"'L right," snapped Mr. Hurd. "Go 'n' see her. If she'll talk, get an
interview. If she won't, describe her and her cell. Tell how she looks
and what she wears--from the amount of hair over her ears to the kind
of polish on her shoes. Leave mawkish sympathy out of it. See her as
she is--a murderess whose trial is going to make American justice look
like a hole in a doughnut."
I went back to my desk thinking of his words. While I was pinning on
my hat the door of Mr. Hurd's room opened and shut, and his assistant,
Godfrey Morris, came and stood beside me.
"I don't want to butt in," he began, "but--I hope you're going on this
assignment with an open mind, Miss Iverson."
That hurt me. For some reason it always hurt me surprisingly to have
Godfrey Morris show any lack of faith in me in any way.
"I told Mr. Hurd," I answered, with dignity, "that I think Mrs.
Brandow is innocent. But my opinion won't--"
"I know." Mr. Morris's ability to interrupt a speaker without seeming
rude was one of his special gifts. "Hurd thinks she's guilty," he went
on. "I think she's innocent. What I hope you'll do is to forget what
any one thinks. Go to the woman without prejudice one way or the
other. Write of her as you find her."
"That," I said, "is precisely what I intend to do."
"Good!" exclaimed Morris. "I was afraid that what Hurd said might send
you out with the wrong notion."
He strolled with me toward the elevator. "I never knew a case where
the evidence for and against a prisoner was so evenly balanced," he
mused. "I'm for her simply because I can't believe that a woman with
her brains and courage would commit such a crime. She's too good a
sport! By Jove, the way she went through that seven-hour session on
the witness-stand the other day ..." He checked himself. "Oh, well,"
he ended, easily, "I'm not her advocate. She may be fooling us all.
Good-by. Get a good story."
"I'll make her confess to me," I remarked, cheerfully, at the elevator
door. "Then we'll suppress the confession!"
"We'll give her a square deal, anyway," he called, as the elevator
began to descend.
It was easy to run out to Fairview, the scene of the trial, easy to
get the letter from Mr. Davies, and easiest of all to interview the
friendly warden of the big prison and send the note to Mrs. Brandow in
her cell when she had returned from court. After that the broad
highway of duty was no longer oiled. Very courteously, but very
firmly, too, Mrs. Brandow declined to see me. Many messages passed
between us before I was admitted to her presence on the distinct
understanding that I was not to ask her questions, that I was not to
quote anything she might say; that, in short, I was to confine the
drippings of my gifted pen to a description of her environment and of
herself. This was not a heartening task. Yet when the iron door of
Number 46 on the women's tier of the prison had swung back to admit me
my first glance at the prisoner and her background showed me that Mr.
Hurd would have at least one "feature" for the _Searchlight_ the next
morning.
On either side of Number 46 were typical white-painted and
carbolic-scented cells--one occupied by an intoxicated woman who
snored raucously on her narrow cot, the other by a wretched hag who
clung to the bars of her door with filthy fingers and leered at me as
I passed. Between the two was a spot as out of place in those
surroundings as a flower-bed would seem on the stern brow of an Alpine
glacier.
Mrs. Brandow, the newspapers had told the world, was not only a
beautiful woman, but a woman who loved beauty. She had spent six
months in Fairview awaiting her trial. All the members of the "good
family" Mr. Hurd had mentioned had died young--probably as a reward of
their excellence. She had no intimate friends--her husband, it was
said, had made friendships impossible for her. Nevertheless, first
with one trifle, then with another, brought to her by the devoted maid
who had been with her for years, she had made herself a home in her
prison.
Tacked on the wall, facing her small, white-painted iron bed, was a
large piece of old Java print, its colors dimmed by time to dull
browns and blues. On the bed itself was a cover of blue linen, and the
cement floor was partly concealed by a Chinese rug whose rich tones
harmonized with those of the print. Over the bed hung a fine copy of a
Hobbema, in which two lines of trees stretched on and on toward a
vague, far-distant horizon. Near this a large framed print showed a
great stretch of Scotch moors and wide, empty skies. A few
silver-backed toilet articles lay on a small glass-covered hospital
table. Against this unlooked-for background the suspected murderess,
immaculate in white linen tailor-made garments, sat on a
white-enameled stool, peacefully sewing a button on a canvas shoe.
The whole effect was so unprecedented, even to me after a year of the
varied experiences which come to a New York reporter, that my sense of
the woman's situation was wiped out by the tableau she made. Without
intending to smile at all, I smiled widely as I entered and held out
my hand; and Mrs. Brandow, who had risen to receive me, sent back an
answering smile, cool, worldly, and understanding.
"It _is_ a cozy domestic scene, isn't it?" she asked, lightly, reading
my thoughts, "but on too small a scale. We're a trifle cramped. Take
the stool. I will sit on the bed."
She moved the stool an inch, with a hospitable gesture which almost
created an effect of space, and sat down opposite me, taking me in
from head to foot with one straight look from black eyes in whose
depths lurked an odd sparkle.
"You won't mind if I finish this?" she asked, as she picked up her
needle. "I have only two more buttons."
I reassured her, and she bit off a piece of cotton and rethreaded her
needle expertly.
"They won't let me have a pair of scissors," she explained, as she
began to sew. "It's a wonder they lend me a needle. They tell me it's
a special privilege. Once a week the guard brings it to me at this
hour, and the same evening he retrieves it with a long sigh of relief.
He is afraid I will swallow it and cheat the electric chair. He
needn't be. It isn't the method I should choose."
Her voice was a soft and warm contralto, whose vibrations seemed to
linger in the air when she had ceased to speak. Her manner was
indescribably matter-of-fact. She gave a vigorous pull to the button
she had sewed on and satisfied herself of its strength. Then she bit
the thread again and began to secure the last button, incidentally
chatting on, as she might have chatted to a friend over a cup of tea.
Very simply and easily, because it was my cue, but even more because
I was immensely interested, I fell into her mood. We talked a long
time and of many things. She asked about my work, and I gave her some
details of its amusing side. She spoke of the books she had read and
was reading, of places she had visited, and, in much the same tone, of
her nights in prison, made hideous by her neighbors in near-by cells.
As she talked, two dominating impressions strengthened in me
momentarily: she was the most immaculate human being I had ever seen,
and the most perfectly poised.
When she had sewed on the last button, fastening the thread with
workman-like deftness, she opened a box of pipe-clay and whitened both
shoes with a moist sponge.
"I don't quite know why I do all this," she murmured, casually. "I
suppose it's the force of habit. It's surprising how some habits last
and others fall away. The only wish I have now is that I and my
surroundings may remain decently clean."
"May I quote that?" I asked, tentatively--"that, and what you have
told me about the books you are reading?"
Her expression of indifferent tolerance changed. She regarded me with
narrowed eyes under drawn, black brows. "No," she said, curtly.
"You'll be good enough to keep to your bond. You agreed not to repeat
a word I said."
I rose to go. "And I won't," I told her, "naturally. But I hoped you
had changed your mind."
She rose also, the slight, ironic smile again playing about her lips.
"No," she answered, in a gentler tone, "the agreement holds. But I
don't wonder I misled you! I've prattled like a school-girl, and"--the
smile subtly changed its character--"do you know, I've rather enjoyed
it. I haven't talked to any one for months but my maid and my lawyer.
Mary's chat is punctuated by sobs. I'm like a freshly watered garden
when she ends her weekly visits. And the charms of Mr. Davies's
conversation leave me cold. So this has been"--she hesitated--"a
pleasure," she ended.
We shook hands again. "Thank you," I said, "and good-by. I hope"--In
my turn I hesitated an instant, seeking the right words. The odd
sparkle deepened in her eyes.
"Yes?" she murmured. "You hope--?"
"I hope you will soon be free," I ended simply.
Her eyes held mine for an instant. Then, "Thank you," she said, and
turned away. The guard, who had waited outside with something of the
effect of a clock about to strike, opened the iron door, and I passed
through.
Late that night, after I had turned in my copy and received in
acknowledgment the grunt which was Mr. Hurd's highest tribute to
satisfactory work, I sat at my desk still thinking of the Brandow
case. Suddenly the chair beside me creaked as Godfrey Morris dropped
into it.
"Just been reading your Brandow story. Good work," he said, kindly.
"Without bias, too. What do you think of the woman now, after meeting
her?"
"She's innocent," I repeated, tersely.
"Then she didn't confess?" laughed Morris.
"No," I smiled, "she didn't confess. But if she had been guilty she
might have confessed. She talked a great deal."
Morris's eyes widened with interest. The day's work was over, and he
was in a mood to be entertained. "Did she?" he asked. "What did she
say?"
I repeated the interview, while he leaned back and listened, his hands
clasped behind his head.
"She _was_ communicative," he reflected, at the end. "In a mood like
that, after months of silence, a woman will tell anything. As you say,
if she had been guilty she might easily have given herself away. What
a problem it would have put up to you," he mused, "if she _had_ been
guilty and _had_ confessed! On the one hand, loyalty to the
_Searchlight_--you'd have had to publish the news. On the other hand,
sympathy for the woman--for it would be you who sent her to the
electric chair, or remained silent and saved her."
He looked at me quizzically. "Which would you have done?" he asked.
It seemed no problem at all to me, but I gave it an instant's
reflection. "I think you know," I told him.
He nodded. "I think I do," he agreed. "Just the same," he rose and
started for his desk, "don't you imagine there isn't a problem in the
situation. There's a big one."
He turned back, struck by a sudden idea. "Why don't you make a
magazine story of it?" he added. "I believe you can write fiction.
Here's your chance. Describe the confession of the murderess, the
mental struggle of the reporter, her suppression of the news, and its
after-effect on her career."
His suggestion hit me much harder than his problem. The latter was
certainly strong enough for purposes of fiction.
"Why," I said, slowly, "thank you. I believe I will."
Before Mr. Morris had closed the door I was drawing a fresh supply of
copy-paper toward me; before he had left the building I had written
the introduction to my first fiction story; and before the roar of the
presses came up to my ears from the basement, at a quarter to two in
the morning, I had made on my last page the final cross of the
press-writer and dropped the finished manuscript into a drawer of my
desk. It had been written with surprising ease. Helen Brandow had
entered my tale as naturally as she would enter a room; and against
the bleak background of her cell I seemed to see her whole life pass
before me like a series of moving-pictures which my pen raced after
and described.
The next morning found me severely critical as I read my story. Still,
I decided to send it to a famous novelist I had met a few months
before, who had since then spent some of her leisure in good-naturedly
urging me to "write." I believed she would tell me frankly what she
thought of this first sprout in my literary garden, and that night,
quite without compunction, I sent it to her. Two days later I received
a letter which I carried around in my pocket until the precious bit of
paper was almost in rags.
"Your story is a corker," wrote the distinguished author, whose
epistolary style was rather free. "I experienced a real thrill when
the woman confessed. You have made out a splendid case for her; also
for your reporter. Given all your premises, things _had_ to happen as
they did. Offer the story to Mrs. Langster, editor of _The Woman's
Friend_. Few editors have sense, but I think she'll know enough to
take it. I inclose a note to her."
If Mrs. Appleton had experienced a thrill over my heroine's confession
we were more than quits, for I experienced a dozen thrills over her
letter, and long afterward, when she came back from a visit to England
with new honors thick upon her, I amused her by describing them.
Within twenty-four hours after receiving her inspiring communication I
had wound my way up a circular staircase that made me feel like an
animated corkscrew, and was humbly awaiting Mrs. Langster's pleasure
in the room next to her dingy private office. She had read Mrs.
Appleton's note at once, and had sent an office boy to say that she
would receive me in a few minutes. I gladly waited thirty, for this
home of a big and successful magazine was a new world to me--and,
though it lacked the academic calm I had associated with the haunts of
literature in the making, everything in it was interesting, from the
ink-spattered desks and their aloof and busy workers to the recurrent
roar of the elevated trains that pounded past the windows.
Mrs. Langster proved to be an old lady, with a smile of extraordinary
sweetness. Looking at her white hair, and meeting the misty glance of
her near-sighted blue eyes, I felt a depressing doubt of Mrs.
Appleton's wisdom in sending me to her with a work of fiction which
turned on murder. One instinctively associated Mrs. Langster with
organ recitals, evening service, and afternoon teas in dimly lighted
rooms. But there was an admirable brain under her silver hair, and I
had swift proof of the keenness of her literary discrimination; for
within a week she accepted my story and sent me a check for an amount
equal to the salary I received for a month of work. Her letter, and
that of Mrs. Appleton, went to Sister Irmingarde--was it only a year
ago that I had parted from her and the convent? Then I framed them
side by side and hung them in a place of honor on my study wall, as a
solace in dark hours and an inspiration in brighter ones. They
represented a literary ladder, on the first rung of which I was sure I
had found firm footing, though the upper rungs were lost in clouds.
Mrs. Langster allowed my story to mellow for almost a year before she
published it; and in the long interval Helen Brandow was acquitted,
and disappeared from the world that had known her.
I myself had almost forgotten her, and I had even ceased to look for
my story in the columns of _The Woman's Friend_, when one morning I
found on my desk a note from Mr. Hurd. It was brief and cryptic, for
Mr. Hurd's notes were as time-saving as his speech. It read:
Pls. rept. immed.
N. H.
Without waiting to remove my hat I entered Mr. Hurd's office. He was
sitting bunched up over his desk, his eyebrows looking like an
intricate pattern of cross-stitching. Instead of his usual assortment
of newspaper clippings, he held in his hand an open magazine, which,
as I entered, he thrust toward me.
"Here!" he jerked. "What's this mean?"
I recognized with mild surprise the familiar cover of _The Woman's
Friend_. A second glance showed me that the page Mr. Hurd was
indicating with staccato movements of a nervous forefinger bore my
name. My heart leaped.
"Why," I exclaimed, delightedly, "it's my story!"
Mr. Hurd's hand held the magazine against the instinctive pull I gave
it. His manner was unusually quiet. Unusual, too, was the sudden
straight look of his tired eyes.
"Sit down," he said, curtly. "I want to ask you something."
I sat down, my eyes on the magazine. As Mr. Hurd held it, I could see
the top of one illustration. It looked interesting.
"See here," Mr. Hurd jerked out. "I'm not going to beat around the
bush. Did you throw us down on this story?"
I stared at him. For an instant I did not get his meaning. Then it
came to me that possibly I should have asked his permission to publish
any work outside of the _Searchlight_ columns.
"But," I stammered, "you don't print fiction."
Mr. Hurd tapped the open page with his finger. The unusual quiet of
his manner began to impress me. "_Is_ it fiction?" he asked. "That's
what I want to know."
Godfrey Morris rose from his desk and came toward us. Until that
instant I had only vaguely realized that he was in the room.
"Hurd," he said, quickly, "you're in the wrong pew. Miss Iverson
doesn't even know what you're talking about." He turned to me. "He's
afraid," he explained, "that Mrs. Brandow confessed to you in
Fairview, and that you threw us down by suppressing the story."
For an instant I was dazed. Then I laughed. "Mr. Hurd," I said, "I
give you my word that Mrs. Brandow never confessed anything to me."
Mr. Hurd's knitted brows uncreased. "That's straight, is it?" he
demanded.
"That's straight," I repeated.
Hurd dropped the magazine on the floor and turned to his papers. "'L
right," he muttered, "don't let 't happen 'gain."
Mr. Morris and I exchanged an understanding smile as I picked up the
magazine and left the room.
In the outer room I met Gibson. His grin of greeting was wide and
friendly, his voice low and interested.
"Read your story last night," he whispered. "Say, tell me--_did_ she,
really?"
I filled the next five minutes explaining to Gibson. He looked
relieved. "I didn't think there was anything in it," he said. "That
woman's no murderess. But, say, you made the story read like the real
thing!"
Within the next few days everybody on the _Searchlight_ staff seemed
to have read _The Woman's Friend_, and to be taking part in the
discussion my story aroused. Those of my associates who believed in
the innocence of Mrs. Brandow accepted the tale for what it was--a
work of fiction. Those without prejudice were inclined to think there
was "something in it," and at least half a dozen who believed her
guilty also firmly believed that I had allowed an acute and untimely
spasm of womanly sympathy to deprive the _Searchlight_ of "the best
and biggest beat in years." For a few days I remained pleasantly
unconscious of being a storm-center, but one morning a second summons
from Mr. Hurd opened my eyes to the situation.
"See here!" began that gentleman, rudely. "What does all this talk
mean, anyway? They're saying now that you and Morris suppressed the
Brandow confession between you. Jim, the elevator-boy, says he heard
you agree to do it."
Godfrey Morris leaped to his feet and came toward us. "Good Lord,
Hurd," he cried, fiercely, "I believe you're crazy! Why don't you come
to me with this rot, if you're going to notice it, and not bother Miss
Iverson? We joked about a confession, and I suppose Jim heard us. The
joke was what suggested the magazine story."
"Well, _that's_ no joke." Hurd spoke grudgingly, as if unwillingly
impressed. "Suppose the woman had confessed," he asked me,
suddenly--"would you have given us the story?"
I shook my head. "Certainly not," I admitted. "You forget that I had
agreed not to print a word she said."
Hurd's expression of uncertainty was so funny that I laughed. "But she
didn't," I added, comfortingly. "Do you think I'd lie to you?"
"You might." Hurd was in a pessimistic mood. "To save her, or--" A
rare phenomenon occurred; he smiled--all his boyish dimples suddenly
revealed--"to save Morris from losing his job," he finished, coolly.
I felt my face grow hot. Morris rushed to the rescue. "The only thing
I regret in this confounded mess," he muttered, ignoring Hurd's words,
"is the effect on Mrs. Brandow. _The Woman's Friend_ has half a
million readers. They'll all think she's guilty."
"Good job," said Hurd. "She _is_ guilty!"
"Rot! She's absolutely innocent," replied Morris. "Why, even the fool
jury acquitted her on the first ballot!"
I left them arguing and slipped away, sick at heart. In the sudden
moment of illumination following Morris's words it had come to me that
the one person to be considered in the whole episode was the person of
whom I had not thought at all! I had done Helen Brandow a great wrong.
Her case had been almost forgotten; somewhere she was trying to build
up a new life. I had knocked out the new foundations.
It was a disturbing reflection, and the events of the next few days
deepened my depression. Several reviewers commented on the similarity
of my story to the Brandow case. People began to ask where Mrs.
Brandow was, began again to argue the question of her innocence or her
guilt. Efforts were made to find her hiding-place. The thought of the
injury I had done the unhappy woman became an obsession. There seemed
only one way to exorcise it, and that was to see or write to my
"victim," as Hurd jocosely called her, make my confession, and have
her absolve me, if she would, of any intent of injury.
On the wings of this inspiration I sought Mr. Davies, and, putting the
situation before him, asked for his client's address.
"Of course I can't give you her address," he explained, mildly. "But
I'll write to her and tell her you want it. Yes, yes, with pleasure. I
know how you feel." He smiled reflectively. "She's a wonderful woman,"
he added. "Most remarkable woman I ever met--strongest soul." He
sighed, then smiled again. "I'll write," he repeated; and with this I
had to be content. I had done all that I could do. But my nerves began
to feel the effect of the strain upon them, and it was a relief when I
reached my home in Madison Square late one evening and found Mrs.
Brandow waiting for me.
She was sitting in a little reception-room off the main hall of the
building, and as I passed the door on my way to the elevator she rose
and came toward me. She wore a thick veil, but something in me
recognized her even before I caught the flash of her eyes through it,
and noticed the characteristically erect poise of the head which every
reporter who saw her had described.
"Mr. Davies said you wanted to talk to me," she began, without
greeting me. "Here I am. Have I come at the wrong time?"
I slipped my hand through her arm. "No," was all I could say. "It was
very good of you to come at all. I did not expect that." In silence
we entered the elevator and ascended to my floor. As I opened the door
with my latch-key and waited for her to go in I spoke again. "I can't
tell you how much I've been thinking of you," I said.
She made no reply. We passed through the hall into my study, and while
I turned on the electric lights she dropped into a big arm-chair
beside a window overlooking the Square, threw back her veil, and
slipped off the heavy furs she wore. As the lights flashed up we
exchanged a swift look. Little more than a year had passed since our
former meeting, but she seemed many years older and much less
beautiful. There were new lines about her eyes and mouth, and the
black hair over her temples was growing gray. I started to draw down
the window-shades, for it was snowing hard, and the empty Square
below, with a few tramps shivering on its benches, afforded but a
dreary vista. She checked me.
"Leave them as they are," she directed, imperiously, adding as an
afterthought: "Please. I like to be able to look out."
I obeyed, realizing now, as I had not done before, what those months
of confinement must have meant to her. When I had removed my hat and
coat, and lit the logs that lay ready in my big fireplace, I took a
chair near her.
"First of all," I began, "I want to thank you for coming. And then--I
want to beg your forgiveness."
For a moment she studied me in silence. "That's rather odd of you,"
she murmured, reflectively. "You know I'm fair game! Why shouldn't you
run with the pack?"
My eyes, even my head, went down before that. For a moment I could not
reply. Then it seemed to me that the most important thing in the world
was to make her understand.
"Of course," I admitted, "I deserve anything you say. I did a horrible
thing when I printed that story. I should never have offered it to an
editor. My defense is simply that I didn't realize what I was doing.
That's what I want to make clear to you. That's why I asked to see
you."
"I see," she said, slowly. "It's not the story you're apologizing for.
It's the effect."
"Yes," I explained, eagerly, "it's the effect. I hadn't been out of
school more than a year when I came to you in Fairview," I hurried on.
"I was very young, and appallingly ignorant. It never occurred to me
that any one would connect a fiction story with--with your case."
She looked at me, and with all the courage I could summon I gazed
straight back into her strange, deep eyes. For a long instant the look
held, and during it something came to me, something new and poignant,
something that filled me with an indescribable pity for the loneliness
I now understood, and for the courage of the nature that bore it so
superbly. She would ask nothing of the world, this woman. Nor would
she defend herself. People could think what they chose. But she would
suffer.
I leaned toward her. "Mrs. Brandow," I said, "I wish I could make you
understand how I feel about this. I believe it has made me ten years
older."
She smiled. "That would be a pity," she said, "when you're so
deliciously young."
"Is there anything I can do?" I persisted.
She raised her eyebrows. "I'm afraid not," she murmured, "unless it is
to cease doing anything. You see, your activities where I am concerned
are so hectic."
I felt my face burn. "You're very hard on me, but I deserve it. I
didn't realize," I repeated, "that the story would suggest you to the
public."
"Even though you described me?" she interjected, the odd, sardonic
gleam deepening in her black eyes.
"But I didn't describe you as you are," I protested, eagerly. "I made
you a blonde! Don't you remember? And I made a Western city the scene
of the trial, and changed some of the conditions of the--" I
faltered--"of the crime."
"As if that mattered," she said, coolly. "You described _me_--to the
shape of my finger-nails, the buttons on my shoes." Suddenly she
laughed. "Those dreadful buttons! I see them still in my dreams. It
seems to me that I was always sewing them on. The only parts of me I
allowed to move in the court-room were my feet. No one could see
them, under my skirt. I used to loosen a button almost every day. Then
of course I had to sew them on. I had a sick fear of looking messy and
untidy--of degenerating physically."
She faced the wide windows and the snow-filled sky. In my own chair,
facing the fire, I also directly faced her.
"I'm going to Europe," she announced at last. "I'm sailing to-morrow
morning--to be gone 'for good,' as the children say. That's why I came
to-night." For a moment she sat in silence, wholly, restfully at her
ease. Dimly I began to realize that she was enjoying the intimacy of
the moment, the sense of human companionship, and again it came to me
how tragically lonely she must be. She had no near friends, and in the
minds of all others there must always be the hideous interrogation-point
that stood between her and life. At best she had "the benefit of the
doubt." And I had helped to destroy even the little that was left to
her. I could have fallen at her feet.
"I'm going away," she added, "to see if there is any place for me in
the life abroad. If there is I want to find it. If I were the sort of
woman who went in for good works, my problem would be easier; but you
see I'm not."
I smiled. I could not see her as a worker in organized charity,
parceling out benefits tied with red tape. It was no effort, however,
to picture her doing many human and beautiful kindnesses in her own
way.
We talked of Europe. I had never been there. She spoke of northern
Africa, of rides over Morocco hills, of a caravan journey from Tangier
to Fez, of Algerian nights, of camping in the desert, of palms and
ripe figs and of tropical gardens. It was fascinating talk in the
purple lights of my driftwood fire, with a snow-storm beating at my
windows. Suddenly she checked herself.
"I think, after all," she said, lightly, "you're rather good for me.
You've done me good to-night. You did me good the day you visited me
at Fairview. You were so young, so much in earnest, so much in love
with life, and you saw so much with your big, solemn eyes. You gave me
something new to think about, and I needed it. So--don't regret
anything."