The Turn of the Balance

X

Though Elizabeth, as long as Eades and Modderwell were there, had chosen to satirize her predicament, and had experienced the pleasure of shocking them by the decision she reached, she found when they had gone that night, and she was alone in her room, that it was no decision at all. The situation presented itself in all seriousness, and she found that she must deal with it, not in any whimsical spirit, but in sober earnestness. She found it to be a real problem, incapable of isolation from those artificialities which were all that made it a problem. She had found it easy and simple enough, and even proper and respectable to visit the poor in their homes, but when she contemplated visiting them in the prisons which seemed made for them alone, and were too often so much better than their homes, obstacles at once arose. As she more accurately imagined these obstacles, they became formidable. She sat by the table in her room, under the reading-lamp that stood among the books she kept beside her, and determined to think it out. She made elaborate preparations, deciding to marshal all the arguments and then make deductions and comparisons, and thus, by a process almost mathematical, determine what to do. But she never got beyond the preparations; her mind worked, after all, intuitively, she felt rather than thought; she imagined herself, in the morning, going to the police station, confronting the officers, finally, perhaps, seeing Gusta. She saw clearly what her family, her friends, her set, the people she knew, would say–how horrified they would be, how they would judge and condemn her. Her mother, Eades and Modderwell accurately represented the world she knew. And the newspapers, in their eagerness for every detail touching the tragedy, however remotely, would publish the fact! "This morning Miss Elizabeth Ward, daughter of Stephen Ward, the broker, called on the Koerner girl. Fashionably dressed–" She could already see the cold black types! It was impossible, unheard of. Gusta had no right–ah, Gusta! She saw the girl's face, pretty as ever, but sad now, and stained by tears, pleading for human companionship and sympathy. She remembered how Gusta had served her almost slavishly, how she had sat up at night for her, and helped her at her toilet, sending delicious little thrills through her by the magnetic touch of her soft fingers. If she should send for Gusta, how quickly she would come, though she had to crawl!

And what, after all, was it that made it hard? What had decreed that she, one girl, should not go to see another girl who was in trouble? Such a natural human action was dictated by the ethics and by the religion of her kind and by all the teachings of her church, and yet, when it was proposed to practise these precepts, she found them treated cynically, as if they were of no worth or meaning. That very evening the representatives of the law and of theology had urged against it!

At breakfast her mother sat at table with her. Mrs. Ward had breakfasted an hour earlier with her husband, but she had a kindly way of following the members of her family one after another to the table, and of entertaining them while they ate. She had told her husband of Elizabeth's contemplated visit to the prison, and then had decided to say nothing of it to Elizabeth, in the hope that the whim would have passed with the night. But Mrs. Ward could not long keep anything in her heart, and she was presently saying:

"I hope, dear, that you have given up that notion of going to see Gusta. I hope," she quickly added, putting it in the way she wished she had put it at first, "that you see your duty more clearly this morning."

"No," said Elizabeth, idly tilting a china cup in her fingers, and allowing the light that came through the tall, broad windows to fill it with the golden luminosity of the sun, "I don't see it clearly at all. I wish I did."

"Don't you think, dear, that you allow yourself to grow morbid, pondering over your duty so much?"

"I don't think I'm morbid." She would as readily have admitted that she was superstitious as that she was morbid.

"You have–what kind of conscience was it that Mr. Parrish was talking about the other night?" Mrs. Ward knitted the brows that life had marked so lightly.

"New England, I suppose," Elizabeth answered wearily. "But I have no New England conscience, mama. I have very little conscience at all, and as for my duty, I almost never do it. I am perfectly aware that if I did my duty I should lead an entirely different life; but I don't; I go on weakly, day after day, year after year, leading a perfectly useless existence, surrounded by wholly artificial duties, and now these same artificial duties keep me from performing my real duty–which, just now, seems to me to go and see poor little Gusta."

Mrs. Ward was more disturbed, now that her daughter saw her duty, than she had been a moment before, when she had declared she could not see it.

"I do wish you could be like other girls," she said, speaking her thought as her habit was.

"I am," said Elizabeth, "am I not?"

"Well," Mrs. Ward qualified.

"In all except one thing."

Mrs. Ward looked her question.

"I'm not getting married very fast."

"No," said Mrs. Ward.

Elizabeth laughed for the first time that morning.

"You dear little mother, I really believe you're anxious to get rid of me!"

"Why, Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, lifting her eyes and then lowering them suddenly, in her reproach. "How can you say such a thing!"

"But never mind," Elizabeth went on:

She smiled as she finished her quotation, and then suddenly sobered as she said:

"I'm twenty-seven already!"

"Who wrote that?" asked Mrs. Ward.

"Alma-Tadema."

"Oh! I thought Mr. Marriott might have done it. It's certainly very silly."

Nora had brought her breakfast, and the action recalled Gusta to Elizabeth.

"What did papa say–about my going to the prison?"

"He said," Mrs. Ward began gladly, "that, of course, we all felt very sorry for Gusta, but that you couldn't go there. He said it would be absurd; that you don't understand." Mrs. Ward was silent for a moment, knowing how much greater the father's influence was than her own. She was glad that Elizabeth seemed altogether docile and practicable this morning.

"There's a good girl now," Mrs. Ward added in the hope of pressing her advantage home.

Elizabeth gave a little start of irritability.

"I wish you wouldn't talk to me in that way, mama. I'm not a child."

"But surely your father knows best, dear," the mother insisted, "more than–we do."

"Not necessarily," said Elizabeth.

"Why! How can you say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, who bowed to all authority as a part of her religion.

"Papa takes merely the conventional view," Elizabeth went on, "and the conventional view is taken without thought."

"But–surely–" Mrs. Ward stammered, in the impotence of one who, easily convinced without reasons, has no reasons at command–"surely–you heard what Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades said."

"Their view is conventional," said Elizabeth, "and proper." She gave a little curl of her lip as she spoke this last word.

"Well, I'm sure, dear, that we all wish to be proper, and Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades–"

"Oh! Don't quote those two men to me! Two such prigs, such Pharisees, I never saw!"

Mrs. Ward looked at her daughter in a new horror. "Why, Elizabeth! I'm surprised–I thought that Mr. Eades especially–"

"Well, don't you think Mr. Eades especially at all! He's not especially; he thinks he is, no doubt, and so does everybody else, but they have no right to, and hereafter Mr. Eades can't come here–that's all!" Her eyes were flashing.

Mrs. Ward ventured no further just then, but presently resumed:

"Think what people would say!"

"Oh, mother! Please don't use that argument. I have often told you that I don't care at all what people say."

"I only wish you cared more." She looked at Elizabeth helplessly a moment and then broke out with what she had been tempted all along to say.

"It's that Gordon Marriott! That's what it is! He has such strange, wild notions. He defends these criminals, it seems. I don't see how he can approve their actions the way he does."

"Why, mother!" said Elizabeth. "How you talk! You might think I was a little child with no mind of my own. And besides, Gordon does not approve of their actions, he disapproves of their actions, but he recognizes them as people, as human beings, just like us–"

"Just like us!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, withdrawing herself wholly from any contact with the mere suggestion. "Just like us, indeed! Well, I'd have him know they're not like us, at all!"

Elizabeth saw how hopeless it was to try to make her mother understand Marriott's attitude, especially when she found it difficult to understand it herself.

"Just like us, indeed!" Mrs. Ward repeated. "You are certainly the most astonishing girl."

"What's the excitement?"

It was Dick, just entering the room. He was clean-shaved, and glowing from his plunge, his face ruddy and his eyes bright. He was good-humored that morning, for he had had nearly five hours of sleep. His mother poured his coffee and he began eating his breakfast.

"What's the matter, Bess?" he asked, seizing the paper his father had laid aside, and glancing at it in a man's ability to read and converse with women at the same time.

"Why, she threatens to go to the jail," Mrs. Ward hastened to reply, in her eagerness for a partizan in her cause. "And her father and Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades have all advised her that it would be improper–to say nothing of my own wishes in the matter."

Dick, to his mother's disappointment, only laughed.

"What do you want to go there for? Some of your friends been run in?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth calmly.

"That's too bad! Why don't you have Eades let 'em out,–you certainly have a swell pull with him."

"You have just had Mr. Eades's opinion from mama."

"Who is your friend?"

"Gusta."

Dick's face was suddenly swept with scarlet, and he started–looked up, then hastily raised his coffee-cup, drained its last drop, flung his napkin on his plate, and said:

"Oh, that girl that used to work for us?"

"Yes."

"Well, mother's right."

Mrs. Ward looked her gratitude.

"Of course, you can't go."

"I can't?"

He had risen from the table, and Elizabeth's tone impressed him.

"Look here," he said peremptorily. "You just can't go there, that's all there is about it!"

"Why not?"

"Because you can't. It wouldn't do, it wouldn't be the thing; you ought to know that."

"But why?" Elizabeth persisted. "I want a reason."

"You don't mean to say you seriously consider it?" asked Dick in real alarm.

"Yes, I do."

Dick suddenly grew excited, his eyes flamed, and he was very red.

"Look here, Bess," he said. "You just can't, that's all."

"Can't I?" she said, and she gave a little laugh. It was not her usual pleasant laugh.

"No, you can't." He spoke more than insistently, he spoke angrily. He snatched out his thin gold watch and glanced at it. "I've not got time to discuss this thing. You just can't go–that's all there is to it."

Elizabeth rose from the table calmly, went out of the room, and Dick, after a hesitant moment, ran after her.

"Bess! Bess!"

She stopped.

"See here, Bess, you must not go there to see that girl. I'm surprised! She isn't the sort, you understand! You don't know what you're doing. Now look here–wait a minute!" He caught her by the arm. "I tell you it's not the thing, you mustn't!"

He was quite beside himself.

"You seem greatly excited," she said.

He made a great effort, controlled himself, and, still holding her, began to plead.

"Please don't go, Bess!" he said. "Please don't!"

"But why–why?" she insisted.

"Because I say so."

"Humph!"

"Because I ask it. Please don't; do it for me, this once. You'll be sorry if you do. Please don't go!"

His eyes were full of the plea he was incoherently stammering. He was greatly moved, greatly agitated.

"Why, Dick," she said, "what is the matter with you? You seem to take this trifle very much to heart. You seem to have some special interest, some deep reason. I wish you'd tell me what it is. Why shouldn't I go to see poor Gusta? She's in trouble–she was always good to me."

There was a sudden strange wild expression in his face, his lips were slightly parted. The moments were flying, and he must be off.

"Oh, Bess," he said, "for God's sake, don't go!"

He implored her in his look, then snatching out his watch ran to the hall, seized his hat and top-coat, and went out, flinging on his coat as he ran, and leaving the door flying wide behind him. Elizabeth stood looking after him. When she turned, her mother was in the room.

"What can be the matter with Dick?" said Elizabeth. "I never saw him so excited before. He seemed–" She paused, and bit her lip.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Ward calmly, "you see now, I hope, just how the world regards such a wild action. It was his love and respect for his sister, of course."

XI

"No, don't say anything more. I've thought it all out; my duty's clear now, I must go." Elizabeth laid her hand on her father's shoulder, and though he turned from the great desk at which he sat in his private office, he hesitated. "Come on."

"That conscience of yours, Bess–" he began, drawing down the lid of his desk.

"Yes, I know, but I can't help it."

"How did you decide at last to go?" asked Ward, as they walked rapidly along in the crowded street.

"Well, it tortured me–I couldn't decide. It seemed so difficult,–every one–mama, our dear Modderwell, Mr. Eades, Dick–he nearly lost his reason, and he did lose his temper–thought it impossible. But at last I decided–"

"Yes?"

"–just to go."

Elizabeth gave a little laugh at this not very illuminating explanation.

"I didn't know what the proprieties were," she went on. "Our little code had not provided rules–what to wear, the chaperonage, and all that, you know. And then,"–she abandoned her irony,–"I thought of you."