The Turn of the Balance

VII

Archie did not have his hearing the next morning. The newspapers said "the State" was not ready, which meant that Allen, the prosecutor, and the police were not ready. Quinn and Allen had conferences. They felt it to be their duty to have Archie put to death if possible, and they were undecided as to which case would the better insure this result. Allen found legal difficulties; there was a question whether or not the murder of Kouka had been murder in the first degree. Hence he wished to have Bridget Flanagan identify Archie.

Several days elapsed, and then one morning, Bentley, the sheriff, brought Bridget Flanagan to the Central Police Station in a carriage. Allen and Cleary and Quinn, with several officers and reporters, were waiting to witness her confrontation of Archie.

The old woman was dressed in black; she wore a black shawl and a black bonnet, but these had faded independently of each other, so that each was now of its own dingy shade. The dress had a brown cast, the shawl a tone of green, the bonnet was dusty and graying, and the black veil that was tightly bound about her brow, like the band of a nun, had been empurpled in the process of decay. She leaned heavily on Bentley, tottering in her weakness, now and then lifting her arms with a wild, nervous gesture. Bentley's huge, disproportionate bulk moved uncertainly beside her, lurching this way and that, as if he feared to step on her feet or her ancient gown, finding it difficult, at arm's length, to support and guide her. But at last he got her to a chair. At the edge of the purplish veil bound across the hairless brows, a strip of adhesive plaster showed. The old woman wearily closed the eyes that had gazed on the horrors of the tragedy; her mouth moved in senile spasms. Now and then she mumbled little prayers that sounded like oaths; and raised to her lips the little ball into which she had wadded her handkerchief. And she sat there, her palsied head shaking disparaging negatives. The police, the detectives, the prosecutor, the reporters looked on. They said nothing for a long time.

Cleary, trying to speak with an exaggerated tenderness, finally said:

"Miss Flanagan, we hate to trouble you, but we won't keep you long. We think we have the man who killed your dear sister–we'd like to have you see him–"

The old woman started, tried to get up, sank back, made a strange noise in her throat, pushed out her hands toward Cleary as if to repulse him and his suggestion, then clasped her hands, wrung them, closed her eyes, swayed to and fro in her chair and moaned, ejaculating the little prayers that sounded like oaths. Cleary waited. Quinn brought a glass of water. Presently the old woman grew calm again; after a while Cleary renewed his suggestion. The old woman continued to moan. Cleary whispered to two policemen and they left the room. The policemen were gone what seemed a long time, but at last they appeared in the doorway, and between them, looking expectantly about him, was Archie Koerner. The policemen led him into the room, the group made way, they halted before the old woman. Cleary advanced.

"Miss Flanagan," he said very gently, standing beside her, and bending assiduously, "Miss Flanagan, will you please take a look now, and tell us–if you ever saw this man before, if he is the man who–"

Wearily, slowly, the old woman raised her blue eyelids; and then she shuddered, started, seemed to have a sudden access of strength, got to her feet and cried out:

"Oh, my poor sister! my poor sister! You kilt her! You kilt her!"

Then she sank to her knees and collapsed on the floor. Bentley ran across the room, brought a glass of water, and stood uncertainly, awkwardly about, while the others bore the old woman to a couch, stretched her out, threw up a window, began to fan her with newspapers, with hats, anything. Some one took the water from the sheriff, pressed the glass to the old woman's lips; it clicked against her teeth.

Then Cleary, Quinn, Bentley, the policemen, the detectives, the reporters, looked at one another and smiled, Cleary bent over the old woman.

"That's all, Miss Flanagan. You needn't worry any more. We're sorry we had to trouble you, but the law, you know, and our duty–"

He repeated the words "law" and "duty" several times. Meanwhile Archie stood there, between the two policemen. He looked about him, at the men in the room, at the old woman stretched on the lounge; finally his gaze fastened on Cleary, and his lips slowly curled in a sneer, and his face hardened into an expression of utter scorn.

"Take him down!" shouted Cleary angrily.

The reporters rushed out. An hour later the extras were on the streets, announcing the complete and positive identification of Archie Koerner by Bridget Flanagan.

"The hardened prisoner," the reports said, "stood and sneered while the old woman confronted him. The police have not known so desperate a character in years."

VIII

Marriott had attended to all of Archie's commissions, save one–that of telling Gusta to go to him. He had not done this because he did not know where to find her. But Gusta went herself, just as she seemed to do most things in life, because she could not help doing them, because something impelled, forced her to do them,–some power that made sport of her, using a dozen agencies, forces hereditary, economic, social, moral, all sorts–driving her this way and that. She had read of the murder, and then, with horror, of Archie's arrest. She did not know he was out of prison until she heard that he was in prison again. She began to calculate the time that had flowed by so swiftly, making such changes in her life. Her first impulse was to go to him, but now she feared the police. She recalled her former visits, that first Sunday at the workhouse, on which she had thought herself so sad, whereas she had not begun to learn what sorrow was. She recalled the day in the police station a year before, and remembered the policeman who had held her arm so suggestively. She read the newspapers eagerly, absorbed every detail, her heart sinking lower than it had ever gone before. When she read that Marriott was to defend Archie, she allowed herself to hope. The next day she read an account of the identification of Archie by the surviving Flanagan sister, and then, when hope was gone, she could resist no longer the impulse to go to him.

She paused again at the door of the sergeant's room, her heart beating painfully with the fear that showed itself in little white spots on each side of her nostrils; then the timid parleying with the officers, the delay, the suspicion, the opposition, the reluctance, until an officer in uniform took her in charge, led her down the iron stairway to the basement, and had the turnkey open the prison doors. Archie came to the bars, and peered purblindly into the gloom. And Gusta went close now, closer than she had ever gone before; the bars had no longer the old meaning for her, they had no longer their old repulsion, and she looked at Archie no more with the old feeling of reproach and moral superiority. In fact, she judged no more; sin had healed her of such faults as self-satisfaction and moral complacency; it had softened and instructed her, and in its great kindness revealed to her her own relation to all who sin, so that she came now with nothing but compassion, sympathy and love. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Oh, Archie!" she said. "Oh, Archie!"

Archie looked at her and at the officers. Gusta was oblivious; she put her face to the greasy bars, and pressed her lips mutely between them. Archie, who did not like to cry before an officer and before the other prisoners, struggled hard. Then he kissed her, coldly.

"Oh, Archie, Archie!" was all she could say, putting all her anguish, her distress, her sorrow, her impotent desire to help into the varying inflections of her tone.

"Oh, Archie! Archie! Archie!"

She spoke his name this last time as if she must find relief by wringing her whole soul into it. Then she stood, biting her lip as if to stop its quivering. Archie, on his part, looked at her a moment, then at the floor.

"Say you didn't do it, Archie."

"Do what?"

"You know–"

"You mean Kouka?"

"Oh, no," she said, impatient with the question.

"That Flanagan job?"

She nodded rapidly.

"Of course not; you ought to know that. Every one knows that–even the coppers." His sentence ended with a sneer cast in the officer's direction. And Gusta sighed.

"I'm so glad!" she said, her bosom rising and falling in relief. "They all said–"

"Oh, that's just the frame-up," said Archie. "They'd job me for it quick enough." He was sneering again at the officer, as incarnating the whole police system, and his face was darkened by a look of all hatred and malignity. The officer smiled calmly.

"I'm so glad," Gusta was smiling now. "But–" she began. Her lip quivered; the tears started afresh. "What about the other?"

"That was self-defense; he agitated me to it. But don't let's talk before that copper there–" He could not avert his look of hatred from the officer, whose face was darkening, as he plucked nervously at his mustache.

"He'd say anything–that's his business," Archie went on, unable to restrain himself.

"Sh! Don't, Archie!" Gusta said. "Don't!"

Archie drew in full breaths, inflating his white chest. The officer returned his look of hatred, his bronzed face had taken on a shade of green; the two men struggled silently, then controlled themselves. Gusta was trying again to choke down her sobs.

"How's father?" Archie asked, after a silence, striving for a commonplace tone.

"He's well,–I guess."

"He knows, does he?"

"I–don't know."

"What! Why–can't you tell him? He could get down here, couldn't he? He had a crutch when I was there."

She was silent, her head drooped, the flowers in her hat brushed the bars at Archie's face. She thrust the toe of a patent-leather boot between the bars at the bottom of the door. The tips of her gloved fingers touched the bars lightly; there was a slight odor of perfume in the entry-way.

"You see," she said, "I–I can't go out there–any more." Her tears were falling on the cement floor, falling beside the iron bucket in which was kept the water for the prisoners to drink.

"Oh!" said Archie coldly.

She looked up suddenly, read the meaning of his changed expression, and then she pressed her face against the bars tightly, and cried out:

"Oh, Archie! Don't! Don't!"

He was hard with her.

"By God!" he said. "I don't know why you should have–oh, hell!"

He whirled on his heel, as if he would go away.

She clung to the bars, pressing her face against them, trying, as it were, to thrust her lips through them.

"Oh, Archie!" she said. "Archie! Don't do that–don't go that way! Listen–listen–listen to your sister! I'm the same old Gus–honest, honest, Archie! Listen! Look at me!"

He had thrust his hands into his pockets and walked to the end of the corridor. He paused there a moment, then turned and came back.

"Say, Gus," he said, "I wish you'd go tell Mr. Marriott I want to see him again. And say, if you go out to the house, see if you can't find that shirt of mine with the white and pink stripes–you know. I guess mother knows where it is. Do that now. And–"

"Time's up," said the officer. "I've got to go."

"And come down to-morrow, Gus," said Archie. She scarcely heard him as she turned to go.

"Hold on!" he called, pressing his face to the bars. "Say! Gus! Come here a minute."

She returned. She lifted her face, and he kissed her through the bars. And she went away, with sobs that racked her whole form.

As she started out by the convenient side door into the alley, the officer laid a hand on her shoulder.

"This way, young woman."

She looked at him a moment.

"You'd better go out the other door," he said.

She climbed the steps behind him, wondering why one door would not do as well as another. She had always gone out that side door before. When they were up-stairs, passing the sergeant's room, he touched her again.

"Hold on," he said.

"What do you want?" she asked in surprise,

"I guess you'd better stay here."

"Why?" she exclaimed. Her surprise had become a great fear. He made no reply, and pushed her into the sergeant's room. Then he whistled into a tube–some one answered. "Come down," he commanded. Presently a woman appeared, a woman with gray hair, in a blue gingham gown something like a nurse's uniform, with a metal badge on her full breast.

"Matron," said the officer, "take this girl in charge."

"Why! What do you mean?" Gusta exclaimed, her eyes wide, her lips parted. "What do you mean? What have I done? What do you–am I–arrested?"

"That's what they call it," said the officer.

"But what for?"

"You'll find out in time. Take her up-stairs, Matron."

Gusta looked at the officer, then at the matron. Her face was perfectly white.

The matron drew near, put her arm about her, and said:

"Come with me."

Gusta swayed uncertainly, tottered, then dragged herself off, leaning against the matron, walking as if in a daze.

IX

It had been months since Marriott had gone up those steps at the Wards', and he mounted them that November evening with a regret at the loss of the old footing, and an impatience with the events that had kept him away. He had waited for some such excuse as Gusta's commission now gave him, and the indignation he felt at the girl's arrest was not strong enough to suppress his gratitude for the opportunity the injustice opened to him. He was sure that Elizabeth knew he was to defend Archie; she must know how sensitive he was to the criticism that was implied in the tone with which the newspapers announced the fact. The newspapers, indeed, had shown feeling that Archie should be represented at all. They had published warnings against the law's delays, of which, they said, there had already been too many in that county, forgetting how they had celebrated the success and promptness, the industry and enterprise of John Eades. They had spoken of Archie as if he were a millionaire, about to evade and confound law and justice by the use of money. Marriott told himself, bitterly, that Elizabeth's circle would discuss the tragedy in this same tone, and speak of him with disappointment and distrust; that was the attitude his own friends had adopted; that was the way the lawyers and judges even had spoken to him of it; he recalled how cold and disapproving Eades had been. This recollection gave Marriott pause; would it not now be natural for Elizabeth to take Eades's attitude? He shrank from the thought and wished he had not come, but he was at the door and he had Gusta's message–impossible as it seemed after all these thoughts had crossed his mind.

She received him in her old manner, without any of the stiffness he had feared the months might have made.

"Ah, Gordon," she said. "I'm so glad you came."

She led the way swiftly into the library. A little wood fire, against the chill of the autumn evening, was blazing in the wide fireplace; under the lamp on the broad table lay a book she must have put down a moment before.

"What have you been reading? Oh, Walden!" And he turned to her with the smile of their old comradeship in such things.

"I've been reading it again, yes," she said, "and I've wished to talk it over again with you. So you see I'm glad you came."

"I came with a message from–"

"Oh!" The bright look faded from her eyes. "Well, I'm glad, then, that some one sent you to me."

He saw his mistake, and grieved for it.

"I wanted to come," he stammered. "I've been intending to come, Elizabeth, anyway, and–"

He felt he was only making the matter worse, and he hated himself for his awkwardness.

"Well," she was saying, "sit down then, and tell me whom this fortunate message is from."

She leaned back in her chair, rather grandly, he felt. He regretted the touch of formality that was almost an irony in her speech. But he thought it best to let it pass,–they could get back to the old footing more quickly if they did it that way.

"You'd never guess," he said.

"I'll not try. Tell me."

"Gusta."

"Gusta!" Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly, and Marriott thought that he had never before seen her so good to look upon; she was so virile, so alive. He noted her gray eyes, bright with interest and surprise, her brown hair, too soft to be confined in any conventional way, and worn as ever with a characteristic independence that recognized without succumbing to fashion. He fixed his eyes on her hands, white, strong, full of character. And he bemoaned the loss of those months; why, he wondered, had he been so absurd?

"Gusta!" she repeated. "Where did you see Gusta?"

"In prison."

"What! No! Oh, Gordon!" she started with the shock, and Marriott found this attitude even more fascinating than the last; her various expressions changing swiftly, responding with instant sensitiveness to every new influence or suggestion, were all delightful.

"What for? Tell me! Why don't you tell me, Gordon? Why do you sit there?"

Her eyes flashed a reproach at him–and he smiled. He was wholly at ease now.

"For nothing. She's done nothing. She went to see Archie, and the police, stupid and brutal as usual, detained her. That's all; they placed the charge of suspicion against her to satisfy the law. The law!"

He sneered out the word.

Elizabeth had fallen back in her chair with an expression of pain.

"Oh, Gordon!" she said with a shudder. "Isn't it horrible, horrible!"

"Horrible!" he echoed.

"That poor Koerner family! What can the fates be about? You know–you know it all seems to come so near. Such things happen in the world, of course, every day the newspapers, the dreadful newspapers, are filled with them. But they never were real at all, because they never happened to people I knew. But this comes so near. Just think. I've seen that Archie Koerner, and he has spoken to me, and to think of him now, a murderer! Will–they hang him?"

She leaned forward earnestly.

"No," he said slowly. "They may electrocute him though–to use their barbarous word."

"And now Gusta's in prison!" Elizabeth went on, forgetting Archie. "But her message! You haven't given me her message!"

Marriott waited a moment, perhaps in his inability to forego the theatrical possibilities of the situation.

"She wants you–to come to her."

Elizabeth stared at him blankly.

"To come to her?"

"Yes."

"In prison?"

"Yes."

Her brows contracted, her eyes winked rapidly.

"But Gordon, how–how can I?"

"I don't know." He sat at his ease in the great chair, enjoying the meaning, the whole significance of her predicament. He had already appreciated its difficulties, its impossibilities, and he was prepared now to wring from every one of them its last sensation. Elizabeth, with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her laces falling away from her white forearm, bit her lip delicately. She seemed to be looking at the toe of her suede shoe.

"Poor little thing!" She spoke abstractedly, as if she were oblivious to Marriott's presence. He was satisfied; it was good just then to sit, merely, and look at her. "I must go to her." And then suddenly she looked up and said in another tone:

"But how am I to do it, Gordon?"

He did not answer at once and she did not wait for a reply, but went on, speaking rapidly, her eyes in a dark glow as her interest was intensified.

"Isn't it a peculiar situation? I don't know how to deal with it. I never was so placed before. You must see the difficulties, Gordon. People, well, people don't go to such places, don't you know? I really don't see how it is possible; it makes me shudder to think of it! Ugh!" She shrugged her shoulders. "What shall you say to her, Gordon?" She said this as if the problem were his, not hers, and showed a relief in this transfer of the responsibility.

"I don't know yet," he said. "Whatever you tell me."

"But you must tell her something; you must make her understand. It won't do for you to hurt the poor girl's feelings."

"Well, I'll just say that I delivered her message and that you wouldn't come."

"Oh, Gordon! How could you be so cruel? You certainly would not be so heartless as to say I wouldn't!"

"Well, then, that you couldn't."

"But she would want a reason, and she'd be entitled to one. What one could you give her? You must think, Gordon, we must both think, and decide on something that will help you out. What are you laughing at?"

"Why, Elizabeth," he said, "it isn't my predicament. It's your predicament."

He leaned back in his chair comfortably, in an attitude of irresponsibility.

"How can you sit there," Elizabeth said, "and leave it all to me?"

And then she laughed,–and was grave again.

"Of course," she said. "Well–I'm sure I can't solve it. Poor little Gusta! She was so pretty and so good, and so–comfortable to have around–don't you know? Really, we've never had a maid like her. She was ideal. And now to think of her–in prison! Isn't it awful?"

Marriott sat with half-closed eyes and looked at her through the haze of his lashes. The room was still; the fire burned slowly in the black chimney; now and then the oil gurgled cozily in the lamp.

"What is a prison like, Gordon? Is it really such an awful place?"

Marriott thought of the miserable room in the women's quarters, with its iron wainscoting, the narrow iron bed; the wooden table and chair, and he contrasted it with this luxurious library of the Wards.

"Well," he said, turning rather lazily toward the fire, "it's nothing like this."

"But,"–Elizabeth looked up suddenly with the eagerness of a new idea,–"can't you get her out on bail–isn't that what it's called? Can't you get some kind of document, some writ?–yes, that's it." She spoke with pleasure because she had found a word with a legal sound. "Get a writ. Surely you are a lawyer clever enough to get her out. I always thought that any one could get out of prison if he had a good lawyer. The papers all say so."

"You get in prison once and see," said Marriott.

"Mercy, I expect to be in prison next!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Prisons! We seem to have had nothing but prisons for a year or more. I don't know what started it–first it was that poor Harry Graves, then Archie, and now it's Gusta. And you talk of them and John Eades talks of them–and I had to see them one night taking some prisoners to the penitentiary. I'd never even thought of prisons before, but since then I've thought of nothing else; I've lived in an atmosphere of prisons. It's just like a new word, one you never heard before,–you see it some day, and then you're constantly running across it. Don't you know? It's the same way with history–I never knew who Pestalozzi was until the other day; never had heard of him. But I saw his name in Emerson, then looked him up–now everything I read mentions him. And oh! the memory of those men they were taking to the penitentiary! I'll never escape it! I see their faces always!"

"Were they such bad faces?"

"Oh, no! such poor, pale, pathetic faces! Just like a page from a Russian novel!"

The memory brought pain to her eyes, and she suffered a moment. Then she sat erect and folded her hands with determination.

"We might as well face it, Gordon, of course. I just can't go; you see that, don't you? What shall we do?"

"You might try your Organized Charities." His eyes twinkled.

"Don't ever mention that to me," she commanded. "I never want to hear the word. That's a page from my past that I'm ashamed of."

"Ashamed! Of the Organized Charities?"

"Oh, Gordon, I needn't tell you what a farce that is–you know it is organized not to help the poor, but to help the rich to forget the poor, to keep the poor at a distance, where they can't reproach you and prick your conscience. The Organized Charities is an institution for the benefit of the unworthy rich." Her eyes showed her pleasure in her epigram, and they both laughed. But the pleasure could not last long; in another instant Elizabeth's hands fell to her lap, and she looked at Marriott soberly. Then she said, with hopeless conviction:

"I just can't go, Gordon."