The Turn of the Balance
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It was evident that in this barren room, with its table and twelve chairs, its high blank walls and lofty ceiling, a mighty conflict had been waged. But now at the mystic hour when the tide of human forces is at its farthest ebb, the men had become exhausted, and they sat about in dejected attitudes of lassitude and weariness, their brains and souls benumbed. Young Menard had drawn his chair up to the table and thrown his head forward on his arms. He was wholly spent, his brow was bathed with clammy perspiration, and a nausea had seized him. His mind was too tired to work longer, and he was only irritably conscious of some unpleasant interruption when any one spoke. The old men had suffered greatly from the confinement; the long night in that miserable little room, without comforts, had accentuated their various diseases, all the latent pains and aches of age had been awakened, and now, at this low hour, they had lost the sense of time and place, the trial seemed far away in the past, there was no future, and they could but sit there and suffer dumbly. In one corner Osgood had tilted back a chair and fallen asleep. He sprawled there, his head fallen to one side, his wide-open mouth revealing his throat; his face was bathed in sweat, and he snored horribly.
In another corner sat Broadwell, his hands folded across his paunch. The flesh on his fat face had darkened, beneath his eyes were deep blue circles and he looked very old. He had been elected foreman, of course, and early in the evening had made long and solemn addresses to the jury, the same kind of addresses he delivered to his Bible-class–instructive, patronizing, every one of his arguments based on some hackneyed and obvious moral premise. Particularly was this the case, when, as had befallen early in the evening, they had discussed the death penalty. This subject roused him to a high degree of anger, and he raged about it, defended the practice of capital punishment, then, growing calm, spoke of it reverently and as if, indeed, it were a sacrament like baptism, or the Lord's Supper, quoting from the ninth chapter of Genesis. Old Reder had opposed him, and Broadwell had demanded of him to know what he would wish to have done to a man who killed his wife, for instance. Reder, quite insensible to the tribute implied in the suggestion that his action would furnish the standard for all action in such an emergency, had for a while maintained that he would not wish to have the man put to death, but Broadwell had insisted that he would, had quoted the ninth chapter of Genesis again, shaken his head, puffed, and angrily turned away from Reder. One by one he had beaten down the wills of the other jurors. He was tenacious and stubborn, and he had conquered them all–all but old Reder, who paced the floor, his hands in the side pockets of his short jacket. His shaggy white brows were knit in a permanent scowl, and now and then he gathered portions of his gray beard into his mouth and chewed savagely. He was the one, of course, who had been voting for acquittal; his was the hand that had written in that Continental script those dissenting words, "Not guilty."
When this became known, the others had gathered round him, trying to beat him down, and finally, giving way to anger, had shaken their fists in his face, reviled him, and called him ugly names. But all the while he had shaken his head and shouted:
"No! no! no! no!"
For a while he had argued against Archie's guilt, then against the methods of the police, at last, had begged for mercy on the boy. But this last appeal only made them angry.
"Mercy!" they said. "Did he show that old woman any mercy?"
"He isn't being triedt for der old woman," said Reder. "Dot's what the chudge saidt."
"Well, then. Did he show Kouka any mercy?"
"Bah!" shouted Reder. "Did Kouka show him any?"
"But Kouka"–they insisted.
"Ach! To hell mit all o' you!" cried Reder, and began to stalk the floor.
"The Dutch dog!" said one.
"The stubborn brute!" grumbled another. "Keeping us all up here, and making us lose our sleep!"
"I tell you," said another, "the jury system ought to be changed, so's a majority would rule!"
"It's no use, it's no use," Reder said in a high petulant voice; "you only make me vorse; you only make me vorse!" He held his hands up and shook them loosely, his fingers vibrating with great rapidity.
Then it was still for a long while–but in the dark and empty court-room, where the bailiff slept on one of the seats, sharp, unnatural, cracking noises were heard now and then; and from it emanated the strange weird influence of the night and darkness. Through the window they looked on the court-house yard lying cold and white under the blaze of the electric lamps. The wind swept down the bleak deserted street. Once they heard a policeman's whistle. Osgood was snoring loudly.
"Great God!" shouted Duncan irritably. "Can't some of you make him stop that?"
Church got up and gave Osgood's chair a rude kick.
"Huh?" Osgood started up, staring about wildly. Then he came to his senses, looked around, understood, fell back and went to sleep again.
And Reder tramped up and down, and Broadwell sat and glared at him, and the others waited. Reder was thinking of that time of his boyhood in Germany when the old peasant had been tried for setting the wood afire. The whole scene had come back to him, and he found a fascination in recalling one by one every detail, until each stood out vividly and distinctly in his mind. He paced on, until, after a while, Broadwell spoke again.
"Mr. Reder," he said, "I don't see how you can assume the position you do."
"It's no use, I tol' you; no use!"
"But look here," Broadwell insisted, getting up and trying to stop Reder. He took him by the lapel of his coat, forced him to stand an instant, and when Reder yielded, and stood still, the other jurors looked up with some hope.
"Tell me why–"
"I don't vant to have him killedt, I tol' you."
"But it isn't killing; it isn't the same."
"Bah! Nonsense!" roared Reder.
"It's the law."
"I don't gare for der law. We say he don't die–he don't die den, ain't it?"
"But it's the law!" protested Broadwell, thinking to add new stress to his argument by placing new stress on the word. "How can we do otherwise?"
"How? Chust by saying not guildy, dot's how."
"But how can we do that?"
"Chust do it, dot's how!"
"But it's the law,–the law!"
"Damn der law!" roared Reder, resuming his walk. And Broadwell stood looking at him, in horror, as if he had blasphemed.
There was silence again, save for Osgood's snoring. Then suddenly, no one knew how, the argument broke out anew.
"How do we know?" some one was saying. It was Grey; his conviction was shaken again.
"Know?" said Church. "Don't we know?"
"How do we?"
"Well–I don't know, only–"
"Yes, only."
"You ain't going back on us now, I hope?",
"No, but–" Grey shook his head.
"Well, you heard what the judge said."
They could always appeal to what the judge had said, as if he spoke with some authority that was above all others.
"What'd he say?" asked Grey.
"Why–he said–what was that there word now?"
"What word?"
"That word he used–refer–no that wasn't it, let's see."
"Infer?" suggested Broadwell.
"Sure! That's it! Infer! He said infer."
"By God! I guess that's right! He did say that."
"Course," Church went on triumphantly. "Infer! He said infer, and that means we can infer it, don't it?"
Just at that minute a pain, sharp and piercing, shot through Reder's back. He winced, made a wry face, stopped, stooped to a senile posture and clapped his hand to his back. His heart suddenly sank–there it was again, his old trouble. That meant bad things for him; now, as likely as not, he'd be laid up all winter; probably he couldn't sit on the jury any more; surely not if that old trouble came back on him. And how would he and his old wife get through the winter? Instantly he forgot everything else. What time was it, he wondered? This being up all night; he could not stand that.
As from a distance he heard the argument going on. At first he felt no relation to it, but this question must be settled some way. The pain had ceased, but it would come back again. He straightened up slowly, gradually, with extreme care, his hand poised in readiness to clap to his back again; He turned about by minute degrees and said:
"What's dot you saidt?"
"Why," began Church, but just then Reder winced again; clapped his hand to his back, doubled up, his face was contorted. He was evidently suffering tortures, but he made no outcry. Church sprang toward him.
"Get him some water,–here!"
Chisholm punched young Menard; he got up, and pushed the big white porcelain water pitcher across the table. But Reder waved it aside.
"Nefer mind," he said. "What was dot you vas sayin' a minute back?"
"Why, Mr. Reder, we said the judge said we could infer. Don't you remember?"
Church looked into his face hopefully, and waited.
Broadwell got slowly to his feet, and moved toward the little group deliberately, importantly, as if he alone could explain.
"Here, have my chair, Mr. Reder," said Broadwell with intense politeness.
"No, nefer mind," said Reder, afraid to move.
"What the judge said," Broadwell began, "was simply this. He said that if it was to be inferred from all the facts and circumstances adduced in evidence–"
"Besides," Church broke in, "that old woman said he was the fellow, down at the police station–it was in the paper, don't you remember?"
"Oh, but the judge said we wasn't to pay attention to anything like that," said Grey.
"Well, but he said we could infer, didn't he?"
"Just let me speak, please," insisted Broadwell, "His Honor went on to say–" he had just recalled that that was the proper way to speak of a judge, and then, the next instant, he remembered that it was also proper to call the judge "the Court," and he was anxious to use both of these phrases. "That is, the Court said–" And he explained the meaning of the word "infer."
Reder was listening attentively, his head bent, his hand resting on his hip. Broadwell talked on, in his low insinuating tone. Reder made no reply. After a while, Broadwell, his eyes narrowing, said softly, gently:
"Gentlemen, shall we not try another ballot?"
Menard got up wearily, his hat in readiness again. The jurors began rummaging among the scraps for ballots.
A street-car was just scraping around the curve at the corner, its wheels sending out a shrill, grinding noise.
"Great heavens!" exclaimed McCann, taking out his watch, "it's five thirty! Morning! We've been here all night!"
Outside the city was still wrapped in a soft thick darkness. Eades was sleeping soundly; his mother, when she kissed him good night, had patted his head, saying, "My dear, brave boy." Marriott had just sunk into a troubled doze. Glassford was snoring loudly in his warm chamber; Koerner and his wife were kneeling on their bed, their hands clasped, saying a prayer in German, and over in the jail, Archie was standing with his face pressed against the cold bars of his cell, looking out across the corridor, watching for the first streak of dawn.
XX
Marriott awoke with a start when the summons came. The jury had agreed; his heart leaped into his throat. What was the verdict? He had a confused sense of the time, the world outside was dark; he could have slept but a few minutes, surely it was not much later than midnight. He switched on the electric light, and looked at his watch. It was half-past six–morning. He dressed hurriedly, and went out.
The clammy air smote him coldly. The day was just breaking, a yellow haze above the roofs toward the east. He hurried along the damp pavement, an eager lonely figure in the silent streets; the light spread gradually, creeping as it were through the heavy air; a fog rolled over the pavements and the world was cold and gray. An early street-car went clanging past, filled with working-men. These working-men were happy; they smoked their pipes and joked–Marriott could hear them, and he thought it strange that men could be happy anywhere in the world that morning. But these fancies were not to be indulged with the leisurely sense in which he usually philosophized on that life of which he was so conscious; for the court-house loomed huge and portentous in the dawn. And suddenly the light that was slowly suffusing the ether seemed to pause; there was a hesitation almost perceptible to the eye in the descent of morning on the world; it was, to Marriott's imagination, exactly, as if the sun had suddenly concluded to shine no longer on the just and the unjust alike, but would await the issue then yeaning beneath that brooding dome, and see whether men would do justice in the world. Somewhere, Marriott knew, in that gray and smoky pile, the fate was waiting, biding its time. What would it be?
He had remained at the court-house the night before with Pennell and Lamborn, several of the court officials and attachés, and a dwindling group of the morbid and the curious. An immediate agreement had been expected, allowing, of course, for the delay necessary to a preservation of the decencies, but as the hours dragged by, Marriott's hopes had risen; each moment increased the chance of an acquittal, of a disagreement, or of some verdict not so tragic as the one the State had striven for. His heart had grown lighter. But by midnight he was wholly exhausted. Intelligence, which knows no walls, had somehow stolen out from the jury room; there was some eccentricity in this mighty machine of man, and no immediate agreement was to be expected. And then Marriott had left, trusting Pennell to remain and represent the defendant at the announcement of the verdict. It was about the only duty he felt he could trust to Pennell. And now, hurrying into the court-house, his hopes rose once more.
Something after all of the effect of custom was apparent in the atmosphere of the court-room, where the tribunal was convened thus so much earlier than its wonted hour. The room was strange and unreal, haunted in this early morning gloom by the ghosts of the protagonists who had stalked through it. Glassford was already on the bench, his eyes swollen, his cheeks puffed. Lamborn was there, in the same clothes he had worn the day before,–it was plain that he had not had them off at all. And there, already in the box, sat the jury, blear-eyed, unkempt, disheveled, demoralized, with traces yet of anger, hatred and the fury of their combat in their faces, a caricature of that majesty with which it is to be presumed this institution reaches the solemn conclusions of the law. And there, at the table, still strewn with the papers that were the debris of the conflict, sat Archie, the sorry subject over which men had been for days quarreling and haggling, harrying and worrying him like a hunted thing. He sat immobile, gazing through the eastern windows at the waiting and inscrutable dawn of a day swollen with such tragic possibilities for him.
Glassford looked sleepily at Marriott as he burst through the doors. His glance indicated relief; he was glad the conclusion had been reached at this early hour, even if it had haled him from his warm bed; he was glad to be able thus to trick the crowd and have the law discharge its solemn function before the crowd came to view it.
"Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "have you agreed upon a verdict?"
"We have, your Honor." Broadwell was rising in his place.
Glassford nodded to the clerk, who walked across the floor, his heels striking out sharp sounds. Marriott had paused at the little gate in the railing. He clutched at it, and supported himself in the weakness that suddenly overwhelmed him. It seemed to him that the clerk took a whole age in crossing that floor. He waited. Broadwell had handed the clerk a folded document. The clerk took it and opened it; it fluttered in his fingers. Now he hastily cast his eye over it, and Marriott thought: "There still is hope–hope in each infinitesimal portion of a second as he reads it–" for he was reading now:
"'We, the jury, impaneled and sworn well and truly to try and true deliverance make in the cause wherein the State is plaintiff and Archie Koerner is defendant, for verdict do find and say that we find the defendant–'" Marriott gasped. The clerk read on:
"'–guilty as charged in the indictment'."
"Gentlemen of the jury," said the clerk, folding the paper in his formal manner, "is this your verdict?"
"It is," said Broadwell.
"So say you all."
There was silence. After a while Marriott controlled himself and said:
"Your Honor, we demand a poll of the jury."
Slowly, one after another, the clerk called the names, and one after another the jurors rose.
"Is this your verdict?" asked the clerk.
"Perhaps," thought Marriott as each one rose, "perhaps even now, one will relent, one will change–one–"
"It is," each man answered.
Then Glassford was speaking again–the everlasting formalities, mocking the very sense of things, thanking the jury, congratulating them, discharging them.
And Archie Koerner sat there, never moving, looking through the eastern window–but now at the dawn no more, for the window was black to his eyes and the light had gone out of the world.
XXI
Archie sat by the trial table and looked out the window toward the east. The window from being black became gray again–gray clouds, a scumbled atmosphere of gray. When the jury came out of the box, after it was all over, a young clerk in the court-house rushed up to Menard and wrung his hand in enthusiastic, hysterical congratulation, as if Menard in the face of heavy opposition had done some brave and noble deed. And Archie wondered what he had ever done to this young clerk that he should so have it in for him. Then Marriott was at his side again, but he said nothing; he only took his hand.
"Well," thought Archie, "there is one man left in the world who hasn't got it in for me." And yet there actually seemed to be Danner. For Danner bent over and whispered:
"Whenever you're ready, Dutch, we'll go back. Of course–no particular hurry, but when you're ready."
Archie wondered what Danner was up to now; usually he ordered them about like brutes, with curses.
"You'll be wanting a bite of breakfast," Danner was saying.
Breakfast! The word was strange. Were people still eating breakfast in this world, just as if nothing had happened, just as if things were as they used to be–before–before–what? Before he shot Kouka? No, there was nothing unusual about that; he didn't care anything about Kouka. Before the penitentiary and the bull rings? Before the first time in the workhouse, when that break, that lapse, came into his life? But breakfast–they would be carrying the little pans about in the jail just now, and that brought the odor of coffee to his memory. Coffee would not be a bad thing.
"Any time," he said to Danner.
Then they got up and walked away, through the gray morning.
In the jail, Danner instantly unlocked the handcuffs, and as he jostled Archie a little in opening the door, he said:
"Oh, excuse me, Dutch."
What had got into Danner, anyway? Inside he wondered more. Danner said:
"You needn't lock this morning; you can stay in the corridor, and I'll have your breakfast sent in to you in a moment."
Then Danner put up his big hand and whispered in Archie's ear:
"I'll see the cook and get her to sneak in a little cream and sugar for your coffee."
Archie could not understand this, nor had he then time to wonder about it, for he was being turned into the prison, and there, he knew, his companions were waiting to know the news. Most of them were in their cells. Two of them, the English thief and Mosey–he could tell it was Mosey by the striped sweater–were standing in the far end of the corridor, but they did not even look. He caught a snatch of their conversation.
"What was the rap, the dip?"
"No, penny weightin'."
They appeared to be talking indifferently and were no more curious–so one would say–than they would have been if some dinge had been vagged. And yet Archie knew that every motion, every word, every gesture of his was important. He tried to walk just as he had always walked. They waited till Archie was at his cell door, and then some one called in a tone of suspense that could be withheld no longer:
"What's the word, Archie?"
"Touched off," he called, loud enough for them all to hear. He spoke the words carelessly, almost casually, with great nonchalance. There was silence, sinister and profound. Then gradually the conversation was resumed between cell and cell; they were all calling out to him, all straining to be cheerful and encouraging.
"That mouthpiece of yours 'll spring you yet," some one said, "down below."
Archie listened to their attempts to cheer him, all pathetic enough, until presently the English thief passed his door, and said in a low voice:
"Be gime, me boy."
That was it! Be game! From this on, that must be his ideal of conduct. He knew how they would inquire, how some day Mason and old Dillon, how Gibbs and all the guns and yeggs would ask about this, how the old gang would ask about it–he must be game. He had made, he thought, a fair beginning.
Danner brought the breakfast himself, and good as his word he had got the cook to put some cream and sugar in his coffee. Not only this, but the cook had boiled him two eggs–and he hadn't eaten eggs in months. The last time, he recalled, was when Curly had boiled some in a can–had Curly, over in another part of the prison, been told?
Archie thanked Danner and told him to thank the cook. And yet a wonder possessed him. He had never known kindness in a prison before, save among the prisoners themselves, and often they were cruel and mean to each other–like the rats and mission-stiffs who were always snitching and having them chalked and stood out. Here in this jail, he had never beheld any kindness, for notwithstanding the fact that nearly every one there was detained for a trial which was to establish his guilt or innocence, and the law had a theory that every one was to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, the sheriff and the jailers treated them all as if they were guilty, and as if it was their duty to assist in the punishment. But here was a man who had been declared guilty of a heinous crime, and was to receive the worst punishment man could bestow, and yet, suddenly, he was receiving every kindness, almost the first he had ever known, at least since he had grown up. Having done all they could to hurry him out of the world, men suddenly apologized by showering him with attention while he remained.
When he ate his breakfast Archie felt better,–Mr. Marriott would do something, he was sure; it was not possible that this thing could happen to him.
"Any of youse got the makin's?" he called.
Instantly, all down the corridor on both sides, the cells' voices rang:
"Here! Here! Archie! Here, have mine!"
"Mr. Marriott gave me a whole box yesterday, but I smoked 'em all up in the night!" he said.
XXII
Those persons in the community who called themselves the good were gratified by Archie's conviction, and there were at once editorials and even sermons to express this gratification. Lorenzo Edwards of the Courier, who hated Marriott because he had borrowed ten dollars of Marriott some years before and had never paid it back, wrote an unctuous and hypocritical editorial in which he condemned Marriott for carrying the case up, and deprecated the law's delay. The Post--although Archie had not talked to a reporter–printed interviews with him, and as a final stroke of enterprise, engaged Doctor Tyler Tilson, the specialist, to examine Archie for stigmata of degeneracy. Tilson went to jail, taking with him tape and calipers and other instruments, and after measuring Archie and percussing him, and lighting matches before his eyes, and having him walk blindfolded, and pricking him with pins, wrote a profound article for the Post from the standpoint of criminology, in which he repeated many scientific phrases, and used the word "environment," many times, and concluded that Archie had the homicidal tendency strongly developed.