Marriott did not even try to conceal the disgust with which he received this hackneyed and conventional formula of thoughtless respectability.
He felt that it was useless to argue with Eades or Modderwell; it seemed to him that they had never thought seriously of such questions, and would not do so, but that they were merely echoing speeches they had heard all their lives, inherited speeches that had been in vogue for generations, ages, one might say.
"I am sure it must be a most disagreeable task," Mrs. Ward was saying, looking at her daughter in the hope that Elizabeth might relieve a situation with which she felt herself powerless to deal. Marriott seemed always to be introducing such topics, and she had the distaste of her class for the real vital questions of life. But Elizabeth was speaking.
"I'm sure that Gordon's task isn't more disagreeable than mine."
"Yours?" Mrs. Ward turned toward her daughter, dreading things even worse now.
"Yes," replied Elizabeth, looking about in pleasure at the surprise she had created.
"Why, what problem have you?" asked Modderwell.
"I've been sent for--to come to the prison to see--"
"Not _him_!" said Modderwell.
Eades started suddenly forward.
"No," said Elizabeth calmly, enjoying the situation, "his sister."
"His sister!"
"Yes," she turned to her mother. "You know, dear; Gusta. She's been arrested."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward. "Elizabeth! The idea! What impertinence!
Who could have brought such an insolent message!" She looked at Marriott, as did the others.
"The idea!" Mrs. Ward went on. "Why, I had no notion he was _her_ brother. To think of our harboring such people!"
Mrs. Ward stiffened in her chair, with glances from time to time for Marriott and Elizabeth, in an attitude of chilling and austere social disapproval; then, as if she had forgotten to claim the reassurance she felt to be certain, she leaned forward, out of the attitude as it were, to say:
"Of course you sent the reply her assurance deserved."
"No," said Elizabeth in a bird-like tone, "I didn't. What would you do, Mr. Eades?"
"Why, of course you could not go to a prison," replied Eades.
"But you could, couldn't you? And you do?"
"Only when necessary."
"But you do, Mr. Modderwell?"
"Only professionally," said Modderwell solemnly, for once remembering his clerical dignity.
"Oh, professionally!" said Elizabeth with a meaning. "You go professionally, too, Gordon, don't you? And I--I can't go that way. I can go only--what shall I say?--humanly? So I suppose I can't go at all!"
"Certainly not," said Mrs. Ward. "How can you ask such a question?"
She was now too disapproving for words. "I can not consent to your going at all, so let that end it."
"But, Mr. Modderwell," said Elizabeth, with a smile for her mother, "we pray, don't we, every Sunday for 'pity upon all prisoners and captives'?"
"That's entirely different," said Modderwell.
"What does it mean,--'I was in prison and ye visited me'?" She sat with her hands folded in humility, as if seeking wisdom and instruction.
"That was in another day," said Modderwell. "Society was not organized then as it is now; it was--all different, of course." Modderwell went on groping for justification. "If these people are repentant--are seeking to turn from their wickedness, the church has appointed the clergy to visit them and give them instruction."
"Then perhaps you'd better go!" Elizabeth's eyes sparkled, and she looked at Modderwell, who feared a joke or a trap; then at Eades, who was almost as deeply distressed as Mrs. Ward, and then at Marriott, whose eyes showed the relish with which he enjoyed the situation.
"I don't think she wishes to see me," said Modderwell, with a significance that did not have a tribute for Gusta. No one disputed him, and there was silence, in which Eades looked intently at Elizabeth, and then, just as he seemed on the point of speaking to her, he turned to Marriott and said:
"You certainly don't think that a proper place for her to go?"
"Oh," said Marriott, "don't refer to me; I'm out of it. I've been, I brought the message--it's--it's up to Elizabeth."
"Well," said Eades, turning to Elizabeth, "you surely can't be seriously considering such a thing. You don't know, of course, what kind of place that is, or what kind of people you would be going among, or what risks you would be exposing yourself to."
"There would be no danger, would there?" said Elizabeth in her most innocent manner. "There would be plenty of policemen at hand, wouldn't there,--in case of need?"
"Well, I don't think you'd willingly elect to go among policemen," said Eades.
"Perhaps you three would go with me?" suggested Elizabeth. "I'd be safe then--all I'd lack would be a physician to make my escort completely representative of the learned professions."
"The newspaper men would be there," said Eades, "you may be sure of that, and the publicity--"
At the word "publicity" Mrs. Ward cringed with genuine alarm.
"Do you find publicity so annoying?" asked Elizabeth, smiling on the three men.
"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, "I do wish you'd stop this nonsense! It may seem very amusing to you, but I assure you it is not amusing to me; I find it very distressing." She looked her distress, and then turned away in the disgust that was a part of her distress. "It would be shocking!" she said, when she seemed to them all to have had her say.
"I'm sorry to shock you all," said Elizabeth meekly. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure, to act as mentors and censors of my conduct. I feel sufficiently put down; you have helped me to a decision. I have decided, after hearing your arguments, and out of deference to your sentiments and opinions, to--"
They all looked up expectantly.
"--to go," she concluded.
She smiled on them all with serenity; and they looked at her with that blank helplessness that came over them whenever they tried to understand her.
X
Though Elizabeth, as long as Eades and Modderwell were there, had chosen to satirize her predicament, and had experienced the pleasure of shocking them by the decision she reached, she found when they had gone that night, and she was alone in her room, that it was no decision at all. The situation presented itself in all seriousness, and she found that she must deal with it, not in any whimsical spirit, but in sober earnestness. She found it to be a real problem, incapable of isolation from those artificialities which were all that made it a problem. She had found it easy and simple enough, and even proper and respectable to visit the poor in their homes, but when she contemplated visiting them in the prisons which seemed made for them alone, and were too often so much better than their homes, obstacles at once arose. As she more accurately imagined these obstacles, they became formidable. She sat by the table in her room, under the reading-lamp that stood among the books she kept beside her, and determined to think it out. She made elaborate preparations, deciding to marshal all the arguments and then make deductions and comparisons, and thus, by a process almost mathematical, determine what to do. But she never got beyond the preparations; her mind worked, after all, intuitively, she felt rather than thought; she imagined herself, in the morning, going to the police station, confronting the officers, finally, perhaps, seeing Gusta. She saw clearly what her family, her friends, her set, the people she knew, would say--how horrified they would be, how they would judge and condemn her. Her mother, Eades and Modderwell accurately represented the world she knew. And the newspapers, in their eagerness for every detail touching the tragedy, however remotely, would publish the fact! "This morning Miss Elizabeth Ward, daughter of Stephen Ward, the broker, called on the Koerner girl. Fashionably dressed--" She could already see the cold black types! It was impossible, unheard of. Gusta had no right--ah, Gusta! She saw the girl's face, pretty as ever, but sad now, and stained by tears, pleading for human companionship and sympathy.
She remembered how Gusta had served her almost slavishly, how she had sat up at night for her, and helped her at her toilet, sending delicious little thrills through her by the magnetic touch of her soft fingers.
If she should send for Gusta, how quickly she would come, though she had to crawl!