Front matter (continued 10)

XXVIII

One morning, a week later, as they sat at breakfast, Ward handed his newspaper across to Elizabeth, indicating an item in the social column, and Elizabeth read:

"Mr. Amos Hunter, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Agnes Hunter, sailed from New York yesterday on the steamer King Emanuel for Naples. Mr. Hunter goes abroad for his health, and will spend the winter in Italy."

Elizabeth looked up.

"That means--?"

"That it's settled," Ward replied.

She grew suddenly weak, in the sense of relief that seemed to dissolve her.

"Unless," Ward added, and Elizabeth caught herself and looked at her father fearfully, "Hunter should come back."

"But will he?"

"Some time, doubtless."

"Oh, dear! Then the suspense isn't over at all!"

"Well, it's over for the present, anyway. Eades can do nothing, so Marriott says, as long as Hunter is away, and even if he were to return, the fact that Hunter accepted the money and credited it on his books--in some fashion--would make it exceedingly difficult to prove anything, and of course, under any circumstances, Hunter wouldn't dare--now."

Elizabeth sat a moment idly playing with a fork, and her father studied the varying expressions of her face as the shades came and went in her sensitive countenance. Her brow clouded in some little perplexity, then cleared again, and at last she sighed.

"I feel a hundred years old," she said. "Hasn't it been horrible?"

"I feel like a criminal myself," said Ward.

"We are criminals--all of us," she said, dealing bluntly, cruelly with herself. "We ought all of us to be in the penitentiary, if anybody ought."

"Yes," he acquiesced.

"Only," she said, "nobody ought. I've learned that, anyway."

"What would you do with them?" he asked, in the comfort of entering the realm of the abstract.

"With us?"

"Well--with the criminals."

"Send us to the penitentiary, I suppose."

"You are delightfully illogical, Betsy," he said, trying to laugh.

"That's all we can be," she said. "It's the only logical way."

Then they were silent, for the maid entered.

"Have we really committed a crime?" she asked, when the door swung on the maid, who came and went so unconsciously in the midst of these tragic currents. "Don't tell me--if we have."

"I don't know," said Ward. "I presume I'd rather not know. I know I've gone through enough to make me miserable the rest of my life. I know that we have settled nothing--that we have escaped nothing--except what people will say."

"Yes, mama, after all, was the only one wise enough to understand and appreciate the real significance."

"Well, there's nothing more we can do now," he replied.

"No, we must go on living some way." She got up, went around the table and kissed him on the forehead. "We'll just lock our little skeleton in the family closet, papa, and once in a while go and take a peep at him. There may be some good in that--he'll keep us from growing proud, anyway."

Ward and Marriott had decided to say as little to Elizabeth as possible of their transaction. Ward had gone through a week of agony. In a day or two he had raised the little fortune, and kept it ready, and he had been surprised and a bit perturbed when Gibbs had come and in quite a matter-of-fact way asked for the amount in cash. Ward had helplessly turned it over to him with many doubts and suspicions; but he knew no other way. Afterward, when Gibbs returned and gave him Hunter's receipt, he had felt ashamed of these doubts and had hoped Gibbs had not noticed them, but Gibbs had gone away without a word, save a gruff:

"Well, that's fixed, Mr. Ward."

And yet Elizabeth had wondered about it all. Her conscience troubled her acutely, so acutely that when Marriott came over that evening for the praise he could not forego, and perhaps for a little spiritual corroboration and comfort, she said:

"Gordon, you have done wonders. I can't thank you."

"Don't try," he said. "It's nothing."

She looked troubled. Her brows darkened, and then, unable to resist the impulse any longer, she asked:

"But, Gordon, was it right?"

"What?" he asked, quite needlessly, as they both knew.

"What you--what we--did?"

"Yes, it was right."

"Was it legal?"

"N-no."

"Ah!" She was silent a moment. "What is it called?"

"What?"

"You know very well--our crime. I must know the worst. I must know just how bad I am."

"You wish to have it labeled, classified, as Doctor Tilson would have it?"

"Yes, tell me."

"I believe," said Marriott looking away and biting his upper lip, "that it's called compounding a felony, or something of that sort."

He was silent and she was silent. Then he spoke again.

"They disbarred poor old Billy Gale for less than that."

She looked at him, her gray eyes winking rapidly as they did when she was interested and her mind concentrated on some absorbing problem. Then she impulsively clasped her white hands in her lap, and, leaning over, she asked out of the psychological interest the situation must soon or late have for her:

"Tell me, Gordon, just how you felt when you were--"

"Committing it?"

She nodded her head rapidly, almost impatiently.

"Well," he said with a far-away expression, "I experienced, especially when I was in Danny Gibbs's saloon, that pleasant feeling of going to hell."

"You just won't reassure me," she said, relaxing into a hopeless attitude.

"Oh, yes, I will," he replied. "Don't you remember what Emerson says?" He looked up at the portrait of the beautiful, spiritual face above the mantel.

She looked up in her vivid literary interest.

"No; tell me. He said everything."

"Yes, everything there is to say. He said, 'Good men must not obey the laws too well.'"

XXIX

When Eades read the announcement of Hunter's departure for Italy he was first surprised, then indignant, then relieved. Hunter had reported Dick's crime in anger, the state of mind in which most criminal prosecutions are begun. The old man had trembled until Eades feared for him; as he sat there with pallid lips relating the circumstances, he was not at all the contained, mild and shrewd old financier Eades so long had known.

"We must be protected, Mr. Eades,"--he could hear the shrill cry for days--"we must be protected from these thieves! They are the worst of all, sir; the worst of all! I want this young scoundrel arrested and sent to the penitentiary right away, sir, right away!"

Eades had seen that the old man was in fear, and that in his fear he had turned to him as toward that ancient corner-stone of society, the criminal statute. And now he had fled!

Eades knew, of course, that some one had tampered with him; and, of course, the defalcation had been made good, and now Hunter would be an impossible witness. Even Eades could imagine Hunter on the stand, not as he had been in his office that day, angry, frightened, keenly conscious of his wrong and recalling minutely all the details; but senile, a little deaf, leaning forward with a hand behind his ear, a grin on his withered face, remembering nothing, not cognizant of the details of his bookkeeping--sitting there, with his money safe in his pocket, while the case collapsed, Dick was acquitted in triumph--and he, John Eades, made ridiculous.

But what was he to do? After all, in the eye of the law, Hunter was not a witness; and, besides, it was possible that, technically, the felony might not have been compounded. At any rate, if it had been he could not prove it, and as for proceeding now against Ward, that was too much to expect, too much even for him to exact of himself. When a definite case was laid before him with the evidence to support it, his duty was plain, but he was not required to go tilting after wind-mills, to investigate mere suspicions. It was a relief to resign himself to this conclusion. Now he could only wait for Hunter's return, and have him brought in when he came, but probably, in the end, it would come to nothing. Yes, it was a relief, and he could think hopefully once more of Elizabeth.

The fourteenth of May--the date for the execution of the sentence of death against Archie--was almost on him before Marriott filed his petition in error in the Appellate Court and a motion for suspension of sentence. He had calculated nicely. As the court could not hear and determine the case before the day of execution, the motion was granted, and the execution postponed. Marriott's relief was exquisite; he hastened to send a telegram to Archie, and was happy, so happy that he could laugh at the editorial which Edwards printed the next morning, calling for reforms in the criminal code which would prevent "such travesties as were evidently to be expected in the Koerner case."

Marriott could laugh, because he knew how hypocritical Edwards was, but Edwards's editorials had influence in other quarters, and Marriott more and more regretted his simple little act of kindness--or of weakness--in loaning Edwards the ten dollars. If the newspapers would desist, he felt sure that in time, when public sentiment had undergone its inevitable reaction, he might secure a commutation of Archie's sentence; but if Edwards, in order to vent his spleen, continued to keep alive the spirit of the mob, then there was little hope.

"If he could only be sent to prison for life!" said Elizabeth, as they discussed this aspect of the case. "No,"--she hastened to correct herself--"for twenty years; that would do."

"It would be the same thing," said Marriott.

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth leaned forward with a puzzled expression in her gray eyes.

"All sentences to the penitentiary are sentences for life. We pretend they're not, but if a man lives to get out--do we treat him as if he had paid the debt? No, he's a convict still. Look at Archie, for instance."

"Look at Harry Graves! Oh, Gordon,"--Elizabeth suddenly sat up and made an impatient gesture--"I can't forget him! And Gusta! And those men I saw as they were taken from the jail!"

"You mustn't worry about it; you can't help it."

"Oh, that's what they all tell me! 'Don't worry about it--you can't help it!' No! But you worried about Archie--and about"--she closed her eyes, and he watched their white lids droop in pain--"and about Dick."

"I knew them."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "you knew them--that explains it all. We don't know the others, and so we don't care. Some one knows them, of course, or did, once, in the beginning. It makes me so unhappy! Don't, please, ever any more tell me not to worry, or that I can't help it. Try to think out some way in which I can help it, won't you?"

Meanwhile, Edwards's editorials were doing their work. They had an effect on Eades, of course, because the Courier was the organ of his party, to which he had to look for renomination. And they produced their effect on the judges of the Appellate Court, who also belonged to that party, but, not knowing Edwards, thought his anonymous utterances the voice of the people, which, at times, in the ears of politicians sounds like the voice of God. The court heard the case early in June; in two weeks it was decided. When Marriott entered the court-room on the morning the decision was to be rendered, his heart sank. On the left of the bench were piled some law-books, and behind them, peeping surreptitiously, he recognized the transcript in the Koerner case. It was much like other transcripts, to be sure, but to Marriott it was as familiar as the features of a friend with whom one has gone through trouble. The transcript lay on the desk before Judge Gardner's empty chair and therefore he knew that the decision was to be delivered by Gardner, and he feared that it was adverse, for Gardner had been severe with him and had asked him questions during the argument.

The bailiff had stood up, rapped on his desk, and Marriott, Eades and the other lawyers in the courtroom rose to simulate a respect for the court entertained only by those who felt that they were likely to win their cases. The three judges paced solemnly in, and when they were seated and the presiding judge had made a few announcements, Gardner leaned forward, pulled the transcript toward him, balanced his gold glasses on his nose, cleared his throat, and in a deep bass voice and in a manner somewhat strained, began to announce the decision. Before he had uttered half a dozen sentences, Marriott knew that he had lost again. The decision of the lower court was affirmed in what was inevitably called by the newspapers an able opinion, and the day of Archie's death was once more fixed--this time for the twenty-first of October.

A few weeks later, Marriott saw Archie at the penitentiary. He had gone to the state capital to argue to the Supreme Court old man Koerner's case against the railroad company. Several weeks before he had tried the case in the Appellate Court, and had won, the court affirming the judgment. This case seemed now to be the only hope of the family, and Marriott was anxious to have it heard by the Supreme Court before the learned justices knew of Archie's case, lest the relation of the old man and the boy prejudice them. He felt somehow that if he failed in Archie's case, a victory in the father's case would go far to dress the balance of the scales of justice and preserve the equilibrium of things. It was noon when Marriott was at the penitentiary, and he was glad that the men who were waiting to be killed were then taking their exercise, for he was spared the depression of the death-chamber. He met Archie under the blackened locust tree in the quadrangle. Archie was hopeful that day.

"I feel lucky," said Archie. "I'll not have to punish,--think so, Mr. Marriott?"

"We've got lots of time," Marriott replied, not knowing what else to say, "the Supreme Court doesn't sit till fall."

Pritchard, the poisoner, laid his slender white hand on Archie's shoulder.

"Good boy you've got here, Mr. Marriott," he said jokingly, "but a trifle wild."

Marriott laughed, and wondered how he could laugh.

Just then a whistle blew, and the convicts in close-formed ranks filed by on their way to dinner. As they went by, one of them glanced at him with a smile of recognition; a smile which, as Marriott saw, the man at once repressed, as the convict is compelled to repress all signs of human feeling. Marriott stared, then suddenly remembered; it was a man named Brill, whom he had known years before. And he, like the rest of the world, had forgotten Brill! He had not even cast him a glance of sympathy! He felt like running after the company--but it was too late; Brill must go without the one little kindness that might have made one day, at least, happier, or if not that, shorter for him.

The last gray-garbed company marched by, the guard with his club at his shoulder. The rear of this company was brought up by a convict, plainly of the fourth grade, for he was in stripes and his head was shaved. He walked painfully, with the aid of a crooked cane, lifting one foot after the other, flinging it before him and then slapping it down uncertainly with a disagreeable sound to the pavement.

"What's the matter with that man?" asked Marriott.

"They say he has locomotor ataxia," said Beck, the death-watch, "but he's only shamming. He's no good."

XXX

Archie had lived in the death-chamber at the penitentiary for nine months. Three times had the day of his death been fixed; the first time, by Glassford for the fourteenth of May, the second time by the Appellate Court for the twenty-first of October. Then, the third time the seven justices of the Supreme Court, sitting in their black and solemn gowns, sustained the lower court, and set the day anew, this time for the twenty-third of November. Then came the race to the Pardon Board; where Marriott and Eades again fought over Archie's life. The Pardon Board refused to recommend clemency. But one hope remained--the governor. It was now the twenty-second of November--one day more. Archie waited that long afternoon in the death-chamber, while Marriott at the state house pleaded with the governor for a commutation of his sentence to imprisonment for life.

Already the prison authorities had begun the arrangements. That afternoon Archie had heard them testing the electric chair; he had listened to the thrumming of its current; twice, thrice, half a dozen times, they had turned it on. Then Jimmy Ball had come in, peered an instant, without a word, then shambled away, his stick hooked over his arm. It was very still in the death-chamber that afternoon. The eight other men confined there, like Archie, spent their days in reviving hope within their breasts; like him, they had experienced the sensation of having the day of their death fixed, and then lived to see it postponed, changed, postponed and fixed again. They had known the long suspense, the alternate rise and fall of hope, as in the courts the state had wrangled with their lawyers for their lives. Not once had Burns, the negro, twanged his guitar. Lowrie, who was writing a history of his wasted life, had allowed his labor to languish, and sat now moodily gazing at the pieces of paper he had covered with his illiterate writing. Old man Stewart, who had strangled his young wife in a jealous rage, lay on his iron cot, his long white beard spread on his breast, strangely suggestive of the appearance he soon would present in death. Kulaski, the Slav, who had slain a saloon-keeper for selling beer to his son, and never repented, was moody and morose; Belden and Waller had consented to an intermission of their quarrelsome argument about religion. The intermission had the effect of a deference to Archie; the argument was not to be resumed until after Archie's death, when he might, indeed, be supposed to have solved the problem they constantly debated, and to have no further interest in it. Pritchard, the poisoner, a quiet fellow, and Muller had ceased their interminable game of cribbage, the cards lay scattered on the table, the little pins stuck in the board where they had left them, to resume their count another time. The gloom of Archie's nearing fate hung over these men, yet none of them was thinking of Archie; each was thinking of an evening which would be to him as this evening was to Archie, unless--there was always that word "unless"; it made their hearts leap painfully.

Just outside the iron grating which separated from the antechamber the great apartment where they existed in the hope of living again, Beck, the guard, sat in his well-worn splint-bottomed chair. He had tilted it against the wall, and, with his head thrown back, seemed to slumber. His coarse mouth was open, his purple nose, thrown thus into prominence, was grotesque, his filthy waistcoat rose and stretched and fell as his flabby paunch inflated with his breathing. Beside the hot stove, just where the last shaft of the sun, falling through the barred window, could fall on her, a black cat, fat and sleek, that haunted the chamber with her uncanny feline presence, stretched herself, and yawned, curling her delicate tongue.

When Archie entered the death-chamber, there had been eleven men in it. But the number had decreased. He could remember distinctly each separate exit. One by one they had gone out, never to return. There was Mike Thomas; he would remember the horror of that to the end of his life, as, with the human habit, he expressed it to Marriott, insensible of the grim irony of the phrase in that place of deliberate death, where, after all, life persisted on its own terms and with its common phrases and symbols. The newspapers had called it a harrowing scene; the inmates of the death-chamber had whispered about it, calling it a bungle, and the affair had magnified and distorted itself to their imaginations, and they had dwelt on it with a covert morbidity. The newspapers next day were denied them, but they knew that it had required three shocks--they could count them by the thrumming of the currents, each time the prison had shaken with the howl of the awakened convicts in the cell-house. Bill Arnold, the negro who had killed a real estate agent, had been the most concerned; his day was but a week after Thomas's. The strain had been too much for Arnold; he had collapsed, raved like a maniac, then sobbed, fallen on his knees and yammered a prayer to Jimmy Ball, as if the deputy warden were a god. They had dragged him out, still on his knees, moaning "God be merciful; God be merciful."

They had missed Arnold. He was a jolly negro, who could sing and tell stories, and do buck-and-wing dancing, and, when Ball was away, and the guard's back turned, give perfect imitations of them both. They missed him out of their life in that chamber, or rather out of their death. It seemed strange to think that one minute he was among them, full of warm pulsing life and strength--and that the next, he should be dead. They missed him, as men miss a fellow with whom they have eaten and slept for months.

These men in the state shambles were there, the law had said, for murder. But this was only in a sense true. One was there, for instance, because his lawyer had made a mistake; he had not kept accurate account of his peremptory challenges; he thought he had exhausted but fifteen, whereas he had exhausted sixteen; that is, all of them, and so had been unable to remove from the jury a man whom he had irritated and offended by his persistent questioning; he had been quite sarcastic, intending to challenge the man peremptorily in a few moments. Another man was there because the judge before whom he was tried, having quarreled with his wife one morning, was out of humor all that day, and had ridiculed his lawyer, not in words, but by sneers and curlings of his lip, which could not be preserved in the record. Another--Pritchard, to be exact--was there, first, because he had been a chemist; secondly, because he, like the judge, had had a quarrel with his wife; thirdly, because his wife had died suddenly, and traces of cyanide of potassium had been found in her stomach--at least three of the four doctors who had conducted the post-mortem examination had said the traces were of cyanide of potassium--and fourthly, because a small vial was discovered in the room in which were also traces of cyanide of potassium; at least, three chemists declared the traces were those of cyanide of potassium. And all of them were there for some such reason as this, and all of them, with the possible exception of Pritchard, had taken human life. And yet each one had felt, and still felt, that the circumstances under which he had killed were such as to warrant killing; such, indeed, as to make it at the moment seem imperative and necessary, just as the State felt that in killing these men, circumstances had arisen which made it justifiable, imperative and necessary to kill.

Though Archie waited in suspense, the afternoon was short, short even beyond the shortness of November, and at five o'clock Marriott came. He lingered just outside the entrance to the chamber in the little room that was fitted up somehow like a chapel, the room in which the death chair was placed. The guard brought Archie out, and he leaned carelessly against the rail that surrounded the chair, mysterious and sinister under its draping of black oil-cloth. The rail railed off the little platform on which the chair was placed just as a chancel-rail rails off an altar, possibly because so many people regarded the chair in the same sacred light that they regarded an altar, and spoke of it as if its rite were quite as saving and sacerdotal. But Archie leaned against the rail calmly, negligently, and it made Marriott's flesh creep to see him thus unmoved and practical. He did not speak, but he looked his last question out of his blue eyes.

"The governor hasn't decided yet," Marriott said. "I've spent the afternoon with him. I've labored with him--God!" he suddenly paused and sighed in utter weariness at the recollection of the long hours in which he had clung to the governor--"I'm to see him again at eight o'clock at the executive mansion. He's to give me a final answer then."

"At eight o'clock?" The words slipped from Archie's lips as softly as his breath.

"This evening," said Marriott, dreading now the thought of fixity of time. He looked at Archie; and it was almost more than he could endure. Archie's eyes were fastened on him; his gaze seemed to cling to him in final desperation.

"Oh, in the name of God," Archie suddenly whispered, leaning toward him, his face directly in his, "do something, Mr. Marriott! something! something! I can't, I can't die to-night! If it's only a little more time--just another day--but not to-night! Not to-night! Do something, Mr. Marriott; something!"

Marriott seized Archie's hand. It was cold and wet. He wrung it as hard as he could. There were no words for such a moment as this. Words but mocked.

He saw Archie's chest heave, and the cords tighten in his swelling neck. Marriott could only look at him--this boy, for whom he had come to have an affection--so young, so strong, with the great gloom of death prematurely, unnecessarily, in his face!

But the face cleared suddenly,--Archie still could think, and he remembered--he remembered Curly, and Mason and old Dillon, and Gibbs, he recalled the only ideals he knew--like all of us, he could live up only to such ideals as he had--he remembered that he must be game. He straightened, Marriott saw the fine and supple play of the muscles of his chest, its white skin revealed through his open shirt.

"So long, Mr. Marriott," said Archie, and then turned and went back into the death-chamber.

Outside, in the twilight that was filling the quadrangle, Marriott passed along, the gloom of the place he had left filling his soul. The trusty who had conducted him to the death-chamber paced in silence by his side. He passed the great tree, gaunt and bare and black now, the tree under which he had seen that summer day these doomed men take their exercise, with the Sunday-school scholars standing by and gazing on with curious covert glances and perverted thoughts. He wished that time had paused on that day--he had had hope then; this thing as to Archie, it then had seemed, simply could not be; it might, he had felt, very well be as to those other doomed men; indeed, it seemed certain and irrevocable; but as to Archie, no, it could not be. And yet, here it was, the night before the day--and but one more hope between them and the end. He hastened on, anxious to get out of the place. Any moment the whistle might blow and he would have to wait until the men had come from their work; the gates could not be unlocked at that time, or until the men were locked again in their cells. They were passing the chapel, and suddenly he heard music--the playing of a piano. He stopped and listened. He heard the deep bass notes of Grieg's Ode to the Spring, played now with a pathos he had never known before.

"What's that?" he asked the trusty.

"That playing? That's young Ernsthauser. He's a swell piano player."

"May we look in?"

"Sure."

They entered, and stood just inside the door. A young German, in the gray convict garb, was seated at a piano, his delicate hands straying over the keys. One gas-jet burned in the wall above the piano, shedding its faint circle of light around the pianist, glistening on the dark panels of the instrument, lighting the pale face of the boy--he was but a boy--and then losing itself in the great darkness that hung thick and soft and heavy in the vast auditorium. Marriott looked and listened in silence; tears came to his eyes, a vast pity welled within him, and he knew that never again would he hear the Ode without experiencing the pity and the pain of this day. He wished, indeed, that he had not heard it. The musician played on, rapt and alone, unconscious of their presence.

"Tell me about that fellow," said Marriott, as they stole away.

"Oh, he was a musician outside. The warden lets him play. The warden likes music. I've seen him cry when Ernsthauser plays. He plays for visitors, and he picks up, they say, a good bit of money every day. The visitors, except the Sunday-schools, give him tips."

"How long is he in for?"

"Life."

The word fell like a blow on Marriott. Life! What paradoxes were in this place! What perverted meanings--if there were any meanings left in the world. This one word life, in one part of the prison meant life indeed; now it meant death. Was there any difference in the words, after all--life and death? Life in death; death in life? With Archie it was death in life, with this musician, life in death--no, it was the other way. But was it? Marriott could not decide. The words meant nothing, after all.

The delay in the chapel kept Marriott in the prison for half an hour. He would not watch the convicts march again to their cells; he did not wish to hear the clanging of the gong nor the thud of the bolts that locked them in for the night.

The warden, a ruddy and rotund man, spoke pleasantly to him and asked him into his office. The warden sat in a big swivel chair before his roll-top desk, and, while Marriott waited, locked in now like the rest, they chatted. It was incomprehensible to Marriott that this man could chat casually and even laugh, when he knew that he must stay up that night to do such a deed as the law required of him. The consciousness, indeed, must have lain on the warden, try as he might not to show it, for, presently, the warden himself, as if he could not help it, referred to the event.

"How's Archie taking it?" he asked.

Marriott might have replied conventionally, or politely, that he was taking it well, but he somehow resented this man's casual and contained manner. And so, looking him in the eyes, and meaning to punish him, he said:

"He's trying to appear game, but he's taking it hard."

"Hard, eh?"

"Yes, hard." Marriott looked at him sternly. "Tell me," he emboldened himself to ask, "how can you do it?"

The warden's face became suddenly hard.

"Do it? Bah! I could switch it into all of them fellows in there--like that!" He snapped his fat fingers in the air with a startling, suggestive electric sound. And for a moment afterward his upper lip curled with a cruelty that appalled Marriott. He looked at this man, this executioner, who seemed to be encompassed all at once with a kind of subtle, evil fascination. Marriott looked at his face--then in some way at the finger and thumb which, a moment before, had snapped their indifference in the air. And he started, for suddenly he recalled that Doctor Tyler Tilson had declared, in the profound scientific treatise he had written for the Post, that Archie had the spatulate finger-tips and the stubbed finger-nails that were among the stigmata of the homicide, and Marriott saw that the fingers of the warden were spatulate, their nails were broad and stubbed, imbedded in the flesh. And this man liked music--cried when the life-man played!

"Won't you stop and have dinner with me?" the warden asked. "You can stay for the execution, too, if you wish."

"No, thank you," said Marriott hurriedly. The thought of sitting down to dine with this man on this evening was abhorrent, loathsome to him. He might have sat down and eaten with Archie and his companions, or with those convicts whose distant shuffling feet he heard; he could have eaten their bread, wet and salt with their tears, but he could not eat with this man. And yet, sensitively, he could not let this man detect his loathing.

"No," he said, "I must get back to my hotel--" and the thought of the hotel, with its light and its life, filled him with instant longing. "I have another appointment with the governor this evening."

"Oh, he won't do anything," said the warden.

The words depressed Marriott, and he hurried away with them persistently ringing in his ears, glad at least to get away from the great pile that hid so much sorrow and misery and shame from the world, and now sat black against the gathering night, under the shadow of a mighty wing.

At eight o'clock that evening Archie was sitting on the edge of his cot, smoking one of the Russian cigarettes Marriott had brought him in the afternoon. The pungent and unusual odor filled the death-chamber, and the other waiting men (who nevertheless did not have to die that night) sniffed, some suspiciously, some with the air of connoisseurs.

"Ha!" said Pritchard, turning his pale face slowly about, "imported, eh?"

Then Archie passed them around, though somewhat reluctantly. Marriott had brought him several boxes of these cigarettes, and Archie knew they were the kind Marriott smoked himself. He was generous enough; this brotherhood of doomed men held all things in common, like the early Christians, sharing their little luxuries, but Archie felt that it was useless to waste such cigarettes on men who would be alive to-morrow; especially when it was doubtful if there would be enough for himself.

The warden had sent him a supper which was borne in with the effect of being the last and highest excellence to which the culinary art could attain. If there was anything, Ball reported the warden as having said, that was then in market, and was not there he'd like to know what it was. The generosity of the warden had not been limited to Archie; the others were treated to a like repast; there was turkey for all. Archie had not eaten much; he had made an effort and smiled and thanked the warden when he strolled in afterward for his meed of praise. Archie found the cigarettes sufficient. He sat there almost without moving, smoking them one after another, end to end, lighting a fresh one from the cork-tipped stub of the one he was about to fling away. He sat and smoked, his eyes blinked in his white face, and his brows contracted as he tried to think. He was not, of course, at any time, capable of sustained or logical thought, and now his thoughts were merely a muddle of impressions, a curiosity as to whether he would win or lose, as if he were gambling, and all this in the midst of a mighty wonder, vast, immeasurable, profound, that was expanding slowly in his soul.

How many times had he waited as he was waiting now, for word from Marriott? May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third. What day was this? Oh, yes, the twenty-second. What time was it now? ... Kouka?--Kouka was dead; yes, dead. That was good ... And he himself must die ... Die? What was that? ... May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third. He had already died three times. No, he had died many more times than that; during the trial he had died again and again, by day, by night. Here in the death-chamber he had died; here on this very cot. Sometimes during the day, when they were all strangely merry, when Bill Arnold was doing a song and dance, when they had all forgotten, suddenly, in an instant, it would come over him, and he would die--die there, amidst them all, with the sun streaming in the window--die with a smile and a joke, perhaps while speaking to one of them; they would not know he was dying. And in the night he died often, nearly every night, suddenly he would find himself awake, staring into the darkness; then he would remember it all, and he would die, live over that death again, as it were. All about him the others would be snoring, or groaning, muttering or cursing, like drunkards in their sleep. Perhaps they were dying, too. Now, he must die again. And he had already died a thousand deaths. Kouka had died, too, but only once....

What was that? Marriott? His heart stopped. But, no, it was not Marriott. There was still hope; there was always hope so long as Marriott did not come. It was only the old Lutheran preacher, Mr. Hoerr. He came to pray with him? This was strange, thought Archie. Why should he pray now? What difference could that make? Prayers could not save him; he had tried that, sometimes at night, as well as he could, imploring, pleading, holding on with his whole soul, until he was exhausted; but it did no good; no one, or nothing heard. The only thing that could do any good now was the governor.... Still, he was glad it was not Marriott. He had, suddenly, begun to dread the coming of Marriott.... But this preacher? Well, he could pray if he wanted to, it seemed to please him, to be a part somehow of the whole ceremony they were going through. Yet he might pray if it gave him any pleasure. He had read of their praying, always; but Mr. Hoerr must not expect him to stop smoking cigarettes while he prayed. Archie lighted a fresh cigarette hurriedly, inhaled the smoke, filling his lungs in every cell.... The preacher had asked him if he was reconciled, if he were ready to meet his God. Archie did not reply. He stared at the preacher, the smoke streaming from his lips, from his nostrils. Ready to meet his God? What a strange thing to ask! He was not ready, no; he had not asked to meet his God, yet. There was no use in asking such a question; if they were uncertain about it, or had any question, or feared any danger they could settle it by just a word--a word from the governor. Then he would not have to meet his God.... Where was his God anyhow? He had no God.... These sky-pilots were strange fellows! He never knew what to say to them.... "The blood of Jesus." ... Oh, yes, he had heard that, too.... Was he being game? What would the papers say? Would the old Market Place gang talk about it? And Mason, and Dillon, and Gibbs? And Curly, too? They might as well; doubtless they would. They settled whomever they pleased.... Out at Nussbaum's saloon in the old days.... His mother, and Jakie and little Katie playing in the back yard, their yellow heads bobbing in the sunshine.... And Gusta! Poor Gusta! Whatever became of that chump of a Peltzer? He ought to have fixed him.... The old man's rheumatic leg.... And that case of his against the railroad.... John O'Brien--rattler.... What was the word for leg? Oh, yes, gimp.... Well, he had made a mess of it.... If they would only hang him, instead.... Why couldn't they? That would be so much easier. He was used to thinking of that; so many men had gone through that. But this new way, there was so much fuss about it.... Bill Arnold.... What if? ... Ugh.... How cold it was! Had some one opened the window?...

Yes, he was the fall guy, all right, all right.... A black, intolerable gloom, dread wastes like a desert. Thirst raged in his throat.... It was dry and sanded.... How rank the cigarette tasted! ... Why did the others huddle there in the back of the cage, their faces black, ugly, brutal? Were they plotting? They might slip up on him, from behind. He turned quickly.... Well, they would get theirs, too.... One day in the wilderness of Samar when their company had been detailed to--the flag--how green the woods were; the rushes--

His father hated him, too, yes, ever since.... Eades--Eades had done this. God! What a cold proposition Eades was! ... One day when he was a little kid, just as they came from school in the afternoon.... The rifle range, and the captain smiling as he pinned his sharp-shooter's medal on.... Where was his medal now? He meant to ask the warden to have it pinned on his breast after--He must attend to that, and not forget it. He had spoken to Beck about it and Beck had promised, but Beck never did anything he said he would.... If, now, those bars were not there, he could choke Beck, take his gun--

His mind suddenly became clear. With a yearning that was ineffable, intolerable, he longed for some power to stay this thing--if he could only try it all over again, he would do better now! His mind had become clear, incandescent; he had a swift flashing conception of purity, faith, virtue--but before he could grasp the conception it had gone. He was crying, his mother, he remembered--but now he could not see her face, he could see the shape of her head, her hair, her throat, but not her face. He could, however, see her hands quite distinctly. They were large, and brown, and wrinkled, and the fingers were curved so that they were almost always closed.... But this was not being game; he needn't say dying game just yet.

Was that Marriott? No, the warden. He had brought him something. He was thrusting it through the bars. A bottle! Archie seized it, pressed it to his lips. Whisky! He drank long and long. Ah! That was better! That did him good! That beat prayers, or tears, or solitaire, or even wishing on the black cat. That made him warm, comfortable. There was hope now. Marriott would bring that governor around! Marriott was a hell of a smart fellow, even if he had lost his case. Perhaps, if he had had Frisby,--Frisby was smart, too, and had a pull. He drank again. That was better yet. What would it matter if the governor refused? It wouldn't matter at all; it was all right. This stuff made him feel game. How much was there in the bottle? ... Ah, the cigarettes tasted better, too, now...

Marriott? No, not this time. Well, that was good. It was the barber come to "top" him.

The barber shaved bare a little round spot on Archie's head, exposing a bluish-white disk of scalp in the midst of his yellow locks. And then, kneeling with his scissors, he slit each leg of Archie's trousers to the knee. Then the warden drew a paper out of his pocket and began to read.

Archie could not hear what he read. After the barber began shaving his head, he fell into a stupor, and sat there, his eyes staring straight before him, his mouth agape, a cigarette clinging to his lower lip and dangling toward his chin. He looked like a young tonsured priest suddenly become imbecile.

When they finished, he still sat there. Some one was taking off his shoes. Then there was a step. He looked up, as one returning from a dream. He saw some one standing just within the door of the antechamber. Marriott? No, it was not Marriott. It was the governor's messenger.

Without in the cell-house the long corridors had been laid deep in yellow sawdust, so that the fall of the feet of the midnight guests might not awaken the convicts who slept so heavily, on the narrow bunks in their cells, after their dreadful day of toil.

XXXI

"All ready, Archie."

Jimmy Ball touched him on the shoulder. The grated door was open, and Beck stood just inside it, his revolver drawn. He kept his eye on the others, huddled there behind him.

"Come, my boy."

He made an effort, and stood up. He glanced toward the open grated door, thence across the flagging to the other door, and tried to take a step. Out there he could see one or two faces thrust forward suddenly; they peered in, then hastily withdrew. He tried again to take a step, but one leg had gone to sleep, it prickled, and as he bore his weight upon it, it seemed to swell suddenly to elephantine proportions. And he seemed to have no knees at all; if he stood up he would collapse. How was he ever to walk that distance?

"Here!" said Ball. "Get on that other side of him, Warden."

Then they started. The Reverend Mr. Hoerr, waiting by the door, had begun to read something in a strange, unnatural voice, out of a little red book he held at his breast in both his hands.

"Good-by, Archie!" they called from behind, and he turned, swayed a little, and looked back over his shoulder.

"Good-by, boys," he said. He had a glimpse of their faces; they looked gray and ugly, worse even than they had that evening--or was it that evening when with sudden fear he had seen them crouching there behind him?

Perhaps just at the last minute the governor would change his mind. They were walking the long way to the door, six yards off. The flagging was cold to his bare feet; his slit trouser-legs flapped miserably, revealing his white calves. Walking had suddenly become laborious; he had to lift each leg separately and manage it; he walked much as that man in the rear rank of Company 21 walked. He would have liked to stop and rest an instant, but Ball and the warden walked beside him, urged him resistlessly along, each gripping him at the wrist and upper arm.

In the room outside, Archie recognized the reporters standing in the sawdust. What they were to write that night would be in the newspapers the next morning, but he would not read it. He heard Beck lock the door of the death-chamber, locking it hurriedly, so that he could be in time to look on. Archie had no friend in the group of men that waited in silence, glancing curiously at him, their faces white as the whitewashed wall. The doctors held their watches in their hands. And there before him was the chair, its oil-cloth cover now removed, its cane bottom exposed. But he would have to step up on the little platform to get to it.

"No--yes, there you are, Archie, my boy!" whispered Ball. "There!"

He was in it, at last. He leaned back; then, as his back touched the back of the chair, started violently. But there were hands on his shoulders pressing him down, until he could feel his back touch the chair from his shoulders down to the very end of his spine. Some one had seized his legs, turned back the slit trousers from his calves.

"Be quick!" he heard the warden say in a scared voice. He was at his right side where the switch and the indicator were.

There were hands, too, at his head, at his arms--hands all over him. He took one last look. Had the governor--? Then the leather mask was strapped over his eyes and it was dark. He could only feel and hear now--feel the cold metal on his legs, feel the moist sponge on the top of his head where the barber had shaved him, feel the leather straps binding his legs and arms to the legs and the arms of the chair, binding them tightly, so that they gave him pain, and he could not move. Helpless he lay there, and waited. He heard the loud ticking of a watch; then on the other side of him the loud ticking of another watch; fingers were at his wrists. There was no sound but the mumble of Mr. Hoerr's voice. Then some one said:

"All ready."

He waited a second, or an age, then, suddenly, it seemed as if he must leap from the chair, his body was swelling to some monstrous, impossible, unhuman shape; his muscles were stretched, millions of hot and dreadful needles were piercing and pricking him, a stupendous roaring was in his ears, then a million colors, colors he had never seen or imagined before, colors no one had ever seen or imagined, colors beyond the range of the spectra, new, undiscovered, summoned by some mysterious agency from distant corners of the universe, played before his eyes. Suddenly they were shattered by a terrific explosion in his brain--then darkness.

But no, there was still sensation; a dull purple color slowly spread before him, gradually grew lighter, expanded, and with a mighty pain he struggled, groping his way in torture and torment over fearful obstacles from some far distance, remote as black stars in the cold abyss of the universe; he struggled back to life--then an appalling confusion, a grasp at consciousness; he heard the ticking of the two watches--then, through his brain there slowly trickled a thread of thought that squirmed and glowed like a white-hot wire...

A faint groan escaped the pale lips below the black leather mask, a tremor ran through the form in the chair, then it relaxed and was still.

"It's all over." The doctor, lifting his fingers from Archie's wrist, tried to smile, and wiped the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief.

Some one flung up a window, and a draught of cool air sucked through the room. On the draught was borne from the death-chamber the stale odor of Russian cigarettes. And then a demoniacal roar shook the cell-house. The convicts had been awake.

XXXII

Late in the winter the cable brought the news that Amos Hunter had died at Capri. Though the conventionalities were observed, it was doubtful if the event caused even a passing regret in the city where Hunter had been one of the wealthiest citizens. The extinction of this cold and selfish personality was noted, of course, by the closing of his bank for a day; the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, and the Stock Exchange adopted the usual resolutions, and the newspapers printed editorials in which the old canting, hypocritical phrases were paraded. To his widow, beyond the shock that came with the breaking of the habit of years, there was a mild regret, and the daughter, who was with him when he died, after the American consul had come to her assistance and arranged to send the body home, experienced a stealthy pleasure in her homeward journey she had not known on the outward voyage.

But to the Wards the news came as a distinct relief, for now the danger, if it ever was a danger, that had hung over them for months was definitely removed. They had grown so accustomed to its presence, however, the suspense and uncertainty had become so much a part of their lives that they did not recognize its reality until they found it removed altogether. Ward and Elizabeth had now and then talked about it and speculated on its possibilities of trouble in a world where there was so much trouble; and Mrs. Ward had been haunted by the fear of what her world might say. Now that this danger was passed, she could look on it as a thing that was as if it never had been, and she fondled and caressed her full-grown son more than ever. Ward was glad, but he was not happy. He saw that Dick's character had been marked definitely. The boy had escaped the artificial law that man had made, but he had not evaded the natural law, and Ward realized, though perhaps not so clearly as Elizabeth realized, that Dick must go on paying the penalty in his character year after year--perhaps to the end of his days.

If it made any real difference to Dick, he did not show it. Very early in the experience he seemed to be fully reassured, and Ward and Elizabeth and Marriott saw plainly that he was not wise enough to find the good that always is concealed somewhere in the bad. Dick took up his old life, and, so far as his restricted opportunities now permitted, sought his old sensations. Elizabeth sadly observed the continued disintegration of his character, expressed to her by such coarse physical manifestations as his excessive eating and drinking and smoking. And she saw that there was nothing she or any one could now do; that no one could help him but himself, and that, like the story of the prodigal of old, which suddenly revealed its hidden meaning to her in this personal contact with a similar experience, he must continue to feed on husks until he came to himself. How few, she thought, had come to themselves! Elizabeth had been near to boasting that her own eyes had been opened, and they had, indeed, been washed by tears, but now she humbly wondered if she had come to herself as yet. She had long ago given up the fictions of society which her mother yet revered; she had abandoned her formal charities, finding them absurd and inadequate. Meanwhile, she waited patiently, hoping that some day she might find the way to life.

She saw nothing of Eades, though she was constantly hearing of his success. His conviction of Archie had given him prestige. He considered the case against Curly Jackson, but finding it impossible to convict him, feeling a lack of public sentiment, he was forced to nolle the indictment against him and reluctantly let him go. In fact, Eades was having his trouble in common with the rest of humanity. Though he had been applauded and praised, all at once, for some mysterious reason he could not understand but could only feel in its effect, he discovered an eccentricity in the institution he revered. For a while it was difficult to convict any one; verdict after verdict of not guilty was rendered in the criminal court; there seemed to be a reaction against punishment.

When Amos Hunter died, Eades began to think again of Elizabeth Ward. He assured himself that after this lapse of time, now that the danger was removed, Elizabeth would respect him for his high-minded impartiality and devotion to duty, and, indeed, understand what a sacrifice it had been to him to decide as he had. And he resolved that at the first opportunity he would speak to her again. He did not have to wait long for the opportunity. A new musician had come to town, and, with his interest in all artistic endeavors, Braxton Parrish had taken up this frail youth who could play the violin, and had arranged a recital at his home.

Elizabeth went because Parrish had asked her especially and because her mother had urged it on her, "out of respect to me," as Mrs. Ward put it. When she got there, she told herself she was glad she had come because she could now realize how foreign all this artificial life had become to her; she was glad to have the opportunity to correct her reckoning, to see how far she had progressed. She found, however, no profit in it, though the boy, whose playing she liked, interested her. He stood in the music-room under the mellow light, and his slender figure bending gracefully to his violin, and his sensitive, fragile, poetic face, had their various impressions for her; but she sat apart and after a while, when the supper was served, she found a little nook on a low divan behind some palms. But Eades discovered her in her retreat.

"I have been wondering whether my fate was settled--after that last time we met," he said, after the awkward moment in which they exchanged banalities.

The wonder was in his words alone; she could not detect the uncertainty she felt would have become him.

"Is it settled?"

"Yes, it is settled."

He was taken aback, but he was determined, always determined. He could not suppose that, in the end, she would actually refuse him.

"Of course," he began again, "I could realize that for a time you would naturally feel resentful--though that isn't the word--but now--that the necessity is passed--that I am in a sense free--I had let myself begin to hope again."

"You don't understand," she said, almost sick at heart. "You didn't understand that day."

"Why, I thought I did. You wanted me--to let him go."

"Yes."

"And because I loved you, to prove that I loved you--"

"Exactly."

"Well, then, didn't I understand you?"

"No."

"Well, I confess," he leaned back helplessly, "you baffle me."

"Oh, but it wasn't a bargain," she said. Her gray eyes looked calmly into his as she told him what she knew was not accurately the truth, and she was glad of the moment because it gave her the opportunity to declare false what had so long been true to her, and, just as she had feared, true to him. She felt restored, rehabilitated in her old self-esteem, and she relished his perplexity.

"It seems inconsistent," he said.

"Does it? How strange!" She said it coldly, and slowly she took her eyes from him. They were silent for a while.

"Then my fate is settled--irrevocably?" he asked at length.

"Yes, irrevocably."

"I wish," he complained, "that I understood."

"I wish you did," she replied.

"Can't you tell me?"

"Don't force me to."

"Very well," he said, drawing himself up. "I beg your pardon." These words, however, meant that the apology should have been hers.

As they drove home, her mother said to her:

"What were you and John Eades talking about back there in that corner?"

"An old subject."

"Was he--" Mrs. Ward was burning with a curiosity she did not, however, like to put into words.

Elizabeth laughed.

"Yes," she said, "he was. But I settled him."

"I hope you were not--"

"Brutal?"

"Well, perhaps not that--you, of course, could not be that."

"Don't be too sure."

They discussed Eades as the carriage rolled along, but their points of view could never be the same.

"And yet, after all, dear," Mrs. Ward was saying, "we must be just. I don't see--"

"No," Elizabeth interrupted her mother. "You don't see. None of you can see. It wasn't because he wouldn't let Dick go. It was because that one act of his revealed his true nature, his real self; showed me that he isn't a man, but a machine; not a human being, but a prosecutor; he's an institution, and one can't marry an institution, you know," she concluded oddly.

"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward. "That doesn't sound quite ladylike or nice!"

Elizabeth laughed lightly now, in the content that came with the new happiness that was glowing within her.

XXXIII

Curly Jackson was hurrying along Race Street, glad of his old friend, the darkness, that in February had begun to gather at five o'clock. He passed a factory, a tall, ugly building of brick, and in the light of the incandescent lamps he could see the faces of the machinists bent over the glistening machines. Curly looked at these workmen, thought of their toil, of the homes they would go to presently, of the wives that would be waiting, and the children--suddenly a whistle blew, the roar of machinery subsided, whirred, hummed and died away; a glad, spontaneous shout went up from the factory, and, in another minute, a regiment of men in overalls and caps, begrimed and greasy, burst into the street and went trooping off in the twilight. The scene moved Curly profoundly; he longed for some touch of this humanity, for the fellowship of these working-men, for some one to slap his back, and, in mere animal spirits and joy at release, sprint a race for half a block with him.

Curly felt that these workmen were like him, at least, in one respect, they were as glad to be released from the factory as he had been half an hour before to be released from the jail. He had left the jail, but he was not free. Inside the jail he had the sympathy and understanding of his fellows; here he had nothing but hatred and suspicion. Even these men trooping along beside him and, to his joy, brushing against him now and then, would have scorned and avoided him had they known he was just released from prison. There was no work for him among them, and his only freedom lay still in the fields, the woods, and along the highways of gravel and of iron.

"Well," he thought, grinding his teeth bitterly, "they'll have to pay toll now!"

He found Gibbs in his back room, alone, and evidently in a gloomy mood. Gibbs stretched his hand across the table.

"Well, Curly, I'm glad to see some one in luck."

"You're right, Dan, my luck's good. I'm no hoodoo. To be in the way I was and have your pal topped, to make a clear lamas--that looks like good luck to me."

"Oh, well, they never had anything on you."

"They didn't have anything on Dutch neither--but in the frame-up I didn't know but they'd put a sinker on me, too. What made me sore was having that Flanagan rap against me--why, great God! a job like that--that some fink, some gay cat done after he'd got scared!" Jackson could not find the words to express his disgust, his sense of injury, the stain, as it were, on his professional reputation.

"It was that they put Dutch away on."

"Sure, I know that, Dan, and everybody knows that. It was just like a mob of hoosiers after you with pitchforks; like that time old Dillon and Mason and me gave 'em battle in the jungle in Illinois. Well, that's the way these people was. They was howlin' around that court-house and that pogey--God! to think of it! To think of a fellow's getting a lump like that handed to him--all for croakin' a copper!" Curly shook his head a moment in his inability to understand this situation, and he held his hands out in appeal to Gibbs, and said in his high, shrill voice, emphasizing certain words:

"What in hell do you make of it, Dan?"

"What's the use wasting time over that?" Gibbs asked. "That's all over, ain't it? Then cut it out. Course,"--it seemed, however, that Gibbs had some final comment of his own to make--"you might say the kid ought to've had a medal for croaking a gendie. I wisht when he pushed his barker he'd wiped out a few more bulls. He was a good shot."

Gibbs said this with an air of closing the discussion, and of having paid his tribute to Archie.

"Well, Dan," Curly began, "you'll have to put me on the nut until I can get to work. I haven't even got pad money. I gave my bit to Jane; she says graft's on the fritz. She twisted a super, but it was an old canister--has she been in to-day?"

Gibbs shook his head gloomily.

"She didn't expect 'em to turn me out to-day." Curly mused in a moment's silence. "Ain't she the limit? One day she was goin' to bash that sister of poor Dutch, the next she's doubled with her, holdin' her up. She had me scared when she landed in; I was 'fraid she'd tip off the lay somehow--course"--he hastened to do her justice--"I knew she wouldn't throw me down, but the main bull-- What's wrong, Dan?" Curly, seeing that Gibbs was not interested, stopped suddenly.

"Oh, everything's wrong. Dean's been here--now he's pinched!"

"No! What for?"

"You'd never guess."

"The big mitt?"

"No, short change! He came in drunk--he's been at it for a month; of course, if he hadn't, he wouldn't have done anything so foolish. Did you know a moll buzzer named McGlynn? Well, he got home the other day from doin' a stretch, and Ed gets sorry for him and promises to take him out. So they go down to the spill and turned a sucker--Ed flopped him for a ten!" Gibbs's tone expressed the greatest contempt. "He'll be doing a heel or a stick-up next, or go shark hunting. Think of Ed Dean's being in for a thing like that!"

"Is he down at the boob?"

"No, we sprung him on paper. He's all broke up--you heard about McDougall?"

"What about him?"

"Dead; didn't you know? Died in Baltimore--some one shot him in a saloon. He wouldn't tell who; he was game--died saying it was all right, that the guy wasn't to blame. And then," Gibbs went on, "that ain't all. Dempsey was settled."

"Yes, I read it in the paper."

"That was a kangaroo, too."

"I judged so; they settled him for the dip. How did it come off?"

"Oh, it was them farmers down at Bayport. Dempsey had a privilege at the fair last fall; he took a hieronymous--hanky-panky, chuck-a-luck."

"Yes, I know," said Curly impatiently, "the old army game."

"Well, he skinned the shellapers, and they squealed this year to get even. They had him pinched for the dip. Why, old Dempsey couldn't even stall--he couldn't put his back up to go to the front!"

"Who did it?"

"Oh, a little Chicago gun. You don't know him."

"Well," said Curly, "you have had a run of bad luck."

"Do you know what does it?" Gibbs leaned over confidentially, a superstitious gleam in his eye. "It's that Koerner thing. There's a hoodoo over that family. That girl's been in here once or twice--with Jane. You tell Jane not to tow her round here any more. If I was you, I'd cut her loose--she'll queer you. You won't have any luck as long as you're filled in with her."

"I thought the old man had some damages coming to him for the loss of his gimp," said Curly.

"Well, he has; but it's in the courts. They'll job him, too, I suppose. He can't win against that hoodoo. The courts have been taking their time."

The courts, indeed, had been taking their time with Koerner's case. Months had gone by and still no hint of a decision. The truth was, the judges of the Supreme Court were divided. They had discussed the case many times and had had heated arguments over it, but they could not agree as to what had been the proximate cause of Koerner's injury, whether it was the unblocked frog in which he had caught his foot, or the ice on which he had slipped. If it was the unblocked frog, then it was the railroad company's fault; if it was the snow and ice, then it was what is known as the act of God. Dixon, McGee and Bundy, justices, all thought the unblocked frog was the proximate cause; they argued that if the frog had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in it. They were supported in their opinion by Sharlow, of the nisi prius court, and by Gardner, Dawson and Kirkpatrick, of the Appellate Court; so that of all the judges who were to pass on Koerner's case, he had seven on his side. On the other hand, Funk, Hambaugh and Ficklin thought it was God's fault and not the railroad company's; they argued it was the ice causing him to slip that made Koerner fall and catch his foot.

It resulted, therefore, that with all the elaborate machinery of the law, one man, after all, was to decide this case, and that man was Buckmaster, the chief justice. Buckmaster had the printed transcript of the record and the printed briefs of counsel, but, like most of his colleagues, he disliked to read records and merely skimmed the briefs. Besides, Buckmaster could not fix his mind on anything just then, for, like Archie, he, too, was under sentence of death. His doctor, some time before this, had told him he had Bright's disease, and Buckmaster had now reached the stage where he had almost convinced himself that his doctor was wrong, and he felt that if he could take a trip south, he would come back well again. Buckmaster would have preferred to lay the blame of Koerner's accident on God rather than on the railroad company. He had thought more about the railroads and the laws they had made than he had about God and the laws He had made, for he had been a railroad attorney before he became a judge; indeed, the railroad companies had had his party nominate him for judge of the Supreme Court. Buckmaster knew how much the railroads lost in damages every year, and how the unscrupulous personal-injury lawyers mulcted them; and just now, when he was needing this trip south, and the manager of the railroad had placed his own private car at his disposal, Buckmaster felt more than ever inclined toward the railroad's side of these cases. Therefore, after getting some ideas from Hambaugh, he announced to his colleagues that he had concluded, after careful consideration, that Funk and Hambaugh and Ficklin were right; and Hambaugh was designated to write the profound opinion in which the decision of the court below was reversed.

Marriott had the news of the reversal in a telegram from the clerk of the Supreme Court, and he sat a long time at his desk, gazing out over the hideous roofs and chimneys with their plumes of white steam.... Well, he must tell old Koerner. He never dreaded anything more in his life, yet it must be done. But he could wait until morning. Bad news would keep.

But Marriott was spared the pain of bearing the news of this final defeat to Koerner. It would seem that the law itself would forego none of its privileges as to this family with which it so long had sported. The news, in fact, was borne to Koerner by a deputy sheriff.

Packard, the lawyer for the Building and Loan Company which held the mortgage on Koerner's house, had been waiting, at Marriott's request, for the determination of Koerner's suit against the railroad company. That morning Packard had read of the reversal in the Legal Bulletin, a journal that spun out daily through its short and formal columns, the threads of misery and woe and sin that men tangle into that inextricable snarl called "jurisprudence." And Packard immediately, that very morning, began his suit in foreclosure, and before noon the papers were served.

When Marriott knocked at the little door in Bolt Street, where he had stood so often and in so many varying moods of hope and despair,--though all of these moods, as he was perhaps in his egoism glad to feel, had owed their origin to the altruistic spirit,--he felt that surely he must be standing there now for the last time. He glanced at the front of the little home; it had been so neat when he first saw it; now it was weather-beaten and worn; the front door was scratched, the paint had cracked and come off in flakes.

The door was opened by the old man himself, and he almost frightened Marriott by the fierce expression of his haggard face. His shirt was open, revealing his red and wrinkled throat; his white hair stood up straight, his lean jaws were covered with a short, white beard, and his thick white eyebrows beetled fearfully. When he saw Marriott his lips trembled in anger, and his eyes flashed from their caverns.

"So!" he cried, not opening wide the door, not inviting Marriott in, "you gom', huh?"

"Yes, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I came--to--"

"You lost, yah, I know dot! You lose all your cases, huh, pretty much, aindt it so?"

Marriott flamed hotly.

"No, it isn't so," he retorted, stepping back a little. "I have been unfortunate, I know, in your case, and in Archie's, but I did--"

"Ho!" scoffed Koerner in his tremendous voice. "Vell! Maybe you like to lose anudder case. Hier! I gif you von!"

With a sudden and elaborate flourish of the arm he stretched over his crutch, he delivered a document to Marriott, and Marriott saw that it was the summons in the foreclosure suit.

"I s'pose we lose dot case, too, aindt it?"

"Yes," said Marriott thoughtfully and sadly, tapping his hand with the paper, "we'll lose this. When did you get it?"

"Dis morning. A deputy sheriff, he brought 'im--"

"And he told you--"

"'Bout de oder von? Yah, dot's so."

They were silent a moment and Marriott, unconsciously, and with something of the habit of the family solicitor, put the summons into his pocket.

"Vell, I bet dere be no delays in dis case, huh?" Koerner asked.

Marriott wondered if it were possible to make this old man understand.

"You see, Mr. Koerner," he began, "the law--"

The old German reared before him in mighty rage, and he roared out from his tremendous throat:

"Oh, go to hell mit your Gott-tamned law!"

And he slammed the door in Marriott's face.

Koerner was right; there were no delays now, no questions of proximate cause, no more, indeed, than there had been in Archie's case. The law worked unerringly, remorselessly and swiftly; the Legal Bulletin marked the steps day by day, judgment by default--decree--order of sale. There came a day when the sheriff's deputies--there were two of them now, knowing old man Koerner--went to the little cottage in Bolt Street. Standing on the little stoop, one of them, holding a paper in his hand, rapped on the door. There was no answer, and he rapped again. Still no answer. He beat with his gloved knuckles; he kicked lightly with his boot; still no answer. The deputies went about the house trying to peep in at the windows. The blinds were down; they tried both doors, front and back; they were locked.

In a neighbor's yard a little girl looked on with the crude curiosity of a child. After the man had tried the house all about, and rightly imagining from all that was said of the Koerners in the neighborhood that the law was about to indulge in some new and sensational ribaldry with them, she called out in a shrill, important voice:

"They're in there, Mister!"

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, honest!" said the officious little girl, drawing her chin in affectedly. "Cross my heart, it's so."

Then the deputy put his shoulder to the door; presently it gave.

In the front room, on the plush lounge, lay the two children, Jakie and Katie, their throats cut from ear to ear. In the dining-room, where there had been a struggle, lay the body of Mrs. Koerner, her throat likewise cut from ear to ear. And from four huge nails driven closely together into the lintel of the kitchen door, hung the body of old man Koerner, with its one long leg just off the floor, and from his long yellow face hung the old man's tongue, as if it were his last impotent effort to express his scorn of the law, whose emissaries he expected to find him there.

XXXIV

The series of dark events that had so curiously interwrought themselves into the life of Elizabeth Ward seemed, as far as the mind of mortals could determine, to find its close in the tragedy which the despairing Koerner contrived in his household. The effects of all these related circumstances on those who, however remotely, were concerned in them, could not, of course, be estimated; but the horror they produced in Elizabeth made the end of that winter a season of depression that left a permanent impress on her life and character. For weeks she was bewildered and afraid, but as the days went by those events began to assume in her retrospective vision their proper relations in a world that speedily forgot them in its contemplation of other events exactly like them, and she tried to pass them in review; the Koerners all were dead, save Gusta, and she was worse than dead; Kouka and Hunter were dead; Dick was still astray; Graves and all that horde of poor and criminal, whose faces for an instant had been turned up in appeal to her, had sunk into the black abyss again. What did it all mean?

She sought an answer to the questions, but could find none. No one could help her; few, indeed, could understand what it was she wished to know. Her father thought the market quotations important; her mother was absorbed in the way in which certain persons dressed, or served their meals, or arranged their entertainments; as for the church, where once she might have gone for help, it was not interested in her question.

The philosophers and the poets that had been her favorites had now for her new meanings, it is true, but they had been writing of the poor and the imprisoned for ages, and yet that very morning in that very city, not far away, there were countless poor and criminal, and as fast as these died or disappeared or were put to prison or to death, others appeared to take their places; the courts ground on, the prisons were promptly filled, the scenes she had witnessed in the slums and at the prisons were daily reënacted with ever-increasing numbers to take the places of those who went down in the process. And men continued to talk learnedly and solemnly of law and justice.

She thought of Marriott's efforts to save Archie; she thought of her own efforts; the Organized Charities squabbling as to whether it would open its meetings with prayer or not, whether it would hold an entertainment in a theater or some other building; she remembered the tedious statistics and the talk about the industrious and the idle, the frugal and the wasteful, the worthy and the unworthy. When, she wondered, had the young curate ever worked? who had declared him worthy? When, indeed, had she herself ever worked? who had declared her worthy?

But this was not all: there were other distinctions; besides the rich and the poor, the worthy and the unworthy, there were the "good" and the "bad." She indeed, herself, had once thought that mankind was thus divided, one class being rich, worthy and good, and the other class poor, unworthy and bad. But now, while she could distinguish between the rich and poor, she could no longer draw a line between the good and the bad, or the worthy and the unworthy, though it did not seem difficult to some people,--Eades, for instance, who, with his little stated formula of life, thought he could make the world good by locking up all the bad people in one place. Surely, she thought, Eades could not do this; he could lock up only the poor people. And a new question troubled Elizabeth: was the one crime, then, in being poor? But gradually these questions resolved themselves into one question that included all the others. "What," she asked herself, "does life mean to me? What attitude am I to adopt toward it? In a word, what am I, a girl, having all my life been carefully sheltered from these things and having led an idle existence, with none but purely artificial duties to perform--what am I to do?"

The first thing, she told herself, was to look at the world in a new light: a light that would reveal, distinctly, all the poor, all the criminal in the great, haggard, cruel city, not as beings of another nature, of another kind or of another class, different from herself, and from whom she must separate herself, but as human beings, no matter how wretched or miserable, exactly like herself, bound to her by ties that nothing could break. They might, indeed, be denied everything else, but they could not be denied this kinship; they claimed it by right of a common humanity and a common divinity. And, beginning to look on them in this new light, she found she was looking on them in a new pity, a new sympathy, yes, a new love. And suddenly she found the peace and the happiness of a new life, like that which came with the great awakening of the spring.

For spring had come again. All that morning a warm rain had fallen and the green sward eagerly soaked it up. The young leaves of the trees were glistening wet, the raindrops clung in little rows, like strings of jewels, to the slender, shining twigs; they danced on the swimming pavement, and in the gutters there poured along a yellow stream with great white bubbles floating gaily on its surface. The day was still; now and then she could hear the hoof-beats of the horses that trotted nervously over the slippery asphalt. It rained softly, patiently, as if it had always rained, as if it always would rain; the day was gray, but in the yard a robin chirped.

Yes, thought Elizabeth, as she faced life in her new attitude, the Koerners' tragedies are not the only ones. For all about her she saw people who, though they moved and ate and talked and bustled to and fro, were yet dead; the very souls within them were atrophied and dead; that is, dead to all that is real and vital in existence. They who could so complacently deny life to others were at the same time denying life to themselves. The tragedy had not been Koerner's alone; it had been Ford's as well; Eades could not punish Archie without punishing himself; Modderwell, in excluding Gusta, must exclude himself; and Dick might cause others to suffer, but he must suffer more. He paid the penalty just as all those in her narrow little world paid the penalty and kept on paying the penalty until they were bankrupts in soul and spirit. The things they considered important and counted on to give them happiness, gave them no happiness; they were the most unhappy of all, and far more desperate because they did not realize why they were unhappy. The poor were not more poor, more unhappy, more hungry, or more squalid. There was no hunger so gnawing as that infinite hunger of the soul, no poverty so squalid as the poverty of mere possession. And there were crimes that printed statutes did not define, and laws that were not accidents, but harmoniously acting and reacting in the moral world, revisited this cruelty, this savagery, this brutality with increasing force upon those who had inflicted it on others. And as she thought of all the evil deeds of that host of mankind known as criminals, and of that other host that punished them, she saw that both crime and punishment emanated from the same ignorant spirit of cruelty and fear. Would they ever learn of the great equity and tolerance, the simple love in nature? They had but to look at the falling rain, or at the sun when it shone again, to read the simple and sufficient lesson. No, she would not disown these people, any of them. She must live among them, she must feast or starve, laugh or cry, despair or triumph with them; she must bear their burdens or lay her own upon them, and so be brought close to them in the great bond of human sympathy and love, for only by love, she saw, shall the world be redeemed.

Meanwhile, everything went on as before. The peculiar spiritual experience through which Elizabeth was passing she kept largely to herself: she could not discuss it with any one; somehow, she would have found it impossible, because she realized that all those about her, except perhaps Marriott, would consider it all ridiculous and look at her in a queer, disconcerting way. She saw few persons outside of her own family; people spoke of her as having settled down, and began to forget her. But she saw much of Marriott; their old friendly relations, resumed at the time the trouble of Gusta and Archie and Dick had brought them together, had grown more intimate. Of Eades she saw nothing at all, and perhaps because both she and Marriott were conscious of a certain restraint with respect to him, his name was never mentioned between them. But at last an event occurred that broke even this restraint: it was announced that Eades was to be married. He was to marry an eastern girl who had visited in the city the winter before and now had come back again. She had been the object of much social attention, partly because she was considered beautiful, but more, perhaps, because she was in her own right very wealthy. She had, in truth, a pretty, though vain and selfish little face; she dressed exquisitely, and she had magnificent auburn, that is, red hair. People were divided as to what color it really was, though all spoke of it as "artistic." And now it was announced that she had been won by John Eades; the wedding was to occur in the autumn. The news had interested Marriott, of course, and he could not keep from imparting it to Elizabeth; indeed, he could not avoid a certain tone of triumph when he told her. He had seen Eades that very morning in the court-house; he seemed to Marriott to have grown heavier, which may have been the effect of a new coat he wore, or of the prosperousness and success that were surely coming to him. He was one of those men whom the whole community would admire; he would always do the thing appropriate to the occasion; it would, somehow, be considered in bad form to criticize him.

The newspapers had the habit of praising him; he was popular--precisely that, for while he had few friends and no intimates, everybody in the city approved him. He was just then being mentioned for Congress, and even for the governorship.

Yes, thought Marriott, Eades is a man plainly marked for success; everything will come his way. Eades had stopped long enough--and just long enough--to take Marriott's hand, to smile, to ask him the proper questions, to tell him he was looking well, that he must drop in and see him, and then he had hastened away. Marriott had felt a new quality in Eades's manner, but he could not isolate or specify it. Was Eades changing? He was changing physically, to be sure, he was growing stouter, but he was at the age for that; the youthful lines were being erased from his figure, just as the lines of maturity were being drawn in his face. Marriott thought it over, a question in his mind. Was success spoiling Eades?

But when Marriott told Elizabeth the news, she did not appear to be surprised; she did not even appear to be interested. The summer had come early that year; within a week it had burst upon them suddenly. The night was so warm that they had gone out on the veranda. Marriott watched Elizabeth narrowly, there in the soft darkness, to note the effect. But apparently there was no effect. She sat quite still and said nothing. The noise of the city had died away into a harmony, and the air throbbed with the shrill, tiny sounds of hidden infinitesimal life. There came to them the fragrance of the lilacs, just blooming in the big yard of the Wards, and the fragrance of the lilacs brought to them memories. To Marriott, the fragrance brought memories of that night at Hazel Ford's wedding; he thought of it a long time, wondering. After a while they left the veranda and strolled into the yard under the trees.

"Do you know," said Marriott, "I thought you would be surprised to hear of John Eades's engagement."

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know; no one had noticed that he was paying her any attention--" Suddenly he became embarrassed. He was still thinking of the evening at Hazel Ford's wedding, and he was wondering if Elizabeth were thinking of it, too, and this confused him.

"Oh," Elizabeth said, as if she had not noticed his hesitation, "I'm very glad--it's an appropriate match."

Then she was silent; she seemed to be thinking; and Marriott wondered what significance there was in the remark she had just made; did it have a tribute for Eades, or for the girl, or exactly the reverse?

"I was thinking," she began, as if in answer to his thought, and then suddenly she stopped and gave a little laugh. "Gordon," she went on, "can't you see them? Can't you see just what a life they will live--how correct, and proper, and successful--and empty, and hollow, and deadly it will be--going on year after year, year after year? Can't you see them with their conception of life, or rather, their lack of conception of it?" She had begun her sentence with a laugh, but she ended it in deep seriousness. And for some reason they stopped where they were; and suddenly, they knew that, at last, the moment had come. Just why they knew this they could not have told, either of them, but they knew that the moment had come, the moment toward which they had been moving for a long time. They felt it, that was all. And neither was surprised. Words, indeed, were unnecessary. They had been talking, for the first time in months, of Eades, yet neither was thinking at all of the life Eades and his fashionable wife would lead, nor caring in the least about it. Marriott knew that in another instant he would tell Elizabeth what long had been in his heart, what he should have told her months ago, what he had come there that very night to tell her; he knew that everything he had said that night had been intended, in some way, to lead up to it; he was certain of it, and he thought quite calmly, and yet when he spoke and heard his own voice, its tone, though low, showed his excitement; and he heard himself saying:

"I am thinking--do you know of what? Well, of that night--"

And then, suddenly, he took her hands and poured out the unnecessary words.

"Elizabeth, do you know--I've always felt--well, that little incident that night at Hazel Ford's wedding; do you remember? I was so stupid, so bungling, so inept. I thought that Eades--that there was--something; I thought so for a long time. I wish I could explain--it was only because--I loved you!"

He could see her eyes glow in the darkness; he heard her catch her breath, and then he took her in his arms.

"Oh, Elizabeth, dearest, how I loved you! I had loved you for a long, long time, but that night for the first time I fully realized, and I thought then, in that moment, that I was too late, that there never had been--"

He drew her close to him, and bent his head and kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair.

"Oh, Gordon!" she whispered, lifting her face from his shoulder. "How very blind you were that night!"

Long after Marriott had gone, Elizabeth sat by her window and looked out into the night; above the trees the stars glowed in a purple sky. She was too happy for sleep, too happy for words. She sat there and dreamed of this love that had come to her, and tears filled her eyes. Because of this love, this love of Gordon Marriott, this love of all things, she need ask no more questions for a while. Love, that was the great law of life, would one day, in the end, explain and make all things clear. Not to her, necessarily, but to some one, to humanity, when, perhaps, through long ages of joy and sorrow, of conflict and sin, and in hope and faith, it had purified and perfected itself. And now by this love and by the new light within her, at last she was to live, to enter into life--life like that which had awakened in the world this brooding tropical night, with its soft glowing stars, its moist air, laden with the odor of lilacs and of the first blossoms of the fruit trees, and with the smell of the warm, rich, fecund earth.

THE END