XXXI
"All ready, Archie."
Jimmy Ball touched him on the shoulder. The grated door was open, and Beck stood just inside it, his revolver drawn. He kept his eye on the others, huddled there behind him.
"Come, my boy."
He made an effort, and stood up. He glanced toward the open grated door, thence across the flagging to the other door, and tried to take a step. Out there he could see one or two faces thrust forward suddenly; they peered in, then hastily withdrew. He tried again to take a step, but one leg had gone to sleep, it prickled, and as he bore his weight upon it, it seemed to swell suddenly to elephantine proportions. And he seemed to have no knees at all; if he stood up he would collapse. How was he ever to walk that distance?
"Here!" said Ball. "Get on that other side of him, Warden."
Then they started. The Reverend Mr. Hoerr, waiting by the door, had begun to read something in a strange, unnatural voice, out of a little red book he held at his breast in both his hands.
"Good-by, Archie!" they called from behind, and he turned, swayed a little, and looked back over his shoulder.
"Good-by, boys," he said. He had a glimpse of their faces; they looked gray and ugly, worse even than they had that evening–or was it that evening when with sudden fear he had seen them crouching there behind him?
Perhaps just at the last minute the governor would change his mind. They were walking the long way to the door, six yards off. The flagging was cold to his bare feet; his slit trouser-legs flapped miserably, revealing his white calves. Walking had suddenly become laborious; he had to lift each leg separately and manage it; he walked much as that man in the rear rank of Company 21 walked. He would have liked to stop and rest an instant, but Ball and the warden walked beside him, urged him resistlessly along, each gripping him at the wrist and upper arm.
In the room outside, Archie recognized the reporters standing in the sawdust. What they were to write that night would be in the newspapers the next morning, but he would not read it. He heard Beck lock the door of the death-chamber, locking it hurriedly, so that he could be in time to look on. Archie had no friend in the group of men that waited in silence, glancing curiously at him, their faces white as the whitewashed wall. The doctors held their watches in their hands. And there before him was the chair, its oil-cloth cover now removed, its cane bottom exposed. But he would have to step up on the little platform to get to it.
"No–yes, there you are, Archie, my boy!" whispered Ball. "There!"
He was in it, at last. He leaned back; then, as his back touched the back of the chair, started violently. But there were hands on his shoulders pressing him down, until he could feel his back touch the chair from his shoulders down to the very end of his spine. Some one had seized his legs, turned back the slit trousers from his calves.
"Be quick!" he heard the warden say in a scared voice. He was at his right side where the switch and the indicator were.
There were hands, too, at his head, at his arms–hands all over him. He took one last look. Had the governor–? Then the leather mask was strapped over his eyes and it was dark. He could only feel and hear now–feel the cold metal on his legs, feel the moist sponge on the top of his head where the barber had shaved him, feel the leather straps binding his legs and arms to the legs and the arms of the chair, binding them tightly, so that they gave him pain, and he could not move. Helpless he lay there, and waited. He heard the loud ticking of a watch; then on the other side of him the loud ticking of another watch; fingers were at his wrists. There was no sound but the mumble of Mr. Hoerr's voice. Then some one said:
"All ready."
He waited a second, or an age, then, suddenly, it seemed as if he must leap from the chair, his body was swelling to some monstrous, impossible, unhuman shape; his muscles were stretched, millions of hot and dreadful needles were piercing and pricking him, a stupendous roaring was in his ears, then a million colors, colors he had never seen or imagined before, colors no one had ever seen or imagined, colors beyond the range of the spectra, new, undiscovered, summoned by some mysterious agency from distant corners of the universe, played before his eyes. Suddenly they were shattered by a terrific explosion in his brain–then darkness.
But no, there was still sensation; a dull purple color slowly spread before him, gradually grew lighter, expanded, and with a mighty pain he struggled, groping his way in torture and torment over fearful obstacles from some far distance, remote as black stars in the cold abyss of the universe; he struggled back to life–then an appalling confusion, a grasp at consciousness; he heard the ticking of the two watches–then, through his brain there slowly trickled a thread of thought that squirmed and glowed like a white-hot wire…
A faint groan escaped the pale lips below the black leather mask, a tremor ran through the form in the chair, then it relaxed and was still.
"It's all over." The doctor, lifting his fingers from Archie's wrist, tried to smile, and wiped the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief.
Some one flung up a window, and a draught of cool air sucked through the room. On the draught was borne from the death-chamber the stale odor of Russian cigarettes. And then a demoniacal roar shook the cell-house. The convicts had been awake.
XXXII
Late in the winter the cable brought the news that Amos Hunter had died at Capri. Though the conventionalities were observed, it was doubtful if the event caused even a passing regret in the city where Hunter had been one of the wealthiest citizens. The extinction of this cold and selfish personality was noted, of course, by the closing of his bank for a day; the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, and the Stock Exchange adopted the usual resolutions, and the newspapers printed editorials in which the old canting, hypocritical phrases were paraded. To his widow, beyond the shock that came with the breaking of the habit of years, there was a mild regret, and the daughter, who was with him when he died, after the American consul had come to her assistance and arranged to send the body home, experienced a stealthy pleasure in her homeward journey she had not known on the outward voyage.
But to the Wards the news came as a distinct relief, for now the danger, if it ever was a danger, that had hung over them for months was definitely removed. They had grown so accustomed to its presence, however, the suspense and uncertainty had become so much a part of their lives that they did not recognize its reality until they found it removed altogether. Ward and Elizabeth had now and then talked about it and speculated on its possibilities of trouble in a world where there was so much trouble; and Mrs. Ward had been haunted by the fear of what her world might say. Now that this danger was passed, she could look on it as a thing that was as if it never had been, and she fondled and caressed her full-grown son more than ever. Ward was glad, but he was not happy. He saw that Dick's character had been marked definitely. The boy had escaped the artificial law that man had made, but he had not evaded the natural law, and Ward realized, though perhaps not so clearly as Elizabeth realized, that Dick must go on paying the penalty in his character year after year–perhaps to the end of his days.
If it made any real difference to Dick, he did not show it. Very early in the experience he seemed to be fully reassured, and Ward and Elizabeth and Marriott saw plainly that he was not wise enough to find the good that always is concealed somewhere in the bad. Dick took up his old life, and, so far as his restricted opportunities now permitted, sought his old sensations. Elizabeth sadly observed the continued disintegration of his character, expressed to her by such coarse physical manifestations as his excessive eating and drinking and smoking. And she saw that there was nothing she or any one could now do; that no one could help him but himself, and that, like the story of the prodigal of old, which suddenly revealed its hidden meaning to her in this personal contact with a similar experience, he must continue to feed on husks until he came to himself. How few, she thought, had come to themselves! Elizabeth had been near to boasting that her own eyes had been opened, and they had, indeed, been washed by tears, but now she humbly wondered if she had come to herself as yet. She had long ago given up the fictions of society which her mother yet revered; she had abandoned her formal charities, finding them absurd and inadequate. Meanwhile, she waited patiently, hoping that some day she might find the way to life.
She saw nothing of Eades, though she was constantly hearing of his success. His conviction of Archie had given him prestige. He considered the case against Curly Jackson, but finding it impossible to convict him, feeling a lack of public sentiment, he was forced to nolle the indictment against him and reluctantly let him go. In fact, Eades was having his trouble in common with the rest of humanity. Though he had been applauded and praised, all at once, for some mysterious reason he could not understand but could only feel in its effect, he discovered an eccentricity in the institution he revered. For a while it was difficult to convict any one; verdict after verdict of not guilty was rendered in the criminal court; there seemed to be a reaction against punishment.
When Amos Hunter died, Eades began to think again of Elizabeth Ward. He assured himself that after this lapse of time, now that the danger was removed, Elizabeth would respect him for his high-minded impartiality and devotion to duty, and, indeed, understand what a sacrifice it had been to him to decide as he had. And he resolved that at the first opportunity he would speak to her again. He did not have to wait long for the opportunity. A new musician had come to town, and, with his interest in all artistic endeavors, Braxton Parrish had taken up this frail youth who could play the violin, and had arranged a recital at his home.
Elizabeth went because Parrish had asked her especially and because her mother had urged it on her, "out of respect to me," as Mrs. Ward put it. When she got there, she told herself she was glad she had come because she could now realize how foreign all this artificial life had become to her; she was glad to have the opportunity to correct her reckoning, to see how far she had progressed. She found, however, no profit in it, though the boy, whose playing she liked, interested her. He stood in the music-room under the mellow light, and his slender figure bending gracefully to his violin, and his sensitive, fragile, poetic face, had their various impressions for her; but she sat apart and after a while, when the supper was served, she found a little nook on a low divan behind some palms. But Eades discovered her in her retreat.
"I have been wondering whether my fate was settled–after that last time we met," he said, after the awkward moment in which they exchanged banalities.
The wonder was in his words alone; she could not detect the uncertainty she felt would have become him.
"Is it settled?"
"Yes, it is settled."
He was taken aback, but he was determined, always determined. He could not suppose that, in the end, she would actually refuse him.
"Of course," he began again, "I could realize that for a time you would naturally feel resentful–though that isn't the word–but now–that the necessity is passed–that I am in a sense free–I had let myself begin to hope again."
"You don't understand," she said, almost sick at heart. "You didn't understand that day."
"Why, I thought I did. You wanted me–to let him go."
"Yes."
"And because I loved you, to prove that I loved you–"
"Exactly."
"Well, then, didn't I understand you?"
"No."
"Well, I confess," he leaned back helplessly, "you baffle me."
"Oh, but it wasn't a bargain," she said. Her gray eyes looked calmly into his as she told him what she knew was not accurately the truth, and she was glad of the moment because it gave her the opportunity to declare false what had so long been true to her, and, just as she had feared, true to him. She felt restored, rehabilitated in her old self-esteem, and she relished his perplexity.
"It seems inconsistent," he said.
"Does it? How strange!" She said it coldly, and slowly she took her eyes from him. They were silent for a while.
"Then my fate is settled–irrevocably?" he asked at length.
"Yes, irrevocably."
"I wish," he complained, "that I understood."
"I wish you did," she replied.
"Can't you tell me?"
"Don't force me to."
"Very well," he said, drawing himself up. "I beg your pardon." These words, however, meant that the apology should have been hers.
As they drove home, her mother said to her:
"What were you and John Eades talking about back there in that corner?"
"An old subject."
"Was he–" Mrs. Ward was burning with a curiosity she did not, however, like to put into words.
Elizabeth laughed.
"Yes," she said, "he was. But I settled him."
"I hope you were not–"
"Brutal?"
"Well, perhaps not that–you, of course, could not be that."
"Don't be too sure."
They discussed Eades as the carriage rolled along, but their points of view could never be the same.
"And yet, after all, dear," Mrs. Ward was saying, "we must be just. I don't see–"
"No," Elizabeth interrupted her mother. "You don't see. None of you can see. It wasn't because he wouldn't let Dick go. It was because that one act of his revealed his true nature, his real self; showed me that he isn't a man, but a machine; not a human being, but a prosecutor; he's an institution, and one can't marry an institution, you know," she concluded oddly.
"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward. "That doesn't sound quite ladylike or nice!"
Elizabeth laughed lightly now, in the content that came with the new happiness that was glowing within her.
XXXIII
Curly Jackson was hurrying along Race Street, glad of his old friend, the darkness, that in February had begun to gather at five o'clock. He passed a factory, a tall, ugly building of brick, and in the light of the incandescent lamps he could see the faces of the machinists bent over the glistening machines. Curly looked at these workmen, thought of their toil, of the homes they would go to presently, of the wives that would be waiting, and the children–suddenly a whistle blew, the roar of machinery subsided, whirred, hummed and died away; a glad, spontaneous shout went up from the factory, and, in another minute, a regiment of men in overalls and caps, begrimed and greasy, burst into the street and went trooping off in the twilight. The scene moved Curly profoundly; he longed for some touch of this humanity, for the fellowship of these working-men, for some one to slap his back, and, in mere animal spirits and joy at release, sprint a race for half a block with him.
Curly felt that these workmen were like him, at least, in one respect, they were as glad to be released from the factory as he had been half an hour before to be released from the jail. He had left the jail, but he was not free. Inside the jail he had the sympathy and understanding of his fellows; here he had nothing but hatred and suspicion. Even these men trooping along beside him and, to his joy, brushing against him now and then, would have scorned and avoided him had they known he was just released from prison. There was no work for him among them, and his only freedom lay still in the fields, the woods, and along the highways of gravel and of iron.
"Well," he thought, grinding his teeth bitterly, "they'll have to pay toll now!"
He found Gibbs in his back room, alone, and evidently in a gloomy mood. Gibbs stretched his hand across the table.
"Well, Curly, I'm glad to see some one in luck."
"You're right, Dan, my luck's good. I'm no hoodoo. To be in the way I was and have your pal topped, to make a clear lamas–that looks like good luck to me."
"Oh, well, they never had anything on you."
"They didn't have anything on Dutch neither–but in the frame-up I didn't know but they'd put a sinker on me, too. What made me sore was having that Flanagan rap against me–why, great God! a job like that–that some fink, some gay cat done after he'd got scared!" Jackson could not find the words to express his disgust, his sense of injury, the stain, as it were, on his professional reputation.
"It was that they put Dutch away on."
"Sure, I know that, Dan, and everybody knows that. It was just like a mob of hoosiers after you with pitchforks; like that time old Dillon and Mason and me gave 'em battle in the jungle in Illinois. Well, that's the way these people was. They was howlin' around that court-house and that pogey–God! to think of it! To think of a fellow's getting a lump like that handed to him–all for croakin' a copper!" Curly shook his head a moment in his inability to understand this situation, and he held his hands out in appeal to Gibbs, and said in his high, shrill voice, emphasizing certain words:
"What in hell do you make of it, Dan?"
"What's the use wasting time over that?" Gibbs asked. "That's all over, ain't it? Then cut it out. Course,"–it seemed, however, that Gibbs had some final comment of his own to make–"you might say the kid ought to've had a medal for croaking a gendie. I wisht when he pushed his barker he'd wiped out a few more bulls. He was a good shot."
Gibbs said this with an air of closing the discussion, and of having paid his tribute to Archie.
"Well, Dan," Curly began, "you'll have to put me on the nut until I can get to work. I haven't even got pad money. I gave my bit to Jane; she says graft's on the fritz. She twisted a super, but it was an old canister–has she been in to-day?"
Gibbs shook his head gloomily.
"She didn't expect 'em to turn me out to-day." Curly mused in a moment's silence. "Ain't she the limit? One day she was goin' to bash that sister of poor Dutch, the next she's doubled with her, holdin' her up. She had me scared when she landed in; I was 'fraid she'd tip off the lay somehow–course"–he hastened to do her justice–"I knew she wouldn't throw me down, but the main bull– What's wrong, Dan?" Curly, seeing that Gibbs was not interested, stopped suddenly.
"Oh, everything's wrong. Dean's been here–now he's pinched!"
"No! What for?"
"You'd never guess."
"The big mitt?"
"No, short change! He came in drunk–he's been at it for a month; of course, if he hadn't, he wouldn't have done anything so foolish. Did you know a moll buzzer named McGlynn? Well, he got home the other day from doin' a stretch, and Ed gets sorry for him and promises to take him out. So they go down to the spill and turned a sucker–Ed flopped him for a ten!" Gibbs's tone expressed the greatest contempt. "He'll be doing a heel or a stick-up next, or go shark hunting. Think of Ed Dean's being in for a thing like that!"
"Is he down at the boob?"
"No, we sprung him on paper. He's all broke up–you heard about McDougall?"
"What about him?"
"Dead; didn't you know? Died in Baltimore–some one shot him in a saloon. He wouldn't tell who; he was game–died saying it was all right, that the guy wasn't to blame. And then," Gibbs went on, "that ain't all. Dempsey was settled."
"Yes, I read it in the paper."
"That was a kangaroo, too."
"I judged so; they settled him for the dip. How did it come off?"
"Oh, it was them farmers down at Bayport. Dempsey had a privilege at the fair last fall; he took a hieronymous–hanky-panky, chuck-a-luck."
"Yes, I know," said Curly impatiently, "the old army game."
"Well, he skinned the shellapers, and they squealed this year to get even. They had him pinched for the dip. Why, old Dempsey couldn't even stall–he couldn't put his back up to go to the front!"
"Who did it?"
"Oh, a little Chicago gun. You don't know him."
"Well," said Curly, "you have had a run of bad luck."
"Do you know what does it?" Gibbs leaned over confidentially, a superstitious gleam in his eye. "It's that Koerner thing. There's a hoodoo over that family. That girl's been in here once or twice–with Jane. You tell Jane not to tow her round here any more. If I was you, I'd cut her loose–she'll queer you. You won't have any luck as long as you're filled in with her."
"I thought the old man had some damages coming to him for the loss of his gimp," said Curly.
"Well, he has; but it's in the courts. They'll job him, too, I suppose. He can't win against that hoodoo. The courts have been taking their time."
The courts, indeed, had been taking their time with Koerner's case. Months had gone by and still no hint of a decision. The truth was, the judges of the Supreme Court were divided. They had discussed the case many times and had had heated arguments over it, but they could not agree as to what had been the proximate cause of Koerner's injury, whether it was the unblocked frog in which he had caught his foot, or the ice on which he had slipped. If it was the unblocked frog, then it was the railroad company's fault; if it was the snow and ice, then it was what is known as the act of God. Dixon, McGee and Bundy, justices, all thought the unblocked frog was the proximate cause; they argued that if the frog had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in it. They were supported in their opinion by Sharlow, of the nisi prius court, and by Gardner, Dawson and Kirkpatrick, of the Appellate Court; so that of all the judges who were to pass on Koerner's case, he had seven on his side. On the other hand, Funk, Hambaugh and Ficklin thought it was God's fault and not the railroad company's; they argued it was the ice causing him to slip that made Koerner fall and catch his foot.
It resulted, therefore, that with all the elaborate machinery of the law, one man, after all, was to decide this case, and that man was Buckmaster, the chief justice. Buckmaster had the printed transcript of the record and the printed briefs of counsel, but, like most of his colleagues, he disliked to read records and merely skimmed the briefs. Besides, Buckmaster could not fix his mind on anything just then, for, like Archie, he, too, was under sentence of death. His doctor, some time before this, had told him he had Bright's disease, and Buckmaster had now reached the stage where he had almost convinced himself that his doctor was wrong, and he felt that if he could take a trip south, he would come back well again. Buckmaster would have preferred to lay the blame of Koerner's accident on God rather than on the railroad company. He had thought more about the railroads and the laws they had made than he had about God and the laws He had made, for he had been a railroad attorney before he became a judge; indeed, the railroad companies had had his party nominate him for judge of the Supreme Court. Buckmaster knew how much the railroads lost in damages every year, and how the unscrupulous personal-injury lawyers mulcted them; and just now, when he was needing this trip south, and the manager of the railroad had placed his own private car at his disposal, Buckmaster felt more than ever inclined toward the railroad's side of these cases. Therefore, after getting some ideas from Hambaugh, he announced to his colleagues that he had concluded, after careful consideration, that Funk and Hambaugh and Ficklin were right; and Hambaugh was designated to write the profound opinion in which the decision of the court below was reversed.
Marriott had the news of the reversal in a telegram from the clerk of the Supreme Court, and he sat a long time at his desk, gazing out over the hideous roofs and chimneys with their plumes of white steam.... Well, he must tell old Koerner. He never dreaded anything more in his life, yet it must be done. But he could wait until morning. Bad news would keep.
But Marriott was spared the pain of bearing the news of this final defeat to Koerner. It would seem that the law itself would forego none of its privileges as to this family with which it so long had sported. The news, in fact, was borne to Koerner by a deputy sheriff.
Packard, the lawyer for the Building and Loan Company which held the mortgage on Koerner's house, had been waiting, at Marriott's request, for the determination of Koerner's suit against the railroad company. That morning Packard had read of the reversal in the Legal Bulletin, a journal that spun out daily through its short and formal columns, the threads of misery and woe and sin that men tangle into that inextricable snarl called "jurisprudence." And Packard immediately, that very morning, began his suit in foreclosure, and before noon the papers were served.
When Marriott knocked at the little door in Bolt Street, where he had stood so often and in so many varying moods of hope and despair,–though all of these moods, as he was perhaps in his egoism glad to feel, had owed their origin to the altruistic spirit,–he felt that surely he must be standing there now for the last time. He glanced at the front of the little home; it had been so neat when he first saw it; now it was weather-beaten and worn; the front door was scratched, the paint had cracked and come off in flakes.
The door was opened by the old man himself, and he almost frightened Marriott by the fierce expression of his haggard face. His shirt was open, revealing his red and wrinkled throat; his white hair stood up straight, his lean jaws were covered with a short, white beard, and his thick white eyebrows beetled fearfully. When he saw Marriott his lips trembled in anger, and his eyes flashed from their caverns.
"So!" he cried, not opening wide the door, not inviting Marriott in, "you gom', huh?"
"Yes, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I came–to–"
"You lost, yah, I know dot! You lose all your cases, huh, pretty much, aindt it so?"
Marriott flamed hotly.
"No, it isn't so," he retorted, stepping back a little. "I have been unfortunate, I know, in your case, and in Archie's, but I did–"
"Ho!" scoffed Koerner in his tremendous voice. "Vell! Maybe you like to lose anudder case. Hier! I gif you von!"
With a sudden and elaborate flourish of the arm he stretched over his crutch, he delivered a document to Marriott, and Marriott saw that it was the summons in the foreclosure suit.
"I s'pose we lose dot case, too, aindt it?"
"Yes," said Marriott thoughtfully and sadly, tapping his hand with the paper, "we'll lose this. When did you get it?"
"Dis morning. A deputy sheriff, he brought 'im–"
"And he told you–"
"'Bout de oder von? Yah, dot's so."
They were silent a moment and Marriott, unconsciously, and with something of the habit of the family solicitor, put the summons into his pocket.
"Vell, I bet dere be no delays in dis case, huh?" Koerner asked.
Marriott wondered if it were possible to make this old man understand.
"You see, Mr. Koerner," he began, "the law–"
The old German reared before him in mighty rage, and he roared out from his tremendous throat:
"Oh, go to hell mit your Gott-tamned law!"
And he slammed the door in Marriott's face.
Koerner was right; there were no delays now, no questions of proximate cause, no more, indeed, than there had been in Archie's case. The law worked unerringly, remorselessly and swiftly; the Legal Bulletin marked the steps day by day, judgment by default–decree–order of sale. There came a day when the sheriff's deputies–there were two of them now, knowing old man Koerner–went to the little cottage in Bolt Street. Standing on the little stoop, one of them, holding a paper in his hand, rapped on the door. There was no answer, and he rapped again. Still no answer. He beat with his gloved knuckles; he kicked lightly with his boot; still no answer. The deputies went about the house trying to peep in at the windows. The blinds were down; they tried both doors, front and back; they were locked.
In a neighbor's yard a little girl looked on with the crude curiosity of a child. After the man had tried the house all about, and rightly imagining from all that was said of the Koerners in the neighborhood that the law was about to indulge in some new and sensational ribaldry with them, she called out in a shrill, important voice:
"They're in there, Mister!"
"Are you sure?"
"Oh, honest!" said the officious little girl, drawing her chin in affectedly. "Cross my heart, it's so."
Then the deputy put his shoulder to the door; presently it gave.
In the front room, on the plush lounge, lay the two children, Jakie and Katie, their throats cut from ear to ear. In the dining-room, where there had been a struggle, lay the body of Mrs. Koerner, her throat likewise cut from ear to ear. And from four huge nails driven closely together into the lintel of the kitchen door, hung the body of old man Koerner, with its one long leg just off the floor, and from his long yellow face hung the old man's tongue, as if it were his last impotent effort to express his scorn of the law, whose emissaries he expected to find him there.