"Surely I do."
"And you know I'm just as good as I ever was, don't you?"
"Why--of course, I do, Gusta." It is so hard to lie; the truth, in its divine persistence, springs so incautiously to the eyes before it can be checked at the lips.
The tears dried suddenly in Gusta's blue eyes. She spoke fiercely.
"You don't mean it! No, you don't mean it! I see you don't--you needn't say you do! Oh, you needn't say you do!"
She squeezed Elizabeth's hand almost maliciously and Elizabeth winced with pain.
"You--you don't know!" Gusta went on. And then she hesitated, seemed to deliberate on the verge of a certain desperation, to pause for an instant before a temptation to which she longed to yield.
"I could tell you something," she said significantly.
A wonder gathered in Elizabeth's eyes. Her heart was beating rapidly, she could feel it throbbing.
"Do you know why I sent for you--what I had to tell you?"
She was looking directly in Elizabeth's eyes; the faces of both girls became pale. And Elizabeth groped in her startled mind for some clear recognition, some postulation of a fact, a horrible, blasting certitude that was beginning to formulate itself, a certitude that would have swept away in an instant all those formal barriers that had stood in the way of her coming to this haggard prison. She shuddered, and closed her mind, as she closed her eyes just then, to shut out the look in the eyes of this imprisoned girl.
But the moment was too tense to last. Some mercy was in the breast of the girl to whom life had shown so little mercy. Voluntarily, she released Elizabeth, and put up her hands to her face, and shook with sobs.
"Don't, don't, Gusta," Elizabeth pleaded, "don't cry, dear."
The endearment made Gusta cry the harder. And then Elizabeth, who had shrunk from her and from everything in the room, put her arms about her, and supported her, and patted her shoulder and repeated:
"There, dear, there, you mustn't cry."
And then presently:
"Tell me what I can do to help you. I want to help you."
Gusta sobbed a moment longer.
"Nothing, there is nothing," she said. "I just wanted you. I wanted some one--"
"Yes, I understand," said Elizabeth. She did understand many things now that made life clearer, if sadder.
"I wanted you to tell my poor old mother," said Gusta. "That's all--that's what I had to tell you."
She said it so unconvincingly, and looked up suddenly with a wan smile that begged forgiveness, and then Elizabeth did what a while before would have been impossible--she kissed the girl's cheek. And Gusta cuddled close to her in a peace that almost purred, and was contented.
Gusta was held for a week; then released.
XII
Archie was looking well that Monday morning in January on which his trial was to begin. He had slept soundly in his canvas hammock; not even the whimpering of Reinhart, the young sneak thief whom every one in the jail detested, nor the strange noises and startled outcries he made in his sleep--when he did sleep--had disturbed him. The night before, Utter had allowed Archie a bath, though he had broken a rule in doing so, and that morning Archie had borrowed a whisk from Utter, brushed his old clothes industriously, and then he had put on the underwear his mother had washed and patched and mended, and the shirt of blue and white stripes Marriott had provided. Then with scrupulous care he set his cell in order, arranged his few things on the little table--the deck of cards, the yellow-covered dog's-eared novel and a broken comb.
Beside these, lay his fresh collar and his beloved blue cravat with the white polka dots; his coat and waistcoat hung over the back of his chair. At seven o'clock Willie Kirkpatrick, alias "Toughie," a boy who, after two terms in the Reform School, was now going to the Intermediate Prison, had brought in the bread and coffee. At eight o'clock Archie was turned into the corridor, and with him Blanco, the bigamist, whose two young wives were being held as witnesses in the women's quarter.
Blanco was a barber, and he made himself useful by shaving the other prisoners. This morning, with scissors, razor, lather-brush and cup, he took especial pains with Archie. Now and then he paused, cocked his little head with its plume of black hair, and surveyed his handiwork with honest pride.
"I'll fix you up swell, Dutch, so's they'll have to acquit you."
From the cells came laughter. The prisoners began to josh Blanco--it was one of their few pastimes.
"Don't stand for one of them gilly hair-cuts, Dutch," cried Billy Whee, a porch-climber. "It'll be a fritzer, sure."
"Yes, he'll make your knob look like a mop."
"When I was doing my bit at the Pork Dump," began O'Grady, in the tone that portends a story; the cell doors began to rattle.
"Cheese it," cried the voices. They had grown tired of O'Grady's boasting.
After Archie had returned to his cell, an English thief whom they called the Duke, began to sing in a clear tenor voice, to the tune of _Dixie_:
"I wish there were no prisons, I do, I does--'cause why?-- This old treadmill makes me feel ill, I only pinch my belly for to fill, Wi' me 'ands, Wi' me dukes, Wi' me clawrs, Me mud hooks."
Archie scowled; he wished, for once, the Duke would keep still. He was trying to think, trying to assure himself that his trial would turn out well. Day after day, Marriott had come, and for hours he and Archie had sat in the long gray corridor, in the dry atmosphere of the overheated jail, conferring in whispers, because Archie knew Danner was listening at the peep-hole in the wall. Marriott was perplexed; how could he get Archie's true story before the jury? He had even consulted Elizabeth, told her the story.
"Oh, horrible!" she exclaimed. "But surely, you can tell the jury--surely they will sympathize."
He had shaken his head.
"Why not?"
"Because," said Marriott, "the rules of evidence are designed to keep out the truth."
"But can't Archie tell it?"
"I don't dare to let him take the stand."
"Why?"
"Because he'll be convicted if he does."
"And if he doesn't?"
"The same result--he'll be convicted. He's convicted now--the mob has already done that; the trial is only a conventional formality."
"What mob?"
"The newspapers, the preachers, the great moral, respectable mob that holds a man guilty until he proves himself innocent, and, if he asserts his innocence, looks even on that as a proof of his guilt."
Eades had announced that Archie would be tried for the murder of Kouka, and Elizabeth had been impressed.