The Turn of the Balance. Brand Whitlock
I try to be confidential and all that–something comes between us, and I can't say it right. I can't talk to him as I could to any other man. I don't know why it is; I sometimes think that it's all my fault, that I haven't reared him right, that I haven't done my duty by him, and yet, God knows, I've tried!"
"Oh, papa," she had replied protestingly, "you mustn't blame yourself–you've done everything."
"He's really a good boy," Ward had gone on irrelevantly, ignoring himself in his large, unselfish thought for his son. "He's kind and generous, and he means well enough–and–and–I think he likes me."
This had touched her to the quick, and she had wept softly, stroking her father's cheek.
"Can't you–couldn't you–" he began. "Do you think you could talk to him, Bess?"
"I'll try," she said, and just then her brother had come into the room, rosy and happy and unsuspecting, and their confidences were at an end.
Ward did not realize, of course, that in asking Elizabeth to speak to Dick he was laying a heavy burden on her. She had promised her father in a kind of pity for him, a pity which sprang from her great love; but as she thought it over, wondering what she was to say, the ordeal grew greater and greater–greater than any she had ever had to encounter. For several days she was spared the necessity of redeeming her promise, for Dick was so little at home, and fortunately, as Elizabeth felt, when he was there the circumstances were not propitious. Then she kept putting it off, and putting it off; and the days went by. Her father had not recurred to the subject; having once opened his heart, he seemed suddenly to have closed it, even against her. His attitude was such that she felt she could not talk the matter over with him; if she could she might have asked him to give her back her promise. She could not talk it over with her mother, and she longed to talk it over with some one. One evening she had an impulse to tell Marriott about it. She knew that he could sympathize with her, and, what was more, she knew that he could sympathize with Dick, whereas she could not sympathize with Dick at all. Though she laughed, and sang, and read, and talked, and drove, and lived her customary life, the subject was always in her thoughts. Finally she discovered that she was adopting little subterfuges in order to evade it, and she became disgusted with herself. She had morbid fears that her character would give way under the strain. At night she lay awake waiting, as she knew her father must be waiting, for the ratchet of Dick's key in the night-latch.
In the many different ways she imagined herself approaching the subject with Dick, in the many different conversations she planned, she always found herself facing an impenetrable barrier–she did not know with what she was to reproach him, with what wrong she was to charge him. She conceived of the whole affair, as the Anglo-Saxon mind feels it must always deal with wrong, in the forensic form–indictment, trial, judgment, execution. But after all, what had Dick done? As she saw him coming and going through the house, at the table, or elsewhere, he was still the same Dick–and this perplexed her; for, looking at him through the medium of her talk with her father, Dick seemed to be something else than her brother; he seemed to have changed into something bad. Thus his misdeeds magnified themselves to her mind, and she thought of them instead of him, of the sin instead of the sinner.
That night Dick did not come at all. In the morning when her father appeared, Elizabeth saw that he was haggard and old. As he walked heavily toward his waiting carriage, her love and pity for him received a sudden impetus.
Dick did not return until the next evening, and the following morning he came down just as his father was leaving the house. If Ward heard his son's step on the stairs, he did not turn, but went on out, got into his brougham, and sank back wearily on its cushions. It happened that Elizabeth came into the hall at that moment; she saw her father, and she saw her brother coming down the stairs, dressed faultlessly in new clothes and smoking a cigarette. As Elizabeth saw him, so easy and unconcerned, her anger suddenly blazed out, her eyes flashed, and she took one quick step toward him. His fresh, ruddy face wore a smile, but as she confronted him and held out one arm in dramatic rigidity and pointed toward her father, Dick halted and his smile faded.
"Look at him!" Elizabeth said, pointing to her father. "Look at him! Do you know what you're doing?"
"Why, Bess"–Dick began, surprised.
"You're breaking his heart, that's what you're doing!"
She stood there, her eyes menacing, her face flushed, her arm extended. The carriage was rolling down the drive and her father had gone, but Elizabeth still had the vision of his bent frame as he got into his carriage.
"Did you see him?" she went on. "Did you see how he's aging, how much whiter his hair has grown in the last few weeks, how his figure has bent? You're killing him, that's what you're doing, killing him inch by inch. Why can't you do it quick, all at once, and be done with it? That would be kinder, more merciful!"
Her lip curled in sarcasm. Dick stood by the newel-post, his face white, his lips open as if to speak.
"You spend your days in idleness and your nights in dissipation. You won't work. You won't do anything. You are disgracing your family and your name. Can't you see it, or won't you?"
"Why, Bess," Dick began, "what's the–"
She looked at him a moment; he was like her mother, so good-natured, so slow to anger. His attitude, his expression, infuriated her; words seemed to have no effect, and in her fury she felt that she must make him see, that she must force him to realize what he was doing–force him to acknowledge his fault–force him to be good.
"Of course, you'd just stand there!" she said. "Why don't you say something? You know what you're doing–you know it better than I. I should think you'd be ashamed to look a sister in the face!"
Dick had seen Elizabeth angry before, but never quite like this. Slowly within him his own anger was mounting. What right, he thought, had she to take him thus to task–him, a man? He drew himself up, his face suddenly lost its pallor and a flush of scarlet mottled it. Strangely, in that same instant, Elizabeth's face became very white.
"Look here," he said, speaking in a heavy voice, "I don't want any more of this from you!"
For an instant there was something menacing in his manner, and then he walked away and left her.
Elizabeth stood a moment, trembling violently. He had gone into the dining-room; he was talking with his mother in low tones. Elizabeth went up the stairs to her room and closed the door, and then a great wave of moral sickness swept over her. She sat down, trying to compose herself, trying to still her nerves. The whole swift scene with her brother flashed before her in all its squalor. Had she acted well or rightly? Was her anger what is called a righteous indignation? She was sure that she had acted for the best, for her father in the first place, and for Dick more than all, but it was suddenly revealed to her that she had failed; she had not touched his heart at all; she had expended all her force, and it was utterly lost; she had failed–failed. This word repeated itself in her brain. She tried to think, but her brain was in turmoil; she could think but one thing–she had failed. She bent her head and wept.
XIV
Archie Koerner and Spud Healy and the others of the gang lay in prison for a week; each morning they were taken with other prisoners to the bull-pen, and there they would stand–for an hour, two hours, three hours–and look through the heavy wire screen at officers, lawyers, court attachés, witnesses and prosecutors who passed and repassed, peering at them as at caged animals, some curiously, some in hatred and revenge, some with fear, now and then one with pity. The session would end, they would be taken downstairs again–the police were not yet ready. But finally, one Saturday morning, they were taken into the court-room and arraigned. Bostwick, the judge, heard a part of the evidence; it was nearly noon, and court never sat on Saturday afternoons. Bostwick and the prosecutor both were very anxious to get away for their half-holiday. The session had been long and trying, the morning was sultry, a summer day had fallen unexpectedly in the midst of the spring. Bostwick was uncomfortable in his heavy clothes. He hurried the hearing and sent them all to the workhouse for thirty days, and fined them the costs. Marriott had realized the hopelessness of the case from the first; even he was glad the hearing was over, glad to have Archie off his mind.
The little trial was but a trivial