye,
looking out benignly from behind his glasses, a smile spread over his
face, and he said:
"Well, old pard, we're fixed for the next five-spot."
"Yes," said the Deacon.
"How was it pulled off for you?" asked the Kid.
"Oh, it was the same old thing over again," replied the Deacon. "They
had us lagged before the trial, but they had to make a flash of some
kind, so they put up twelve suckers and then they put a rapper up, and
that settled it."
"There was nothing to it," said the Kid, in a tone that acquiesced in
all the Deacon had been saying. "It was that way with me. They were
out chewing the rag for five minutes, then they comes in, hands the
stiff to the old bloke in the rock, and he hands it to quills, who reads
it to me, and then the old punk-hunter made his spiel."
"Did he?" said the Deacon, interested. "He didn't to me; he just slung
it at me in a lump."
"Did Snaggles plant the slum?"
"Naw," said the Deacon, "the poke was cold and the thimble was a
phoney."
"Je's," exclaimed the Kid. "I never got wise! Well, then there was no
chance for him to spring us."
"No."
"It's tough to fall for a dead one," mused the Kid.
The other prisoners had been respectfully silent while these two thieves
compared notes, but their conversation annoyed Danner. He could not
understand what they were saying, and this angered him, and besides,
their talking interfered with his entries, for he was excessively
stupid.
"They gave me a young mouthpiece," the Kid was beginning, when Danner
raised his head and said:
"Now you fellows cut that out, do you hear? I want to get my work done
and start."
"I beg your pardon, papa," said the Kid; "we're anxious to start, too.
Did you engage a lower berth for me?"
The line of miserable men laughed, not with mirth so much as for the
sake of any diversion, and at the laugh Danner's face and neck colored a
deeper red. The Kid saw this change in color and went on:
"Please don't laugh, gentlemen; you're disturbing the main screw." And
then, lifting his eyebrows, he leaned forward a little and said: "Can't
I help you, papa?"
Danner paid no attention, but he was rapidly growing angry.
"I'd be glad to sling your ink for you, papa," the Kid went on, "and
anyway you'd better splice yourself in the middle of the line before we
start, or you might get lost. You know you're not used to traveling or
to the ways of the world--"
"Cheese it, Kid," said the Deacon warningly. But the spirit of deviltry
which he had never been able to resist, and indeed had never tried very
hard to resist, was upon the Kid, and he went on:
"Deac, pipe the preacher clothes! And the brand new kicks, and the
mush! They must have put him on the nut for ten ninety-eight."
"He'll soak you with a sap if you don't cheese it," said the Deacon.
"Oh, no, a nice old pappy guy like him wouldn't, would you?" the Kid
persisted. "He knows I'm speaking for his good. I want him to chain
himself to us so's he won't get lost; if he'd get away and fall off the
rattler, he'd never catch us again."
"Well, I could catch you all right," said Danner, stopping and looking
up.
"Why, my dear boy," said the Kid, "you couldn't track an elephant
through the snow."
The line laughed again, even the under-turnkeys could not repress their
smiles. But Danner made a great effort that showed in the changing hues
of scarlet that swept over his face, and he choked down his anger. He
put on his overcoat and picked up his satchel, and said:
"Come on, now."
Utter unlocked the outer doors, and the line of men filed out.
"Good-by, Bud," the Kid called to Utter. "If you ever get down to the
dump, look me up."
The others bade Utter good-by, for they all liked him, and as the line
shuffled down the stone steps the men eagerly inhaled the fresh air they
had not breathed for weeks, save for the few minutes consumed in going
over to the court-house and back, and a thrill of gladness momentarily
ran through the line. Then the Kid called out:
"Hold on, Danner!"
He halted suddenly, and so jerked the whole line to an abrupt
standstill. "I've left my mackintosh in my room!"
"If you don't shut up, I'll smash your jaw!"
The Kid's laugh rang out in the air.
"Yes, that'd be just about your size!" he said.
Danner turned quickly toward the Kid, but just at that instant a dark
fluttering form flew out of the misty gloom and enveloped Schypalski; it
was his wife, who had been waiting all the afternoon outside the jail.
She clung to the Pole, who was as surprised as any of them, and she wept
and kissed him in her Slavonic fashion,--wept and kissed as only the
Slavs can weep and kiss. Then Danner, when he realized what had
occurred, seized her and flung her aside.
"You damn bitch!" he said. "I'll show you!"
"That's right, Danner," said the Kid. "You've got some one your size
now! Soak her again."
Danner whirled, his anger loose now, and struck the Kid savagely in the
face. The line thrilled through its entire length; wild, vague hopes of
freedom suddenly blazed within the breasts of these men, and they tugged
at the chains that bound them. Utter, watching from the door, ran down
the walk, and Danner drew his revolver.
"Get into that wagon!" he shouted, and then he hurled after them another
mouthful of the oaths he always had ready. The little sensation ended,
the hope fell dead, and the prisoners moved doggedly on. In a second
the Kid had recovered himself, and then, speaking thickly, for the blood
in his mouth, he said in a low voice:
"Danner, you coward, I'll serve you out for that, if I get the chair for
it!"
It was all still there in the gloom and the misty rain, save for the
shuffle of the feet, the occasional click of a handcuff chain, and
presently the sobbing of the Polish woman rising from the wet ground.
Danner hustled his line along, and a moment later they were clambering
up the steps of the patrol wagon.
"Well, for God's sake!" exclaimed the driver, "I thought you'd never get
here! Did you want to keep these horses standing out all night in the
wet?"
The men took their seats inside, those at the far end having to hold
their hands across the wagon because they were chained together, and the
wagon jolted and lurched as the driver started his team and went bowling
away for the station. The Pole was weeping.
"The poor devil!" said the pickpocket. "That's a pretty little broad he
has. Can't you fellows do something for him? Give him a
cigarette--or--a chew--or--something." Their resources of comfort were
so few that the Kid could think of nothing more likely.
Just behind the patrol wagon came a handsome brougham, whose progress
for an instant through the street which saw so few equipages of its rank
had been stayed by the patrol wagon, moving heavily about before it
started. The occupants of the brougham had seen the line come out of
the jail, had seen it halt, had seen Danner fling the Polish woman aside
and strike the pickpocket in the face; they had seen the men hustled
into the patrol wagon, and now, as it followed after, Elizabeth Ward
heard a voice call impudently:
"All aboard for the stir!"
IX
The patrol wagon bowled rapidly onward, and the brougham followed
rapidly behind. The early darkness of the winter afternoon was
enveloping the world, and in the damp and heavy air the roar of the city
was intensified. The patrol wagon turned into Franklin Street and
disappeared in the confusion of vehicles. The street was crowded;
enormous trucks clung obstinately to the car tracks and only wrenched
themselves away when the clamor of the gongs became desperate, their
drivers swearing at the motormen, flinging angry glances at them. The
trolley-cars swept by, filled with shop-girls, clerks, working-men,
business men hanging to straps, reading evening papers in the brilliant
electric lights; men clung to the broad rear platforms; at every
crossing others attached themselves to these dark masses of humanity,
swarming like insects. The sidewalks were crowded, and, as far as one
could see, umbrellas balanced in the glistening mist.
The brougham of the Wards succeeded presently in crossing Franklin
Street.
"They were taking them to the penitentiary!" said Elizabeth, speaking
for the first time.
"I presume they were," said her mother.
"Harry Graves was among them," Elizabeth went on, staring widely before
her, her tone low and level.
Mrs. Ward turned her head.
"I saw his face--it stood out among the rest. I can never forget it!"
She sat with her gloved hands in her lap. Her mother did not speak, but
she looked at her.
"And that man--that big, brutal man, throwing that woman down, and then
striking that man in the face!"
Mrs. Ward, not liking to encourage her daughter's mood, did not speak.
"Oh, it makes me sick!"
Elizabeth stretched forth her hand, drew a cut-glass bottle from its
case beside the little carriage clock and mirror, and, sinking back in
her cushioned corner, inhaled the stimulating odor of the salts. Then
her mother stiffened and said:
"I don't know what Barker means, driving us down this way where we have
to endure such sights. You must control yourself, dear, and not allow
disagreeable things to get on your nerves."
"But think of that poor boy, and the man who was struck, and that
woman!"
"Probably they can not feel as keenly as--"
"And think of all those men! Oh, their faces! Their faces! I can
never forget them!"
Elizabeth continued to inhale the salts, her mind deeply intent on the
scene she had just witnessed. They were drawing near to Claybourne
Avenue now, and Mrs. Ward's spirits visibly improved at the sight of its
handsome lamp posts and the carriages flashing by, their rubber tires
rolling softly on the wet asphalt.
"Well," she exclaimed, settling back on the cushions, "this is better!
I don't know what Barker was thinking of! He's very stupid at times!"
The carriage joined the procession of other equipages of its kind. They
had left the street at the end of which could be seen the court-house
and the jail. The jail was blazing now with light, its iron bars
showing black across its illumined windows. And beyond the jail, as if
kept at bay by it, a huddle of low buildings stretched crazily along
Mosher's Lane, a squalid street that preserved in irony the name of one
of the city's earliest, richest and most respectable citizens, long
since deceased. The Lane twinkled with the bright lights of saloons,
the dim lights of pawnshops, the red lights of brothels--the slums,
dark, foul, full of disease and want and crime. Along the streets
passed and repassed shadowy, fugitive forms, negroes, Jews, men, and
women, and children, ragged, unkempt, pinched by cold and hunger. But
above all this, above the turmoil of Franklin Street and the reeking
life of the slums behind it, above the brilliantly lighted jail, stood
the court-house, gray in the dusk, its four corners shouldering out the
sky, its low dome calmly poised above the town.
X
"And how is your dear mother?" Miss Masters turned to Eades and wrought
her wry face into a smile. Her black eyes, which she seemed able to make
sparkle at will, were fixed on him; her black-gloved hands were crossed
primly in her lap, as she sat erect on the stiff chair Elizabeth Ward
had given her.
"She's pretty well, thanks," said Eades. He had always disliked Miss
Masters, but he disliked her more than ever this Sunday afternoon in
April when he found her at the Wards'. It was a very inauspicious
beginning of his spring vacation, to which, after his hard work of the
winter term, he had looked forward with sentiments as tender as the
spring itself, just beginning to show in the sprightly green that dotted
the maple trees along Claybourne Avenue.
"And your sister?"
"She is very well, too."
"Dear me!" the ugly little woman ran on, speaking with the affectation
she had cultivated for years enough to make it natural at last to her.
"It has been so long since I've seen either of them! I told mama to-day
that I didn't go to see even my old friends any more. Of course," she
added, lowering her already low tone to a level of hushed deprecation,
"we never go to see any of the new-comers; and lately there are so many,
one hardly knows the old town. Still, I feel that we of the old
families understand each other and are sufficient unto ourselves, as it
were, even if we allow years to elapse without seeing each other--don't
you, dear?" She turned briskly toward Elizabeth.
Eades had hoped to find Elizabeth alone, and he felt it to be peculiarly
annoying that Miss Masters, whose exclusiveness kept her from visiting
even her friends of the older families, should have chosen for her
exception this particular Sunday afternoon out of all the other Sunday
afternoons at her command. He had found it impossible to talk with
Elizabeth in the way he had expected to talk to her, and he was so out
of sorts that he could not talk to Miss Masters, though that maiden
aristocrat of advancing years, strangely stimulated by his presence,
seemed efficient enough to do all the talking herself.
Elizabeth was trying to find a position that would give her comfort,
without denoting any lapse from the dignity of posture due a family that
had been known in that city for nearly fifty years. But repose was
impossible to her that afternoon, and she nervously kept her hands in
motion, now grasping the back of her chair, now knitting them in her
lap, now raising one to her brow; once she was on the point of clasping
her knee, but this impulse frightened her so that she quickly pressed
her belt down, drew a deep breath, resolutely sat erect, crossed her
hands unnaturally in her lap, and smiled courageously at her visitors.
Eades noted how firm her hands were, and how white; they were indicative
of strength and character. She held her head a little to one side,
keeping up her pale smile of interest for Miss Masters, and Eades
thought that he should always think of her as she sat thus, in her soft
blue dress, her eyes winking rapidly, her dark hair parting of its own
accord.
"And how do you like your new work, Mr. Eades?" Miss Masters was asking
him, and then, without waiting for a reply, she went on: "Do you know, I
believe I have not seen you since your election to congratulate you.
But we've been keeping watch; we have seen what the papers said."
She smiled suggestively, and Eades inclined his head to acknowledge her
tribute.
"I think we are to be congratulated on having you in that position. I
think it is very encouraging to find some of our _best_ people in public
office."
There was a tribute surely in the emphasis she placed on the adjective,
and Eades inclined his head again.
"I really think it was noble in you to accept. It must be very
disagreeable to be brought in contact with--you know!" She smiled and
nodded as if she could not speak the word. "And you have been so brave
and courageous through it all--you are surely to be admired!"
Eades felt suddenly that Miss Masters was not so bad after all; he
relished this appreciation, which he took as an evidence of the opinion
prevailing in the best circles. He recalled a conversation he had
lately had with Elizabeth on this very subject, and, with a sudden
impulse to convict her, he said:
"I'm afraid Miss Ward will hardly agree with you."
Miss Masters turned to Elizabeth with an expression of incredulity and
surprise.
"Oh, I am sure--" she began.
"I believe she considers me harsh and cruel," Eades went on, smiling,
but looking intently at Elizabeth.
"Oh, Mr. Eades is mistaken," she said; "I'm sure I agree with all the
nice things that are said of him."
She detested the weakness of her quick retreat; and she detested more
the immediate conviction that it came from a certain fear of Eades. She
was beginning to feel a kind of mastery in his mere presence, so that
when she was near him she felt powerless to oppose him. The arguments
she always had ready for others, or for him--when he was gone--seemed
invariably to fail her when he was near; she had even gone to the length
of preparing them in advance for him, but when he came, when she saw
him, she could not even state them, and when she tried, they seemed so
weak and puerile and ineffectual as to deserve nothing more serious than
the tolerant smile with which he received and disposed of them. And
now, as this weakness came over her, she felt a fear, not for any of her
principles, which, after all, were but half-formed and superficial, but
a fear for herself, for her own being, and she was suddenly grateful for
Miss Masters's presence. Still, Eades and Miss Masters seemed to be
waiting, and she must say something.
"It's only this," she said. "Not long ago I saw officers taking some
prisoners to the penitentiary. I can never forget the faces of those
men."
Over her sensitive countenance there swept the memory of a pain, and she
had the effect of sinking in her straight chair. But Eades was gazing
steadily at her, a smile on his strong face, and Miss Masters was
saying:
"But, dear me! The penitentiary is the place for such people, isn't it,
Mr. Eades?"
"I think so," said Eades. His eyes were still fixed on Elizabeth, and
she looked away, groping in her mind for some other subject. Just then
the hall bell rang.
Elizabeth was glad, for it was Marriott, and as she took his hand and
said simply, "Ah, Gordon," the light faded from Eades's face.
Marriott's entrance dissolved the situation of a moment before. He
brought into the drawing-room, dimming now in the fading light, a new
atmosphere, something of the air of the spring. Miss Masters greeted
him with a manner divided between a certain distance, because Marriott
had not been born in that city, and a certain necessary approach to his
mere deserts as a man. Marriott did not notice this, but dropped on to
the divan. Elizabeth had taken a more comfortable chair. Marriott,
plainly, was not in the formal Sunday mood, just as he was not in the
formal Sunday dress. He had taken in Eades's frock-coat and white
waistcoat at a glance, and then looked down at his own dusty boots.
"I've been hard at work to-day, Elizabeth," he said, turning to her with
a smile.
"Working! You must remember the Sabbath day to keep it--"
"The law wasn't made for lawyers, was it, John?" He appealed suddenly
to Eades, whose conventionality he always liked to shock, and Elizabeth
smiled, and Eades became very dignified.
"I've been out to see our old friends, the Koerners," Marriott went on.
"Oh, tell me about them!" said Elizabeth, leaning forward with eager
interest. "How is Gusta?"
"Gusta's well, and prettier than ever. Jove! What a beauty that girl
is!"
"Isn't she pretty?" said Elizabeth. "She was a delight in the house for
that very reason. And how is poor old Mr. Koerner--and all of them?"
"Well," said Marriott, "Koerner's amputated leg is all knotted up with
rheumatism."
Miss Masters's dark face was pinched in a scowl.
"And Archie's in jail."
"In jail!" Elizabeth dropped back in her chair.
"Yes, in jail."
"Why! What for?"
"Well, he seems to belong to a gang that was arrested day before
yesterday for something or other."
"There, Mr. Eades," said Elizabeth suddenly, "there now, you must let
Archie Koerner go."
"Oh, I'll not let John get a chance at him," said Marriott. "He's
charged with a misdemeanor only--he'll go to the workhouse, if he goes
anywhere."
"And you'll defend him?"
"Oh, I suppose so," said Marriott wearily. "You've given me a whole
family of clients, Elizabeth. I went out to see the old man about his
case--I think we'll try it early this term."
"These Koerners are a family in whom I've been interested," Elizabeth
suddenly thought to explain to Miss Masters, and then she told them of
Gusta, of old Koerner's accident, and of Archie's career as a soldier.
"They've had a hard winter of it," said Marriott "The old man, of
course, can't work, and Archie, by his experience as a soldier, seems to
have been totally unfitted for everything--except shooting--and shooting
is against the law."
Now that the conversation had taken this turn, Miss Masters moved to go.
She bade Marriott farewell coldly, and Eades warmly, and Elizabeth went
with her into the hall. Eades realized that all hope of a tete-a-tete
with Elizabeth had departed, and he and Marriott not long afterward left
to walk down town together. The sun was warm for the first time in
months, and the hope of the spring had brought the people out of doors.
Claybourne Avenue was crowded with carriages in which families solemnly
enjoyed their Sunday afternoon drives, as they had enjoyed their
stupefying dinners of roast beef four hours before. Electric
automobiles purred past, and now and then a huge touring car, its driver
in his goggles resembling some demon, plunged savagely along, its horn
honking hoarsely at every street crossing. The sidewalks were thronged
with pedestrians, young men whose lives had no other diversion than to
parade in their best clothes or stand on dusty down-town corners, smoke
cigars and watch the girls that tilted past.
"That Miss Masters is a fool," said Marriott, when they had got away
from the house.
"Yes, she is," Eades assented. "She was boring Miss Ward to death."
"Poor Elizabeth!" said Marriott with a little laugh. "She is so patient,
and people do afflict her so."
Eades did not like the way in which Marriott could speak of Elizabeth,
any more than he liked to hear Elizabeth address Marriott as Gordon.
"I see the _Courier_ gave you a fine send-off this morning," Marriott
went on. "What a record you made! Not a single acquittal the whole
term!"
Eades made no reply. He was wondering if Elizabeth had seen the
_Courier's_ editorial. In the morning he thought he would send her a
bunch of violets, and Tuesday--
"Your course is most popular," Marriott went on. And Eades looked at
him; he could not always understand Marriott, and he did not like to
have him speak of his course as if he had deliberately chosen it as a
mere matter of policy.
"It's the right course," he said significantly.
"Oh, I suppose so," Marriott replied. "Still--I really can't
congratulate you when I think of those poor devils--"
"I haven't a bit of sympathy for them," said Eades coldly. This, he
thought, was where Elizabeth got those strange, improper notions.
Marriott should not be permitted--
Just then, in an automobile tearing by, they saw Dick Ward, and Eades
suddenly recalled a scene he had witnessed in the club the day before.
"That young fellow's going an awful gait," he said suddenly.
"Who, Dick?"
"Yes, I saw him in the club yesterday--"
"I know," said Marriott. "It's a shame. He's a nice little chap."
"Can't you do something for him? He seems to like you."
"What can I do?"
"Well, can't you--speak to him?"
"I never could preach," said Marriott.
"Well," said Eades helplessly, "it's too bad."
"Yes," said Marriott; "it would break their hearts--Ward's and
Elizabeth's."
XI
The Koerners, indeed, as Marriott said, had had a hard winter. The old
man, sustained at first by a foolish optimism, had expected that his
injury would be compensated immediately by heavy damages from the
railroad he had served so long. Marriott had begun suit, and then the
law began the slow and wearisome unfolding of its interminable delays.
Weeks and months went by and nothing was done. Koerner sent for
Marriott, and Marriott explained--the attorneys for the railroad company
had filed a demurrer, the docket was full, the case would not be reached
for a long time. Koerner could not understand; finally, he began to
doubt Marriott; some of his neighbors, with the suspicion natural to the
poor, hinted that Marriott might have been influenced by the company.
Koerner's leg, too, gave him incessant pain. All winter long he was
confined to the house, and the family grew tired of his monotonous
complainings. To add to this, Koerner was now constantly dunned by the
surgeon and by the authorities of the hospital; the railroad refused to
pay these bills because Koerner had brought suit; the bills, to a frugal
German like Koerner, were enormous, appalling.
The Koerners, a year before, had bought the house in which they lived,
borrowing the money from a building and loan association. The agent of
the association, who had been so kind and obliging before the mortgage
was signed, was now sharp and severe; he had lately told Koerner that
unless he met the next instalment of interest he would set the family
out in the street.
Koerner had saved some money from his wages, small as they were; but
this was going fast. During the winter Mrs. Koerner, though still
depressed and ill, had begun to do washings; the water, splashing over
her legs from the tubs in the cold wood-shed day after day, had given
her rheumatism. Gusta helped, of course, but with all they could do it
was hard to keep things going. Gusta tried to be cheerful, but this was
the hardest work of all; she often thought of the pleasant home of the
Wards, and wished she were back there. She would have gone back,
indeed, and given her father her wages, but there was much to do at
home--the children to look after, the house to keep, the meals to get,
the washings to do, and her father's leg to dress. Several times she
consulted Marriott about the legal entanglements into which the family
was being drawn; Marriott was wearied with the complications--the damage
suit, the mortgage, the threatened actions for the doctor's bills. The
law seemed to be snarling the Koerners in every one of its meshes, and
the family was settling under a Teutonic melancholia.
Just at this time the law touched the family at another point--Archie
was arrested. For a while he had sought work, but his experience in the
army had unfitted him for every normal calling; he had acquired a taste
for excitement and adventure, and no peaceful pursuit could content him.
He would not return to the army because he had too keen a memory of the
indignities heaped on a common soldier by officers who had been trained
from youth to an utter disregard of all human relations save those that
were unreal and artificial. He had learned but one thing in the army,
and that was to shoot, and he could shoot well. Somehow he had secured
a revolver, a large one, thirty-eight caliber, and with this he was
constantly practising.
Because Archie would not work, Koerner became angry with him; he was
constantly remonstrating with him and urging him to get something to do.
Archie took all his father's reproaches with his usual good nature, but
as the winter wore slowly on and the shadow of poverty deepened in the
home, the old man became more and more depressed, his treatment of his
son became more and more bitter. Finally Archie stayed away from home
to escape scolding. He spent his evenings in Nussbaum's saloon, where,
because he had been a soldier in the Philippines and was attractive and
good looking, he was a great favorite and presently a leader of the
young men who spent their evenings there. These young men were workers
in a machine shop; they had a baseball club called the "Vikings," and in
summer played games in the parks on Sundays. In the winter they spent
their evenings in the saloon, the only social center accessible to them;
here, besides playing pool, they drank beer, talked loudly, laughed
coarsely, sang, and now and then fought, very much like Vikings indeed.
Later, roaming down town to Market Place, Archie made other
acquaintances, and these young men were even more like Vikings. They
were known as the Market Place gang, and they made their headquarters in
Billy Deno's saloon, though they were well known in all the little
saloons around the four sides of the Market. They were known, too, at
the police station, which stood grimly overlooking Market Place, for
they had committed many petty raids, and most of them had served terms
in the workhouse. One by one they were being sent to the penitentiary,
a distinction they seemed to prize, or which their fellows seemed to
prize in them when they got back. The gang had certain virtues,--it
stuck together; if a member was in trouble, the other members were all
willing to do anything to help him out. Usually this willingness took
the form of appearing in police court and swearing to an alibi, but they
had done this service so often that the police-court habitues and
officials smiled whenever they appeared. Their testimonies never
convinced the judge; but they were imperturbable and ever ready to
commit perjury in the cause.
When Archie was out of money he could not buy cartridges for his
revolver, and he discovered by chance one afternoon, when he had drifted
into a little shooting gallery, that the proprietor was glad to give him
cartridges in return for an exhibition with the revolver, for the
exhibition drew a crowd, and the boozy sailors who lounged along the
Market in the evening were fascinated by Archie's skill and forthwith
emulated it. It was in this way that Archie met the members of the
Market Place gang, and finding them stronger, braver, more enterprising
spirits than the Vikings, he became one of them, spent his days and
nights with them, and visited Nussbaum's no more. He became the fast
friend of Spud Healy, the leader of the gang, and in this way he came to
be arrested.
Besides Archie and Spud Healy, Red McGuire, Butch Corrigan, John Connor
and Mike Nailor were arrested. A Market Place grocer had missed a box
of dried herrings, reported it to the police, and the police, of course,
had arrested on suspicion such of the gang as they could find.
Archie's arrest was a blow to Koerner. He viewed the matter from the
German standpoint, just as he viewed everything, even after his
thirty-seven years in America. It was a blow to his German reverence
for law, a reverence which his own discouraging experience of American
law could not impair, and it was a blow to his German conception of
parental authority; he denounced Archie, declaring that he would do
nothing for him even if he could.
Gusta, in the great love she had for Archie, felt an instant desire to
go to him, but when she mentioned this, her father turned on her so
fiercely that she did not dare mention it again. On Monday morning,
when her work was done, Gusta, dressing herself in the clothes she had
not often had occasion to wear during the winter, stole out of the house
and went down town,--a disobedience in which she was abetted by her
mother. Half an hour later Gusta was standing bewildered in the main
entrance of the Market Place Police Station. The wide hall was vacant,
the old and faded signs on the walls, bearing in English and in German
instructions for police-court witnesses, could not aid her. From all
over the building she heard noises of various activities,--the hum of
the police court, the sound of voices, from some near-by room a laugh.
She went on and presently found an open door, and within she saw several
officers in uniform, with handsome badges on their breasts and stars on
the velvet collars of their coats. As she hesitated before this door, a
policeman noticed her, and his coarse face lighted up with a suggestive
expression as he studied the curves of her figure. He planted himself
directly in front of her, his big figure blocking the way.
"I'd like to speak to my brother, if I can," said Gusta. "He's
arrested."
She colored and her eyes fell. The policeman's eyes gleamed.
"What's his name, Miss?" he asked.
"Archie Koerner."
"What's he in fer?"
"I can't tell you, sir."
The policeman looked at her boldly, and then he took her round arm in
his big hand and turned her toward the open door.
"Inspector," he said, "this girl wants to see her brother. What's his
name?" he asked again, turning to Gusta.
"Koerner, sir," said Gusta, speaking to the scowling inspector, "Archie
Koerner."
Inspector McFee, an old officer who had been on the police force for
twenty-five years, eyed her suspiciously. His short hair was dappled
with gray, and his mustache was clipped squarely and severely on a level
with his upper lip. Gusta had even greater fear of him than she had of
the policeman, who now released his hold of her arm. Instinctively she
drew away from him.
"Archie Koerner, eh?" said the inspector in a gruff voice.
At the name, a huge man, swart and hairy, in civilian's dress, standing
by one of the big windows, turned suddenly and glowered at Gusta from
under thick black eyebrows. His hair, black and coarse and closely
clipped, bristled almost low enough on his narrow forehead to meet his
heavy brows. He had a flat nose, and beneath, half encircling his
broad, deep mouth, was a black mustache, stubbed and not much larger
than his eyebrows. His jaw was square and heavy. A gleam showed in his
small black eyes and gave a curiously sinister aspect to his black
visage.
"What's that about Koerner?" he said, coming forward aggressively.
Gusta shrank from him. She felt herself in the midst of powerful, angry
foes.
"You say he's your brother?" asked the inspector.
"Yes, sir."
"What do you want of him?"
"Oh, I just want to see him, sir," Gusta said. "I just want to talk to
him a minute--that's all, sir."
Her blue eyes were swimming with tears.
"Hold on a minute," said the man of the dark visage. He went up to the
inspector, whispered to him a moment. The inspector listened, finally
nodded, then took up a tube that hung by his desk and blew into it. Far
away a whistle shrilled.
"Let this girl see Koerner," he said, speaking into the tube, "in
Kouka's presence." Then, dropping the tube, he said to Gusta:
"Go down-stairs--you can see him."
The policeman took her by the arm again, and led her down the hall and
down the stairs to the turnkey's room. The turnkey unlocked a heavy
door and tugged it open; inside, in a little square vestibule, Gusta saw
a dim gas-jet burning. The turnkey called:
"Koerner!"
Then he turned to Gusta and said:
"This way."
She went timidly into the vestibule and found herself facing a heavy
door, crossed with iron bars. On the other side of the bars was the
face of Archie.
"Hello, Gusta," he said.
She had lifted her skirts a little; the floor seemed to her unclean.
The odor of disinfectants, which, strong as it was, could not overpower
the other odors it was intended to annihilate, came strongly to her.
Through the bars she had a glimpse of high whitewashed walls, pierced
near the top with narrow windows dirty beyond all hope. On the other
side was a row of cells, their barred doors now swinging open. Along
the wall miserable figures were stretched on a bench. Far back, where
the prison grew dark as night, other figures slouched, and she saw
strange, haggard faces peering curiously at her out of the gloom.
"Hello, Gusta," Archie said.
She felt that she should take his hand, but she disliked to thrust it
through the bars. Still she did so. In slipping her hand through to
take Archie's hand it touched the iron, which was cold and soft as if
with some foul grease.
"Oh, Archie," she said, "what has happened?"
"Search me," he said, "I don't know what I'm here for. Ask Detective
Kouka there. He run me in."
Gusta turned. The black-visaged man was standing beside her. Archie
glared at the detective in open hatred, and Kouka sneered but controlled
himself, and looked away as if, after all, he were far above such
things.
Then they were silent, for Gusta could not speak.
"How did you hear of the pinch?" asked Archie presently.
"Mrs. Schopfle was in--she told us," replied Gusta.
"What did the old man say?"
"Oh, Archie! He's awful mad!"
Archie hung his head and meditatively fitted the toe of his boot into
one of the squares made by the crossed bars at the bottom of the door.
"Say, Gusta," he said, "you tell him I'm in wrong; will you? Honest to
God, I am!"
He raised his face suddenly and held it close to the bars.
"I will, Archie," she said.
"And how's ma?"
"Oh, she's pretty well." Gusta could not say the things she wished; she
felt the presence of Kouka.
"Say, Gusta," said Archie, "see Mr. Marriott; tell him to come down
here; I want him to take my case. I'll work and pay him when I get out.
Say, Gusta," he went on, "tell him to come down this afternoon. My God,
I've got to get out of here! Will you? You know where his office is?"
"I'll find it," said Gusta.
"It's in the Wayne Building."
Gusta tried to look at Archie; she tried to keep her eyes on his face,
on his tumbled yellow hair, on his broad shoulders, broader still
because his coat and waistcoat were off, and his white throat was
revealed by his open shirt. But she found it hard, because her eyes
were constantly challenged by the sights beyond--the cell doors, the men
sleeping off their liquor, the restless figures that haunted the
shadows, the white faces peering out of the gloom. The smell that came
from within was beginning to sicken her.
"Oh, Archie," she said, "it must be awful in there!"
Archie became suddenly enraged
"Awful?" he said. "It's hell! This place ain't fit for a dog to stay
in. Why, Gusta, it's alive--it's crawlin'! That's what it is! I didn't
sleep a wink last night! Not a wink! Say, Gusta," he grasped the bars,
pressed his face against them, "see Mr. Marriott and tell him to get me
out of here. Will you? See him, will you?"
"I will, Archie," she said. "Ill go right away."
She was eager now to leave, for she had already turned sick with
loathing.
"And say, Gusta," Archie said, "get me some cigarettes and send 'em down
by Marriott."
"All right," she said. She was backing away.
"Good-by," he called. The turnkey was locking the door on him.
Outside, Gusta leaned a moment against the wall of the building,
breathing in the outdoor air; presently she went on, but it was long
before she could cleanse her mouth of the taste or her nostrils of the
odor of the foul air of that prison in which her brother was locked.
XII
Gusta hurried out of the alley as fast as she could go; she wished to
get away from the police station, and to forget the faces of those men
in prison. It was now nine o'clock and the activity of the Market was
waning; the few gardener's wagons that lingered with the remnants of
their loads were but a suggestion of the hundreds of wagons that had
packed the square before the dawn. Under the shed, a block long, a
constable was offering at public vendue the household goods of some
widow who had been evicted; the torn and rusty mattresses, broken chairs
and an old bed were going for scarcely enough to pay the costs; a
little, blue-bearded man, who had forced the sale, stood by sharply
watching, ready to bid the things in himself if the dealers in
second-hand furniture should not offer enough. Gusta hurried on, past
butcher-shops, past small saloons, and she hurried faster because every
one--the policemen, the second-hand dealers, the drivers of the
market-wagons, the butchers in their blood-stained smock frocks--turned
to look at her. It was three blocks to the Wayne Building, rearing its
fifteen stories aloft from the roaring tide of business at its feet, and
Gusta was glad to lose herself in the crowds that swarmed along the
street.
The waiting-room of Marriott's office was filled; the door which was
lettered with his name was closed, and Gusta had to wait. She joined
the group that sat silent in the chairs along the walls, and watched the
girl with the yellow hair at the typewriter. The girl's white fingers
twinkled over the keys; the little bell tinkled and the girl snatched
back the carriage of the machine with a swift grating sound; she wrote
furiously, and Gusta was fascinated. She wished she might be a
typewriter; it must be so much easier to sit here in this pleasant,
sunlit office, high above the cares and turmoil of the world, and write
on that beautiful machine; so much easier than to toil in a poor,
unhappy home with a mother ill, a father maimed and racked by pains so
that he was always morose and cross, a brother in jail, and always
work--the thankless task of washing at a tub, of getting meals when
there was little food to get them with. Gusta thought she might master
the machine, but no--her heart sank--she could not spell nor understand
all the long words the lawyers used, so that was hopeless.
After a while the door marked "Mr. Marriott" opened, and a man stepped
out, a well-dressed man, with an air of prosperousness; he glanced at
the yellow-haired typewriter as he passed out of the office. Marriott
was standing in his door, looking at the line of waiting clients; his
face was worn and tired. He seemed to hesitate an instant, then he
nodded to one of the waiting women, and she rose and entered the private
office. Just as Marriott was closing the door, he saw Gusta and smiled,
and Gusta was cheered; it was the first friendly smile she had seen that
day.
She had to wait two hours. The men did not detain Marriott long, but
the women remained in his private office an interminable time, and
whenever he opened his door to dismiss one of them, he took out his
watch and looked at it. At last, however, when all had gone, he said:
"Well, Gusta, what can I do for you?" He dropped into his chair, swung
round to face her, rested one elbow on the top of the desk and leaned
his head in his hand.
"I came to see about Archie."
Marriott felt the deadly ennui that came over him at the thought of
these petty criminal cases. The crimes were so small, so stupid, and so
squalid, they had nothing to excuse them, not even the picturesque
quality of adventure that by some sophistry might extenuate crimes of a
more enterprising and dangerous class. They were so hopeless, too, and
Marriott could hardly keep a straight face while he defended the
perpetrators, and yet he allowed himself to be drawn into them; he found
himself constantly pleading for some poor devil who had neither money to
pay him nor the decency to thank him. Sometimes he wondered why he did
it, and whenever he wondered he decided that he would never take another
such case. Then the telephone would ring, and before he knew it he
would be in police court making another poor devil's cause his own,
while more important litigation must wait--for the petty criminals were
always in urgent need; the law would not stay for them nor abide their
convenience; with them it was imperative, implacable, insistent, as if
to dress the balance for its delay and complaisance with its larger
criminals. Marriott often thought it over, and he had thought enough to
recognize in these poor law-breakers a certain essential innocence; they
were so sublimely foolish, so illogical, they made such lavish sacrifice
of all that was best in their natures; they lived so hardly, so
desperately; they paid such tremendous prices and got so little; they
were so unobservant, they learned nothing by experience. And yet with
one another they were so kind, so considerate, so loyal, that it seemed
hard to realize that they could be so unkind and so disloyal to the rest
of mankind. In his instinctive love of human nature, their very
hopelessness and helplessness appealed to him.
"Mr. Marriott, do you think he is guilty?" Gusta was asking.
"Guilty?" said Marriott, automatically repeating the word. "Guilty?
What difference does that make?"
"Oh, Mr. Marriott!" the girl exclaimed, her blue eyes widening.
"Surely, it makes all the difference in the world!"
"To you?"
"Why--yes--shouldn't it?"
"No, it shouldn't, Gusta, and what's more, it doesn't. And it doesn't to
me, either. You don't want him sent to prison even if he is guilty, do
you?"
"N--no," Gusta hesitated as she assented to the heresy.
"No, of course you don't. Because, Gusta, we know him--we know he's all
right, don't we, no matter what he has done? Just as we know that we
ourselves are all right when we do bad things--isn't that it?"
The girl was sitting with her yellow head bent; she was trying to think.
"But father would say--"
"Oh, yes," Marriott laughed, "father would say and grandfather would
say, too--that's just the trouble. Father got his notions from the Old
World, but we--Gusta, we know more than father or grandfather in this
country."
Marriott enjoyed the discomfiture that Gusta plainly showed in her
inability to understand in the least what he was saying. He felt a
little mean about it, for he recognized that he was speaking for his own
benefit rather than for hers; he had wished Elizabeth might be there to
hear him.
"I don't know much about it, Mr. Marriott," Gusta said presently, "but
when will you go to see him?"
"Oh, I'll try to get down this afternoon."
"All right. He told me to ask you please to bring him some cigarettes.
Of course," she was going on in an apologetic tone, but Marriott cut her
short:
"Oh, he wants cigarettes? Well, I'll take them to him."
Then they talked the futilities which were all such a case could
inspire, and Marriott, looking at his watch, made Gusta feel that she
should go. But the world wore a new aspect for her when she left
Marriott's office. The spring sun was warm now, and she felt that she
had the right to glory in it. The crowds in the streets seemed human
and near, not far away and strange as they had been before; she felt
that she had somehow been restored to her own rights in life. She had
not understood Marriott's philosophy in the least, but she went away
with the memory of his face and the memory of his smile; she could not
realize her thoughts; it was a feeling more than anything else, but she
knew that here was one man, at least, who believed in her brother, and
it seemed that he was determined to believe in him no matter what the
brother did; and he believed in her, too, and this was everything--this
made the whole world glad, just as the sun made the whole world glad
that morning.
But Gusta's heart sank at the thought of going home; there was nothing
there now but discord and toil. The excitement, the change of the
morning, the little interview with Marriott, had served to divert her,
and now the thought of returning to that dull and wearisome routine was
more than ever distasteful. It was nearly noon, and she would be
expected, but she did not like to lose these impressions, and she did
not like to leave this warm sunshine, these busy, moving streets, this
contact with active life, and so she wandered on out Claybourne Avenue.
There was slowly taking form within her a notion of eking out her
pleasure by going to see Elizabeth Ward, but she did not let the thought
wholly take form; rather she let it lie dormant under her other
thoughts. She walked along in the sunlight and looked at the
automobiles that went trumpeting by, at the carriages rolling home with
their aristocratic mistresses lolling on their cushions. Gusta found a
pleasure in recognizing many of these women; she had opened the Wards'
big front door to them, she had served them with tea, or at dinner; she
had heard their subdued laughter; she had covertly inspected their
toilets; some of them had glanced for an instant into her eyes and
thanked her for some little service. And then she could recall things
she had heard them say, bits of gossip, or scandal, some of which gave
her pleasure, others feelings of hatred and disgust. A rosy young
matron drove by in a phaeton, with her pretty children piled about her
feet, and the sight pleased Gusta. She smiled and hurried on with
quickened step.
At last she saw the familiar house, and then to her joy she saw
Elizabeth on the veranda, leaning against one of the pillars, evidently
taking the air, enjoying the sun and the spring. Elizabeth saw Gusta,
too, and her eyes brightened.
"Why, Gusta!" she said. "Is that you?"
Gusta stood on the steps and looked up at Elizabeth. Her face was rosy
with embarrassment and pleasure. Elizabeth perched on the rail of the
veranda and examined the vine of Virginia roses that had not yet begun
to put forth.
"And how are you getting along?" she said. "How are they all at home?"
Gusta told her of her father and of her mother and of the children.
Elizabeth tried to talk to her; she was fond of her, but there seemed to
be nothing to talk about. She knew, too, how Gusta adored her, and she
felt that she must always retain this adoration, and constantly prove
her kindness to Gusta. But the conversation was nothing but a series of
questions she extorted from herself by a continued effort that quickly
wearied her, especially as Gusta's replies were delivered so promptly
and so laconically that she could not think of other questions fast
enough. At last she said:
"And how's Archie?"
And then instantly she remembered that Archie was in prison. Her heart
smote her for her thoughtlessness. Gusta's head was hanging.
"I've just been to see him," she said.
"I wished to hear of him, Gusta," Elizabeth said, trying by her tone to
destroy the quality of her first question. "I spoke to Mr. Marriott
about him--I'm sure he'll get him off."
Gusta made no reply, and Elizabeth saw that her tears were falling.
[Illustration: Elizabeth saw that her tears were falling]
"Come, Gusta," she said sympathetically, "you mustn't feel bad."
The girl suddenly looked at her, her eyes full of tears.
"Oh, Miss Elizabeth," she said, "if you could only know! To see him
down there--in that place! Such a thing never happened to us before!"
"But I'm sure it'll all come out right in the end--I'm sure of that.
There must have been some mistake. Tell me all about it."
And then Gusta told her the whole story.
"You don't know how it feels, Miss Elizabeth," she said when she had
done, "to have your own brother--such a thing couldn't happen to
you--here." Gusta glanced about her, taking in at a glance, as it were,
the large house, and all its luxury and refinement and riches, as if
these things were insurmountable barriers to such misfortune and
disgrace.
Elizabeth saw the glance, and some way, suddenly, the light and warmth
went out of the spring day for her. The two girls looked at each other
a moment, then they looked away, and there was silence. Elizabeth's
brows were contracted; in her eyes there was a look of pain.
When Gusta had gone Elizabeth went indoors, but her heart was heavy.
She tried to throw off the feeling, but could not. She told herself
that it was her imagination, always half morbid, but this did not
satisfy her. She was silent at the luncheon-table until her mother said:
"Elizabeth, what in the world ails you?"
"Oh; nothing."
"I know something does," insisted Mrs. Ward.
Elizabeth, with her head inclined, was outlining with the prong of a
fork the pattern on the salad bowl.
"Gusta has been here, telling me her troubles."
"Oh, that's it, is it?" said Mrs. Ward.
"You know her brother has been arrested."
"What for?"
"Stealing."
"Indeed! Well! I do wish she'd keep away! I'm sure I don't know what
we've done that we should have such things brought into our house!"
"But it's too bad," said Elizabeth. "The young man--"
"Yes, the young man! If he'd go to work and earn an honest living, he
wouldn't be arrested for stealing!"
"I was just thinking--" Elizabeth finished the pattern on the salad
bowl and inclined her head on the other side, as if she had really
designed the pattern and were studying the effect of her finished
work,--"that if Dick--"
"Why, Elizabeth!" Mrs. Ward cried. "How can you say such a thing?"
Elizabeth smiled, and the smile irritated her mother.
"I'm sure it's entirely different!" Mrs. Ward went on. "Dick does not
belong to that class at all!"
XIII
The truth was that Elizabeth had been worried for days about Dick. A
few evenings before, Ward, who took counsel of his daughter rather than
of his wife in such affairs, had told her of his concern about his son.
"I don't know what to do with the boy," he had said. "He seems to have
no interest in anything; he tired of school, and he tired of college;
and now he is of age and--doing nothing."
She remembered how he had sat there, puffing at his cigar as if that
could assist him to some conclusion.
"I tried him in the office for a while, you know, but he did not seem to
take it seriously--of course, it wasn't really serious; the work went on
as well without him as with him. I guess he knew that."
Elizabeth sat and thought, but the problem which her father had put to
her immediately overpowered her; there seemed to be no solution at
all--she could not even arrange its terms in her mind, and she was
silent, yet her silence was charged with sympathy.
"I've talked to him, but that does no good. I've pleaded with him, but
that does no good. I tried giving him unlimited money, then I put him
on an allowance, then I cut him off altogether--it was just the same."
Ward smoked a moment in silence.
"I've thought of every known profession. He says he doesn't want to be
a lawyer or a doctor; he has no taste for mechanics, and he seems to
have no interest in business. I've thought of sending him abroad, or
out West, but he doesn't want to do that."
And again the silence and the smoking and the pain.
"He's out to-night--where, I don't know. I don't want to know--I'm
afraid to know!"
There was something wild, appealing and pathetic in this cry wrung from
a father's heart. Elizabeth had looked up quickly, her own heart aching
with pity. She recalled how he had said:
"Your mother--she doesn't understand; I don't know that I want her to;
she idolizes the boy; she thinks he can't do wrong."
And then Elizabeth had slipped her arm about his neck, and, leaning
over, had placed her cheek against his; her tears had come, and she had
felt that his tears had come; he had patted her hand. They had sat thus
for a long while.
"Poor boy!" Ward had said again. "He's only making trouble for himself.
I'd like to help him, but somehow, Bess, I can't get next to him; when I
try to talk to him, when I try to be confidential and all
that--something comes between us, and I can't say it right. I can't talk
to him as I could to any other man. I don't know why it is; I sometimes
think that it's all my fault, that I haven't reared him right, that I
haven't done my duty by him, and yet, God knows, I've tried!"
"Oh, papa," she had replied protestingly, "you mustn't blame
yourself--you've done everything."
"He's really a good boy," Ward had gone on irrelevantly, ignoring
himself in his large, unselfish thought for his son. "He's kind and
generous, and he means well enough--and--and--I think he likes me."
This had touched her to the quick, and she had wept softly, stroking her
father's cheek.
"Can't you--couldn't you--" he began. "Do you think you could talk to
him, Bess?"
"I'll try," she said, and just then her brother had come into the room,
rosy and happy and unsuspecting, and their confidences were at an end.
Ward did not realize, of course, that in asking Elizabeth to speak to
Dick he was laying a heavy burden on her. She had promised her father
in a kind of pity for him, a pity which sprang from her great love; but
as she thought it over, wondering what she was to say, the ordeal grew
greater and greater--greater than any she had ever had to encounter.
For several days she was spared the necessity of redeeming her promise,
for Dick was so little at home, and fortunately, as Elizabeth felt, when
he was there the circumstances were not propitious. Then she kept
putting it off, and putting it off; and the days went by. Her father
had not recurred to the subject; having once opened his heart, he seemed
suddenly to have closed it, even against her. His attitude was such
that she felt she could not talk the matter over with him; if she could
she might have asked him to give her back her promise. She could not
talk it over with her mother, and she longed to talk it over with some
one. One evening she had an impulse to tell Marriott about it. She
knew that he could sympathize with her, and, what was more, she knew
that he could sympathize with Dick, whereas she could not sympathize
with Dick at all. Though she laughed, and sang, and read, and talked,
and drove, and lived her customary life, the subject was always in her
thoughts. Finally she discovered that she was adopting little
subterfuges in order to evade it, and she became disgusted with herself.
She had morbid fears that her character would give way under the strain.
At night she lay awake waiting, as she knew her father must be waiting,
for the ratchet of Dick's key in the night-latch.
In the many different ways she imagined herself approaching the subject
with Dick, in the many different conversations she planned, she always
found herself facing an impenetrable barrier--she did not know with what
she was to reproach him, with what wrong she was to charge him. She
conceived of the whole affair, as the Anglo-Saxon mind feels it must
always deal with wrong, in the forensic form--indictment, trial,
judgment, execution. But after all, what had Dick done? As she saw him
coming and going through the house, at the table, or elsewhere, he was
still the same Dick--and this perplexed her; for, looking at him through
the medium of her talk with her father, Dick seemed to be something else
than her brother; he seemed to have changed into something bad. Thus
his misdeeds magnified themselves to her mind, and she thought of them
instead of him, of the sin instead of the sinner.
That night Dick did not come at all. In the morning when her father
appeared, Elizabeth saw that he was haggard and old. As he walked
heavily toward his waiting carriage, her love and pity for him received
a sudden impetus.
Dick did not return until the next evening, and the following morning he
came down just as his father was leaving the house. If Ward heard his
son's step on the stairs, he did not turn, but went on out, got into his
brougham, and sank back wearily on its cushions. It happened that
Elizabeth came into the hall at that moment; she saw her father, and she
saw her brother coming down the stairs, dressed faultlessly in new
clothes and smoking a cigarette. As Elizabeth saw him, so easy and
unconcerned, her anger suddenly blazed out, her eyes flashed, and she
took one quick step toward him. His fresh, ruddy face wore a smile, but
as she confronted him and held out one arm in dramatic rigidity and
pointed toward her father, Dick halted and his smile faded.
"Look at him!" Elizabeth said, pointing to her father. "Look at him! Do
you know what you're doing?"
"Why, Bess"--Dick began, surprised.
"You're breaking his heart, that's what you're doing!"
She stood there, her eyes menacing, her face flushed, her arm extended.
The carriage was rolling down the drive and her father had gone, but
Elizabeth still had the vision of his bent frame as he got into his
carriage.
"Did you see him?" she went on. "Did you see how he's aging, how much
whiter his hair has grown in the last few weeks, how his figure has
bent? You're killing him, that's what you're doing, killing him inch by
inch. Why can't you do it quick, all at once, and be done with it? That
would be kinder, more merciful!"
Her lip curled in sarcasm. Dick stood by the newel-post, his face
white, his lips open as if to speak.
"You spend your days in idleness and your nights in dissipation. You
won't work. You won't do anything. You are disgracing your family and
your name. Can't you see it, or won't you?"
"Why, Bess," Dick began, "what's the--"
She looked at him a moment; he was like her mother, so good-natured, so
slow to anger. His attitude, his expression, infuriated her; words
seemed to have no effect, and in her fury she felt that she must make
him see, that she must force him to realize what he was doing--force him
to acknowledge his fault--force him to be good.
"Of course, you'd just stand there!" she said. "Why don't you say
something? You know what you're doing--you know it better than I. I
should think you'd be ashamed to look a sister in the face!"
Dick had seen Elizabeth angry before, but never quite like this. Slowly
within him his own anger was mounting. What right, he thought, had she
to take him thus to task--him, a man? He drew himself up, his face
suddenly lost its pallor and a flush of scarlet mottled it. Strangely,
in that same instant, Elizabeth's face became very white.
"Look here," he said, speaking in a heavy voice, "I don't want any more
of this from you!"
For an instant there was something menacing in his manner, and then he
walked away and left her.
Elizabeth stood a moment, trembling violently. He had gone into the
dining-room; he was talking with his mother in low tones. Elizabeth
went up the stairs to her room and closed the door, and then a great
wave of moral sickness swept over her. She sat down, trying to compose
herself, trying to still her nerves. The whole swift scene with her
brother flashed before her in all its squalor. Had she acted well or
rightly? Was her anger what is called a righteous indignation? She was
sure that she had acted for the best, for her father in the first place,
and for Dick more than all, but it was suddenly revealed to her that she
had failed; she had not touched his heart at all; she had expended all
her force, and it was utterly lost; she had failed--failed. This word
repeated itself in her brain. She tried to think, but her brain was in
turmoil; she could think but one thing--she had failed. She bent her
head and wept.
XIV
Archie Koerner and Spud Healy and the others of the gang lay in prison
for a week; each morning they were taken with other prisoners to the
bull-pen, and there they would stand--for an hour, two hours, three
hours--and look through the heavy wire screen at officers, lawyers,
court attaches, witnesses and prosecutors who passed and repassed,
peering at them as at caged animals, some curiously, some in hatred and
revenge, some with fear, now and then one with pity. The session would
end, they would be taken downstairs again--the police were not yet
ready. But finally, one Saturday morning, they were taken into the
court-room and arraigned. Bostwick, the judge, heard a part of the
evidence; it was nearly noon, and court never sat on Saturday
afternoons. Bostwick and the prosecutor both were very anxious to get
away for their half-holiday. The session had been long and trying, the
morning was sultry, a summer day had fallen unexpectedly in the midst of
the spring. Bostwick was uncomfortable in his heavy clothes. He
hurried the hearing and sent them all to the workhouse for thirty days,
and fined them the costs. Marriott had realized the hopelessness of the
case from the first; even he was glad the hearing was over, glad to have
Archie off his mind.
The little trial was but a trivial incident in the life of the city;
Bostwick and the prosecutor, to whom it was but a part of the day's
work, forgot it in the zest of ordering a luncheon; the police forgot
it, excepting Kouka, who boasted to the reporters and felt important for
a day. Frisby, a little lawyer with a catarrhal voice, thought of it
long enough to be thankful that he had demanded his fee in advance from
the mother of the boy he had defended--it took her last cent and made
her go hungry over Sunday. Back on the Flats, in the shadow of the
beautiful spire of St. Francis, there were cries, Gaelic lamentations,
keening, counting of beads and prayers to the Virgin. The reporters
made paragraphs for their newspapers, writing in the flippant spirit
with which they had been taught to treat the daily tragedies of the
police court. Some people scanned the paragraphs, and life passed by on
the other side; the crowds of the city surged and swayed, and Sunday
dawned with the church-bells ringing peacefully.
The Koerner family had the news that evening from Jerry Crowley, the
policeman who had recently been assigned to that beat, his predecessor,
Miller, having been suspended for drunkenness. Crowley had had a hard
time of it ever since he came on the beat. The vicinity was German and
he was Irish, and race hatred pursued him daily with sneers, and jibes,
and insults, now and then with stones and clods. The children took
their cue from the gang at Nussbaum's; the gang made his life miserable.
Yet Crowley was a kindly Irishman, with many a jest and joke, and a
pleasant word for every one. Almost anybody he arrested could get
Crowley to let him go by begging hard enough. On the warm evenings
Koerner would sit on the stoop, and Crowley, coming by, would stop for a
dish of gossip.
"Oh, come now, Mr. Koerner," he said that Saturday night, after he had
crudely told the old German of his son's fate, "I wouldn't take it that
hard; shure an' maybe it's good 'twill be doin' the lad an' him needin'
it the way he does."
Officer Crowley was interrupted in his comforting by a racket at the
corner--the warm, soft nights were bringing the gang out, and he went
away to wage his hopeless battle with it. When he returned, old man
Koerner had gone indoors.
Gusta shared all her father's humiliation and all her mother's grief at
Archie's imprisonment. She felt that she should visit her brother in
prison, but it was a whole week before she could get away, and then on a
brilliant Sunday afternoon she went to the workhouse. The hideous
prison buildings were surrounded by a high fence, ugly in its dull red
paint; the office and the adjoining quarters where the superintendent
lived had a grass plot in which some truckling trusty had made
flower-beds to please the superintendent's wife. In the office an old
clerk, in a long black coat, received Gusta solemnly. He was sitting,
from the habit of many years, on the high stool at the desk where he
worked; ordinarily he crouched over his books in the fear that political
changes would take his job from him; now a Sunday paper, which the
superintendent and his family had read and discarded, replaced the sad
records, but he bent over this none the less timidly. After a long
while an ill-natured guard, whose face had grown particularly sinister
and vicious in the business, ordered Gusta to follow him, and led her
back into the building. Reluctantly he unlocked doors and locked them
behind her, and Gusta grew alarmed. Once, waiting for him to unlock
what proved to be a final door, he waited while a line of women,
fourteen or fifteen of them, in uniform of striped gingham, went
clattering up a spiral iron stairway; two or three of the women were
negresses. They had been down to the services some Christian people had
been holding for the inmates, preaching to them that if they believed on
Jesus they would find release, and peace, and happiness. These people,
of course, did not mean release from the workhouse, and the peace and
happiness, it seemed, could not come until the inmates died. So long as
they lived, their only prospect seemed to be unpaid work by day, bread
and molasses to eat, and a cell to sleep in at night, with iron bars
locking them in and armed men to watch them. However, the inmates
enjoyed the services because they were allowed to sing.
After the women disappeared, Gusta stood fearfully before a barred door
and looked down into a cell-house. The walls were three stories high,
and sheer from the floor upward, with narrow windows at the top. Inside
this shell of brick the cells were banked tier on tier, with dizzy
galleries along each tier. Though Gusta could see no one, she could
hear a multitude of low voices, like the humming of a bee-hive--the
prisoners, locked two in each little cell, were permitted to talk during
this hour. The place was clean, but had, of course, the institutional
odor. The guard called another guard, and between them they unlocked
several locks and threw several levers; finally a cell-door opened--and
Gusta saw Archie come forth. He wore a soiled ill-fitting suit of gray
flannel with wide horizontal stripes, and his hair had been clipped
close to his head. The sight so confused and appalled Gusta that she
could not speak, and the guard, standing suspiciously by her side to
hear all that was said, made it impossible for her to talk. The feeling
was worse than that she had had at the police station when an iron door
had thus similarly separated her from her brother.
Archie came close and took hold of the bars with both his hands and
peered at her; he asked her a few questions about things at home, and
charged her with a few unimportant messages and errands. But she could
only stand there with the tears streaming down her face. Presently the
guard ordered Archie back to his cell, and he went away, turning back
wistfully and repeating his messages in a kind of desperate wish to
connect himself with the world.
When Gusta got outside again, she determined that she would not go home,
for there the long shadow of the prison lay. She did not know where to
go or what to do, but while she was trying to decide she heard from afar
the music of a band--surely there would be distraction. So she walked
in the direction of the music. About the workhouse, as about all
prisons, were the ramshackles of squalid poverty and worse; but little
Flint Street, along which she took her way, began to pick up, and she
passed cottages, painted and prim, where workmen lived, and the people
she saw, and their many children playing in the street, were well
dressed and happy. It seemed strange to Gusta that any one should be
happy then. When suddenly she came into Eastend Avenue, she knew at
last where she was and whence the music came; she remembered that Miami
Park was not far away. The avenue was crowded with vehicles, not the
stylish kind she had been accustomed to on Claybourne Avenue, but
buggies from livery-stables, in which men drove to the road-houses up
the river, surreys with whole families crowded in them, now and then
some grocer's or butcher's delivery wagon furnished with seats and
filled with women and children. The long yellow trolley-cars that went
sliding by with incessant clangor of gongs were loaded; the only signs
of the aristocracy Gusta once had known were the occasional automobiles,
bound, like the Sunday afternoon buggy-riders, up the smooth white river
road.
Eastend Avenue ran through the park, and just before it reached that
playground of the people it was lined with all kinds of amusement
pavilions, little vaudeville shows, merry-go-rounds, tintype studios,
shooting galleries, pop-corn and lemonade stands, public dance halls
where men and girls were whirling in the waltz. On one side was a
beer-garden. All these places were going noisily, with men shouting out
the attractions inside, hand-organs and drums making a wild, barbaric
din, and in the beer-garden a German band braying out its meretricious
tunes. But at the beginning of the park a dead-line was invisibly
drawn--beyond that the city would not allow the catch-penny amusements
to go. On one side of the avenue the park sloped down to the river, on
the other it stretched into a deep grove. The glass roof of a botanical
house gleamed in the sun, and beyond, hidden among the trees, were the
zooelogical gardens, where a deer park, a bear-pit, a monkey house, and
a yard in which foxes skulked and racoons slept, strove with their
mild-mannered exhibits for the beginnings of a menagerie. And
everywhere were people strolling along the walks, lounging under the
trees, hundreds of them, thousands of them, dressed evidently in their
best clothes, seeking relief from the constant toil that kept their
lives on a monotonous level.
Gusta stood a while and gazed on the river. On the farther shore its
green banks rose high and rolled away with the imagination into woods
and fields and farms. Here and there little cat-boats moved swiftly
along, their sails white in the sun; some couples were out in rowboats.
But as Gusta looked she suddenly became self-conscious; she saw that, of
all the hundreds, she was the only one alone. Girls moved about, or
stood and talked and giggled in groups, and every girl seemed to have
some fellow with her. Gusta felt strange and out of place, and a little
bitterness rose in her heart. The band swelled into a livelier, more
strident strain, and Gusta resented this sudden burst of joyousness.
She turned to go away, but just then she saw that a young man had
stopped and was looking at her. He was a well-built young fellow, as
strong as Archie; he had dark hair and a small mustache curled upward at
the corners in a foreign way. His cheeks were ruddy; he carried a light
cane and smoked a cigar. When he saw that Gusta had noticed him he
smiled and Gusta blushed. Then he came up to her and took off his hat.
"Are you taking a walk?" he asked.
"I was going home," Gusta replied. She wondered how she could get away
without hurting the young man's feelings, for he seemed to be pleasant,
harmless and well meaning.
"It's a fine day," he said. "There's lots o' people out."
"Yes," said Gusta.
"Where 'bouts do you live?"
"On Bolt Street."
"Oh, I live out that way myself!" said the young man. "It's quite a
ways from here. Been out to see some friends?"
"Yes." Gusta hesitated. "I had an errand to do out this way."
"Don't you want to go in the park and see the zoo? There's lots of funny
animals back there." The young man pointed with his little cane down
one of the gravel walks that wound among the trees. Gusta looked, and
saw the people--young couples, women with children, and groups of young
men, sauntering that way. Then she looked at the street-cars, loaded
heavily, with passengers clinging to the running-boards; she was tempted
to go, but it was growing late.
"No, thanks," she said, "I must be going home now."
"Are you going to walk or take the car?" asked the young man.
"I'll walk, I guess," she said; and then, lest he think she had no car
fare, she added: "the cars are so crowded."
She started then, and was surprised when the young man naturally walked
along by her side, swinging his cane and talking idly to her. At first
she was at a loss whether to let him walk with her or not; she had a
natural fear, a modesty, the feminine instinct, but she did not know
just how to dismiss him. She kept her face averted and her eyes
downcast; but finally, when her fears had subsided a little, she glanced
at him occasionally; she saw that he was good-looking, and she
considered him very well dressed. He had a gold watch chain, and when
she asked him what time it was he promptly drew out a watch. Their
conversation, from being at the first quite general, soon became
personal, and before they had gone far Gusta learned that the young
man's name was Charlie Peltzer, that he was a plumber, and that
sometimes he made as much as twenty dollars a week. By the time they
parted at the corner near Gusta's home they felt very well acquainted
and had agreed to meet again.
After that they met frequently. In the evening after supper Gusta would
steal out, Peltzer would be waiting for her at the corner, and they
would stroll under the trees that were rapidly filling with leaves.
Once, passing Policeman Crowley, Gusta saw him looking at them narrowly.
There was a little triangular park not far from Gusta's home, and there
the two would sit all the evening. The moon was full, the nights were
soft and mild and warm. On Sundays they went to the park where they had
met, and now and then they danced in the public pavilion. But Gusta
never danced with any of the other men there, nor did Peltzer dance with
any of the other girls; they danced always together, looking into each
other's eyes. Now she could endure the monotony and the drudgery at
home, the children's peevishness, her mother's melancholy, her father's
querulousness. Even Archie's predicament lost its horror and its
sadness for her. She had not yet, however, told Peltzer, and she felt
ashamed of Archie, as if, in creating the possibility of compromising
her, he had done her a wrong. She went about in a dream, thinking of
Peltzer all the time, and of the wonderful thing that had brought all
this happiness into her life.
Gusta had not, however, as yet allowed Peltzer to go home with her; he
went within half a block of the house, and there, in the shadow, they
took their long farewell. But Peltzer was growing more masterful; each
night he insisted on going a little nearer, and at last one night he
clung to her, bending over her, looking into her blue eyes, his lips
almost on hers, and before they were aware they were at her door. Gusta
was aroused by Crowley's voice. Crowley was there with her father,
telling him again the one incident in all his official career that had
distinguished him for a place in the columns of the newspapers. He was
just at the climax of the thrilling incident, and they heard his voice
ring out:
"An' I kept right on toowards him, an' him shootin' at me breasht four
toimes--"
He had got up, in the excitement he so often evoked in living over that
dramatic moment again, to illustrate the action, and he saw Gusta and
Charlie. Peltzer stopped, withdrew his arm hurriedly from Gusta's
waist, and then Crowley, forgetting his story, called out:
"Oh-ho, me foine bucko!"
Then Koerner saw Gusta, and, forgetting for a moment, tried to rise to
his feet, then dropped back again.
"Who's dot feller mit you, huh? Who's dot now?" he demanded.
"Aw, tut, tut, man," said Crowley. "Shure an' the girl manes no harm at
all--an' the laad, he's a likely wan. Shure now, Misther Koerner, don't
ye be haard on them--they're that young now! An' 'tis the spring, do ye
moind--and it's well I can see the phite flower on the thorn tra in me
ould home these days!"
Gusta's heart and Peltzer's heart warmed to Crowley, but old Koerner
said:
"In mit you!"
And she slipped hurriedly indoors.
But nothing could harm her now, for the world had changed.
XV
Archie Koerner served his thirty days in the workhouse, then, because he
was in debt to the State for the costs and had no money with which to
pay the debt, he was kept in prison ten days longer, although it was
against the constitution of that State to imprison a man for debt.
Forty days had seemed a short time to Bostwick when he pronounced
sentence; had he chosen, he might have given Archie a sentence, in fine
and imprisonment, that would have kept him in the workhouse for two
years; he frequently did this with thieves. These forty days, too, had
been brief to Marriott, and to Eades, and they had been brief to
Elizabeth, who had found new happiness in the fact that Mr. Amos Hunter
had given Dick a position in the banking department of his Title and
Trust Company. These forty days, in fact, had passed swiftly for nearly
every one in the city, because they were spring days, filled with warm
sunshine by day, and soft and musical showers by night. The trees were
pluming themselves in new green, the birds were singing, and people were
happy in their release from winter; they were busied about new clothes,
with riding and driving, with plans for summer vacations and schemes for
the future; they were all imbued with the spirit of hope the spring had
brought to the world again. To Gusta, too, in her love, these days had
passed swiftly, like a hazy, golden dream.
But to Archie these forty days had not been forty days at all, but a
time of infinite duration. He counted each day as it dragged by; he
counted it when he came from his bunk in the morning; he counted it
every hour during the long day's work over the hideous bricks he could
find no joy in making; he counted it again at evening, and the last
thing before he fell asleep. It seemed that forty days would never roll
around.
They did pass finally, and a morning came when he could leave the
comrades of his misery. He felt some regret in doing this; many of them
had been kind to him, and friendships had been developed by means of
whispers and signs, but more by the silent influence of a common
suffering. He had quarreled and almost fought with some of them, for
the imprisonment had developed the beast that was in them, and had made
many of them morose, ugly, suspicious, dangerous, filling them with a
kind of moral insanity. But he forgot all these enmities in the joy of
his release, and he bade his friends good-by and wished them luck. In
the superintendent's office they gave him back his clothes, and he went
out again into the world.
It was strange to be at liberty again. His first unconscious impulse
was to take up his life where he had left it off, but he did not know
how to do this. For behind him stretched an unknown time, a blank, a
break in his existence, which refused to adjust itself to the rest of
his life; it bore no relation to that existence which was himself, his
being, and yet it was there. The world that knew no such blank or break
had gone on meanwhile and left him behind, and he could not catch up
now. He was like a man who had been unconscious and had awakened with a
blurred conception of things; it was as if he had come out of a profound
anaesthesia, to find that he had been irrevocably maimed by some
unnecessary operation in surgery.
Archie did not, of course, realize all this clearly; had he been able to
do so, he might have avoided some of the consequences. But he had a
troubled sense of change, and he was to learn it and realize it fully
only by a slow, torturing process, a bit at a time. He had the first
sensation of this change in the peculiar gleam that came into the eye of
a policeman he passed in Market Place, and he felt it, too, when, half
fearfully, he presented himself at the back door of his home. His
father's fury had long since abated, but he showed that he could not
look on Archie as he once had done, and Gusta showed it, too. Bostwick
may have thought he had sentenced Archie to forty days in prison, but he
had really sentenced him to a lifetime in prison; for the influences of
those forty days could never leave Archie now; the shadows of that
prison were ever lengthening, and they were for evermore to creep with
him wherever he went, keeping him always within their shades. He was
thereafter to be but an umbra at the feast of life.
Archie could not think of the whole matter very clearly; of the theft of
which he had been convicted he scarcely thought at all. The change that
came in the world's attitude toward him did not seem to be concerned
with that act; it was never mentioned or even suggested to him at home
or elsewhere. The thing that marked him was not the fact that he had
been a thief, but that he had been a prisoner. When he did think of the
theft, he told himself that he had paid for that; the score had been
wiped out; the world had taken its revenge on him. This revenge was
expressed by the smile that lit up the face of the grocer whose herrings
had been stolen; it had been shown in the satisfaction of the prosecutor
when the judge announced his finding; it had been expressed by the
harshness of the superintendent and the guards at the workhouse; it was
shown even by the glance of that policeman he met in the Market. The
world had wreaked its vengeance on him, and Archie felt that it should
be satisfied now.
There was but one place now where the atmosphere lacked the element of
suspicion and distrust, but one place where he was not made to feel the
barrier that separated him from other men, and that was with the gang.
The gang welcomed him with a frank heartiness; they showed almost the
same eagerness and pleasure in him that they showed in welcoming Spud
and the others. There was balm in their welcome; they asked no
questions, they drew no distinctions; to them he was the same old
Archie, only grown nearer because now he could unite with them in
experience--they all had those same gaps in their lives.
That afternoon they celebrated with cans of beer in the shade of a
lumber pile, and that night the gang went down the line. Having some
money, they were welcome in all the little saloons, and the girls in
short dresses, who stood about the bars rolling cigarettes constantly,
were glad to see them. And Archie found that no questions were asked
here, that no distinctions were made even when respected, if not
respectable, men appeared, even when the prosecutor of the police court
came along with a companion, and spent a portion of the salary these
people contributed so heavily to pay, even when the detectives came and
received the tribute money. And it dawned on Archie that here was a
little quarter of the world where he was wanted, where he was made to
feel at home, where that gap in his life made no difference. It was a
small quarter, covering scarcely more than a dozen blocks. It was
filled with miserable buildings, painted garishly and blazing with
light; there was ever the music of pianos and orchestras, and in the
saloons that were half theaters, bands blared out rapid tunes. And here
was swarming life; here, in the midst of death. But it was an important
quarter of the town; in rents and dividends and fines it contributed
largely of the money it made at such risk and sacrifice of body and of
soul, to all that was accounted good and great in the city. It helped
to pay the salaries of the mayor and the judges and the prosecutors and
the clerks and the detectives and the policemen; some of its money went
to support in idleness and luxury many dainty and exclusive women in
Claybourne Avenue, to build enormous churches, to pay for stained-glass
windows with pictures of Christ and the Magdalene, pictures that in soft
artistic hues lent a gentle religious and satisfying melancholy to the
ladies and gentlemen who sat in their pews on Sundays; it even helped to
send missionaries to far countries like Japan and China and India and
Africa, in order that the heathen who lived there might receive the
light of the Cross.
While in the workhouse Archie had occupied the same cell with a man
called Joseph Mason, which was not his name. The prison was crowded,
and it was necessary for the prisoners to double up. The cells were
narrow and had two bunks, one above and the other below--there was as
much room as there is in a section of a sleeping-car. In these cells
the men slept and ate and lived, spending all the time they did not pass
at labor in the brick-yard. During those forty days Archie became well
acquainted with Mason; they sat on their little stools all day Sunday
and talked, and when they climbed into their bunks at night they
whispered. They shared with each other their surreptitious matches and
tobacco--all they had.
This man Mason was nearly fifty years old. His close-cropped hair and
his close-shaven beard gave his head and cheeks and lips a uniform color
of dark blue; his lips were thin and compressed from a habit of
taciturnity, his eyes were small, bright and alert; at any sound he
would turn quickly and glance behind him. He had spent twenty years in
prison--ten years in Dannemora, five in Columbus, three in Allegheny and
two in Joliet. This, however, did not include the time he had been shut
up in police stations, calabooses, county jails and workhouses. In the
present instance he had been arrested for pocket-picking, and had agreed
to plead guilty if the offense were reduced to petit larceny; the
authorities had accepted his proposal, and he had been sentenced to six
months in the workhouse. He had served four and a half months of his
sentence when Archie went into the workhouse.
The only time when Mason showed any marked sense of humor was when he
told Archie of his having confessed to pocket-picking. The truth was
that he was totally innocent of this crime, and if the police had been
wise they would have known this. Mason was a Johnny Yegg, that is, an
itinerant safe-blower. As a yegg man, of course, he never had picked a
pocket, and could not have done so had he wished, for he did not know
how; and if he had known how, still he would not have done so, for the
yeggs held such crimes as picking pockets in contempt. All of the terms
he had served in states' prisons had been for blowing safes, and all of
the safes had been in rural post-offices. The technical charge was
burglary, though he was not a burglar, either, in the sense of entering
dwellings by night; this was a class of thieving left to prowlers. The
preceding fall, however, a safe had been blown in a country post-office
near the city, and Mason knew that the United States inspectors would
suspect him if they found him, and while he had been innocent of that
particular crime, he knew that this would make no difference to the
inspectors; they would willingly "job" him, as he expressed it,
justifying the act to any one who might question it--they would not need
to justify it to themselves--by arguing that if he had not blown that
particular safe he had blown others, so that the balance would be
dressed in the end. Consequently, when the police arrested him for
pocket-picking, he hailed it as a stroke of good fortune and looked on
the workhouse as an asylum. He had been a model prisoner, and had given
the authorities no trouble. He did this partly because he was a
philosophical fellow, patient and uncomplaining, partly because he did
not wish to attract attention to himself. His picture and his
measurements, taken according to the Bertillon system, were in every
police station in the land.
Mason told Archie many interesting stories of his life, of cooking over
a fire in the woods, riding on freight trains, of hang-outs in
sand-houses, and so on, and he told circumstantially of numerous crimes,
though never did he identify himself as concerned in any of them
excepting those of which he had been convicted, and in these he did not
give the names of his accomplices. Before their companionship ended he
had taught Archie the distinctions between yegg men and peter men and
gay cats, guns of various kinds, prowlers, and sure-thing men, and the
other unidentified horde of criminals who belong to none of these
classes.
He had taught Archie also many little tricks whereby a convict's lot may
be lightened--as, for instance, how to split with a pin one match into
four matches, how to pass little things from one cell to another by a
"trolley" or piece of string, how to lie on a board, and so on. But,
above all, he had set Archie the example of a patient man who took
things as they came, without question or complaint.
Archie missed Mason. He could see him sitting in the gloom of their
little cell, upright and almost never moving, talking in a low tone, his
lips, which had a streak of tobacco always on them, moving slowly,
shutting tightly after each sentence, until he had swallowed, then
deliberately he would go on. Mason's view of life interested Archie,
who, up to that time, had never thought at all, had never made any
distinctions, and so had no view of life at all. Many of Mason's views
were striking in their insight, many were childish in their lack of it;
they were curiously straightforward at times, at others astonishingly
oblique. He had a great hatred of sham and pretense, and he considered
all so-called respectable people as hypocrites. He had about the same
contempt for them that he had for the guns, who were sneaks, he said,
afraid to take chances. He had a high admiration for boldness and
courage, and a great love of adventure, and he thought that all these
qualities were best exemplified in yegg men. For the courts he had no
respect at all; his contempt was so deep-rooted that he never once
considered the possibility of their doing justice, and spoke as if it
were axiomatic that they could not do justice if they tried. He had the
same contempt for the church, although he seemed to know much about the
life of Jesus and had respect for His teachings. He called the people
who came to pray and sing on Sundays "mission stiffs"; he treated them
respectfully enough, but he told Archie that those prisoners who took an
interest in the services di
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