The Ordeal of Elizabeth Part 33

"I don't know that I care about their thanking me," she said at last, "and even if they're not worthy, that doesn't make it any the less hard for them, does it?"

To the matron this sentiment had a taint of immorality and she drew herself up primly. "Why, on that principle, Miss," she said, "there's no use at all in good behavior." Her point of view was the correct one, of course--at least for a prison official. But it was natural that Elizabeth, in revolt against the hard judgment of the world, should take the opposite side. And certainly the women, even the roughest of them, seemed to be grateful in their own way for her kindness, and respected absolutely the intangible barrier between them. There were one or two, indeed, younger and more imaginative than the rest, who would follow her with wistful eyes as she pa.s.sed, or flush in involuntary, awkward delight if she spoke to them; to whom her presence in their midst appealed irresistibly, touching some latent sense of romance, and lending a new interest to the prison routine. There was something wraith-like, spiritual about her, as she grew from day to day, more frail, her face more thin and wasted, her eyes more unnaturally large and strained, and the shadows beneath them deeper and darker. Her gowns, since the hot weather began, were always white, unrelieved by color even at throat or belt. Only her hair made a gleam of brightness, the more vivid for the pallor of her face and the grayness of the prison walls.

It was this soft, wavy hair at which visitors to The Tombs looked most curiously, recognizing one of the strong pieces of evidence against her. There was a number of visitors to The Tombs, even on those hot summer days; people who only stared at one prisoner and asked before they left one question of the prison officials, which met the one answer. The warden--a gruff old man, hardened by long contact with the lowest offenders--seemed when his turn came to hesitate.

"Guilty, she?" he repeated, staring up at the questioner with his shrewd old eyes. "Well, there ain't a guilty person in The Tombs--not to hear them talk; but--she"--he paused a moment. "She never says nothing; but--bless you"--carried beyond himself by an unwonted burst of sentiment--"I'd as soon suspect an angel from heaven."

"Ah, he has had a large fee," the more cynical would observe as they left, and it was true. But the canny old warden was quite capable of accepting all the money in the world, and reserving the right to his own opinion, which he had stated in this case with absolute honesty.

And it was shared, moreover, by the entire prison,--jailers and criminals alike.

Elizabeth grew conscious of the general sentiment and it cheered her more than its intrinsic value seemed to warrant. For it was based on no tangible evidence, was the result of a hundred unconsidered, unimportant words and actions, the effect of which, to those who had not seen or heard them, it was hard to explain; and it could penetrate little to the outside world. But she felt strangely indifferent to the outside world. Her horizon was bounded by the prison walls.

One day, sitting dull and languid on her bench in the shadow of the wall, she chanced to overhear a fragment of a conversation between the warden and a visitor. They stood within the door of the office, and their voices came to her distinctly. "I tell you," the warden said, apparently bringing his argument to a conclusion, "they'll never put a woman--let alone a young and pretty one like her--in the electric chair."

"Ah, but if she's guilty,"--the visitor's voice demanded. And then, with an odd grunt from the warden, they pa.s.sed on. She could not hear the rest.

But what she had heard thrilled her with a new, sharp pang of terror, the reason of which she could not have explained. There was nothing in the warden's a.s.sertion, nothing even in the visitor's protest. She knew of course that there were people who believed her guilty, and the man's words were rea.s.suring rather than otherwise. Yet something in them called up before her vividly for the first time the very danger which he disclaimed. Yes, she was to be tried for her life! Incredible stupidity!--how was it she had never realized it before?

There was after all nothing extraordinary, unprecedented in the idea; it was one which had exercised over her in times past a curious fascination. She remembered well having read a graphic account of the last hours of a noted criminal, everything that he had said and done, the way in which he had met his fate, his last words ... it all came back to her with startling distinctness. She had tried at the time to put herself in his place, to think how she would have felt.... It was so futile, she had desisted from it at last with a smile at her own absurdity, the healthy instincts of her warm young life a.s.serting themselves, as they generally did, against the occasional morbidness of her imagination. Now, looking back on it, the whole thing seemed one of those presentiments with which people doomed to misfortune are visited.

Yet the idea was absurd, even now. There was no danger, for she was innocent. That man was guilty--or so the papers said. She remembered that he had protested his innocence--to the end. And perhaps he had spoken the truth.

What did the papers say about her own case? The evidence against her was strong--she had always vaguely known that. But--what was it the man had said?--they'd never put a woman, guilty or innocent, in the electric chair. But what woman would accept her life on such terms as that? Elizabeth raised her head with that characteristic, proud little motion which not all the humiliations of prison life had availed to break her of entirely. "I would rather die," she said to herself, "I would rather die."

And then she remembered how she had shrunk from death--that morning months ago in the park. She felt again the intense physical repulsion, the instinctive clinging to life, the dread of the unknown....

That evening when the younger matron--the one she liked the best--came with her dinner, she put her through a series of questions, which embarra.s.sed the kind woman not a little. Had she ever, Elizabeth demanded, seen people who were condemned to death and how had they behaved? Did they seem frightened, or were they calm and brave? Were they--did the matron really believe that they were guilty, beyond possibility of doubt?

"Are innocent people ever condemned," asked the girl, sitting huddled together on her bed and staring at the matron with haggard eyes.

"Surely there couldn't be--you don't suppose there could be--such a terrible mistake?"

"I"--The matron's voice suddenly failed her, her eyes filled with tears. "Heaven knows I hope not, Miss," she said and went out hastily.

Elizabeth sat still, staring before her. "She believes me innocent--but she is afraid I will be found guilty." A little shudder pa.s.sed through her, in spite of the intense heat. And then again the dull cloud of weary indifference descended upon her, and she said to herself that she did not care.

But as time went on, she knew that this was false.

A few days later Mrs. Bobby came back, after spending a week in the country much against her will. It seemed to her that Elizabeth looked much worse than when she saw her last. She sighed as she realized, more emphatically than ever, how much of the girl's beauty had left her with that wealth of color and outline which had been its most striking characteristic. Certainly any one who judged of her by the famous picture, taken in her first bloom, would be wofully disappointed now. There was only the soft sweep of the hair, and the strange shadow in the eyes--of which the first premonition as it were had somehow crept into the picture--but for these points of resemblance one would hardly know her for the same woman.

"No," Mrs. Bobby reflected, "they won't acquit her for her beauty."

But aloud she talked cheerfully, giving the Neighborhood news--what there was of it, skimming the cream of her letters from friends at gayer places--profoundly uninteresting just then, and mocking the scene about them with its frivolous incongruity--but what matter.

Anything to keep going the ball of conversation! But at last, in spite of herself, there came a pause.

It was intensely hot. The sun beat down upon the rough uneven stones which paved the prison court, it baked the wall against which the two women leaned. Before their eyes there rose up sharply the walls of the men's prison, and beyond a fragment of the Court-house, with which the Bridge of Sighs formed a connecting link, invisible from where they sat. A little way off, in a small circle of shade, a group of women prisoners gathered silent, inert. A great stillness brooded over the place, broken only by the buzzing of flies and the noises in the street, which sounded dreamily as if it were many miles away. A man was crying "Strawberries, fresh strawberries!" and his voice floated in to the prison, bringing with it a tantalizing suggestion of coolness and freedom and green fields.

Involuntarily Elizabeth made a gesture of weariness, and raised to her parched lips the great bunch of roses, fresh from the country, which Mrs. Bobby had brought. They already hung their heads.

"I suppose," the girl said dreamily, her eyes half shut, "our flowers must be all out at the Homestead. It always looks so pretty there now, before the heat has lasted too long. I can see it--the river with the sails on it, and the fields covered with daisies--they must be out now--ah, and the wild-roses!"--She drew a long breath. "Oh, I am sick sometimes for a sight of it all," she broke out with sudden vehemence.

"I'd give anything to lie down in the gra.s.s with the trees over me, and the cool wind in my face, and so--sleep"--Her voice sank away, she made a weary gesture. "I'm so tired," she said, "I'd like to sleep forever."

"My dear child." Mrs. Bobby caught her breath, a mist of tears in her eyes. "Don't you ever sleep here?"--she asked tentatively after a moment, and Elizabeth answered in the same dreary way, unconscious, apparently, that she was departing from her usual reserve.

"No, I don't sleep often," she said, "especially since the nights have been so hot. But when I do"--she paused and stared reflectively before her, while the shadow in her eyes grew deeper. "There's a dream that haunts me now," she said at last, "whenever I fall asleep. I dream about my trial, and--it always goes against me. I stand there all alone, the judge p.r.o.nounces sentence, and I--I try to speak, I try to tell them that I'm innocent, but--the words won't come--I wake up half strangled"--she broke off shuddering. "Ah, you can't imagine how horrible it is," she said, "worse even than--lying awake."

Mrs. Bobby was silent for a moment, but when she spoke her voice was steady. "It's a horrible dream," she said, "but it's impossible--quite impossible that it should come true. You won't be left alone, we shall all stand by you, you will be acquitted surely--surely"--in spite of herself, her voice suddenly faltered, in a way that belied her words.

"You think so?" Elizabeth said, quickly. "You _hope_ so. But--if you should be mistaken?" She put out her hand and grasped Mrs. Bobby's wrist. "Tell me the worst," she said. "I'd rather know it. Is there much danger, do you--in your heart of hearts, do you think that I shall be acquitted?" Involuntarily her grasp tightened, her strained, dilated eyes searched her friend's face with a look that seemed to compel only the truth--to tolerate no evasions. And Eleanor Van Antwerp, with all her courage, could not meet it. She turned her face away with a little sob.

Elizabeth sat rigid for a moment, waiting for the answer that did not come; then her fingers relaxed their hold, she took her hand away and sank back against the wall.

There was a long silence. The noon-day sun crept towards them, dazzling the eyes, a few flies buzzed aimlessly about. Upon Eleanor Van Antwerp's mind the prison court, as she saw it then, baking in the noon-day heat--the group of women huddled together, the rags of some, the tawdry finery of others, the look of dogged misery on their coa.r.s.e faces--the whole scene impressed itself, calling up always in after years a sense of powerless despair.

At last Elizabeth turned to her, and a faint smile hovered about her white lips.

"Do you know," she said, "did the warden show you? in that corner there they have--the old scaffold--what's left of it, at least. They keep it as an interesting relic. Oh, he wouldn't show it to me"--she smiled again painfully--" he's too considerate--I heard him telling one of the visitors. They don't have anything of the kind now, he said,--there is--Sing Sing and the electric chair. And that is--or so they say--more merciful. But is it--do you really think it can be?"

She paused and stared up at Mrs. Bobby with eyes full of a dawning terror. "To have a hood put over one's face," she went on, her voice trembling, "that's how they do it, isn't it?--to wait--wait for the shock." ... She stopped, the look of terror in her eyes grew deeper.

She lifted the roses from her lap and held them up before her face, as if to shut out, with their color and fragrance, some horrible vision.

"Oh, I see it day and night," she said, "day and night! If I see it much longer, I shall go mad."

Mrs. Bobby's hand tightened convulsively upon hers.

"Elizabeth, my dear," she cried, "you mustn't think of such possibilities. It could never--come to that, they would never--carry their cruelty to that extent"--Her voice faltered.

Elizabeth put down her roses and looked up at her. Her face showed recovered self-control. "Why--because I'm a woman?" she asked, with a pale little smile. "That's what the warden said--that they wouldn't condemn a woman to death. But even if they--stopped short of that, would imprisonment--would this sort of thing, or worse"--she swept her hand with a comprehensive gesture round her--"wouldn't death, on the whole, be better?"

And Mrs. Bobby could not answer, for she thought in her heart it would be--infinitely better.

But in a moment she rallied her energies.

"Elizabeth," she said, "there's no necessity to consider--either alternative. I believe firmly that we shall get you off. But in order to do it you must help us--to defend you. You seem indifferent about it; Mr. Fenton complains that you keep things back. You can't afford to trifle--tell us everything. Isn't there"--she leaned forward eagerly and grasped Elizabeth's hand--"doesn't Julian Gerard know something that would help us?"

She felt Elizabeth start and s.h.i.+ver; then stiffen into sudden rigidity. The hand she held was withdrawn, and with the action the girl seemed to release herself, mentally and physically, from her grasp.

"I don't know," she said, and her voice was cold, almost as though she resented being questioned, "I don't know why you think that."

"I don't think--I feel it! There is something that he can say." Mrs.

Bobby's eyes seemed to challenge a denial. Elizabeth met them with a look of defiance.

"There is nothing," she said. "He knows nothing; or if he did"--she lowered her voice with a sudden change of tone--"if he could save me, I'd rather die than have him sent for."

"Ah--you'd rather die?" Mrs. Bobby caught her breath. "And you think that is fair--to yourself, to your aunts, to us all?"

"I don't know." The girl's voice had the ring of weary obstinacy that suffering will sometimes a.s.sume. "I only know I don't want him--sent for."

Mrs. Bobby seemed to reflect. "We can't send for him," she said at last, "we don't know where he is."

Elizabeth started. "You don't," she repeated, in a low voice, "know where he is?"--

"No, he left no address. His mail is at his banker's--they don't know where to forward it."