IX
It had been months since Marriott had gone up those steps at the Wards', and he mounted them that November evening with a regret at the loss of the old footing, and an impatience with the events that had kept him away. He had waited for some such excuse as Gusta's commission now gave him, and the indignation he felt at the girl's arrest was not strong enough to suppress his gratitude for the opportunity the injustice opened to him. He was sure that Elizabeth knew he was to defend Archie; she must know how sensitive he was to the criticism that was implied in the tone with which the newspapers announced the fact. The newspapers, indeed, had shown feeling that Archie should be represented at all. They had published warnings against the law's delays, of which, they said, there had already been too many in that county, forgetting how they had celebrated the success and promptness, the industry and enterprise of John Eades. They had spoken of Archie as if he were a millionaire, about to evade and confound law and justice by the use of money. Marriott told himself, bitterly, that Elizabeth's circle would discuss the tragedy in this same tone, and speak of him with disappointment and distrust; that was the attitude his own friends had adopted; that was the way the lawyers and judges even had spoken to him of it; he recalled how cold and disapproving Eades had been. This recollection gave Marriott pause; would it not now be natural for Elizabeth to take Eades's attitude? He shrank from the thought and wished he had not come, but he was at the door and he had Gusta's message–impossible as it seemed after all these thoughts had crossed his mind.
She received him in her old manner, without any of the stiffness he had feared the months might have made.
"Ah, Gordon," she said. "I'm so glad you came."
She led the way swiftly into the library. A little wood fire, against the chill of the autumn evening, was blazing in the wide fireplace; under the lamp on the broad table lay a book she must have put down a moment before.
"What have you been reading? Oh, Walden!" And he turned to her with the smile of their old comradeship in such things.
"I've been reading it again, yes," she said, "and I've wished to talk it over again with you. So you see I'm glad you came."
"I came with a message from–"
"Oh!" The bright look faded from her eyes. "Well, I'm glad, then, that some one sent you to me."
He saw his mistake, and grieved for it.
"I wanted to come," he stammered. "I've been intending to come, Elizabeth, anyway, and–"
He felt he was only making the matter worse, and he hated himself for his awkwardness.
"Well," she was saying, "sit down then, and tell me whom this fortunate message is from."
She leaned back in her chair, rather grandly, he felt. He regretted the touch of formality that was almost an irony in her speech. But he thought it best to let it pass,–they could get back to the old footing more quickly if they did it that way.
"You'd never guess," he said.
"I'll not try. Tell me."
"Gusta."
"Gusta!" Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly, and Marriott thought that he had never before seen her so good to look upon; she was so virile, so alive. He noted her gray eyes, bright with interest and surprise, her brown hair, too soft to be confined in any conventional way, and worn as ever with a characteristic independence that recognized without succumbing to fashion. He fixed his eyes on her hands, white, strong, full of character. And he bemoaned the loss of those months; why, he wondered, had he been so absurd?
"Gusta!" she repeated. "Where did you see Gusta?"
"In prison."
"What! No! Oh, Gordon!" she started with the shock, and Marriott found this attitude even more fascinating than the last; her various expressions changing swiftly, responding with instant sensitiveness to every new influence or suggestion, were all delightful.
"What for? Tell me! Why don't you tell me, Gordon? Why do you sit there?"
Her eyes flashed a reproach at him–and he smiled. He was wholly at ease now.
"For nothing. She's done nothing. She went to see Archie, and the police, stupid and brutal as usual, detained her. That's all; they placed the charge of suspicion against her to satisfy the law. The law!"
He sneered out the word.
Elizabeth had fallen back in her chair with an expression of pain.
"Oh, Gordon!" she said with a shudder. "Isn't it horrible, horrible!"
"Horrible!" he echoed.
"That poor Koerner family! What can the fates be about? You know–you know it all seems to come so near. Such things happen in the world, of course, every day the newspapers, the dreadful newspapers, are filled with them. But they never were real at all, because they never happened to people I knew. But this comes so near. Just think. I've seen that Archie Koerner, and he has spoken to me, and to think of him now, a murderer! Will–they hang him?"
She leaned forward earnestly.
"No," he said slowly. "They may electrocute him though–to use their barbarous word."
"And now Gusta's in prison!" Elizabeth went on, forgetting Archie. "But her message! You haven't given me her message!"
Marriott waited a moment, perhaps in his inability to forego the theatrical possibilities of the situation.
"She wants you–to come to her."
Elizabeth stared at him blankly.
"To come to her?"
"Yes."
"In prison?"
"Yes."
Her brows contracted, her eyes winked rapidly.
"But Gordon, how–how can I?"
"I don't know." He sat at his ease in the great chair, enjoying the meaning, the whole significance of her predicament. He had already appreciated its difficulties, its impossibilities, and he was prepared now to wring from every one of them its last sensation. Elizabeth, with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her laces falling away from her white forearm, bit her lip delicately. She seemed to be looking at the toe of her suede shoe.
"Poor little thing!" She spoke abstractedly, as if she were oblivious to Marriott's presence. He was satisfied; it was good just then to sit, merely, and look at her. "I must go to her." And then suddenly she looked up and said in another tone:
"But how am I to do it, Gordon?"
He did not answer at once and she did not wait for a reply, but went on, speaking rapidly, her eyes in a dark glow as her interest was intensified.
"Isn't it a peculiar situation? I don't know how to deal with it. I never was so placed before. You must see the difficulties, Gordon. People, well, people don't go to such places, don't you know? I really don't see how it is possible; it makes me shudder to think of it! Ugh!" She shrugged her shoulders. "What shall you say to her, Gordon?" She said this as if the problem were his, not hers, and showed a relief in this transfer of the responsibility.
"I don't know yet," he said. "Whatever you tell me."
"But you must tell her something; you must make her understand. It won't do for you to hurt the poor girl's feelings."
"Well, I'll just say that I delivered her message and that you wouldn't come."
"Oh, Gordon! How could you be so cruel? You certainly would not be so heartless as to say I wouldn't!"
"Well, then, that you couldn't."
"But she would want a reason, and she'd be entitled to one. What one could you give her? You must think, Gordon, we must both think, and decide on something that will help you out. What are you laughing at?"
"Why, Elizabeth," he said, "it isn't my predicament. It's your predicament."
He leaned back in his chair comfortably, in an attitude of irresponsibility.
"How can you sit there," Elizabeth said, "and leave it all to me?"
And then she laughed,–and was grave again.
"Of course," she said. "Well–I'm sure I can't solve it. Poor little Gusta! She was so pretty and so good, and so–comfortable to have around–don't you know? Really, we've never had a maid like her. She was ideal. And now to think of her–in prison! Isn't it awful?"
Marriott sat with half-closed eyes and looked at her through the haze of his lashes. The room was still; the fire burned slowly in the black chimney; now and then the oil gurgled cozily in the lamp.
"What is a prison like, Gordon? Is it really such an awful place?"
Marriott thought of the miserable room in the women's quarters, with its iron wainscoting, the narrow iron bed; the wooden table and chair, and he contrasted it with this luxurious library of the Wards.
"Well," he said, turning rather lazily toward the fire, "it's nothing like this."
"But,"–Elizabeth looked up suddenly with the eagerness of a new idea,–"can't you get her out on bail–isn't that what it's called? Can't you get some kind of document, some writ?–yes, that's it." She spoke with pleasure because she had found a word with a legal sound. "Get a writ. Surely you are a lawyer clever enough to get her out. I always thought that any one could get out of prison if he had a good lawyer. The papers all say so."
"You get in prison once and see," said Marriott.
"Mercy, I expect to be in prison next!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Prisons! We seem to have had nothing but prisons for a year or more. I don't know what started it–first it was that poor Harry Graves, then Archie, and now it's Gusta. And you talk of them and John Eades talks of them–and I had to see them one night taking some prisoners to the penitentiary. I'd never even thought of prisons before, but since then I've thought of nothing else; I've lived in an atmosphere of prisons. It's just like a new word, one you never heard before,–you see it some day, and then you're constantly running across it. Don't you know? It's the same way with history–I never knew who Pestalozzi was until the other day; never had heard of him. But I saw his name in Emerson, then looked him up–now everything I read mentions him. And oh! the memory of those men they were taking to the penitentiary! I'll never escape it! I see their faces always!"
"Were they such bad faces?"
"Oh, no! such poor, pale, pathetic faces! Just like a page from a Russian novel!"
The memory brought pain to her eyes, and she suffered a moment. Then she sat erect and folded her hands with determination.
"We might as well face it, Gordon, of course. I just can't go; you see that, don't you? What shall we do?"
"You might try your Organized Charities." His eyes twinkled.
"Don't ever mention that to me," she commanded. "I never want to hear the word. That's a page from my past that I'm ashamed of."
"Ashamed! Of the Organized Charities?"
"Oh, Gordon, I needn't tell you what a farce that is–you know it is organized not to help the poor, but to help the rich to forget the poor, to keep the poor at a distance, where they can't reproach you and prick your conscience. The Organized Charities is an institution for the benefit of the unworthy rich." Her eyes showed her pleasure in her epigram, and they both laughed. But the pleasure could not last long; in another instant Elizabeth's hands fell to her lap, and she looked at Marriott soberly. Then she said, with hopeless conviction:
"I just can't go, Gordon."
Before Marriott could reply there was a sense of interruption; he heard doors softly open and close, the muffled and proper step of a maid, the well-known sounds that told him that somewhere in the house a bell had rung. In another moment he heard voices in the hall; a laugh of familiarity, more steps,–and then Eades and Modderwell and Mrs. Ward entered the room. Elizabeth cast at Marriott a quick glance of disappointment and displeasure; his heart leaped, he wondered if it were because of Eades's coming. Then he decided, against his will, that it was because of Modderwell. A constraint came over him, he suddenly felt it impossible that he should speak, he withdrew wholly within himself, and sat with an air of detachment.
The clergyman, stooping an instant to chafe his palms before the fire, had taken a chair close to Elizabeth, and he now began making remarks about nothing, his clean, ruddy face smiling constantly, showing his perfect teeth, his eyes roving over Elizabeth's figure.
"Well! Well! Well!" he cried. "What grave questions have you two been deciding this time?"
Elizabeth glanced at Marriott, whose face was drawn, then at Eades, who sat there in the full propriety of his evening clothes, then at her mother, seated in what was considered the correct attitude for a lady on whom her rector had called.
"I think it's good we came, eh, Eades?" the clergyman went on, without waiting for an answer. "It is not good for you to be too serious, Miss Elizabeth,–my pastoral calls are meant as much as anything to take people out of themselves." He laughed again in his abundant self-satisfaction and reclined comfortably in his chair. And he rolled his head in his clerical collar, with a smile to show Elizabeth how he regarded duties that in all propriety must not be considered too seriously or too sincerely. But Elizabeth did not smile. She met his eyes calmly.
"Dear me," he said, mocking her gravity. "It must have been serious."
"It was," said Elizabeth soberly. "It was–the murder!"
"The murder! Shocking!" said Modderwell. "I've read something about it. The newspapers say the identification of Koerner by that poor old woman was complete and positive; they say the shock was such that she fainted, and that he stood there all the time and sneered. I hope, Eades, you will see that the wretch gets his deserts promptly, and send him to the gallows, where he belongs!"
"Marriott here doesn't join you in that wish, I know," said Eades.
"No? Why not?" asked Modderwell. "Surely he–"
"He's going to defend the murderer." Eades spoke in a tone that had a sting for Marriott.
"Oh!" said Modderwell rather coldly. "I don't see how you can do such a thing, Marriott. For your own sake, as much as anybody's, I'm sorry I can't wish you success."
"I wish he hadn't undertaken the task," said Eades.
"I'm sure it must be most disagreeable," said Mrs. Ward, feeling that she must say something.
"Why do you wish it?" said Marriott, suddenly turning almost savagely on Eades.
"Why," said Eades, elevating his brows in a superior way, "I don't like to see you in such work. A criminal practice is the disreputable part of the profession."
"But you have a criminal practice."
"Oh, but on the other side!" said Modderwell. "And we all expect so much better things of Mr. Marriott."
"Oh, don't trouble yourselves about me!" said Marriott. "I'm sure I prefer my side of the case to Eades's."
The atmosphere was surcharged with bitterness. Mrs. Ward gave a sidelong glance of pain, deprecating such a contretemps.
"And I'm going to try to save him," Marriott was forging on.
"Well," said Eades, looking down on his large oval polished nails, and speaking in a tone that would finally dispose of the problem, "for my part, I revere the law and I want to see it enforced."
"Exactly!" Modderwell agreed. "And if there were fewer delays in bringing these criminals to justice, there would be fewer lynchings and more respect for the law."
Marriott did not even try to conceal the disgust with which he received this hackneyed and conventional formula of thoughtless respectability. He felt that it was useless to argue with Eades or Modderwell; it seemed to him that they had never thought seriously of such questions, and would not do so, but that they were merely echoing speeches they had heard all their lives, inherited speeches that had been in vogue for generations, ages, one might say.
"I am sure it must be a most disagreeable task," Mrs. Ward was saying, looking at her daughter in the hope that Elizabeth might relieve a situation with which she felt herself powerless to deal. Marriott seemed always to be introducing such topics, and she had the distaste of her class for the real vital questions of life. But Elizabeth was speaking.
"I'm sure that Gordon's task isn't more disagreeable than mine."
"Yours?" Mrs. Ward turned toward her daughter, dreading things even worse now.
"Yes," replied Elizabeth, looking about in pleasure at the surprise she had created.
"Why, what problem have you?" asked Modderwell.
"I've been sent for–to come to the prison to see–"
"Not him!" said Modderwell.
Eades started suddenly forward.
"No," said Elizabeth calmly, enjoying the situation, "his sister."
"His sister!"
"Yes," she turned to her mother. "You know, dear; Gusta. She's been arrested."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward. "Elizabeth! The idea! What impertinence! Who could have brought such an insolent message!" She looked at Marriott, as did the others.
"The idea!" Mrs. Ward went on. "Why, I had no notion he was her brother. To think of our harboring such people!"
Mrs. Ward stiffened in her chair, with glances from time to time for Marriott and Elizabeth, in an attitude of chilling and austere social disapproval; then, as if she had forgotten to claim the reassurance she felt to be certain, she leaned forward, out of the attitude as it were, to say:
"Of course you sent the reply her assurance deserved."
"No," said Elizabeth in a bird-like tone, "I didn't. What would you do, Mr. Eades?"
"Why, of course you could not go to a prison," replied Eades.
"But you could, couldn't you? And you do?"
"Only when necessary."
"But you do, Mr. Modderwell?"
"Only professionally," said Modderwell solemnly, for once remembering his clerical dignity.
"Oh, professionally!" said Elizabeth with a meaning. "You go professionally, too, Gordon, don't you? And I–I can't go that way. I can go only–what shall I say?–humanly? So I suppose I can't go at all!"
"Certainly not," said Mrs. Ward. "How can you ask such a question?" She was now too disapproving for words. "I can not consent to your going at all, so let that end it."
"But, Mr. Modderwell," said Elizabeth, with a smile for her mother, "we pray, don't we, every Sunday for 'pity upon all prisoners and captives'?"
"That's entirely different," said Modderwell.
"What does it mean,–'I was in prison and ye visited me'?" She sat with her hands folded in humility, as if seeking wisdom and instruction.
"That was in another day," said Modderwell. "Society was not organized then as it is now; it was–all different, of course." Modderwell went on groping for justification. "If these people are repentant–are seeking to turn from their wickedness, the church has appointed the clergy to visit them and give them instruction."
"Then perhaps you'd better go!" Elizabeth's eyes sparkled, and she looked at Modderwell, who feared a joke or a trap; then at Eades, who was almost as deeply distressed as Mrs. Ward, and then at Marriott, whose eyes showed the relish with which he enjoyed the situation.
"I don't think she wishes to see me," said Modderwell, with a significance that did not have a tribute for Gusta. No one disputed him, and there was silence, in which Eades looked intently at Elizabeth, and then, just as he seemed on the point of speaking to her, he turned to Marriott and said:
"You certainly don't think that a proper place for her to go?"
"Oh," said Marriott, "don't refer to me; I'm out of it. I've been, I brought the message–it's–it's up to Elizabeth."
"Well," said Eades, turning to Elizabeth, "you surely can't be seriously considering such a thing. You don't know, of course, what kind of place that is, or what kind of people you would be going among, or what risks you would be exposing yourself to."
"There would be no danger, would there?" said Elizabeth in her most innocent manner. "There would be plenty of policemen at hand, wouldn't there,–in case of need?"
"Well, I don't think you'd willingly elect to go among policemen," said Eades.
"Perhaps you three would go with me?" suggested Elizabeth. "I'd be safe then–all I'd lack would be a physician to make my escort completely representative of the learned professions."
"The newspaper men would be there," said Eades, "you may be sure of that, and the publicity–"
At the word "publicity" Mrs. Ward cringed with genuine alarm.
"Do you find publicity so annoying?" asked Elizabeth, smiling on the three men.
"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, "I do wish you'd stop this nonsense! It may seem very amusing to you, but I assure you it is not amusing to me; I find it very distressing." She looked her distress, and then turned away in the disgust that was a part of her distress. "It would be shocking!" she said, when she seemed to them all to have had her say.
"I'm sorry to shock you all," said Elizabeth meekly. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure, to act as mentors and censors of my conduct. I feel sufficiently put down; you have helped me to a decision. I have decided, after hearing your arguments, and out of deference to your sentiments and opinions, to–"
They all looked up expectantly.
"–to go," she concluded.
She smiled on them all with serenity; and they looked at her with that blank helplessness that came over them whenever they tried to understand her.