Chapter XIV: Book V: I (1)

The editor-in-chief of the New York “Eye” sat in the large revolving-chair in his private room, dictating to a typewriter answers to the great pile of letters on the desk before him. He opened one letter after another with expert swiftness, glanced over it, gave it a few lines of response, or tossed it, half read, into a wastebasket. But although his heed to duty was alert, his brow was contracted, and he was carrying on a double train of thought. The subconsciousness was not pleasant.

Arnold Sturges was one of the most remarkable men in New York. Not thirty-three, he had been editor-in-chief of one of the great newspapers of the United States for a year and a half. He had elected journalism as the safety-valve for a superabundant nervous energy and a means to gratify ambition and love of power. Although possessed of a little fortune he had begun his career on the city staff. As a reporter he had worked as hard as if twenty-five dollars a week stood between him and starvation. He had risen rapidly from one editorship to another, and still no half naked man down in the printing-rooms worked more lustily. His rushing career was by no means due to work alone, nor yet to his superlative cleverness: it was said of him that he could smell news a week off, and not only ahead but backward; by which was meant that he knew the subtle and valuable relation that old news occasionally holds to that of the moment. Naturally, he had made many brilliant and memorable coups.

When friends had blocked his way he had thrust them aside as lightly as he seemed to spurn less material obstacles. Body and brain he was the dauntless servant of the “Eye;” its personality was his; his very nerves were tuned to its sensational policy. He lived for it, and would have died for it. He hardly regarded himself as an individual, although his fine intellect, his bold executive ability, his splendid suggestions, had been large factors in the success of the paper.

Cold, cruel, charming, calculating, enthusiastic, audacious, unscrupulous, fearless, relentless, brilliant, executive, had he been a factor in the French Revolution his name would have become infamously immortal. As it was, he was supreme in the field he had deliberately chosen ten years before, immediately after graduating from Harvard with such honours that the faculty had sent for and severally congratulated him upon his future.

He lived with a soubrette with whom he spent his evenings, playing _parchisi_.

To-day he was in a serious quandary. Three days before he had paid fifteen hundred dollars for a scandalous story relative to one of the most fashionable families in Westchester County,—a story which bore truth on the face of it, but which he had not yet published, as it was necessary to go through the form of verification. The family meanwhile had heard of the sale, and brought tremendous pressure to bear upon him to suppress the story: the owner of the “Eye” was travelling in Europe. Lawyers had called and harangued. A woman had gone to his apartment and wept at his feet. A man had flourished a pistol. For tears and threats he cared nothing, but it had occurred to him when too late that the owner of the “Eye” purposed to build in Westchester County and had aspirations to the Country Club. Despite the fact that the story would make the sensation of the day, the owner might be moved to fury. On the other hand, he had paid fifteen hundred dollars for the facts, and must justify himself. It was the first time in his career that he had made a serious mistake, and he was in a cold rage.

The man would have given pleasure to a physiognomist; he was a type so marked, so essentially modern, that an amateur could not have misplaced him, as one easily could so commonplace a type as Beverly Peele. His forehead was full and wide, his grey eyes piercing, restless, hard as ice. The nose was finely cut, the mouth licentious, the face thin and sallow. At each extremity of the jaw was an abnormal development of muscle. His small thin figure was as lithe as a panther, and so crowded with pure nerve force that it seemed to shed electricity. His attire was fashionable and elegant. In flannel shirt and overalls he would still have looked a product of the higher civilisation.

The door opened. He wheeled about with a frown, then smiled pleasantly.

“Oh, it’s you, Van,” he said. “I’ll be through in a minute. Sit down.”

The man that had entered bore so striking a resemblance to Sturges that the two men might have been twins. He was, in fact, three years younger than his brother. Yet there were some points of difference. Van Cortlandt Sturges’ mouth was a straight line, his hair was many shades lighter, almost flaxen, and he was several inches taller. But the expression of the upper part of the two faces was identical. He, too, had left Harvard with high honours, and ambition devoured him. Although only thirty he was District Attorney of Westchester County. But as yet his fame had not gone beyond its borders, although within them his dry incisive bitter eloquence had carried many juries. Criminals in their cells thought on him with terror. He had sent several men to the chair, but no man that had been defended by Garan Bourke. People said of him lightly that he would not go out of his way to be President of the United States until he had thrashed Bourke on his own ground.

“I’d like ten minutes as soon as possible,” he said. “I have an important communication to make.”

“I’ll hear it now.” To the typewriter: “You can go. Don’t return until I ring, and tell Tom to stand in front of the door and admit no one.—Well, what is it?”

“Have you made up your mind to publish that Westchester County scandal?”

“How do you know anything about that?”

“They sent for me yesterday and besought me to use my influence with you. I am engaged to the woman’s sister.”

“The devil you are! This is bad—bad. But I can’t do anything. I paid fifteen hundred dollars for that story.”

“I know you did. If I could give you a better, would you let that go?”

“Wouldn’t I? It’s a white elephant. I thought you didn’t know me so little as to come here with sentiment. Fire away.”

“Of course you remember the Gardiner Peeles, although you never go anywhere. You went to one or two children’s parties there when you were a kid. Well, Beverly Peele died suddenly night before last, supposedly of an overdose of morphine administered by himself. Now, old Lewis, the family physician, is a great friend of mine, and likely to be communicative in his cups. Last night he dined with me, and after he was pretty well loaded told me a remarkable yarn. It seems that Mrs. Beverly had not been on good terms with her husband since the early days of their marriage, and had threatened to leave him from time to time. He treated her well, and was desperately in love with her. She, as far as is known, had nothing against him but personal dislike. She is said to have frequently expressed hatred of him in violent terms. Well, winter before last she left him, came to New York, and went to work on the ‘Day.’ The Peeles did everything to induce her to return, but she only consented to go back temporarily this summer to nurse her husband, who had been attacked with a chronic but not immediately fatal complaint. Meanwhile it seems she had fallen in love with some one, and she met him every Thursday in a wood. Jim, a stable boy, who had been brought up on the place and was devoted to Beverly Peele, watched her, but said nothing to his master, as he was cautiously waiting for some proof of criminality. On the afternoon of Peele’s death there was a tremendous scene between the lovers: young Mrs. Peele telling a furious story of her husband’s refusal to give her divorce, of his threat to have her watched, to expose her if she took a lover, and to live until ninety if he had to go abroad and live at a foreign spa. She reiterated that she hated him, and had frequently had the impulse to murder him. The lover invited her to go to Texas, and she demurred, as she disliked scandal. Jim told this story to Lewis when driving him home from the death-bed,—his own horse had cast a shoe,—and the doctor advised him to keep quiet.

“The night after the interview between the lovers—or rather the following morning—Peele died of an overdose of morphine. She says he took it himself; but it is a remarkable fact that never before—not in a single instance—had he dropped the morphine himself. He had had a nurse from the first, and when the pain was on he shook like a leaf. And yet she asserts that she did not drop it that particular night, and adds—by way of explanation—that they had had a violent quarrel and he had refused to let her wait on him. While he was dying and the others were working over him, she behaved in the most heartless manner,—deliberately went to bed in the next room and went to sleep. When Lewis awakened her, however, and told her that Peele was dead, she displayed symptoms of abject terror, and tore across the hall and locked herself in another room. Now, what do you think of it?”

Sturges’ eyes were glittering like smoked diamonds. “My God!” he cried. “That’s a grand story! a corker! I’ll have Bart Tripp, the best detective reporter in New York, up there inside of two hours. Between whiskey and gold he’ll get every fact out of the servants they’ve got. It’s worth two of the other. A young, beautiful, swagger woman accused of murdering her husband, and that husband a Peele of Peele Manor! The ‘Eye’ will be read in the very bowels of the earth.”

“And I shall conduct the case for the prosecution.”

“The ‘Eye’ will let people know it. Don’t worry about that. Does Lewis remember that he told you?”

“Not a word.”

II

On the following Sunday Patience arose early. Beverly had been in the family vault down in the hollow for a week. She had wished to leave immediately after the funeral, but had remained at the insistence of Hal, who had returned at once, and was doubly depressed by her brother’s death and the gloomy house. Mrs. Peele had gone to bed with a violent attack of neuralgia some days ago, and had not risen since. Honora was in constant attendance. Mr. Peele never opened his lips except to ask for what he wanted. Burr, as a matter of course, spent the days in New York or at a private club house in the neighbourhood.

Patience had moved into a room adjoining Hal’s. She kept the light burning all night.

“I’ll be all right when I get back to New York,” she said, “but I have a horror of death. I can’t help it.”

“Who hasn’t?” asked Hal. “I wish I were a man—or could be as selfish as one.”

On this Sunday morning Patience rose after a restless night, and went downstairs as soon as she was dressed. The “Day” and the “Eye”—Burr’s favorite newspaper—lay on a table in the hall. She carried them into the library and turned them over listlessly, then remembered that a great Westchester County scandal had been promised for the Sunday “Eye” by the issue of the day before, and that Hal and Burr were on the alert, suspecting that they half knew the story already.

She opened the “Eye” and glanced at the headlines of the first page. In the place of honour, the extreme left hand column, she found her story:

WAS IT MURDER?
AN OLD MANOR HOUSE IN WESTCHESTER COUNTY MAY
HAVE BEEN THE THEATRE OF A GREAT CRIME!
A YOUNG WIFE SUSPECTED OF THE FOUL DEED!

Patience read ten lines. Then she stumbled to her feet, spilling the papers to the floor. Her skin felt cold and wet, her knees trembled, her hands moved spasmodically. Something within her seemed disintegrating.

She got to the door and up to her room. Aside from the horror which sat in each nerve centre and jabbered, she was conscious of but one idea: she must fly. She flung off her robe and put on the black frock she had bought out of deference to the family’s grief. She scratched herself and thrust the buttons into the wrong holes, but she could call no one to her assistance. She was thankful it was so early; she could get away without encountering any of the family. She was about to put on her black bonnet when her muddled consciousness emitted another flash and bade her disguise herself; detectives would have orders to search for a woman in weeds. She tore off the mourning frock, dropping it to the floor, and got herself into a grey one, then pinned on a grey hat trimmed with pink flowers. She thrust a few things into a bag, and ran down the stair. She reached the station in time to flag the 8.30 train for New York. Some one else boarded the same train, but she did not see him.

Having accomplished her flight, her thoughts travelled to the objective point. Inevitably her woman’s instinct turned to the man whose duty it was to protect her. She convinced herself femininely that if she could reach him all would be well; he not only loved her, but he was so amazingly clever.

At the station in New York she walked deliberately to a cab and gave the man Morgan Steele’s address. She looked neither to the right nor to the left, consequently did not see that the man who had boarded the train at Peele Manor stood at her elbow when she gave the order, and followed her immediately.

When the cab reached the house in which Morgan Steele lived, she dismissed it and ran up the steps. She rang again and again, pacing the narrow stoop in an agony of fear and impatience. At the end of ten minutes an irritable half dressed Frenchman came shuffling down the stairs. There were no curtains on the door, and the man’s expression struck new terror to her heart.

“What is it?” he asked surlily, as he opened the door.

“I—I—must see Mr. Steele.”

“Mr. Steele is asleep. He does not receive visitors at this hour.”

“I must see him.” Her cheeks were flaming under the man’s scrutiny. “Here,” she opened her purse and gave him a bill, then pushed him aside and ran upstairs. She remembered that Steele had told her that his rooms were on the second floor, front. The halls were as dark as midnight. She had to feel with her hands for a door. There was one at the end facing the hall. She knocked so loudly that Steele sprang out of bed.

“What is it?” he cried.

“It is I. Open the door—quick!”

Steele made no reply until he opened a door at the side of the hall. He had tied himself into a bath robe.

“Good heavens!” he said, “why have you come here? Are you mad?”

“Oh, I think I am. Lock the door—quick. Oh, haven’t you heard? Didn’t you know about it before? The ‘Day’ is right next door to the ‘Eye.’ Why didn’t you warn me?”

“What on earth are you talking about? What has happened? Do sit down and calm yourself.”

“The ‘Eye’ is out with a big story that I murdered Beverly Peele. That is what is the matter.”

“What? Oh, you poor child! The damned rascals! But you shouldn’t have come here. Don’t you know that the ‘Eye’ will watch every move you make? It takes the clever woman to do the wrong thing, every time!”

He went to the window and peered out, then clenched his teeth, and raising his arm brought it down violently.

“They can’t put me in prison, can they?”

He pressed his finger to a bell. “I must read what they have to say. They are very wary, and never would have printed such a story unless they had had a good deal of circumstantial evidence. But they will need a terrible lot to convict you. Don’t worry.”

“Oh, how can you be so cool?”

“Some one has to be cool, my dear girl. If you cannot think I must think for you.” A man has not much sentiment at that hour of the morning; still, Steele had sympathy in his nature, and was profoundly disturbed.

The servant came up with the newspapers, and Steele ordered coffee and rolls from the restaurant below. He threw himself into a chair, opened the “Eye,” and read the story through deliberately, word for word, while Patience walked nervously up and down the room. When he had finished he laid the newspaper on the table.

“It’s a damned bad case,” he said.

“You don’t believe I did it, do you?”

He looked at her for a moment with his peculiarly searching gaze. “No,” he said, “you didn’t do it. You’d be even more interesting if you had. But that’s not the question. We’ve got to make others believe you didn’t do it. The first thing for you to do is to go directly back to Peele Manor. Tell them you came up to see Miss Merrien and to engage rooms. Anything you like—only go back there and wait. If you are arrested, it must be from there, and there must be no suggestion of fear on your part—you must brace up and carry it off.”

The waiter entered with the coffee and rolls, and Steele made her drink and eat.

“It is 9.45,” he said. “You can catch a train that goes between ten and eleven.”

When Patience had finished she drew on her gloves. “I’ll go,” she said, “and I’ll try to do as you say. I’ve made a fool of myself, but I won’t again—I promise. I can be as cold as stone, you know. That’s the New England part of me. And so long as I know that you care I sha’n’t break down—in public at least.”

“Oh, I care fast enough—poor little woman. Here, leave that bag, for heaven’s sake. You mustn’t go back with that.”

III

When Patience arrived at Peele Manor she knew before she reached the house that her story had been read and told. The gardener turned on his heel as she passed him and walked hastily away. A new stable boy stared at her until she thought his eyes would fly from their sockets.

As she entered the front door, Hal ran forward and threw her arms about her.

“Oh, Patience! Patience!” she sobbed hysterically. “That brutal paper! How could they do such a thing? Have they no heart nor soul?”

“You don’t believe it then?” said Patience, gratefully.

“Of course I don’t believe it—believe such a thing of _you_! Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come back. They were all sure you’d run away; but I knew you hadn’t. It is only the guilty that hide—But why on earth did you put on that grey frock?”

“Oh, I don’t know. How can one know what one’s doing—What does your father say?”

The girls were in one of the small reception-rooms. Hal removed Patience’s hat and gloves.

“Oh, this has been the most terrible day of my life,” she said evasively. “But you must be prudent, Patience dear. You must wear black—What is it?”

A servant had entered the room.

“Mr. Peele would like to see Mrs. Beverly in the library!”

Patience rose and shook herself a little, as if she would shake her nerves into place. Hal’s face flushed, and she turned away.

As Patience crossed the hall she met Latimer Burr. He held out his hand and pressed hers warmly.

“This is terrible, Patience,” he said; “but remember that Hal and I are always your friends. If the worst comes to the worst I’ll send you my attorney. Remember that, and don’t engage any one else, for he’s one of the ablest criminal lawyers in the country.”

“Oh, you are good!” she said. She smiled even through the grateful tears which sprang to her eyes. Burr had grown a visible inch. His chest and lips were slightly extended.

Mr. Peele sat in a large chair, his elbows on the arms, his finger-tips lightly pressed together. As Patience stood before him she felt as if transfixed by two steel lances.

“You murdered my son.”

“I did not.” Her courage came back to her under the overt attack.

“You murdered my son. The evidence is conclusive to me as a lawyer—and to my knowledge of you. My error was that I regarded your threats as feminine ravings. I wish you to leave my house at once—within the hour. I shall not have you arrested, but if you are I shall appear against you; and I have some evidence, as you will admit. You have dishonoured an ancient house,” he continued with cold passion, “and you have left it without an heir. Its name, after nearly three hundred years in this country alone, must die with me. If you had borne a son I should move heaven and earth to get you out of the country, but now I hope to heaven you’ll go to the chair.”

Patience shuddered and chilled, but she answered: “You despised your son, and you should be thankful that he left no second edition of himself.”

“He was my son, and the last of his name. Now, kindly leave this house.”

Patience went up to her room and began to pack her trunk. Hal followed, and when she heard what her father had said cried bitterly. She helped Patience to pack, assisted her into the black clothes, then walked to the station with her and stood conspicuously on the platform, waving her hand as the train moved off.

IV

Patience went directly to her old quarters in Forty-Fourth Street. She told the cabman not to lift her trunk down until she ascertained if there was a vacant room in the house. The bell was answered by a maid that had been there in her time. The girl stifled a scream and fled. Patience shut the door behind her with a hand that trembled again, and went slowly upstairs to Miss Merrien’s room. A solemn voice answered her knock. When she opened the door Miss Merrien sprang up and came forward. Her face was drawn, her eyes were red.

“Oh, Mrs. Peele!” she cried.

“Do you believe it? If you do, I’ll go at once.”

“Of course I don’t believe it! How can you ask me? Sit down. How good of you to come here. Tell me—are you terribly frightened?”

“No, I don’t think I am now. Why should I be? If I am so unlucky as to have been tossed up in the news hat of the ‘Eye,’ I cannot help it; and I suppose this is only the beginning. If I have to go to jail I have to, and that is the end of it; but they cannot possibly convict me, for I am innocent.”

“Oh, you always were the bravest woman I ever knew. It is like you—Come.”

The door opened, and the landlady entered and closed it carefully behind her. She was a tall thin elderly woman with a refined face stamped with commercial unquiet. Her grey hair was piled high. Her voice was low, and well modulated. She looked at Patience out of faded blue eyes in which there was a faint sparkle of resentment.

“I see that you have a trunk on your cab, Mrs. Peele,” she said, “I am very sorry that I have no room.”

“I had no intention of asking you for a room,” said Patience, haughtily. “I merely came to call on Miss Merrien; and as I have only a few moments to spare, I should be obliged if you would leave us alone.”

The landlady retired in disorder, and Miss Merrien exhausted her vocabulary of invective.

“What is the use?” said Patience. “She is right. In the struggle for bread and butter it must be self first, last, and always. If it were known—as it would be—that I had been arrested from her house every other lodger would leave. Well, I must go roof-hunting.” She laughed suddenly. “If I do go to jail I suppose you’ll come to interview me. I hope so. Good-bye.”

Miss Merrien, although not a demonstrative girl, kissed her affectionately. “The ‘Day’ will defend you for all it’s worth—you know that. And I needn’t say anything about myself.”

Patience told her cabman to drive to the Holland House, but when he stopped there she did not get out. Reflection had convinced her that no hotel in New York would take her in. She dared not give a false name lest her motive should be misconstrued. She put her head out of the window and gave the man Rosita’s address.

“There is no other way,” she thought. “I cannot live in a cab. Mrs. Field would take me in, but I have no right to make such a test of friendship as that.”

Rosita received her with open arms. She was looking very beautiful in flowing nainsook and lace, and exhaled a new and delicious perfume.

“Patita! Patita _mia_!” she purred. “_Pobrecita!_ Who would have thought that this would happen to my _lili_.” (Her accent was more pronounced than ever.)

“Can I stay with you until they arrest me, or this blows over?”

“You shall stay with me forever. ‘Are we not bound by the ties of childhood?’ That is a line in my new opera. Isn’t it funny? Ay, Patita, I am so sorry.” And she sent down for the trunk and removed Patience’s hat.

V

The next morning Patience was awakened by Rosita’s ecstatic voice. She opened her eyes to see her hostess standing at the bedside, the “Eye” in her hand, her face radiant.

“Patita!” she cried. “Read it—there is a whole column about you and me.”

Patience sat up in bed. “Is that why you were so glad to have me come here?” she asked.

“Patita! Do not look at me like that. Oh, if I could only look that way when I am stage mad!—but they always say I look like an angry baby. Of course, that was not the reason, Patita _mia_; but it is heavenly to be written about; do not you think so? And, of course, every new story about me—and such a sensation as this—means a perfect rush—”

“Give me the paper, please.”

She read the column while Rosita pattered back to her room and ate her dainty breakfast. Every move she had made on the day before was chronicled. On another page an editorial commented on the facts of her having visited a young man’s apartment, and finally taken refuge with the notorious Spanish woman.

She dressed herself hastily in her black garments, and locked and strapped her trunk. “I’ll go straight down and give myself up,” she thought. “It’s what I ought to have done yesterday. It’s eleven o’clock. I wish it were nine. Come.”

“Two gentlemen to see madame,” said the maid.

“What—who—what do they look like?”

“Like policemen, and yet not, madame.”

Patience gasped. Her knees gave way. Again she experienced that horrible feeling of disintegration. Her untasted breakfast stood on a table by the bed. She hastily drank a cup of black coffee, then walked steadily to the drawing-room.

“You have come for me?” she asked of the men.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Where am I to go?”

“To the jail at White Plains, Westchester County. You are arrested on charge of murder;” and he displayed the warrant.

Patience touched the bell button. “Take my trunk downstairs to the cab,” she said to the butler. Then she stepped to the portières and said good-bye to Rosita.

“She’s a cool one,” said one man to the other. “She done it.”

They went down in the elevator. As they left it, one of the men preceded her, the other followed close. Both entered the cab with her. She felt that they were regarding her with the frank curiosity of their kind, and kept her eyes fixed on the street with an expressionless stare. On the train they gave her a seat to herself, each taking the outside of another, one before and one behind. The passengers did not suspect the meaning of the party. She saw no one she knew. It was not the line that passed Peele Manor. For small mercies she was duly thankful. She guessed, however, that a meagre wiry black-eyed young man on the opposite side of the aisle, a man with a mean sharp common face, was Bart Tripp. He stared at her until she thought she should scream aloud, or, what would be almost as fatal, relax the proud calm of her face. It was with a sigh of profound relief that she stepped from the train at White Plains.

“We won’t meet no one,” said one of the detectives, as they entered the hack. “The sheriff’s got ready for you, I guess; he was wired yesterday; but we took good care not to say what train we was coming on, so there wouldn’t be no crowd. Feeling’s pretty high against you, I guess.”

As they drove through the ugly little town, Patience wondered why it was called White Plains. She had never seen a more undulating country. One or two of the environing hills were almost perpendicular. She also noticed with the minute observance of persons approaching crises, that the court house was a big handsome building of grey stone, and decided that she liked its architecture. The extension behind, one of the keepers told her, was the jail.

She was escorted before a police justice, who read the charge and explained such privileges as the law allowed her; then to the sheriff’s office, where she was registered. A crowd of men were in the office. They watched her with deep but respectful attention, as she answered the many questions put to her, but she managed to maintain her impassive demeanour. There was a buzz of excitement by this time all through the court house, and a little of it began to communicate itself to her. The few that are sustained through life’s trials by public interest are immeasurably fortunate. Before the sheriff—who could not have treated her with more consideration were she a dethroned queen—had finished, word had gone up into the court room, and a sudden trampling on the back stair indicated that the case in hand had lost its interest.

“That’s all,” said the sheriff, hurriedly. “Guess you’d better get along.—Tarbox,” he called.

A short stout man with a ruddy kind face came forward, offered Patience his arm, pushed his way through the crowd of men in the hall, and led her out of a back door and down a long yard beside the jail. At the end of the building he inserted a key in a lock.

“Go right up, ma’am,” he said politely, and she ascended a narrow flight of stairs. At its head he unlocked another door, and again they ascended, again a door was unlocked. Then Patience stepped into a long low clean well-lighted room. In the middle of its length was a stove over which a kettle boiled. On a bench sat four women. At each end and on one side were low grated windows. On the other side were a number of grated doors.

The man led Patience to the upper end of the room and swung open the door of the corner cell. It was a large cell, and had it not been for the low window with its iron bars would have been in no wise different from any room of simple comfort. A red carpet covered the floor. The bed in the corner was fresh and spotless. The rest of the furniture was new and convenient. There were even a large rocker and a student’s lamp. Over the door a curtain had been hung.

“Why!” exclaimed Patience, “are all prison cells like this?”

“No, ma’am, they’re not; but you see when we have a lady—which isn’t often—we do what we can to make her feel at home. We can’t afford to forget that this is the swell county of New York, you know. And of course you’re the finest person we’ve ever had. You’ll be treated well here,—you needn’t worry about that. I’ll order one of them girls outside to wait on you.”

“You are very good.” For the first time tears threatened.

“Well, I’ll try to be to you, ma’am. I’m John Tarbox, deputy sheriff, jailor, warden, and all the rest of it. I shall look after you. I’ll call twice a day, and anything you want you’ll get. If any of them hussies out there get to fighting just sing out the window, and I’ll lock them up.”

“You won’t lock me in?”

“Oh, no—there’s no need for that. This cell’s no stronger than the whole place. Well, make yourself comfortable. I’ll send over to the hotel to get a lunch for you. You must be hungry. Keep a stiff upper lip.”

Patience, when she was alone, drew a long breath and looked about her. The cheerful room, the unexpected kindness of the sheriffs, had raised her spirits. She took off her hat and tossed it on the bed.

“I may as well take the situation humourously,” she thought. “It helps more than anything else in life, I’ve discovered. This can’t last forever, and they can’t convict me. The serious people of this world have always struck me as being the most farcical. So here goes my ninth or tenth lesson in philosophy. Such is life.”

After luncheon Mag, the improvised maid, unpacked the trunk and shook out the pretty garments with many expressions of rapture. Patience gave her a red frock, and the girl was her slave thenceforth.

The afternoon hours revolved like a clogged wheel in a muddy stream. Excitement and novelty kept horror at bay, but she knew that it lurked, biding its time.

When night came she lit the lamp and tried to read a magazine that Tarbox had brought her; but it fell from her hands again and again. Her ears acted independently of her will. She had never known so terrible a stillness. The women had gone to bed at half past seven. No voice came from the distant street. The silence of eternity seemed to have descended upon those massive walls.

She was in jail!

She sprang to her feet, shuddering; then set her teeth and knelt by the window.

The heat waves of August hid the stars. Beyond the jail-yard was a mass of buildings, but no light in any window. Now and again a tramp came forth from his quarters on the ground floor and strolled about the yard, smoking his pipe; but he made no sound, and in his grey dilapidation looked like a parodied ghost. One of the women cursed loudly in her sleep, then collapsed into silence. An engine whistle shrieked, hilarious with freedom, but the rattle of the train was too distant to carry to straining ears.

She clutched the bars and shook them, then crouched, trembling and gasping. She dropped forward, resting her face on her arms. Her fine courage retreated, and mocked her. She had no wish to recall it. She longed passionately for the strong arm and the strong soul of a man. The independence and self-reliance which Circumstance had implanted, seemed to fade out of her; she was woman symbolised. No shipwrecked mariner was ever so desolate; for nothing in all life is so tragic as a woman forced to stand and do battle alone.

It was only when she arose, shivering and exhausted, and groped her way to bed, that it occurred to her that in those appalling moments she had not thought of Morgan Steele.

VI

In the morning she awoke with a start and a chill, and sprang out of bed, governed by an impulse to fling herself against the bars. But sleep had refreshed her, and she sat down and reasoned herself into courage and hope once more. The tussle with the world develops the iron in a woman’s blood, and Patience’s experiences of the last year and a half stood her in good stead now. When the girl came in to arrange her room and Tarbox brought her breakfast, the commonplace details completed her poise. The morning mail brought her letters from Steele and Hal.

DEAR GIRL [Steele’s ran],—You are blue and frightened and
lonesome. I wish I were there to cheer you up. But the first day
will be the worst. Remember that liberty is not far off. They
cannot convict you. I shall see you a few hours after you get
this.

M. S.

Oh, Patience dear [Hal had written], it has come! I wish I could
tell you how terribly I feel. But cheer up, old girl. It will
come out all right—I know it will. Latimer is hustling me out
of the country so I cannot appear as a witness—he says I would
do you more harm than good. But he will stay and see you
through. His attorney will call on you at once. I send you a box
to cheer you up a little. Do write to me, and always remember
that I am your sister

HAL.

The box arrived an hour later. It contained her silver toilet-set, and all the paraphernalia of a well-groomed and pretty woman, a bottle of cologne, a box of candy, eight French novels, a large box of handsome writing paper, and a bolt of black satin ribbon. Patience arranged the toilet-set on the bureau, halved the candy with the women, then sat down with a volume of Bourget. When Tarbox came up an hour later with a card she was still reading, and quite herself.

“Well,” he said, “I’m glad, I am, to see you so contented and so cool,” he added, mopping his brow. “This gent is below. He says he’s one of the lawyers in the case. I hoped you’d have Bourke. He’s the smartest man in Westchester County! Shall I tell him to come up, or would you like to see him down in the sheriffs office? Anything to please you.”

“Oh, here, by all means, if he doesn’t mind the stairs.”

Tarbox gazed at her admiringly. “Well, ma’am,” he ejaculated, “you are cool, but I for one believe it’s the coolness of innocence. You never did murder!” and he walked hastily away as if ashamed of his enthusiasm.

The lawyer’s card bore the name of Eugene A. Simms. He came up at once, a short thick-set man of thirty, with a square shrewd dogged face, a low brow, a snub nose, and black brilliant hard eyes. He came in with a bustling aggressive business-like air, scanning Patience as if he expected to find all the points of the case written upon her. Patience conceived an immediate and violent dislike to him.

“Will you sit down?” she said stiffly. “You are Mr. Burr’s lawyer, I believe.”

“Oh, no. That’s Bourke. He has charge of the case. I’m getting it up. I shall attend the coroner’s inquest and get the case in shape for Mr. Bourke to conduct.”

The blood rose to Patience’s hair and receded to her heart, which changed its time; but she asked no questions.

Simms leaned forward and fixed her with his unpleasant eyes. “Be perfectly frank with me,” he said, abruptly. “It’s best. We can’t work in the dark. We’ll pull you through; that’s what we are here for.”

“You take it for granted that I am guilty, I suppose?”

“I’m bound to say that all the revealed facts point that way. But of course that makes no difference to us. In fact, the harder a case is the better Bourke likes it—”

“Does Mr. Bourke believe that I am guilty?”

“I haven’t discussed it with him. He merely called me in, put the facts in my hands, and told me to go to work. I haven’t seen him since.”

“I will be perfectly frank with you,” said Patience, who had recovered herself. “I did not murder Mr. Peele. I am not wholly an idiot. If I had wished to poison him do you suppose I would have selected the drug I was known to administer?”

“You might have done it in a moment of passion. You had had a quarrel with him that night.”

“So much the more reason why I would not make such a fatal mistake. It is quite true that when in a passion I frequently expressed the wish to kill him. I will also tell you that one night when dropping the morphine I was seized with an uncontrollable impulse to give him a double dose. I dropped twenty-six drops. But fortunately it takes some time to do that, and meanwhile the impulse weakened, and I anathematised myself as a fool. No man nor woman of respectable brains ever made a mistake like that.”

“What is your own theory?”

“I hardly believe that he committed suicide. I think that he was wild with pain, and did not count the drops. He was probably half blind. On the other hand, he was capable of anything when in a rage.”

Mr. Simms scraped the floor with his boot-heels and beat a tattoo on his knee with his fingers. “Very well,” he said at last. “We take your word, of course. Now tell me as nearly as you can, every circumstance of that night, and give me a general idea of your relations with him and your reasons for leaving him. It is going to be one of the biggest fights this State has ever seen, and we want all the help you can give us.”

After he had gone Patience fell into a rage. Why had not Bourke come himself instead of sending his underling? If he hesitated to meet her after the abominable words he had used that second night at Peele Manor why had he undertaken her case at all? Her pride revolted at the thought of being defended by him, of owing her life to him. Once she was at the point of writing him a haughty note declining to accept his services; but Latimer Burr’s kindness deserved a more gracious acknowledgment. Again, she took up her pen to inform him that unless he apologised he must understand that she could have no relations with him; but her lively fear of making herself ridiculous came to the rescue, and she threw the pen aside. She resumed her novel, but it had lost its flavour. Bourke’s face was on every page. The interview in the elm walk wrote itself between the French lines; and the subsequent conversation in the library danced in letters of red. She hated Bourke the more bitterly because he had once been something more to her than any other man had been. She worked herself into such a bad humour that she almost snubbed Miss Merrien and a “Day” artist who came to interview and sketch her; and when Morgan Steele arrived, late in the afternoon, she was as perverse and unreasonable as if the widowed châtelaine of Peele Manor with the world at her feet. He understood her mood perfectly, although not the cause of it, and guyed her into good humour and her native sense of the ridiculous.

“Oh, I do like you,” she said. “You understand me so. Any other man would go off in a huff. And I won’t always be like this. I suppose I am nervous and upset and all the rest of it. Who wouldn’t be? And you know I am tremendously fond of you.”

“I know you are,” he said dryly. “As you will have ample time for reflection and meditation in the next few months, you will find out just how fond. But I am more glad than I can say to find you in this mood. It is as healthy as irritability in illness. I am even willing to be sacrificed.”

Patience put out her hand and patted his soft hair with a spasm of genuine affection. “You are the dearest boy in the world,” she said, “and I do love you. For all your uncanny wisdom and cold-blooded philosophy you are just a big lovable good-natured boy.”

“Just the kind of fellow a woman would like to have for a brother, in short.”

“No! No! I think it will be the most charming thing in the world to be married to you. You are such a compound. You will interest me forever. Most people are such bores after a little.”

“If you hadn’t started out in life with ideas upside-down, you would really love me in loving me no more than you do now. But ideals and the fixed idea have got to be worked out to the bitter end, as you are fond of remarking. In reality, happiness means a comfortable state of affairs between a man and a woman with plenty of brains, philosophy, and passion, who are wholly congenial in these three matters, and have chucked their illusions overboard. However, we won’t discuss the matter any further at present. How do you like being the sensation of the day?”

“Am I?”

“Are you? Every newspaper in town had a big story this morning, and of course the news has gone all over the country. Nothing else is to be heard in the trains or in Park Row. Oh, you will have plenty to sustain you. Lots of women would give their heads to be in your place.”

He dined with her and remained until eight o’clock. After he had gone, Patience sat for some time lost in a pleasurable reverie. He always left her in a good humour, and she unquestionably loved him. Few women could help loving Morgan Steele. She sighed once as she reflected that love was not the tremendous passion she had once imagined it to be; in all her dreams she had never pictured it as a restful and tranquillising element; but she conceded that Steele’s philosophy was correct.

And if he did not inspire her with a mightier passion it was her fault, not his. Miss Merrien had told her of one brilliant newspaper woman who had made a wilful idiot of herself on his behalf, and of a popular and gifted actress who at one time had taken to haunting the “Day” office, much to the enjoyment of his fellow editors and to his own futile wrath.

“No,” she thought, “I made a mistake once, and the shock was so great that it either benumbed or stunted me; or else the imaginary me was killed and the real developed. And after such a marriage I doubt if there are depths or heights left in one’s nature.”

Then her mind drifted to her predicament, and she wondered that the workings of fear had so wholly ceased. “I suppose it is because that man is going to defend me,” she said, ruthlessly, at last. “They say he could save a man that had been caught driving a knife into another man’s heart with a hammer; so it is quite natural that I should feel safe.”

VII

The next day a box of books and periodicals arrived from Steele. Rosita thoughtfully subscribed to a clipping bureau, and sent Patience daily a heavy package of “stories,” editorials, and telegrams of which she was the heroine. Patience became so bewildered over the contradictory descriptions of her personal appearance, the various versions of her marital drama, the hundred and one theories for the murder and defence, the ingenious analyses of her character, and the conflicting information regarding her girlhood, that she wondered sometimes if a person could come forth from the hands of so many creators and retain any original birthmarks. The “Eye” telegraphed to its correspondent in San Francisco to investigate her childhood, and the correspondent evidently interviewed all her old enemies. Her mother’s happy career was detailed with glee, and her own “sulky, moody, eccentric, murderous propensities” were brilliantly epitomised. The story was entitled “She Tried To Murder Her Mother,” and the “Eye’s” perfervid joy at this discovery throbbed in an editorial.

The story was copied the length and breadth of the United States; but it is only fair to add that Mr. Field’s eloquent leaders in her defence were as widely quoted.

Miss Beale came to see her at once, and after a few tears and an emphatic warning that “this terrible ordeal was the logical punishment of her blasphemy of and disrespect to the Lord,” announced her intention to sit by her during the trial, and let the jury see what a president of the W. C. T. U. thought of a prisoner whose life was in their hands. Patience told her that she loved her, and indeed was deeply grateful.

She spent her mornings reading the newspapers and attending to her correspondence. Tarbox always paid her a short call, and usually discoursed of Garan Bourke, whom he admired extravagantly. For a half hour before luncheon she permitted her fellow prisoners to sit before her in a wondering semi-circle while she manicured her nails and drew vivid word-pictures of the superior comforts incident upon the resignation of alcohol. With the exception of Mag they were weather-beaten creatures, with hollow eyes and weak pathetic mouths. They admired Patience superlatively. She was touched by their devotion, and occasionally read them the funny stories in the illustrated weeklies. They listened with open mouth and voiceless laughter, which, however, expressed itself vocally when the stories were told in Irish or German dialect. Patience gave them the papers, and they pasted the pictures on the walls of the corridor. Never before had the female ward of the White Plains Jail presented so festive an appearance. When the W. C. T. U. ladies came to sing to the prisoners they were inclined to be horrified; but Patience assured them that love of art, however manifested, was a hopeful sign.

She was very comfortable. She had saved a thousand dollars,—to be exact, Miss Merrien had saved them for her,—and she could command all the small luxuries of prison life. The ugly walls of her cell had been draped with red cloth, and a low bookcase was rapidly filling with the literature of the moment. She would never have consented to save those thousand dollars had not Miss Merrien represented that by judicious economy she could manage to spend every third year abroad. They did her good service now; she could accept great favours, but not small ones. Graceful tributes were to be expected by every charming woman; but if she had been dependent upon friends for the small comforts of her daily life she would have gone without them.

The W’s and Y’s of Mariaville forgave her, and brought her flowers, tracts, and spiritual admonitions. She received the former with gratitude and the latter with grace. Miss Merrien came as often as her duties permitted, and so did all the other newspaper women she had ever known or heard of. She was interviewed for nearly every newspaper in the Union, and in most cases treated with sensational kindness. Many strangers and a few old friends called.

Steele came regularly once a week. He dared not come oftener. The “lover in the case” was still a mystery, and it was as well that he should remain so. Five other newspaper men lived in his house; therefore Patience’s visit had told Bart Tripp nothing beyond the fact that she had indubitably called on a young man at his apartments at a quarter past nine in the morning.

But despite the fact that much of her time was occupied Patience grew very restless and nervous, after the novelty wore off. She spent hours pacing up and down the corridor, and every evening after dark Tarbox took her out in the jail-yard for a walk; but she had been used to long walks and hours in the open air all her life, and no woman ever lived less suited to routine and restraint of any sort. Fear did not return, although the coroner’s jury had pronounced her guilty and she had been indicted by the Grand Jury.

VIII

When the dark days of winter came little light struggled through the low grating, and she was obliged to keep her lamp burning most of the time. Steele sent her one with a rose-coloured shade which shed a cheerful light but hurt her eyes. When the storms began visitors came infrequently. Moreover, as public interest cannot be kept at concert pitch for any length of time, there was less and less about her in the newspapers. Steele, who understood the intimate relationship between public interest and the resignation of a prisoner, assured her that when her trial came off in March she would once more be the popular news of the day.