"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."