XIVThe debate over the charity ball raged until twilight, and it served for unfinished business at two special sessions. The spare little woman who had proposed that the meetings be opened with prayer led the opposition to the charity ball, and, summoning all her militant religion to her aid, succeeded in arraying most of the evangelical churches against it. In two weeks the controversy was in the newspapers, and when it had waged for a month, and both parties were exhausted, they compromised on a charity bazaar.The dispute had been distressing to Mrs. Russell, whose nature was too sensitive to take the relish most of the others seemed to find in the controversy, and it was through her tact that peace was finally established. Even after the bazaar was decided on, the peace was threatened by dissension as to where the bazaar should be held. The more sophisticated and worldly-minded favored the Majestic Theater, and this brought the spare little woman to her feet again, trembling with moral indignation. To her the idea of a bazaar in a theater was even more sacrilegious than a ball. But Mrs. Russell saved the day by a final sacrifice--she offered her residence for the bazaar."It was beautiful in you!" Elizabeth exclaimed as they drove homeward together in the graying afternoon of the November day. "To think of throwing your house open for a week--and having the whole town tramp over the rugs!""Oh, I'll lay the floors in canvas," said Mrs. Russell, with a little laugh she could not keep from ending in a sigh."You'll find it no light matter," said Elizabeth; "this turning your house inside out. Of course, the fact that it is your house will draw all the curious and vulgar in town."This was not exactly reassuring and Elizabeth felt as much the moment she had said it."You must help me, dear!" Mrs. Russell said, squeezing Elizabeth's hand in a kind of desperation. Elizabeth had never known her to be in any wise demonstrative, and her own sympathetic nature responded immediately."Indeed I shall!" she said.The bazaar was to be held the week before Christmas, and the ladies forgot their differences to unite in one of those tremendous and exhausting labors they seem ever ready to undertake, though the end is always so disproportionate to the sacrifice and toil that somehow bring it to pass. Elizabeth was almost constantly with Mrs. Russell; they were working early and late. Mrs. Russell appointed her on the committee on arrangements, and the committee held almost daily meetings at the Charities. And here Elizabeth at last found an opportunity of seeing some of the poor for whom she was working.The fall had prolonged itself into November; the weather was so perfect that Dick could daily speed his automobile, and the men who, like Marriott, still clung to golf, could play on Saturdays and Sundays at the Country Club. But December came, and with it a heavy rain that in three days became a sleet; then the snow and a cold wave. The wretched winter weather, which seems to have a spite almost personal for the lake regions, produced its results in the lives of men--there were suicides and crimes for the police, and for the Organized Charities, the poor, now forced to emerge from the retreats where in milder weather they could hide their wretchedness. They came forth, and when Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell entered the Charities one morning, there they were, ranged along the wall. They sat bundled in their rags, waiting in dumb patience for the last humiliation of an official investigation, making no sound save as their ailments compelled them to sneeze or to cough now and then; and as Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell passed into the room, they were followed by eyes that held no reproach or envy, but merely a mild curiosity. The poor sat there, perhaps glad of the warmth and the rest; willing to spend the day, if necessary; with hopes no higher than some mere temporary relief that would help them to eke out their lives a few hours longer and until another day, which should be like this day, repeating all its wants and hardships. The atmosphere of the room was stifling, with an odor that sickened Elizabeth, the fetor of all the dirt and disease that poverty had accumulated and heaped upon them.At the desk Mrs. Rider, the clerk, and the two agents of the society were interrogating a woman. The woman was tall and slender, and her pale face had some trace of prettiness left; her clothing was better than that of the others, though it had remained over from some easier circumstance of the summer.The woman was hungry, and she was sick. She had reported her condition to the agent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, but as this man could think of nothing better than to arrest somebody and have somebody punished, he had had the woman's husband sent to the workhouse for six months, thus removing the only hope she had.To Elizabeth it seemed that the three inquisitors were trying, not so much to discover some means of helping this woman, as to discover some excuse for not helping her; they took turns in putting to her, with a professional frankness, the most personal questions,--questions that made Elizabeth blush and burn with shame, even as they made the woman blush. But just then a middle-aged woman appeared, and Elizabeth instantly identified her when Mrs. Rider pleasantly addressed her by a name that appeared frequently in the newspapers in connection with deeds that took on the aspect of nobility and sacrifice."I'm so glad you dropped in, Mrs. Norton," said Mrs. Rider. "We have a most perplexing case."The clerk lifted her eyebrows expressively, and somehow indicated to Mrs. Norton the woman she had just had under investigation. Mrs. Norton glanced at the hunted face and smiled."You mean the Ordway woman? Exactly. I know her case thoroughly. Mr. Gleason 'phoned me from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and I looked her up. You should have seen her room--the filthiest place I ever saw--and those children!" She raised her hands, covered with gloves, and her official-looking reticule slid up her forearm as if to express an impossibility. "The woman was tired of farm life--determined to come to town--fascinated by city life--she complained of her husband, and yet--what do you think?--she wanted me to get him out of the work-house!"Mrs. Norton stopped as if she had made an unanswerable argument and proved that the woman should not be helped; and Mrs. Rider and the two agents seemed to be relieved. Presently Mrs. Rider called the woman, and told her that her case was not one that came within the purview of the society's objects, and when the hope was dying out of the woman's face Mrs. Norton began to lecture her on the care of children, and to assure her the city was filled with pitfalls for such as she. The woman, beaten into humility, listened a while, and then she turned and dragged herself toward the door. The eyes of the waiting paupers followed her with the same impersonal curiosity they had shown in the entrance of Mrs. Russell and Elizabeth and Mrs. Norton.The limp retreating figure of the woman filled Elizabeth with distress. When, at the door, she saw the woman press to her eyes the sodden handkerchief she had been rolling in her palm during the interview, she ran after her; in the hall outside, away from others, she called; the woman turned and gazed at her suspiciously."Here!" said Elizabeth fearfully.She opened her purse and emptied from it into the woman's hand all the silver it held."Where do you live?" she asked, and as the woman gave her the number of the house where she rented a room, Elizabeth realized how inappropriate the word "live" was. Elizabeth returned to the office with a glow in her breast, though she dreaded Mrs. Norton, whom she feared she had affronted by her deed. But Mrs. Norton received her with a smile."It seemed hard to you, no doubt," Mrs. Norton said, and Mrs. Rider and the two agents looked up with smiles of their own, as if they were about to shine in Mrs. Norton's justification, "but you'll learn after a while. We must discriminate, you know; we must not pauperize them. When you've been in the work as long as I have,"--she paused with a superior lift of her eyebrows at the use of this word "work,"--"you'll understand better."Elizabeth felt a sudden indignation which she concealed, because she had her own doubts, after all. The ladies were gathering for the committee meeting and just then Mrs. Russell beckoned her into an inner room."The air is better in here," she said.XVEvery day Elizabeth went to the Organized Charities. The committee on arrangements divided itself into subcommittees, and these, with other committees that were raised, must have meetings, make reports, receive instructions, and consider ways and means. The labor entailed was enormous. The women were exhausted before the first week had ended; the rustling of their skirts as they ran to and fro, their incessant chatter---they all spoke at once--their squealing at each other as their nerves snapped under the strain, filled the rooms with clamor. But all this endless confusion and complication were considered necessary in order to effect an organization. If any one doubted or complained, it was only necessary to speak the word "organization," and criticism was immediately silenced.It had been discovered very early in the work of this organization that Mrs. Russell's great house would be too small for the bazaar, and it had been a relief to her when a certain Mrs. Spayd offered to place at the disposal of the committee the new mansion her husband had just built on Claybourne Avenue and named with the foreign-sounding name of "Bellemere." Mrs. Spayd privately conveyed the information that the young people might have the ball-room at the top of the house, where the most exclusive, if they desired, could dance, and she commissioned a firm of decorators to transform Bellemere into a bazaar. Mrs. Spayd was to bear the entire expense, and her charity was lauded everywhere, especially in the society columns of the newspapers. The booths were to represent different nations, and it was suddenly found to be desirable to dress as peasants. The women who were to serve in these booths flew to costumers to have typical clothing made. And this occasioned still greater conflict and confusion, for each woman wished to represent that country whose inhabitants were supposed to wear the most picturesque costumes.Meanwhile the cold weather held and the poor besieged the Charities. No matter how early Elizabeth might arrive, no matter how late she might leave, they were always there, a stolid, patient row along the wall, or crowding up to the railing, or huddling in the hall outside. For a while Elizabeth, regarding them in the mass, thought that the same persons came each day, but she discovered that this was not the case. As she looked she noted a curious circumstance: the faces gradually took on individuality, slight at first, but soon decided, until each stood out among the others and developed the sharpest, most salient characteristics. She saw in each face the story of a single life, and always a life of neglect and failure, as if the misery of the world had been distributed in a kind of ironical variation. These people all were victims of a common doom, presenting itself each time in a different aspect; they were all alike--and yet they were all different, like leaves of a tree.One afternoon Elizabeth suddenly noted a face that stood out in such relief that it became the only face there for her. It was the face of a young man, and it wore a strange pallor, and as Elizabeth hurried by she was somehow conscious that the young man's eyes were following her with a peculiar searching glance. When she sat down to await the women of the committee with which she was to meet, the young man still gazed at her steadily; she grew uncomfortable, almost resentful. She felt this continued stare to be a rudeness, and then suddenly she wondered why any rudeness of these people should be capable of affecting her; surely they were not of her class, to be judged by her standards. But she turned away, and determined not to look that way again, for fear that the young man might accost her.And yet, though she persistently looked away, the face had so impressed her that she still could see it. In her first glimpse it had been photographed on her mind; its pallor was remarkable, the skin had a damp, dead whiteness, as if it had bleached in a cave, curls of thin brown hair clung to the brows; on the boy's neck was a streak of black where the collar of his coat had rubbed its color. In his thin hands he held a plush cap. And out of his pale face his wan eyes looked and followed her; she could not escape them, and for relief she finally fled to the inner room."We have made arrangements," said one of the women, "to hold our committee meetings hereafter at Mrs. Spayd's. She has kindly put her library at our disposal. This place is unbearable!"She flung up a window and let the fresh air pour in."Yes," sighed another woman, "the air is sickening. It gives me a headache. If the poor could only be taught that cleanliness is akin to godliness!"Elizabeth's head ached, too; it would be a relief to be delivered out of this atmosphere. But still the face of the young man pursued her. She could not follow the deliberations of the committee; she could think of nothing but that face. Where, she continually asked herself, had she seen it before? She sat by a window, and looked down into the street, preoccupied by the effort to identify it. She gave herself up to the pain of the process, as one does when trying to remember a name. Now and then she caught phrases of the sentences the women began, but seemed never able to finish:--"Oh, I hardly think that--" "As a class, of course--" "Oriental hangings would be best--" "Cheese-cloth looks cheap--" "Of course, flags--" "We could solicit the merchants--" "My husband was saying last night--"But where had she seen that face before? Why should it pursue and worry her? What had she ever done? Finally, after two hours of the mighty effort and patience that are necessary to bring a number of minds to grasp a subject and agree even on the most insignificant detail, two hours in which thoughts hovered and flitted here and there, and could not find expression, when minds held back, and continually balked at the specific, the certain, the definite, and sought refuge from decision in the general and the abstract, the committee exhausted itself, and decided to adjourn. Then, although it had reached no conclusions whatever, the matron who presided smiled and said:"Well, I feel that we're making progress.""I don't feel as if we'd done much," some one else said. "And I can not come on Friday.""Do you know, I really haven't got a single one of my Christmas presents yet.""I have to give sixty-seven! Just think! What a burden it all is!"Elizabeth dreaded the sight of that boy's face again, but it was growing late, the early winter twilight was expanding its gloom in the room. She made haste, and walked swiftly through the outer office. The young man was no longer there. But though this was a relief, his face still followed her. Who could he be?The air out of doors was grateful. It soothed her hot cheeks, and, though her head throbbed more violently for an instant from the exertion of coming down the steps, she drew in great drafts of the winter air with a comforting sense that it was cleansing her lungs of all that foul atmosphere of poverty she had been breathing for two days. She walked hurriedly to the corner, to wait for a car; beside her, St. Luke's, as with an effort, lifted its Gothic arches of gray stone into the dark sky; across the street the City Hall loomed, its windows bright with lights. The afternoon crowds were streaming by on the sidewalk, wagons and heavy trucks jolted and rumbled along the street; she saw the drivers of coal-wagons, the whites of their eyes flashing under the electric lights against faces black as negroes with the grime. Politicians were coming from the City Hall; here and there, in and out of the crowd, newsboys darted, shouting "All 'bout the murder!" The shops were ablaze, their windows tricked out for the holidays; throngs of people hurried by, intent, preoccupied, selfish. As Elizabeth stood there, the constant stream of faces oppressed her with an intolerable gloom; the blazing electric lights, signs of theaters and restaurants, were mere mockeries of pleasure and comfort. And always the roar of the city. It was the hour when the roar became low and dull, a deep, ugly note of weariness and discontent was in it, the grumble of a city that was exhausted from its long day of confusion and wearing, complicated effort. On the City Hall corner, a man with the red-banded cap of the Salvation Army stood beside an iron kettle suspended beneath a tripod, swaying from side to side, stamping his huge feet in the cold, jangling a little hand-bell, and constantly crying in a bass voice:"Remember the poor! Remember the poor!"She recalled, suddenly, that the outcasts at the Charities invariably sneered whenever the Salvation Army was suggested, and she was impatient with this man in the cap with the red band, his enormous sandy mustache frozen into repulsive little icicles. Why must he add his din to this tired roar of the worn-out city?Her car came presently, jerking along, stopping and starting again in the crowded street. The crowd sweeping by brushed her now and then, but suddenly she felt a more personal contact--some one had touched her. She shrank; she shuddered with fear, then she ran out to her car. Inside she began again that study of faces. She tried not to do so, but she seemed unable to shake off the habit--that face seemed always to be looking out at her from all other faces, white and sensitive, with the black mark on the neck where the coat collar had rubbed its color. And the eyes more and more reproached her, as if she had been responsible for the sadness that lay in them. The car whirred on, the conductor opened the door with monotonous regularity, and called out the interminable streets. The air in the car, overheated by the little coal-stove, took on the foul smell of the air at the Charities. Elizabeth's head ached more and more, a sickness came over her. At last she reached the street which led across to Claybourne Avenue, and got off. She crossed the little triangular park. The air had suddenly taken on a new life, it was colder and clearer. The dampness it had held in suspense for days was leaving it. Looking between the black trunks of the trees in the park she saw the western sky, yellow and red where the sun had gone down; and she thought of her home, with its comfort and warmth and light, and the logs in the great fireplace in the library. She hastened on, soothed and reassured. In the sense of certain comfort she now confidently anticipated, she could get the poor out of her mind, and feel as she used to feel before they came to annoy her. The clouds were clearing, the sky took on the deep blue it shows at evening; one star began to sparkle frostily, and, just as peace was returning, that young man's face came back, and she remembered instantly, in a flash, that it was the face of Harry Graves.XVIElizabeth was right; it was Harry Graves. Four weeks before he had been released from the penitentiary. On the day that he was permitted to go forth into the world again as a free man, the warden gave him a railroad ticket back to the city, a suit of prison-made clothes, a pair of prison-made brogans, and a shirt. These clothes were a disappointment and a chagrin to Graves. When he went into the prison, the fall before, he had an excellent suit of clothes and a new overcoat, and during the whole year he had looked forward to the pleasure he would experience in donning these again. He had felt a security in returning to the world well-habited and presentable. But one of the guards had noticed Graves's clothes when he entered the penitentiary and had stolen them, so that when he was released, Graves was forced to go back wearing a suit of the shoddy clothes one of the contractors manufactured in the prison, and sold to the state at a profit sufficient to repay him and to provide certain officials of the penitentiary with a good income as well. These clothes were of dull black. A detective could recognize them anywhere. Before Graves had reached the city, the collar had rubbed black against his neck.Things, of course, had changed while he was in prison. His mother had died and he had no home to go to. Besides this, he had contracted tuberculosis in the penitentiary, as did many of the convicts unless they were men of exceptionally strong constitutions. Nevertheless Graves was glad to be free on any terms, and glad to be back in the city in which he had been born and reared. And yet, no sooner was he back than the fear of the city lay on him. He dreaded to meet men; he felt their eyes following him curiously. He knew that he presented an uncouth figure in those miserable clothes and the clumsy prison brogans. Besides, he had so long walked in the lock-step that his gait was now constrained, awkward and unnatural; having been forbidden to speak for more than a year, and having spoken at all but surreptitiously, he found it impossible to approach men with his old frankness; having been compelled to keep his gaze on the ground, he could not look men in the eyes, and so he seemed to be a surly, taciturn creature with a hang-dog air.During the three weeks Graves had been confined in jail, prior to his plea and sentence, he had thought over his misdeeds, recognized his mistakes and formed the most strenuous resolutions of betterment. He was determined, then, to live a better life; but as he could not live while in prison, but merely "do time," he was compelled, of course, to wait a year before he could begin life anew. During the eleven months he spent in the penitentiary he had tried to keep these resolutions fresh, strong and ever clear before him. This was a difficult thing to do, for his mind was weakened by the confinement, and his moral sense was constantly clouded by the examples that were placed before him. On Sundays, in the chapel, he heard the chaplain preach, but during the week the guards stole the comforts his mother sent to him before she died, the contractors and the prison officials were grafting and stealing from the state provisions, household furniture, liquors, wines, and every other sort of thing; one of the prison officials supplied his brother's drug store with medicines and surgical appliances from the prison hospital. Besides all this, the punishments he was compelled at times to witness--the water-cure, the paddle, the electric battery, the stringing up by the wrists, not to mention the loathsome practices of the convicts themselves--benumbed and appalled him, until he shuddered with terror lest his mind give way. But all these things, he felt, would be at an end if he could keep his reason and his health, and live to the end of his term. Then he could leave them all behind and go out into the world and begin life anew.Graves came back to town during those last glorious days of the autumn, and the fact that he had no place to go was not so much a hardship. He did not care to show himself to his old friends until he had had opportunity to procure new clothes, and he felt that he was started on the way to this rehabilitation when almost immediately he found a place trucking merchandise for a wholesale house in Front Street. He felt encouraged; his luck, he told himself, was good, and for three days he was happy in his work. Then, one morning, he noticed a policeman; the policeman stood on the sidewalk, watching Graves roll barrels down the skids from a truck. The policeman stood there a good while, and then he spoke to the driver, admired the magnificent horses that were hitched to the truck, patted their glossy necks, picked up some sugar that had been spilled from a burst barrel and let the horses lick the sugar from the palm of his hand. The horses tossed their heads playfully as they did this, and, meanwhile, the policeman glanced every few minutes at Graves. Presently, he went into the wholesale house, and through the window Graves saw him talking to the manager. That evening the manager paid Graves for his three days' work and discharged him.On this money, four dollars and a half, Graves lived for a week, meanwhile hunting another job. He could do nothing except manual labor, for he was not properly clothed for any clerical employment. He walked along the entire river front, seeking work on the wharves as a stevedore, but no one could work there who was not a member of the Longshoremen's Union, and no one could be a member of the Longshoremen's Union who did not work there; so this plan failed. He visited employment bureaus, but these demanded fees and deposits. Graves read the want advertisements in the newspapers, but none of these availed him; each prospective employer demanded references which Graves could not give.The snow-storm brought him a prosperity as fleeting as the snow itself; he went into the residence district--where as yet he had not had the heart to go because of memories that haunted it--and cleaned the sidewalks of the well-to-do. After a day or so, the sidewalks of the well-to-do were all cleaned,--that is, the sidewalks of those who respected the laws sufficiently to have their sidewalks cleaned. Then the rain came, and Graves tramped the slushy streets. His prison-made shoes were as pervious to water as paper, of which substance, indeed, they were made; he contracted a cold, and his cough grew rapidly worse. He had no place to sleep. He spent a night in each of the two lodging-houses in the city, then he "flopped" on the floor of a police station. In this place he became infested with vermin, though this was no new experience to him after eleven months in the cells of the penitentiary. Meanwhile, he had little to eat. Once or twice, he visited hotel kitchens and the chefs gave him scraps from the table; then he did what for days he had been dreading--he tried to beg. After allowing twenty people to go by, he found the courage to hold out his hand to the twenty-first; the man passed without noticing him; a dozen others did likewise. Then a policeman saw him and arrested him on a charge of vagrancy. At the police station the officers, recognizing his prison clothes, held him for three days as a suspicious character. Then he was arraigned before Bostwick, who scowled and told him he would give him twenty-four hours in which to leave the city.It was now cold. The wind cut through Graves's clothing like a saw; he skulked and hid for two days; then, intolerably hungry, he went to the Organized Charities. He sat there for two hours that afternoon, glad of the delay because the room was warm. He thought much during those two hours, though his thoughts were no longer clear. He was able, however, to recall a belief he had held before coming out of the penitentiary,--a belief that he had paid the penalty for his crime, that, having served the sentence society had imposed on him, his punishment was at an end. This view had seemed to be confirmed by the certificate that had been issued to him, under the Great Seal of State and signed by the governor, restoring him to citizenship. But now he realized that this belief had been erroneous, that he had not at all paid the penalty, that he had not served his sentence, that his punishment was not at an end, and that he had not been restored to citizenship. The Great Seal of State had attested an hypocrisy and a lie, and the governor had signed his name to this lie with a conceited flourish at the end of his pen. Graves formulated this conclusion with an effort, but he grasped it finally, and his mind clung to it and revolved about it, finding something it could hold to.And then, suddenly, Elizabeth Ward entered the room. He knew her instantly, and his heart leaped with a wild desperate hope. He watched her; she was beautiful in the seal-skin jacket that fitted her slender figure so well; her hat with its touch of green became her dark hair. He noted the flush of her cheek, the sparkle of her eyes behind the veil. He remembered her as he had seen her that last day she came into her father's office; he remembered how heavy his own heart had been under its load of guilty fears. He recalled the affection her father had shown, how his tired face had smiled when he saw her. Graves remembered that the smile had filled him with a pity for Ward; he seemed once more to see Ward fondly take her little gloved hand and hold it while he looked up at her, and how he had laughed and evidently joked her as he swung about to his desk and wrote out a check. And then, as she went out, she had smiled at the clerks and spoken to them; she had smiled on him and spoken to him; would she smile now, this day? The hope leaped wild in his heart. If she did! She was the apple of her father's eye--he would do anything for her; if she would but see and recognize him now, give him the least hint of encouragement or permission, he would tell her, she would speak to her father and he would help him. His whole being seemed to melt within him--he half started from his chair--his eyes were wide with the excitement of this hope. He never once took them from her; he must not permit an instant to escape him, lest she look his way. He watched her as she sat by the window; she made a picture he never could forget. Once she turned. Ah! it was coming now!--but no--yes, she was moving! She had gone into the other room. He hoped now that his case would be one of the last. He must see her. After a while the agent beckoned him, looked at him suspiciously, and said:"How long have you been out?""A month," said Graves."Well, I haven't got no use for convicts," said the agent.Graves waited in the hall. He waited until it was dark, but not so dark that the agent could not recognize him."You needn't hang around," he said; "there's nothing to steal here."Graves waited, then, outside. He feared he would miss Elizabeth in the dark, or confuse her among the other women. The thought made him almost frantic. The women came out, and finally--yes, it was Elizabeth! He could nowhere mistake that figure. He pressed up, he spoke, he put forth a hand to touch her--she turned with a start of fright. He saw a policeman looking at him narrowly. And then he gave up, slunk off, and was lost in the crowd.XVIISeated in the library at the Wards', Eades gave himself up to the influences of the moment. The open fire gave off the faint delicious odor of burning wood, the lamp filled the room with a soft light that gleamed on the gilt lettering of the books about the walls, the pictures above the low shelves--a portrait of Browning among them--lent to the room the dignity of the great souls they portrayed. Eades, who had just tried his second murder case, was glad to find this refuge from the thoughts that had harassed him for a week. Elizabeth noticed the weariness in his eyes, and she had a notion that his hair glistened a little more grayly at his temples."You've been going through an ordeal this week, haven't you?" She had expressed the thought that lay on their minds. He felt a thrill. She sympathized, and this was comfort; this was what he wanted!"It must have been exciting," Elizabeth continued. "Murder trials usually are, I believe. I never saw one; I never was in a court-room in my life. Women do go, I suppose?""Yes--women of a certain kind." His tone deprecated the practice. "We've had big audiences all the week; it would have disgusted you to see them struggling and scrambling for admission. Now I suppose they'll be sending flowers to the wretch, and all that."Eades chose to forget how entirely the crowd had sympathized with him, and how the atmosphere of the trial had been wholly against the wretch."Well, I'll promise not to send him any flowers," Elizabeth said quickly. "He'll have to hang?""No, not hang; we don't hang people in this state any more; we electrocute them. But I forgot; Gordon Marriott told me I mustn't say 'electrocute'; he says there is no such word.""Gordon is particular," Elizabeth observed with a laugh.Eades thought she laughed sympathetically; and he wanted all her sympathy for himself just then."He calls it killing." Eades grasped the word boldly, like a nettle."Gordon doesn't believe in capital punishment.""So I understand.""I don't either."Her tone startled him. He glanced up. She was looking at him steadily."Did you read of this man's crime?" he asked."No, I don't read about crimes.""Then I'll spare you. Only, he shot a man down in cold blood; there were eye-witnesses; there is no doubt of his guilt. He made no defense.""Then it couldn't have been hard to convict him.""No," Eades admitted, though he did not like this detraction from his triumph. "But the responsibility is great.""I should imagine so."He did not know exactly what she meant; he wondered if this were sarcasm."It is indeed," he insisted."Yes," she went on, "I know it must be. I couldn't bear it myself. I'm glad women are not called to such responsibilities. I believe it is said--isn't it?--that their sentimental natures unfit them." She was smiling."You're guying now," he said, leaning back in his chair."Oh, indeed, no! Of course, I know nothing about such things--save that you men are superior to your emotional natures, and rise above them and control them.""Well, not always. We become emotional, but our emotions are usually excited on the side of justice.""What is that?""Justice? Why--well--""You mean 'an eye for an eye,' I suppose, and 'a life for a life.'" Elizabeth looked at him steadily, and he feared she was making him ridiculous."I'm not sure that I believe in capital punishment myself," he said, seeing that she would not, after all, sympathize with him, "but luckily I have no choice; I have only my duty to do, and that is to enforce the laws as I find them." He settled back as if he had found a sure foundation and placed his fingers tip to tip, his polished nails gleaming in the firelight as if they were wet. "I can only do my duty; the jury, the judge, the executioner, may do theirs or not. My personal feelings can not enter into the matter in the least. That's the beauty of our system. Of course, it's hard and unpleasant, but we can't allow our sentiments to stand in the way." Plainly he enjoyed the nobility of this attitude. "As a man, I might not believe in capital punishment--but as an official--""You divide yourself into two personalities?""Well, in that sense--""How disagreeable!" Elizabeth gave a little shrug. "It's a kind of vivisection, isn't it?""But something has to be done. What would you have me do?" He sat up and met her, and she shrank from the conflict."Oh, don't ask me! I don't know anything about it, I'm sure! I know but one criminal, and I don't wish to dream about him to-night.""It is strange to be discussing such topics," said Eades. "You must pardon me for being so disagreeable and depressing.""Oh, I'll forgive you," she laughed. "I'd really like to know about such things. As I say, I have known but one criminal.""The one you dream of?""Yes. Do you ever dream of your criminals?""Oh, never! It's bad enough to be brought into contact with them by day; I put them out of my mind when night comes. Except this Burns--he insists on pursuing me more or less. But now that he has his just deserts, perhaps he'll let me alone. But tell me about this criminal of yours, this lucky one you dream of. I'd become a criminal myself--""You know him already," Elizabeth said hastily, her cheeks coloring."I?""Yes. Do you remember Harry Graves?"Eades bent his head and placed his knuckles to his chin."Graves, Graves?" he said. "It seems to me--""The boy who stole from my father; you had him sent to the penitentiary for a year--and papa--""Oh, I remember; that boy! To be sure. His term must be over now.""Yes, it's over. I've seen him.""You!" he said in surprise. "Where?""At the Charity Bureau, before Christmas.""Ah, begging, of course." Eades shook his head. "I was in hopes our leniency would do him good; but it seems that it's never appreciated. I sometimes reproach myself with being too easy with them; but they do disappoint us--almost invariably. Begging! Well, they don't want to work, that's all. What became of him?""I don't know," said Elizabeth. "I saw him there, but didn't recognize him. After I had come away, I recalled him. I've reproached myself again and again. I wonder what has become of him!""It's sad, in a way," said Eades, "but I shouldn't worry. I used to worry, at first, but I soon learned to know them. They're no good, they won't work, they have no respect for law, they have no desire but to gratify their idle, vicious natures. The best thing is just to shut them up where they can't harm any one. This may seem heartless, but I don't think I'm heartless." He smiled tolerantly for himself. "I have no personal feeling in the matter, but I've learned from experience. As for this Graves--I had my doubts at the time. I thought then I was making a mistake in recommending leniency. But, really, your father was so cut up, and I'd rather err on the side of mercy." He paused a moment, and then said: "He'll turn up in court again some day. You'll see. I shouldn't lose any more sleep over him."Elizabeth smiled faintly, but did not reply. She sat with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her delicate chin resting on her hand, and Eades was content to let the subject drop, if it would. He wished the silence would prolong itself. His heart beat rapidly; he felt a new energy, a new joy pulsing within him. He sat and looked at her calmly, her gaze bent on the fire, her profile revealed to him, her lashes sweeping her cheek, the lace in her sleeve falling away from her slender arm. Should he tell her then? He longed to--but this was not, after all, the moment. The moment would come, and he must be patient. He must wait and prove himself to her; she must understand him; she should see him in time as the modern ideal of manhood, doing his duty courageously and without fear or favor. Some day he would tell her."Your charity bazaar was a success, I hope?" he said presently, coming back to the lighter side of their last topic."I don't know," Elizabeth said. "I never inquired.""You never inquired?""No.""How strange! Why not?""I lost interest.""Oh!" he laughed. "Well, we all do that.""The whole thing palled on me--struck me as ridiculous."Eades was perplexed. He could not in the least understand this latest attitude. Surely, she was a girl of many surprises."I shouldn't think you would find charity ridiculous. A hard-hearted and cruel being like me might--but you--oh, Miss Ward! To think that helping the poor was ridiculous!""But it isn't to help the poor at all."He was still more perplexed."It's to help the rich. Can't you see that?"She turned and faced him with clear, sober gray eyes."Can't you see that?" she asked again. "If you can't, I wish I knew how to make you."'The organized charity, scrimped and iced,In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ'--"Do you know Boyle O'Reilly's poetry?"Eades showed the embarrassment of one who has not the habit of reading, and she saw that the words had no meaning for him."Don't take it all so seriously," he said, leaning over as if he might plead with her. "'The poor,' you know, 'we have always with us.'" He settled back then as one who has said the thing proper to the occasion.XVIIIAlthough Marriott had promised Koerner early in the fall that his action against the railroad would be tried at once, he was unable to bring the event to pass. In the first place, Bradford Ford, the attorney for the railroad, had to go east in his private car, then in the winter he had to go to Florida to rest and play golf, and because of these and other postponements it was March before the case was finally assigned for trial."So that's your client back there, is it?" said Ford, the morning of the trial, turning from the window and the lingering winter outdoors to look at Koerner.Koerner was sitting by the trial table, his old wife by his side. He was pale and thin from his long winter indoors; his yellow, wrinkled skin stretched over his jaw-bones, hung flabby at his throat. As Ford and Marriott looked at him, a troubled expression appeared in Koerner's face; he did not like to see Marriott so companionable with Ford; he had ugly suspicions; he felt that Marriott should treat his opponent coldly and with the enmity such a contest deserved. But just at that minute Judge Sharlow came in and court was opened.The trial lasted three days. The benches behind the bar were empty, the bailiff slept with his gray chin on his breast, the clerk copied pleadings in the record, pausing now and then to look out at the flurries of snow. Sharlow sat on the bench, trying to write an opinion he had been working on for weeks. The jury sat in the jury-box, their eyes heavy with drowsiness, breathing grossly. Long ago life had paused in these men; they had certain fixed opinions, one of which was that any man who sued a corporation was entitled to damages; and after they had seen Koerner, with the stump of his leg sticking out from his chair, they were ready to render a verdict.Marriott knew this, and Ford knew it, and consequently they gave attention, not to the jury, but to the stenographer bending over the tablet on which he transcribed the testimony with his fountain pen. Marriott and Ford were concerned about the record; they saw not so much this trial, as a hearing months or possibly years hence in the Appellate Court, and still another hearing months or years hence in the Supreme Court. They knew that just as the jurymen were in sympathy with Koerner, and by any possible means would give a verdict in his favor, so the judges in the higher courts would be in sympathy with the railroad company, and by any possible means give judgment in its favor; and, therefore, while Marriott's efforts were directed toward trying the case in such a way that the record should be free from error, Ford's efforts were directed toward trying the case in such a way that the record should be full of error. Ford was continually objecting to the questions Marriott asked his witnesses, and compelling Sharlow to drop his work and pass on these objections. One of Marriott's witnesses, a stalwart young mechanic, unmarried and with no responsibilities, testified positively that the frog in which Koerner had caught his foot had no block in it; he had examined it carefully at the time. Another, a man of middle age with a large family, an employe of the railroad company, had the most unreliable memory--he could remember nothing at all about the frog; he could not say whether it had been blocked or not; he had not examined it; he had not considered it any of his business. While giving his testimony, he cast fearful and appealing glances at Ford, who smiled complacently, and for a while made no objections. Another witness was Gergen, the surgeon, a young man with eye-glasses, a tiny gold chain, and a scant black beard trimmed closely to his pale skin and pointed after the French fashion. He retained his overcoat and kept on his glasses while he testified, as if he must get through with this business and return to his practice as quickly as possible. With the greatest care he couched all his testimony in scientific phrases."I was summoned to the hospital," he said, "at seven-sixteen on that evening and found the patient prostrated by hemorrhage and shock. I supplemented the superficial examination of the internes and found that there were contusions on the left hip, and severe bruises on the entire left side. The most severe injury, however, developed in the right foot. The tibiotarsal articulation was destroyed, the calcaneum and astragalus were crushed and inoperable, the metatarsus and phalanges, and the internal and external malleolus were also crushed, and the fibula and tibia were splintered to the knee.""Well, what then?""I gave orders to have the patient prepared, and proceeded to operate. My assistant, Doctor Remack, administered the anesthetic, and I amputated at the lower third."Doctor Gergen then explained that what he had said meant that he had found Koerner's foot, ankle and knee crushed, and that he had cut off his leg above the knee. After this he told what fee he had charged; he did this in plain terms, calling dollars dollars, and cents cents.But Koerner himself was a sufficient witness in his own behalf. Sitting on the stand, his crutches in the hollow of his arm, the stump of his leg thrust straight out before him and twitching now and then, he told of his long service with the railroad, pictured the blinding snow-storm, described how he had slipped and caught his foot in the unblocked frog--then the switch-engine noiselessly stealing down upon him. The jurymen roused from their lethargy as he turned his white and bony face toward them; the atmosphere was suddenly charged with the sympathy these aged men felt for him. Sharlow paused in his writing, the clerk ceased from his monotonous work, and Mrs. Koerner, whose expression had not changed, wiped her eyes with the handkerchief which, fresh from the iron, she had held all day without unfolding.When Ford began his cross-examination, Koerner twisted about with difficulty in his chair, threw back his head, and his face became hard and obdurate. He ran his stiff and calloused hand through his white hair, which seemed to bristle with leonine defiance. Ford conducted his cross-examination in soft, pleasant tones, spoke to Koerner kindly and with consideration, scrupulously addressed him as "Mr. Koerner," and had him repeat all he had said about his injury."As I understand it, then, Mr. Koerner," said Ford, "you were walking homeward at the end of the day through the railroad yards.""Yes, sir, dot's right.""You'd always gone home that way?""Sure; I go dot vay for twenty year, right t'rough dose yards dere.""Yes. Was that a public highway, Mr. Koerner?""Vell, everybody go dot vay home all right; dot's so.""But it wasn't a street?""No.""Nor a sidewalk?""You know dot alreadty yourself," said Koerner, leaning forward, contracting his bushy white eyebrows and glaring at Ford. "Vot you vant to boder me mit such a damn-fool question for?"The jurymen laughed and Ford smiled."I know, of course, Mr. Koerner; you will pardon me--but what I wish to know is whether or not you know. You had passed through those yards frequently?""Yah, undt I knows a damn-sight more about dose yards dan you, you bet."Again the jurymen laughed in vicarious pleasure at another's profanity."I yield to you there, Mr. Koerner," said Ford in his suave manner. "But let us go on. You say your foot slipped?""Yah, dot's right.""Slipped on the frozen snow?""Yah. I bedt you shlip on such a place as dot.""No doubt," said Ford, who suddenly ceased to smile. He now leaned forward; the faces of the two protagonists seemed to be close together."And, as a result, your foot slid into the frog, and was wedged there so that you could not get it out?""Yah.""And the engine came along just then and ran over it?""Yah."Ford suddenly sat upright, turned away, seemed to have lost interest, and said:"That's all, Mr. Koerner."And the old man was left sitting there, suspended as it were, his neck out-thrust, his white brows gathered in a scowl, his small eyes blinking.Sharlow looked at Marriott, then said, as if to hurry Koerner off the stand:"That's all, Mr. Koerner. Call your next."When all the testimony for the plaintiff had been presented Ford moved to arrest the case from the jury; that is, he wished Sharlow to give judgment in favor of the railroad company without proceeding further. In making this motion, Ford stood beside his table, one hand resting on a pile of law-books he had had borne into the court-room that afternoon by a young attorney just admitted to the bar, who acted partly as clerk and partly as porter for Ford, carrying his law-books for him, finding his place in them, and, in general, relieving Ford from all that manual effort which is thought incompatible with professional dignity. As he spoke, Ford held in his hand the gold eye-glasses which seemed to betray him into an age which he did not look and did not like to admit. Marriott had expected this motion and listened attentively to what Ford said. The Koerners, who did not at all understand, waited patiently. Meanwhile, Sharlow excused the jury, sank deeper in his chair and laid his forefinger learnedly along his cheek.Ford's motion was based on the contention that the failure to block the frog--he spoke of this failure, perfectly patent to every one, as an alleged failure, and was careful to say that the defendant did not admit that the frog had not been blocked--that the alleged failure was not the proximate cause of Koerner's injury, but that the real cause was the ice about the frog on which Koerner, according to his own admission, had slipped. The unblocked frog, he said--admitting merely for the sake of argument that the frog was unblocked--was the remote cause, the ice was the proximate cause; the question then was, which of these had caused Koerner's injury? It was necessary that the injury be the effect of a cause which in law-books was referred to as a proximate cause; if it was not referred to as a proximate cause, but as a remote cause, then Koerner could not recover his damages. After elaborating this view and many times repeating the word "proximate," which seemed to take on a more formidable and insuperable sound each time he uttered it, Ford proceeded to elucidate his thought further, and in doing this, he used a term even more impressive than the word proximate; he used the phrase, "act of God." The ice, he said, was an "act of God," and as the railroad company was responsible, under the law, for its own acts only, it followed that, as "an act of God" was not an act of the railroad company, but an act of another, that is, of God, the railroad company could not be held accountable for the ice.Having, as he said, indicated the outline of his argument, Ford said that he would pass to a second proposition; namely, that the motion must be granted for another reason. In stating this reason, Ford used the phrases, "trespass" and "contributory negligence," and these phrases had a sound even more ominous than the phrases "proximate" and "act of God." Ford declared that the railroad yards were the property of the railroad company, and therefore not a thoroughfare, and that Koerner, in walking through them, was a trespasser. The fact that Koerner was in the employ of the railroad, he said, did not give him the right to enter in and upon the yards--he had the lawyer's reckless extravagance in the use of prepositions, and whenever it was possible used the word "said" in place of "the"--for the reason that his employment did not necessarily lead him to said yard and, more than all, when Koerner completed his labors for the day, his right to remain in and about said premises instantly ceased. Therefore, he contended, Koerner was a trespasser, and a trespasser must suffer all the consequences of his trespass. Then Ford began to use the phrase "contributory negligence." He said that Koerner had been negligent in continuing in and upon said premises, and besides, had not used due care in avoiding the ice and snow on and about said frog; that he had the same means of knowing that the ice was there that the railroad company had, and hence had assumed whatever risk there was in passing on and over said ice, and that then and thereby he had been guilty of contributory negligence; that is, had contributed, by his own negligence, to his own injury. In fact, it seemed from Ford's argument that Koerner had really invited his injury and purposely had the switch-engine cut off his leg."These, in brief, if the Court please," said Ford, who had spoken for an hour, "are the propositions I wish to place before your Honor." Ford paused, drew from his pocket a handkerchief, pressed it to his lips, passed it lightly over his forehead, and laid it on the table. Then he selected a law-book from the pile and opened it at the page his clerk had marked with a slip of paper. Sharlow, knowing what he had to expect, stirred uneasily and glanced at the clock.During Ford's argument Sharlow had been thinking the matter over. He knew, of course, that the same combination of circumstances is never repeated, that there could be no other case in the world just like this, but that there were hundreds which resembled it, and that Ford and Marriott would ransack the law libraries to find these cases, explain them to him, differentiate them, and show how they resembled or did not resemble the case at bar. And, further, he knew that before he could decide the question Ford had raised he would have to stop and think what the common law of England had been on the subject, then whether that law had been changed by statute, then whether the statute had been changed, and, if it was still on the statute books, whether it could be said to be contrary to the Constitution of the United States or of the State. Then he would have to see what the courts had said about the subject, and, if more than one court had spoken, whether their opinions were in accord or at variance with each other. Besides this he would have to find out what the courts of other states had said on similar subjects and whether they had reversed themselves; that is, said at one time something contrary to what they had said at another. If he could not reconcile these decisions he would have to render a decision himself, which he did not like to do, for there was always the danger that some case among the thousands reported had been overlooked by him, or by Ford or Marriott, and that the courts which would review his decision, in the years that would be devoted to the search, might discover that other case and declare that he had not decided the question properly. And even if the courts had decided this question, it might be discovered that the question was not, after all, the exact question involved in this case, or was not the exact question the courts had meant to decide. It would not do for Sharlow to decide this case according to the simple rule of right and wrong, which he could have found by looking into his own heart; that would not be lawful; he must decide it according to what had been said by other judges, most of whom were dead. Though if Sharlow did decide, his decision would become law for other judges to be guided by, until some judge in the future gave a different opinion.Considering all this, Sharlow determined to postpone his decision as long as possible, and told Ford that he would not then listen to his authorities, but would hear what Marriott had to say.And then Marriott spoke at length, opposing all that Ford had said, saying that the unblocked frog must be the proximate cause, for if it had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in it and could have got out of the way of the switch-engine. Furthermore, he declared that the yards had been used by the employes as a thoroughfare so long that a custom had been established; that the unblocked frog, according to the statute, wasprima facienegligence on the part of the defendant. And he said that if Ford was to submit authorities, he would like an opportunity to submit other authorities equally authoritative. At this Sharlow bowed, said he would adjourn court until two o'clock in order to consider the question, recalled the jury and cautioned them not to talk about the case. This caution was entirely worthless, because they talked of nothing else, either among themselves or with others; being idle men, they had nothing else to talk about.Koerner had listened with amazement to Ford and Marriott, wondering how long they could talk about such incomprehensible subjects. He had tried to follow Ford's remarks and then had tried to follow Marriott's, but he derived nothing from it all except further suspicions of Marriott, who seemed to talk exactly as Ford talked and to use the same words and phrases. He felt, too, that Marriott should have spoken in louder tones and more vehemently, and shown more antipathy to Ford. And when they went out of the court-house, he asked Marriott what it all meant. But Marriott, who could not himself tell as yet what it meant, assured Koerner that an important legal question had arisen and that they must wait until it had been fully argued, considered and decided by the court. Koerner swung away on his crutches, saying to himself that it was all very strange; the switch-engine had cut off his leg, against his will, no one could gainsay that, and the only important question Koerner could see was how much the law would make the railroad company pay him for cutting off his leg. It seemed silly to him that so much time should be wasted over such matters. But then, as Marriott had said, it was impossible for Koerner to understand legal questions.By the time he opened court in the afternoon, Sharlow had decided on a course of action, one that would give him time to think over the question further. He announced that he would overrule the motion, but that counsel for defense might raise the question again at the close of the evidence, and, should a verdict result unfavorably to him, on the motion for a new trial.Ford took exceptions, and began his defense, introducing several employes of the railroad to give testimony about the ice at the frog. When his evidence was in, Ford moved again to take the case from the jury, but Sharlow, having thought the matter over and found it necessary for his peace of mind to reach some conclusion, overruled the motion.Then came the arguments, extending themselves into the following day; then Sharlow must speak; he must charge the jury. The purpose of the charge was to lay the law of the case before the jury, and for an hour he went on, talking of "proximate cause," of "contributory negligence," of "measure of damages," and at last, the jury having been confused sufficiently to meet all the requirements of the law, he told them they might retire.It was now noon, and the court was deserted by all but Koerner and his wife, who sat there, side by side, and waited. It was too far for them to go home, and they had no money with which to lunch down town. The bright sun streamed through the windows with the first promise of returning warmth. Now and then from the jury room the Koerners could hear voices raised in argument; then the noise would die, and for a long time it would be very still. Occasionally they would hear other sounds, the scraping of a chair on the floor, once a noise as of some one pounding a table; voices were raised again, then it grew still. And Koerner and his wife waited.At half-past one the bailiff returned."Any sign?" he asked Koerner."Dey was some fightin'.""They'll take their time," said the bailiff."Vot you t'ink?" Koerner ventured to ask."Oh, you'll win," said the bailiff. But Koerner was not so sure about that.At two o'clock Sharlow returned and court began again. Another jury was called, another case opened, Koerner gave place to another man who was to exchange his present troubles for the more annoying ones the law would give him; to experience Koerner's perplexity, doubt, confusion, and hope changing constantly to fear. Other lawyers began other wrangles over other questions of law.At three o'clock there was a loud pounding on the door of the jury room. Every one in the court-room turned with sudden expectation. The bailiff drew out his keys, unlocked the door, spoke to the men inside, and then went to telephone to Marriott and Ford. After a while Marriott appeared, but Ford had not arrived. Marriott went out himself and telephoned; Ford had not returned from luncheon. He telephoned to Ford's home, then to his club. Finally, at four o'clock, Ford came.After the verdict Marriott went to the Koerners and whispered:"We can go now."The old man got up, his wife helped him into his overcoat, and he swung out of the court-room on his crutches. He had tried to understand what the clerk had read, but could not. He thought he had lost his case."Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott when they were in the corridor."How's dot?" asked the old man harshly."Why, you won.""Me?""Yes; didn't you know?""I vin?""Certainly, you won. You get eight thousand dollars."The old man stopped and looked at Marriott."Eight t'ousandt?""Yes, eight thousand.""I get eight t'ousandt, huh?""Yes."A smile transfigured the heavy, bony face."Py Gott!" he said. "Dot's goodt, hain't it?"
XIV
The debate over the charity ball raged until twilight, and it served for unfinished business at two special sessions. The spare little woman who had proposed that the meetings be opened with prayer led the opposition to the charity ball, and, summoning all her militant religion to her aid, succeeded in arraying most of the evangelical churches against it. In two weeks the controversy was in the newspapers, and when it had waged for a month, and both parties were exhausted, they compromised on a charity bazaar.
The dispute had been distressing to Mrs. Russell, whose nature was too sensitive to take the relish most of the others seemed to find in the controversy, and it was through her tact that peace was finally established. Even after the bazaar was decided on, the peace was threatened by dissension as to where the bazaar should be held. The more sophisticated and worldly-minded favored the Majestic Theater, and this brought the spare little woman to her feet again, trembling with moral indignation. To her the idea of a bazaar in a theater was even more sacrilegious than a ball. But Mrs. Russell saved the day by a final sacrifice--she offered her residence for the bazaar.
"It was beautiful in you!" Elizabeth exclaimed as they drove homeward together in the graying afternoon of the November day. "To think of throwing your house open for a week--and having the whole town tramp over the rugs!"
"Oh, I'll lay the floors in canvas," said Mrs. Russell, with a little laugh she could not keep from ending in a sigh.
"You'll find it no light matter," said Elizabeth; "this turning your house inside out. Of course, the fact that it is your house will draw all the curious and vulgar in town."
This was not exactly reassuring and Elizabeth felt as much the moment she had said it.
"You must help me, dear!" Mrs. Russell said, squeezing Elizabeth's hand in a kind of desperation. Elizabeth had never known her to be in any wise demonstrative, and her own sympathetic nature responded immediately.
"Indeed I shall!" she said.
The bazaar was to be held the week before Christmas, and the ladies forgot their differences to unite in one of those tremendous and exhausting labors they seem ever ready to undertake, though the end is always so disproportionate to the sacrifice and toil that somehow bring it to pass. Elizabeth was almost constantly with Mrs. Russell; they were working early and late. Mrs. Russell appointed her on the committee on arrangements, and the committee held almost daily meetings at the Charities. And here Elizabeth at last found an opportunity of seeing some of the poor for whom she was working.
The fall had prolonged itself into November; the weather was so perfect that Dick could daily speed his automobile, and the men who, like Marriott, still clung to golf, could play on Saturdays and Sundays at the Country Club. But December came, and with it a heavy rain that in three days became a sleet; then the snow and a cold wave. The wretched winter weather, which seems to have a spite almost personal for the lake regions, produced its results in the lives of men--there were suicides and crimes for the police, and for the Organized Charities, the poor, now forced to emerge from the retreats where in milder weather they could hide their wretchedness. They came forth, and when Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell entered the Charities one morning, there they were, ranged along the wall. They sat bundled in their rags, waiting in dumb patience for the last humiliation of an official investigation, making no sound save as their ailments compelled them to sneeze or to cough now and then; and as Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell passed into the room, they were followed by eyes that held no reproach or envy, but merely a mild curiosity. The poor sat there, perhaps glad of the warmth and the rest; willing to spend the day, if necessary; with hopes no higher than some mere temporary relief that would help them to eke out their lives a few hours longer and until another day, which should be like this day, repeating all its wants and hardships. The atmosphere of the room was stifling, with an odor that sickened Elizabeth, the fetor of all the dirt and disease that poverty had accumulated and heaped upon them.
At the desk Mrs. Rider, the clerk, and the two agents of the society were interrogating a woman. The woman was tall and slender, and her pale face had some trace of prettiness left; her clothing was better than that of the others, though it had remained over from some easier circumstance of the summer.
The woman was hungry, and she was sick. She had reported her condition to the agent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, but as this man could think of nothing better than to arrest somebody and have somebody punished, he had had the woman's husband sent to the workhouse for six months, thus removing the only hope she had.
To Elizabeth it seemed that the three inquisitors were trying, not so much to discover some means of helping this woman, as to discover some excuse for not helping her; they took turns in putting to her, with a professional frankness, the most personal questions,--questions that made Elizabeth blush and burn with shame, even as they made the woman blush. But just then a middle-aged woman appeared, and Elizabeth instantly identified her when Mrs. Rider pleasantly addressed her by a name that appeared frequently in the newspapers in connection with deeds that took on the aspect of nobility and sacrifice.
"I'm so glad you dropped in, Mrs. Norton," said Mrs. Rider. "We have a most perplexing case."
The clerk lifted her eyebrows expressively, and somehow indicated to Mrs. Norton the woman she had just had under investigation. Mrs. Norton glanced at the hunted face and smiled.
"You mean the Ordway woman? Exactly. I know her case thoroughly. Mr. Gleason 'phoned me from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and I looked her up. You should have seen her room--the filthiest place I ever saw--and those children!" She raised her hands, covered with gloves, and her official-looking reticule slid up her forearm as if to express an impossibility. "The woman was tired of farm life--determined to come to town--fascinated by city life--she complained of her husband, and yet--what do you think?--she wanted me to get him out of the work-house!"
Mrs. Norton stopped as if she had made an unanswerable argument and proved that the woman should not be helped; and Mrs. Rider and the two agents seemed to be relieved. Presently Mrs. Rider called the woman, and told her that her case was not one that came within the purview of the society's objects, and when the hope was dying out of the woman's face Mrs. Norton began to lecture her on the care of children, and to assure her the city was filled with pitfalls for such as she. The woman, beaten into humility, listened a while, and then she turned and dragged herself toward the door. The eyes of the waiting paupers followed her with the same impersonal curiosity they had shown in the entrance of Mrs. Russell and Elizabeth and Mrs. Norton.
The limp retreating figure of the woman filled Elizabeth with distress. When, at the door, she saw the woman press to her eyes the sodden handkerchief she had been rolling in her palm during the interview, she ran after her; in the hall outside, away from others, she called; the woman turned and gazed at her suspiciously.
"Here!" said Elizabeth fearfully.
She opened her purse and emptied from it into the woman's hand all the silver it held.
"Where do you live?" she asked, and as the woman gave her the number of the house where she rented a room, Elizabeth realized how inappropriate the word "live" was. Elizabeth returned to the office with a glow in her breast, though she dreaded Mrs. Norton, whom she feared she had affronted by her deed. But Mrs. Norton received her with a smile.
"It seemed hard to you, no doubt," Mrs. Norton said, and Mrs. Rider and the two agents looked up with smiles of their own, as if they were about to shine in Mrs. Norton's justification, "but you'll learn after a while. We must discriminate, you know; we must not pauperize them. When you've been in the work as long as I have,"--she paused with a superior lift of her eyebrows at the use of this word "work,"--"you'll understand better."
Elizabeth felt a sudden indignation which she concealed, because she had her own doubts, after all. The ladies were gathering for the committee meeting and just then Mrs. Russell beckoned her into an inner room.
"The air is better in here," she said.
XV
Every day Elizabeth went to the Organized Charities. The committee on arrangements divided itself into subcommittees, and these, with other committees that were raised, must have meetings, make reports, receive instructions, and consider ways and means. The labor entailed was enormous. The women were exhausted before the first week had ended; the rustling of their skirts as they ran to and fro, their incessant chatter---they all spoke at once--their squealing at each other as their nerves snapped under the strain, filled the rooms with clamor. But all this endless confusion and complication were considered necessary in order to effect an organization. If any one doubted or complained, it was only necessary to speak the word "organization," and criticism was immediately silenced.
It had been discovered very early in the work of this organization that Mrs. Russell's great house would be too small for the bazaar, and it had been a relief to her when a certain Mrs. Spayd offered to place at the disposal of the committee the new mansion her husband had just built on Claybourne Avenue and named with the foreign-sounding name of "Bellemere." Mrs. Spayd privately conveyed the information that the young people might have the ball-room at the top of the house, where the most exclusive, if they desired, could dance, and she commissioned a firm of decorators to transform Bellemere into a bazaar. Mrs. Spayd was to bear the entire expense, and her charity was lauded everywhere, especially in the society columns of the newspapers. The booths were to represent different nations, and it was suddenly found to be desirable to dress as peasants. The women who were to serve in these booths flew to costumers to have typical clothing made. And this occasioned still greater conflict and confusion, for each woman wished to represent that country whose inhabitants were supposed to wear the most picturesque costumes.
Meanwhile the cold weather held and the poor besieged the Charities. No matter how early Elizabeth might arrive, no matter how late she might leave, they were always there, a stolid, patient row along the wall, or crowding up to the railing, or huddling in the hall outside. For a while Elizabeth, regarding them in the mass, thought that the same persons came each day, but she discovered that this was not the case. As she looked she noted a curious circumstance: the faces gradually took on individuality, slight at first, but soon decided, until each stood out among the others and developed the sharpest, most salient characteristics. She saw in each face the story of a single life, and always a life of neglect and failure, as if the misery of the world had been distributed in a kind of ironical variation. These people all were victims of a common doom, presenting itself each time in a different aspect; they were all alike--and yet they were all different, like leaves of a tree.
One afternoon Elizabeth suddenly noted a face that stood out in such relief that it became the only face there for her. It was the face of a young man, and it wore a strange pallor, and as Elizabeth hurried by she was somehow conscious that the young man's eyes were following her with a peculiar searching glance. When she sat down to await the women of the committee with which she was to meet, the young man still gazed at her steadily; she grew uncomfortable, almost resentful. She felt this continued stare to be a rudeness, and then suddenly she wondered why any rudeness of these people should be capable of affecting her; surely they were not of her class, to be judged by her standards. But she turned away, and determined not to look that way again, for fear that the young man might accost her.
And yet, though she persistently looked away, the face had so impressed her that she still could see it. In her first glimpse it had been photographed on her mind; its pallor was remarkable, the skin had a damp, dead whiteness, as if it had bleached in a cave, curls of thin brown hair clung to the brows; on the boy's neck was a streak of black where the collar of his coat had rubbed its color. In his thin hands he held a plush cap. And out of his pale face his wan eyes looked and followed her; she could not escape them, and for relief she finally fled to the inner room.
"We have made arrangements," said one of the women, "to hold our committee meetings hereafter at Mrs. Spayd's. She has kindly put her library at our disposal. This place is unbearable!"
She flung up a window and let the fresh air pour in.
"Yes," sighed another woman, "the air is sickening. It gives me a headache. If the poor could only be taught that cleanliness is akin to godliness!"
Elizabeth's head ached, too; it would be a relief to be delivered out of this atmosphere. But still the face of the young man pursued her. She could not follow the deliberations of the committee; she could think of nothing but that face. Where, she continually asked herself, had she seen it before? She sat by a window, and looked down into the street, preoccupied by the effort to identify it. She gave herself up to the pain of the process, as one does when trying to remember a name. Now and then she caught phrases of the sentences the women began, but seemed never able to finish:--"Oh, I hardly think that--" "As a class, of course--" "Oriental hangings would be best--" "Cheese-cloth looks cheap--" "Of course, flags--" "We could solicit the merchants--" "My husband was saying last night--"
But where had she seen that face before? Why should it pursue and worry her? What had she ever done? Finally, after two hours of the mighty effort and patience that are necessary to bring a number of minds to grasp a subject and agree even on the most insignificant detail, two hours in which thoughts hovered and flitted here and there, and could not find expression, when minds held back, and continually balked at the specific, the certain, the definite, and sought refuge from decision in the general and the abstract, the committee exhausted itself, and decided to adjourn. Then, although it had reached no conclusions whatever, the matron who presided smiled and said:
"Well, I feel that we're making progress."
"I don't feel as if we'd done much," some one else said. "And I can not come on Friday."
"Do you know, I really haven't got a single one of my Christmas presents yet."
"I have to give sixty-seven! Just think! What a burden it all is!"
Elizabeth dreaded the sight of that boy's face again, but it was growing late, the early winter twilight was expanding its gloom in the room. She made haste, and walked swiftly through the outer office. The young man was no longer there. But though this was a relief, his face still followed her. Who could he be?
The air out of doors was grateful. It soothed her hot cheeks, and, though her head throbbed more violently for an instant from the exertion of coming down the steps, she drew in great drafts of the winter air with a comforting sense that it was cleansing her lungs of all that foul atmosphere of poverty she had been breathing for two days. She walked hurriedly to the corner, to wait for a car; beside her, St. Luke's, as with an effort, lifted its Gothic arches of gray stone into the dark sky; across the street the City Hall loomed, its windows bright with lights. The afternoon crowds were streaming by on the sidewalk, wagons and heavy trucks jolted and rumbled along the street; she saw the drivers of coal-wagons, the whites of their eyes flashing under the electric lights against faces black as negroes with the grime. Politicians were coming from the City Hall; here and there, in and out of the crowd, newsboys darted, shouting "All 'bout the murder!" The shops were ablaze, their windows tricked out for the holidays; throngs of people hurried by, intent, preoccupied, selfish. As Elizabeth stood there, the constant stream of faces oppressed her with an intolerable gloom; the blazing electric lights, signs of theaters and restaurants, were mere mockeries of pleasure and comfort. And always the roar of the city. It was the hour when the roar became low and dull, a deep, ugly note of weariness and discontent was in it, the grumble of a city that was exhausted from its long day of confusion and wearing, complicated effort. On the City Hall corner, a man with the red-banded cap of the Salvation Army stood beside an iron kettle suspended beneath a tripod, swaying from side to side, stamping his huge feet in the cold, jangling a little hand-bell, and constantly crying in a bass voice:
"Remember the poor! Remember the poor!"
She recalled, suddenly, that the outcasts at the Charities invariably sneered whenever the Salvation Army was suggested, and she was impatient with this man in the cap with the red band, his enormous sandy mustache frozen into repulsive little icicles. Why must he add his din to this tired roar of the worn-out city?
Her car came presently, jerking along, stopping and starting again in the crowded street. The crowd sweeping by brushed her now and then, but suddenly she felt a more personal contact--some one had touched her. She shrank; she shuddered with fear, then she ran out to her car. Inside she began again that study of faces. She tried not to do so, but she seemed unable to shake off the habit--that face seemed always to be looking out at her from all other faces, white and sensitive, with the black mark on the neck where the coat collar had rubbed its color. And the eyes more and more reproached her, as if she had been responsible for the sadness that lay in them. The car whirred on, the conductor opened the door with monotonous regularity, and called out the interminable streets. The air in the car, overheated by the little coal-stove, took on the foul smell of the air at the Charities. Elizabeth's head ached more and more, a sickness came over her. At last she reached the street which led across to Claybourne Avenue, and got off. She crossed the little triangular park. The air had suddenly taken on a new life, it was colder and clearer. The dampness it had held in suspense for days was leaving it. Looking between the black trunks of the trees in the park she saw the western sky, yellow and red where the sun had gone down; and she thought of her home, with its comfort and warmth and light, and the logs in the great fireplace in the library. She hastened on, soothed and reassured. In the sense of certain comfort she now confidently anticipated, she could get the poor out of her mind, and feel as she used to feel before they came to annoy her. The clouds were clearing, the sky took on the deep blue it shows at evening; one star began to sparkle frostily, and, just as peace was returning, that young man's face came back, and she remembered instantly, in a flash, that it was the face of Harry Graves.
XVI
Elizabeth was right; it was Harry Graves. Four weeks before he had been released from the penitentiary. On the day that he was permitted to go forth into the world again as a free man, the warden gave him a railroad ticket back to the city, a suit of prison-made clothes, a pair of prison-made brogans, and a shirt. These clothes were a disappointment and a chagrin to Graves. When he went into the prison, the fall before, he had an excellent suit of clothes and a new overcoat, and during the whole year he had looked forward to the pleasure he would experience in donning these again. He had felt a security in returning to the world well-habited and presentable. But one of the guards had noticed Graves's clothes when he entered the penitentiary and had stolen them, so that when he was released, Graves was forced to go back wearing a suit of the shoddy clothes one of the contractors manufactured in the prison, and sold to the state at a profit sufficient to repay him and to provide certain officials of the penitentiary with a good income as well. These clothes were of dull black. A detective could recognize them anywhere. Before Graves had reached the city, the collar had rubbed black against his neck.
Things, of course, had changed while he was in prison. His mother had died and he had no home to go to. Besides this, he had contracted tuberculosis in the penitentiary, as did many of the convicts unless they were men of exceptionally strong constitutions. Nevertheless Graves was glad to be free on any terms, and glad to be back in the city in which he had been born and reared. And yet, no sooner was he back than the fear of the city lay on him. He dreaded to meet men; he felt their eyes following him curiously. He knew that he presented an uncouth figure in those miserable clothes and the clumsy prison brogans. Besides, he had so long walked in the lock-step that his gait was now constrained, awkward and unnatural; having been forbidden to speak for more than a year, and having spoken at all but surreptitiously, he found it impossible to approach men with his old frankness; having been compelled to keep his gaze on the ground, he could not look men in the eyes, and so he seemed to be a surly, taciturn creature with a hang-dog air.
During the three weeks Graves had been confined in jail, prior to his plea and sentence, he had thought over his misdeeds, recognized his mistakes and formed the most strenuous resolutions of betterment. He was determined, then, to live a better life; but as he could not live while in prison, but merely "do time," he was compelled, of course, to wait a year before he could begin life anew. During the eleven months he spent in the penitentiary he had tried to keep these resolutions fresh, strong and ever clear before him. This was a difficult thing to do, for his mind was weakened by the confinement, and his moral sense was constantly clouded by the examples that were placed before him. On Sundays, in the chapel, he heard the chaplain preach, but during the week the guards stole the comforts his mother sent to him before she died, the contractors and the prison officials were grafting and stealing from the state provisions, household furniture, liquors, wines, and every other sort of thing; one of the prison officials supplied his brother's drug store with medicines and surgical appliances from the prison hospital. Besides all this, the punishments he was compelled at times to witness--the water-cure, the paddle, the electric battery, the stringing up by the wrists, not to mention the loathsome practices of the convicts themselves--benumbed and appalled him, until he shuddered with terror lest his mind give way. But all these things, he felt, would be at an end if he could keep his reason and his health, and live to the end of his term. Then he could leave them all behind and go out into the world and begin life anew.
Graves came back to town during those last glorious days of the autumn, and the fact that he had no place to go was not so much a hardship. He did not care to show himself to his old friends until he had had opportunity to procure new clothes, and he felt that he was started on the way to this rehabilitation when almost immediately he found a place trucking merchandise for a wholesale house in Front Street. He felt encouraged; his luck, he told himself, was good, and for three days he was happy in his work. Then, one morning, he noticed a policeman; the policeman stood on the sidewalk, watching Graves roll barrels down the skids from a truck. The policeman stood there a good while, and then he spoke to the driver, admired the magnificent horses that were hitched to the truck, patted their glossy necks, picked up some sugar that had been spilled from a burst barrel and let the horses lick the sugar from the palm of his hand. The horses tossed their heads playfully as they did this, and, meanwhile, the policeman glanced every few minutes at Graves. Presently, he went into the wholesale house, and through the window Graves saw him talking to the manager. That evening the manager paid Graves for his three days' work and discharged him.
On this money, four dollars and a half, Graves lived for a week, meanwhile hunting another job. He could do nothing except manual labor, for he was not properly clothed for any clerical employment. He walked along the entire river front, seeking work on the wharves as a stevedore, but no one could work there who was not a member of the Longshoremen's Union, and no one could be a member of the Longshoremen's Union who did not work there; so this plan failed. He visited employment bureaus, but these demanded fees and deposits. Graves read the want advertisements in the newspapers, but none of these availed him; each prospective employer demanded references which Graves could not give.
The snow-storm brought him a prosperity as fleeting as the snow itself; he went into the residence district--where as yet he had not had the heart to go because of memories that haunted it--and cleaned the sidewalks of the well-to-do. After a day or so, the sidewalks of the well-to-do were all cleaned,--that is, the sidewalks of those who respected the laws sufficiently to have their sidewalks cleaned. Then the rain came, and Graves tramped the slushy streets. His prison-made shoes were as pervious to water as paper, of which substance, indeed, they were made; he contracted a cold, and his cough grew rapidly worse. He had no place to sleep. He spent a night in each of the two lodging-houses in the city, then he "flopped" on the floor of a police station. In this place he became infested with vermin, though this was no new experience to him after eleven months in the cells of the penitentiary. Meanwhile, he had little to eat. Once or twice, he visited hotel kitchens and the chefs gave him scraps from the table; then he did what for days he had been dreading--he tried to beg. After allowing twenty people to go by, he found the courage to hold out his hand to the twenty-first; the man passed without noticing him; a dozen others did likewise. Then a policeman saw him and arrested him on a charge of vagrancy. At the police station the officers, recognizing his prison clothes, held him for three days as a suspicious character. Then he was arraigned before Bostwick, who scowled and told him he would give him twenty-four hours in which to leave the city.
It was now cold. The wind cut through Graves's clothing like a saw; he skulked and hid for two days; then, intolerably hungry, he went to the Organized Charities. He sat there for two hours that afternoon, glad of the delay because the room was warm. He thought much during those two hours, though his thoughts were no longer clear. He was able, however, to recall a belief he had held before coming out of the penitentiary,--a belief that he had paid the penalty for his crime, that, having served the sentence society had imposed on him, his punishment was at an end. This view had seemed to be confirmed by the certificate that had been issued to him, under the Great Seal of State and signed by the governor, restoring him to citizenship. But now he realized that this belief had been erroneous, that he had not at all paid the penalty, that he had not served his sentence, that his punishment was not at an end, and that he had not been restored to citizenship. The Great Seal of State had attested an hypocrisy and a lie, and the governor had signed his name to this lie with a conceited flourish at the end of his pen. Graves formulated this conclusion with an effort, but he grasped it finally, and his mind clung to it and revolved about it, finding something it could hold to.
And then, suddenly, Elizabeth Ward entered the room. He knew her instantly, and his heart leaped with a wild desperate hope. He watched her; she was beautiful in the seal-skin jacket that fitted her slender figure so well; her hat with its touch of green became her dark hair. He noted the flush of her cheek, the sparkle of her eyes behind the veil. He remembered her as he had seen her that last day she came into her father's office; he remembered how heavy his own heart had been under its load of guilty fears. He recalled the affection her father had shown, how his tired face had smiled when he saw her. Graves remembered that the smile had filled him with a pity for Ward; he seemed once more to see Ward fondly take her little gloved hand and hold it while he looked up at her, and how he had laughed and evidently joked her as he swung about to his desk and wrote out a check. And then, as she went out, she had smiled at the clerks and spoken to them; she had smiled on him and spoken to him; would she smile now, this day? The hope leaped wild in his heart. If she did! She was the apple of her father's eye--he would do anything for her; if she would but see and recognize him now, give him the least hint of encouragement or permission, he would tell her, she would speak to her father and he would help him. His whole being seemed to melt within him--he half started from his chair--his eyes were wide with the excitement of this hope. He never once took them from her; he must not permit an instant to escape him, lest she look his way. He watched her as she sat by the window; she made a picture he never could forget. Once she turned. Ah! it was coming now!--but no--yes, she was moving! She had gone into the other room. He hoped now that his case would be one of the last. He must see her. After a while the agent beckoned him, looked at him suspiciously, and said:
"How long have you been out?"
"A month," said Graves.
"Well, I haven't got no use for convicts," said the agent.
Graves waited in the hall. He waited until it was dark, but not so dark that the agent could not recognize him.
"You needn't hang around," he said; "there's nothing to steal here."
Graves waited, then, outside. He feared he would miss Elizabeth in the dark, or confuse her among the other women. The thought made him almost frantic. The women came out, and finally--yes, it was Elizabeth! He could nowhere mistake that figure. He pressed up, he spoke, he put forth a hand to touch her--she turned with a start of fright. He saw a policeman looking at him narrowly. And then he gave up, slunk off, and was lost in the crowd.
XVII
Seated in the library at the Wards', Eades gave himself up to the influences of the moment. The open fire gave off the faint delicious odor of burning wood, the lamp filled the room with a soft light that gleamed on the gilt lettering of the books about the walls, the pictures above the low shelves--a portrait of Browning among them--lent to the room the dignity of the great souls they portrayed. Eades, who had just tried his second murder case, was glad to find this refuge from the thoughts that had harassed him for a week. Elizabeth noticed the weariness in his eyes, and she had a notion that his hair glistened a little more grayly at his temples.
"You've been going through an ordeal this week, haven't you?" She had expressed the thought that lay on their minds. He felt a thrill. She sympathized, and this was comfort; this was what he wanted!
"It must have been exciting," Elizabeth continued. "Murder trials usually are, I believe. I never saw one; I never was in a court-room in my life. Women do go, I suppose?"
"Yes--women of a certain kind." His tone deprecated the practice. "We've had big audiences all the week; it would have disgusted you to see them struggling and scrambling for admission. Now I suppose they'll be sending flowers to the wretch, and all that."
Eades chose to forget how entirely the crowd had sympathized with him, and how the atmosphere of the trial had been wholly against the wretch.
"Well, I'll promise not to send him any flowers," Elizabeth said quickly. "He'll have to hang?"
"No, not hang; we don't hang people in this state any more; we electrocute them. But I forgot; Gordon Marriott told me I mustn't say 'electrocute'; he says there is no such word."
"Gordon is particular," Elizabeth observed with a laugh.
Eades thought she laughed sympathetically; and he wanted all her sympathy for himself just then.
"He calls it killing." Eades grasped the word boldly, like a nettle.
"Gordon doesn't believe in capital punishment."
"So I understand."
"I don't either."
Her tone startled him. He glanced up. She was looking at him steadily.
"Did you read of this man's crime?" he asked.
"No, I don't read about crimes."
"Then I'll spare you. Only, he shot a man down in cold blood; there were eye-witnesses; there is no doubt of his guilt. He made no defense."
"Then it couldn't have been hard to convict him."
"No," Eades admitted, though he did not like this detraction from his triumph. "But the responsibility is great."
"I should imagine so."
He did not know exactly what she meant; he wondered if this were sarcasm.
"It is indeed," he insisted.
"Yes," she went on, "I know it must be. I couldn't bear it myself. I'm glad women are not called to such responsibilities. I believe it is said--isn't it?--that their sentimental natures unfit them." She was smiling.
"You're guying now," he said, leaning back in his chair.
"Oh, indeed, no! Of course, I know nothing about such things--save that you men are superior to your emotional natures, and rise above them and control them."
"Well, not always. We become emotional, but our emotions are usually excited on the side of justice."
"What is that?"
"Justice? Why--well--"
"You mean 'an eye for an eye,' I suppose, and 'a life for a life.'" Elizabeth looked at him steadily, and he feared she was making him ridiculous.
"I'm not sure that I believe in capital punishment myself," he said, seeing that she would not, after all, sympathize with him, "but luckily I have no choice; I have only my duty to do, and that is to enforce the laws as I find them." He settled back as if he had found a sure foundation and placed his fingers tip to tip, his polished nails gleaming in the firelight as if they were wet. "I can only do my duty; the jury, the judge, the executioner, may do theirs or not. My personal feelings can not enter into the matter in the least. That's the beauty of our system. Of course, it's hard and unpleasant, but we can't allow our sentiments to stand in the way." Plainly he enjoyed the nobility of this attitude. "As a man, I might not believe in capital punishment--but as an official--"
"You divide yourself into two personalities?"
"Well, in that sense--"
"How disagreeable!" Elizabeth gave a little shrug. "It's a kind of vivisection, isn't it?"
"But something has to be done. What would you have me do?" He sat up and met her, and she shrank from the conflict.
"Oh, don't ask me! I don't know anything about it, I'm sure! I know but one criminal, and I don't wish to dream about him to-night."
"It is strange to be discussing such topics," said Eades. "You must pardon me for being so disagreeable and depressing."
"Oh, I'll forgive you," she laughed. "I'd really like to know about such things. As I say, I have known but one criminal."
"The one you dream of?"
"Yes. Do you ever dream of your criminals?"
"Oh, never! It's bad enough to be brought into contact with them by day; I put them out of my mind when night comes. Except this Burns--he insists on pursuing me more or less. But now that he has his just deserts, perhaps he'll let me alone. But tell me about this criminal of yours, this lucky one you dream of. I'd become a criminal myself--"
"You know him already," Elizabeth said hastily, her cheeks coloring.
"I?"
"Yes. Do you remember Harry Graves?"
Eades bent his head and placed his knuckles to his chin.
"Graves, Graves?" he said. "It seems to me--"
"The boy who stole from my father; you had him sent to the penitentiary for a year--and papa--"
"Oh, I remember; that boy! To be sure. His term must be over now."
"Yes, it's over. I've seen him."
"You!" he said in surprise. "Where?"
"At the Charity Bureau, before Christmas."
"Ah, begging, of course." Eades shook his head. "I was in hopes our leniency would do him good; but it seems that it's never appreciated. I sometimes reproach myself with being too easy with them; but they do disappoint us--almost invariably. Begging! Well, they don't want to work, that's all. What became of him?"
"I don't know," said Elizabeth. "I saw him there, but didn't recognize him. After I had come away, I recalled him. I've reproached myself again and again. I wonder what has become of him!"
"It's sad, in a way," said Eades, "but I shouldn't worry. I used to worry, at first, but I soon learned to know them. They're no good, they won't work, they have no respect for law, they have no desire but to gratify their idle, vicious natures. The best thing is just to shut them up where they can't harm any one. This may seem heartless, but I don't think I'm heartless." He smiled tolerantly for himself. "I have no personal feeling in the matter, but I've learned from experience. As for this Graves--I had my doubts at the time. I thought then I was making a mistake in recommending leniency. But, really, your father was so cut up, and I'd rather err on the side of mercy." He paused a moment, and then said: "He'll turn up in court again some day. You'll see. I shouldn't lose any more sleep over him."
Elizabeth smiled faintly, but did not reply. She sat with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her delicate chin resting on her hand, and Eades was content to let the subject drop, if it would. He wished the silence would prolong itself. His heart beat rapidly; he felt a new energy, a new joy pulsing within him. He sat and looked at her calmly, her gaze bent on the fire, her profile revealed to him, her lashes sweeping her cheek, the lace in her sleeve falling away from her slender arm. Should he tell her then? He longed to--but this was not, after all, the moment. The moment would come, and he must be patient. He must wait and prove himself to her; she must understand him; she should see him in time as the modern ideal of manhood, doing his duty courageously and without fear or favor. Some day he would tell her.
"Your charity bazaar was a success, I hope?" he said presently, coming back to the lighter side of their last topic.
"I don't know," Elizabeth said. "I never inquired."
"You never inquired?"
"No."
"How strange! Why not?"
"I lost interest."
"Oh!" he laughed. "Well, we all do that."
"The whole thing palled on me--struck me as ridiculous."
Eades was perplexed. He could not in the least understand this latest attitude. Surely, she was a girl of many surprises.
"I shouldn't think you would find charity ridiculous. A hard-hearted and cruel being like me might--but you--oh, Miss Ward! To think that helping the poor was ridiculous!"
"But it isn't to help the poor at all."
He was still more perplexed.
"It's to help the rich. Can't you see that?"
She turned and faced him with clear, sober gray eyes.
"Can't you see that?" she asked again. "If you can't, I wish I knew how to make you.
"'The organized charity, scrimped and iced,In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ'--
"'The organized charity, scrimped and iced,
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ'--
"Do you know Boyle O'Reilly's poetry?"
Eades showed the embarrassment of one who has not the habit of reading, and she saw that the words had no meaning for him.
"Don't take it all so seriously," he said, leaning over as if he might plead with her. "'The poor,' you know, 'we have always with us.'" He settled back then as one who has said the thing proper to the occasion.
XVIII
Although Marriott had promised Koerner early in the fall that his action against the railroad would be tried at once, he was unable to bring the event to pass. In the first place, Bradford Ford, the attorney for the railroad, had to go east in his private car, then in the winter he had to go to Florida to rest and play golf, and because of these and other postponements it was March before the case was finally assigned for trial.
"So that's your client back there, is it?" said Ford, the morning of the trial, turning from the window and the lingering winter outdoors to look at Koerner.
Koerner was sitting by the trial table, his old wife by his side. He was pale and thin from his long winter indoors; his yellow, wrinkled skin stretched over his jaw-bones, hung flabby at his throat. As Ford and Marriott looked at him, a troubled expression appeared in Koerner's face; he did not like to see Marriott so companionable with Ford; he had ugly suspicions; he felt that Marriott should treat his opponent coldly and with the enmity such a contest deserved. But just at that minute Judge Sharlow came in and court was opened.
The trial lasted three days. The benches behind the bar were empty, the bailiff slept with his gray chin on his breast, the clerk copied pleadings in the record, pausing now and then to look out at the flurries of snow. Sharlow sat on the bench, trying to write an opinion he had been working on for weeks. The jury sat in the jury-box, their eyes heavy with drowsiness, breathing grossly. Long ago life had paused in these men; they had certain fixed opinions, one of which was that any man who sued a corporation was entitled to damages; and after they had seen Koerner, with the stump of his leg sticking out from his chair, they were ready to render a verdict.
Marriott knew this, and Ford knew it, and consequently they gave attention, not to the jury, but to the stenographer bending over the tablet on which he transcribed the testimony with his fountain pen. Marriott and Ford were concerned about the record; they saw not so much this trial, as a hearing months or possibly years hence in the Appellate Court, and still another hearing months or years hence in the Supreme Court. They knew that just as the jurymen were in sympathy with Koerner, and by any possible means would give a verdict in his favor, so the judges in the higher courts would be in sympathy with the railroad company, and by any possible means give judgment in its favor; and, therefore, while Marriott's efforts were directed toward trying the case in such a way that the record should be free from error, Ford's efforts were directed toward trying the case in such a way that the record should be full of error. Ford was continually objecting to the questions Marriott asked his witnesses, and compelling Sharlow to drop his work and pass on these objections. One of Marriott's witnesses, a stalwart young mechanic, unmarried and with no responsibilities, testified positively that the frog in which Koerner had caught his foot had no block in it; he had examined it carefully at the time. Another, a man of middle age with a large family, an employe of the railroad company, had the most unreliable memory--he could remember nothing at all about the frog; he could not say whether it had been blocked or not; he had not examined it; he had not considered it any of his business. While giving his testimony, he cast fearful and appealing glances at Ford, who smiled complacently, and for a while made no objections. Another witness was Gergen, the surgeon, a young man with eye-glasses, a tiny gold chain, and a scant black beard trimmed closely to his pale skin and pointed after the French fashion. He retained his overcoat and kept on his glasses while he testified, as if he must get through with this business and return to his practice as quickly as possible. With the greatest care he couched all his testimony in scientific phrases.
"I was summoned to the hospital," he said, "at seven-sixteen on that evening and found the patient prostrated by hemorrhage and shock. I supplemented the superficial examination of the internes and found that there were contusions on the left hip, and severe bruises on the entire left side. The most severe injury, however, developed in the right foot. The tibiotarsal articulation was destroyed, the calcaneum and astragalus were crushed and inoperable, the metatarsus and phalanges, and the internal and external malleolus were also crushed, and the fibula and tibia were splintered to the knee."
"Well, what then?"
"I gave orders to have the patient prepared, and proceeded to operate. My assistant, Doctor Remack, administered the anesthetic, and I amputated at the lower third."
Doctor Gergen then explained that what he had said meant that he had found Koerner's foot, ankle and knee crushed, and that he had cut off his leg above the knee. After this he told what fee he had charged; he did this in plain terms, calling dollars dollars, and cents cents.
But Koerner himself was a sufficient witness in his own behalf. Sitting on the stand, his crutches in the hollow of his arm, the stump of his leg thrust straight out before him and twitching now and then, he told of his long service with the railroad, pictured the blinding snow-storm, described how he had slipped and caught his foot in the unblocked frog--then the switch-engine noiselessly stealing down upon him. The jurymen roused from their lethargy as he turned his white and bony face toward them; the atmosphere was suddenly charged with the sympathy these aged men felt for him. Sharlow paused in his writing, the clerk ceased from his monotonous work, and Mrs. Koerner, whose expression had not changed, wiped her eyes with the handkerchief which, fresh from the iron, she had held all day without unfolding.
When Ford began his cross-examination, Koerner twisted about with difficulty in his chair, threw back his head, and his face became hard and obdurate. He ran his stiff and calloused hand through his white hair, which seemed to bristle with leonine defiance. Ford conducted his cross-examination in soft, pleasant tones, spoke to Koerner kindly and with consideration, scrupulously addressed him as "Mr. Koerner," and had him repeat all he had said about his injury.
"As I understand it, then, Mr. Koerner," said Ford, "you were walking homeward at the end of the day through the railroad yards."
"Yes, sir, dot's right."
"You'd always gone home that way?"
"Sure; I go dot vay for twenty year, right t'rough dose yards dere."
"Yes. Was that a public highway, Mr. Koerner?"
"Vell, everybody go dot vay home all right; dot's so."
"But it wasn't a street?"
"No."
"Nor a sidewalk?"
"You know dot alreadty yourself," said Koerner, leaning forward, contracting his bushy white eyebrows and glaring at Ford. "Vot you vant to boder me mit such a damn-fool question for?"
The jurymen laughed and Ford smiled.
"I know, of course, Mr. Koerner; you will pardon me--but what I wish to know is whether or not you know. You had passed through those yards frequently?"
"Yah, undt I knows a damn-sight more about dose yards dan you, you bet."
Again the jurymen laughed in vicarious pleasure at another's profanity.
"I yield to you there, Mr. Koerner," said Ford in his suave manner. "But let us go on. You say your foot slipped?"
"Yah, dot's right."
"Slipped on the frozen snow?"
"Yah. I bedt you shlip on such a place as dot."
"No doubt," said Ford, who suddenly ceased to smile. He now leaned forward; the faces of the two protagonists seemed to be close together.
"And, as a result, your foot slid into the frog, and was wedged there so that you could not get it out?"
"Yah."
"And the engine came along just then and ran over it?"
"Yah."
Ford suddenly sat upright, turned away, seemed to have lost interest, and said:
"That's all, Mr. Koerner."
And the old man was left sitting there, suspended as it were, his neck out-thrust, his white brows gathered in a scowl, his small eyes blinking.
Sharlow looked at Marriott, then said, as if to hurry Koerner off the stand:
"That's all, Mr. Koerner. Call your next."
When all the testimony for the plaintiff had been presented Ford moved to arrest the case from the jury; that is, he wished Sharlow to give judgment in favor of the railroad company without proceeding further. In making this motion, Ford stood beside his table, one hand resting on a pile of law-books he had had borne into the court-room that afternoon by a young attorney just admitted to the bar, who acted partly as clerk and partly as porter for Ford, carrying his law-books for him, finding his place in them, and, in general, relieving Ford from all that manual effort which is thought incompatible with professional dignity. As he spoke, Ford held in his hand the gold eye-glasses which seemed to betray him into an age which he did not look and did not like to admit. Marriott had expected this motion and listened attentively to what Ford said. The Koerners, who did not at all understand, waited patiently. Meanwhile, Sharlow excused the jury, sank deeper in his chair and laid his forefinger learnedly along his cheek.
Ford's motion was based on the contention that the failure to block the frog--he spoke of this failure, perfectly patent to every one, as an alleged failure, and was careful to say that the defendant did not admit that the frog had not been blocked--that the alleged failure was not the proximate cause of Koerner's injury, but that the real cause was the ice about the frog on which Koerner, according to his own admission, had slipped. The unblocked frog, he said--admitting merely for the sake of argument that the frog was unblocked--was the remote cause, the ice was the proximate cause; the question then was, which of these had caused Koerner's injury? It was necessary that the injury be the effect of a cause which in law-books was referred to as a proximate cause; if it was not referred to as a proximate cause, but as a remote cause, then Koerner could not recover his damages. After elaborating this view and many times repeating the word "proximate," which seemed to take on a more formidable and insuperable sound each time he uttered it, Ford proceeded to elucidate his thought further, and in doing this, he used a term even more impressive than the word proximate; he used the phrase, "act of God." The ice, he said, was an "act of God," and as the railroad company was responsible, under the law, for its own acts only, it followed that, as "an act of God" was not an act of the railroad company, but an act of another, that is, of God, the railroad company could not be held accountable for the ice.
Having, as he said, indicated the outline of his argument, Ford said that he would pass to a second proposition; namely, that the motion must be granted for another reason. In stating this reason, Ford used the phrases, "trespass" and "contributory negligence," and these phrases had a sound even more ominous than the phrases "proximate" and "act of God." Ford declared that the railroad yards were the property of the railroad company, and therefore not a thoroughfare, and that Koerner, in walking through them, was a trespasser. The fact that Koerner was in the employ of the railroad, he said, did not give him the right to enter in and upon the yards--he had the lawyer's reckless extravagance in the use of prepositions, and whenever it was possible used the word "said" in place of "the"--for the reason that his employment did not necessarily lead him to said yard and, more than all, when Koerner completed his labors for the day, his right to remain in and about said premises instantly ceased. Therefore, he contended, Koerner was a trespasser, and a trespasser must suffer all the consequences of his trespass. Then Ford began to use the phrase "contributory negligence." He said that Koerner had been negligent in continuing in and upon said premises, and besides, had not used due care in avoiding the ice and snow on and about said frog; that he had the same means of knowing that the ice was there that the railroad company had, and hence had assumed whatever risk there was in passing on and over said ice, and that then and thereby he had been guilty of contributory negligence; that is, had contributed, by his own negligence, to his own injury. In fact, it seemed from Ford's argument that Koerner had really invited his injury and purposely had the switch-engine cut off his leg.
"These, in brief, if the Court please," said Ford, who had spoken for an hour, "are the propositions I wish to place before your Honor." Ford paused, drew from his pocket a handkerchief, pressed it to his lips, passed it lightly over his forehead, and laid it on the table. Then he selected a law-book from the pile and opened it at the page his clerk had marked with a slip of paper. Sharlow, knowing what he had to expect, stirred uneasily and glanced at the clock.
During Ford's argument Sharlow had been thinking the matter over. He knew, of course, that the same combination of circumstances is never repeated, that there could be no other case in the world just like this, but that there were hundreds which resembled it, and that Ford and Marriott would ransack the law libraries to find these cases, explain them to him, differentiate them, and show how they resembled or did not resemble the case at bar. And, further, he knew that before he could decide the question Ford had raised he would have to stop and think what the common law of England had been on the subject, then whether that law had been changed by statute, then whether the statute had been changed, and, if it was still on the statute books, whether it could be said to be contrary to the Constitution of the United States or of the State. Then he would have to see what the courts had said about the subject, and, if more than one court had spoken, whether their opinions were in accord or at variance with each other. Besides this he would have to find out what the courts of other states had said on similar subjects and whether they had reversed themselves; that is, said at one time something contrary to what they had said at another. If he could not reconcile these decisions he would have to render a decision himself, which he did not like to do, for there was always the danger that some case among the thousands reported had been overlooked by him, or by Ford or Marriott, and that the courts which would review his decision, in the years that would be devoted to the search, might discover that other case and declare that he had not decided the question properly. And even if the courts had decided this question, it might be discovered that the question was not, after all, the exact question involved in this case, or was not the exact question the courts had meant to decide. It would not do for Sharlow to decide this case according to the simple rule of right and wrong, which he could have found by looking into his own heart; that would not be lawful; he must decide it according to what had been said by other judges, most of whom were dead. Though if Sharlow did decide, his decision would become law for other judges to be guided by, until some judge in the future gave a different opinion.
Considering all this, Sharlow determined to postpone his decision as long as possible, and told Ford that he would not then listen to his authorities, but would hear what Marriott had to say.
And then Marriott spoke at length, opposing all that Ford had said, saying that the unblocked frog must be the proximate cause, for if it had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in it and could have got out of the way of the switch-engine. Furthermore, he declared that the yards had been used by the employes as a thoroughfare so long that a custom had been established; that the unblocked frog, according to the statute, wasprima facienegligence on the part of the defendant. And he said that if Ford was to submit authorities, he would like an opportunity to submit other authorities equally authoritative. At this Sharlow bowed, said he would adjourn court until two o'clock in order to consider the question, recalled the jury and cautioned them not to talk about the case. This caution was entirely worthless, because they talked of nothing else, either among themselves or with others; being idle men, they had nothing else to talk about.
Koerner had listened with amazement to Ford and Marriott, wondering how long they could talk about such incomprehensible subjects. He had tried to follow Ford's remarks and then had tried to follow Marriott's, but he derived nothing from it all except further suspicions of Marriott, who seemed to talk exactly as Ford talked and to use the same words and phrases. He felt, too, that Marriott should have spoken in louder tones and more vehemently, and shown more antipathy to Ford. And when they went out of the court-house, he asked Marriott what it all meant. But Marriott, who could not himself tell as yet what it meant, assured Koerner that an important legal question had arisen and that they must wait until it had been fully argued, considered and decided by the court. Koerner swung away on his crutches, saying to himself that it was all very strange; the switch-engine had cut off his leg, against his will, no one could gainsay that, and the only important question Koerner could see was how much the law would make the railroad company pay him for cutting off his leg. It seemed silly to him that so much time should be wasted over such matters. But then, as Marriott had said, it was impossible for Koerner to understand legal questions.
By the time he opened court in the afternoon, Sharlow had decided on a course of action, one that would give him time to think over the question further. He announced that he would overrule the motion, but that counsel for defense might raise the question again at the close of the evidence, and, should a verdict result unfavorably to him, on the motion for a new trial.
Ford took exceptions, and began his defense, introducing several employes of the railroad to give testimony about the ice at the frog. When his evidence was in, Ford moved again to take the case from the jury, but Sharlow, having thought the matter over and found it necessary for his peace of mind to reach some conclusion, overruled the motion.
Then came the arguments, extending themselves into the following day; then Sharlow must speak; he must charge the jury. The purpose of the charge was to lay the law of the case before the jury, and for an hour he went on, talking of "proximate cause," of "contributory negligence," of "measure of damages," and at last, the jury having been confused sufficiently to meet all the requirements of the law, he told them they might retire.
It was now noon, and the court was deserted by all but Koerner and his wife, who sat there, side by side, and waited. It was too far for them to go home, and they had no money with which to lunch down town. The bright sun streamed through the windows with the first promise of returning warmth. Now and then from the jury room the Koerners could hear voices raised in argument; then the noise would die, and for a long time it would be very still. Occasionally they would hear other sounds, the scraping of a chair on the floor, once a noise as of some one pounding a table; voices were raised again, then it grew still. And Koerner and his wife waited.
At half-past one the bailiff returned.
"Any sign?" he asked Koerner.
"Dey was some fightin'."
"They'll take their time," said the bailiff.
"Vot you t'ink?" Koerner ventured to ask.
"Oh, you'll win," said the bailiff. But Koerner was not so sure about that.
At two o'clock Sharlow returned and court began again. Another jury was called, another case opened, Koerner gave place to another man who was to exchange his present troubles for the more annoying ones the law would give him; to experience Koerner's perplexity, doubt, confusion, and hope changing constantly to fear. Other lawyers began other wrangles over other questions of law.
At three o'clock there was a loud pounding on the door of the jury room. Every one in the court-room turned with sudden expectation. The bailiff drew out his keys, unlocked the door, spoke to the men inside, and then went to telephone to Marriott and Ford. After a while Marriott appeared, but Ford had not arrived. Marriott went out himself and telephoned; Ford had not returned from luncheon. He telephoned to Ford's home, then to his club. Finally, at four o'clock, Ford came.
After the verdict Marriott went to the Koerners and whispered:
"We can go now."
The old man got up, his wife helped him into his overcoat, and he swung out of the court-room on his crutches. He had tried to understand what the clerk had read, but could not. He thought he had lost his case.
"Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott when they were in the corridor.
"How's dot?" asked the old man harshly.
"Why, you won."
"Me?"
"Yes; didn't you know?"
"I vin?"
"Certainly, you won. You get eight thousand dollars."
The old man stopped and looked at Marriott.
"Eight t'ousandt?"
"Yes, eight thousand."
"I get eight t'ousandt, huh?"
"Yes."
A smile transfigured the heavy, bony face.
"Py Gott!" he said. "Dot's goodt, hain't it?"