The Turn of the Balance. Brand Whitlock
say, Gusta," Archie said, "get me some cigarettes and send 'em down by Marriott."
"All right," she said. She was backing away.
"Good-by," he called. The turnkey was locking the door on him.
Outside, Gusta leaned a moment against the wall of the building, breathing in the outdoor air; presently she went on, but it was long before she could cleanse her mouth of the taste or her nostrils of the odor of the foul air of that prison in which her brother was locked.
XII
Gusta hurried out of the alley as fast as she could go; she wished to get away from the police station, and to forget the faces of those men in prison. It was now nine o'clock and the activity of the Market was waning; the few gardener's wagons that lingered with the remnants of their loads were but a suggestion of the hundreds of wagons that had packed the square before the dawn. Under the shed, a block long, a constable was offering at public vendue the household goods of some widow who had been evicted; the torn and rusty mattresses, broken chairs and an old bed were going for scarcely enough to pay the costs; a little, blue-bearded man, who had forced the sale, stood by sharply watching, ready to bid the things in himself if the dealers in second-hand furniture should not offer enough. Gusta hurried on, past butcher-shops, past small saloons, and she hurried faster because every one–the policemen, the second-hand dealers, the drivers of the market-wagons, the butchers in their blood-stained smock frocks–turned to look at her. It was three blocks to the Wayne Building, rearing its fifteen stories aloft from the roaring tide of business at its feet, and Gusta was glad to lose herself in the crowds that swarmed along the street.
The waiting-room of Marriott's office was filled; the door which was lettered with his name was closed, and Gusta had to wait. She joined the group that sat silent in the chairs along the walls, and watched the girl with the yellow hair at the typewriter. The girl's white fingers twinkled over the keys; the little bell tinkled and the girl snatched back the carriage of the machine with a swift grating sound; she wrote furiously, and Gusta was fascinated. She wished she might be a typewriter; it must be so much easier to sit here in this pleasant, sunlit office, high above the cares and turmoil of the world, and write on that beautiful machine; so much easier than to toil in a poor, unhappy home with a mother ill, a father maimed and racked by pains so that he was always morose and cross, a brother in jail, and always work–the thankless task of washing at a tub, of getting meals when there was little food to get them with. Gusta thought she might master the machine, but no–her heart sank–she could not spell nor understand all the long words the lawyers used, so that was hopeless.
After a while the door marked "Mr. Marriott" opened, and a man stepped out, a well-dressed man, with an air of prosperousness; he glanced at the yellow-haired typewriter as he passed out of the office. Marriott was standing in his door, looking at the line of waiting clients; his face was worn and tired. He seemed to hesitate an instant, then he nodded to one of the waiting women, and she rose and entered the private office. Just as Marriott was closing the door, he saw Gusta and smiled, and Gusta was cheered; it was the first friendly smile she had seen that day.
She had to wait two hours. The men did not detain Marriott long, but the women remained in his private office an interminable time, and whenever he opened his door to dismiss one of them, he took out his watch and looked at it. At last, however, when all had gone, he said:
"Well, Gusta, what can I do for you?" He dropped into his chair, swung round to face her, rested one elbow on the top of the desk and leaned his head in his hand.
"I came to see about Archie."
Marriott felt the deadly ennui that came over him at the thought of these petty criminal cases. The crimes were so small, so stupid, and so squalid, they had nothing to excuse them, not even the picturesque quality of adventure that by some sophistry might extenuate crimes of a more enterprising and dangerous class. They were so hopeless, too, and Marriott could hardly keep a straight face while he defended the perpetrators, and yet he allowed himself to be drawn into them; he found himself constantly pleading for some poor devil who had neither money to pay him nor the decency to thank him. Sometimes he wondered why he did it, and whenever he wondered he decided that he would never take another such case. Then the telephone would ring, and before he knew it he would be in police court making another poor devil's cause his own, while more important litigation must wait–for the petty criminals were always in urgent need; the law would not stay for them nor abide their convenience; with them it was imperative, implacable, insistent, as if to dress the balance for its delay and complaisance with its larger criminals. Marriott often thought it over, and he had thought enough to recognize in these poor law-breakers a certain essential innocence; they were so sublimely foolish, so illogical, they made such lavish sacrifice of all that was best in their natures; they lived so hardly, so desperately; they paid such tremendous prices and got so little; they were so unobservant, they learned nothing by experience. And yet with one another they were so kind, so considerate, so loyal, that it seemed hard to realize that they could be so unkind and so disloyal to the rest of mankind. In his instinctive love of human nature, their very hopelessness and helplessness appealed to him.
"Mr. Marriott, do you think he is guilty?" Gusta was asking.
"Guilty?" said Marriott, automatically repeating the word. "Guilty? What difference does that make?"
"Oh, Mr. Marriott!" the girl exclaimed, her blue eyes widening. "Surely, it makes all the difference in the world!"
"To you?"
"Why–yes–shouldn't it?"
"No, it shouldn't, Gusta, and what's more, it doesn't. And it doesn't to me, either. You don't want him sent to prison even if he is guilty, do you?"
"N–no," Gusta hesitated as she assented to the heresy.
"No, of course you don't. Because, Gusta, we know him–we know he's all right, don't we, no matter what he has done? Just as we know that we ourselves are all right when we do bad things–isn't that it?"
The girl was sitting with her yellow head bent; she was trying to think.
"But father would say–"
"Oh, yes," Marriott laughed, "father would say and grandfather would say, too–that's just the trouble. Father got his notions from the Old World, but we–Gusta, we know more than father or grandfather in this country."
Marriott enjoyed the discomfiture that Gusta plainly showed in her inability to understand in the least what he was saying. He felt a little mean about it, for he recognized that he was speaking for his own benefit rather than for hers; he had wished Elizabeth might be there to hear him.
"I don't know much about it, Mr. Marriott," Gusta said presently, "but when will you go to see him?"
"Oh, I'll try to get down this afternoon."
"All right. He told me to ask you please to bring him some cigarettes. Of course," she was going on in an apologetic tone, but Marriott cut her short:
"Oh, he wants cigarettes? Well, I'll take them to him."
Then they talked the futilities which were all such a case could inspire, and Marriott, looking at his watch, made Gusta feel that she should go. But the world wore a new aspect for her when she left Marriott's office. The spring sun was warm now, and she felt that she had the right to glory in it. The crowds in the streets seemed human and near, not far away and strange as they had been before; she felt that she had somehow been restored to her own rights in life. She had not understood Marriott's philosophy in the least, but she went away with the memory of his face and the memory of his smile; she could not realize her thoughts; it was a feeling more than anything else, but she knew that here was one man, at least, who believed in her brother, and it seemed that he was determined to believe in him no matter what the brother did; and he believed in her, too, and this was everything–this made the whole world glad, just as the sun made the whole world glad that morning.
But Gusta's heart sank at the thought of going home; there was nothing there now but discord and toil. The excitement, the change of the morning, the little interview with Marriott, had served to divert her, and now the thought of returning to that dull and wearisome routine was more than ever distasteful.