As soon as the court had opened on the following morning, Mrs. Peele was

called. She looked haughtily askance at the worn Bible as the clerk

rattled off the oath, bent her head as would she whiff upon what

plebeian lips had touched so often and so evidently, and took the

witness chair as were she mounting a throne. She was apparelled in

crape. Only her intimate friends could have told whether the backward

bend of her head was due to the weight of her veil or the weight of her

ancestors. At first she stared at the district attorney with haughty

resentment, as, for the benefit of the humble jury, he curtly asked her

several direct questions; but remembering that he was “a Sturges,” and

also recalling her husband’s admonitions, she unbent, and even

condescended to address the jury. Her tale of the night in no wise

differed from her husband’s; but her accentuation of Patience’s dark

threats and marital deficiencies was all her own. Her suggestion of a

lover in the case caused a sudden movement in the jury box, although the

stolid faces did not relax. Under cross-examination much of her

testimony was as effectually demolished as her husband’s had been.

Two maid servants followed. They testified to violent quarrels between

the young couple. Then the butler testified to the reiterant and

emphatic command of the prisoner on the day before the death to send to

New York for morphine.

The prosecution produced its trump card: the stable boy who had spied

upon the interviews between the prisoner and the mysterious lover. The

man had evidently been carefully rehearsed—as Bourke later on pointed

out to the jury—for his memory of the eight or ten interviews he had

witnessed needed little refreshing. His “best recollection” was given

glibly and ungrammatically. He dilated upon the young man’s remarkable

personal beauty, and observed that it far outshone his beloved Mr.

Beverly’s. They had talked principally of books in all but the last two

interviews, but had looked perfectly happy. His account of the last two

interviews created a profound impression in the court room, even the

jury leaning forward slightly. The judge frowned and wheeled his chair

sharply when the man gave the gist of the prisoner’s matter-of-fact

objection to living with a man who was not her husband.

Mr. Bourke’s rich voice had never rung with deeper indignation and

disgust, never shaped itself to more cutting sarcasm than when he made

the man see himself and the jury see him as a coward, a cur, a spy, a

liar, an eager schemer for an innocent woman’s life. “You felt it your

duty,” he concluded, “to spy upon a woman of irreproachable reputation

who met a friend in an open wood in broad daylight—Yes, yes,” with all

the lingering scornful emphasis which only he could give that simple

word. “You never felt yourself a cowardly scoundrel meddling in what was

none of your business—No! No!” He turned to the jury with the passion

still upon his face, but when he took his seat he smiled encouragingly

to his admiring young client.

“Wouldn’t he make an actor?” whispered Simms. “I never saw him do the

lofty indignation act with finer effect.”

“Well, he would be a great actor, at least,” retorted Patience, “and I

am convinced that you would be a very small one.”

“Just wait,” said Simms, angrily. “I’ve got to talk to this jury about

you in a day or two, and if you don’t forget I ever doubted you I’ll eat

my hat. The best lawyer’s the best fakir, and a few days from now you’ll

see what an ambitious man I am.”

“Miss Rosita Thrailkill,” called the district attorney when the court

opened next morning. The audience stood up to a man.

A plump willowy Spanish figure undulated behind the jury box, kissed the

Bible reverently, and ascended the witness stand. Rosita was clad in

black and yellow, a mantilla in place of a hat, and many diamonds. She

looked as pretty and as naughty as possible. As she met Patience’s eyes,

she wafted her a kiss, and the prisoner groaned in spirit. She gave her

name and birthplace with melodious caressing accent and her marked

precision of speech. Yes, the defendant had been her dear friend, her

best friend, her only intimate friend. Yes, with unaffected reluctance,

Mrs. Sparhawk had been disreputable, and Patience had once attempted her

life. Yes, she was the prima donna of light opera known as La Rosita.

Did she appear before the public in tights and scant attire? Yes, why

not? Had she not had a number of lovers? Objected to and sustained.

Flashing indignation of soft Spanish eyes. Did she not have the

reputation of being a woman of loose and lawless life? Objected to and

sustained. Angry rattle of fan. Was it not in her house that the

prisoner was arrested? Yes, it was! and she loved her Patita and would

always give her shelter.

When the district attorney sat down with an ugly smile on his thin

mouth, Bourke, muttering anathema, rose to his feet.

“Was there ever a whisper against your reputation when you were a

school-girl in Monterey and most intimate with the prisoner?”

“No, _señor_!” cried Rosita, paying no attention to the objection. “I

was a child, and could not even endure boys.”

“How many times have you seen the defendant since you left Monterey?”

Rosita cast up her eyes, then tapped the sticks of her fan successively

as she spoke.

“Once she came to see me just after—ah—WCTU died; then once just

before she left Mr. Peele; then that day the ‘Eye’ came out and said she

had done this so horrible thing. _Ay, dios!_”

“She has called upon you three times only, then, since you were children

in Monterey, since you have been the Rosita of the public; in the last

five years, in short?”

“_Si, señor_—yes, sir.”

“How long did she remain upon her first visit?”

“Oh, only a little while. I told her something that shocked her, for she

was always so proper.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Objected to,” cried the district attorney.

“Objection sustained,” snapped the judge.

“How long did she remain on her second visit?”

“About a half hour. I never knew what she came at all for. She just

floated in and out.” Rosita waved her arm with enchanting grace.

“Did she tell you why she came the third time?”

“Because she had no other place to go to. She said no hotel would take

her in.”

“She said that her old landlady had refused to admit her, did she not?”

“_Si, señor._”

“Yes, yes!—and that in her terrible extremity she naturally turned to

the friend of her childhood?”

“_Si!_” and Rosita wept.

“But that she should not have gone to your house if there had been any

possibility of obtaining entrance to a hotel, or if she had not been

turned out of her father-in-law’s house?”

“_Ay, yi!_ yes.”

“That is all. You can go.”

During the rest of that day and the two following days the experts for

the prosecution had the stand. The innumerable questions asked by the

district attorney, the technical details of the cross-examinations, the

constant interruptions, and the minutiæ of the evidence emptied the

court room after the first hour, and even Patience became bored, and

fell to thinking of other things, not forgetting to pity those twelve

puzzled little heads in the jury box.

The gist of the evidence was that there was enough morphine in Beverly

Peele’s stomach to kill two men.

XV

“Our turn has come,” said Lansing to Patience on the morning after the

expert testimony was concluded. “We are confident of success now.”

“But the facts are hideous, and they have painted me black.”

“Mr. Bourke scraped off a good deal, and he’ll have the rest off before

he gets through. If he could only make that lying woman open her mouth!

You’ve borne yourself splendidly. Keep in good condition for the witness

stand. Are you frightened?”

“No,” she said, smiling at Bourke gratefully. “Not a bit.”

Simms opened the case for the defence.

He had a harsh strident voice. He gesticulated as if practising for a

prize fight, doubling back and springing forward. He cleared his throat

with vicious emphasis and rasped his heels upon the floor. His

statements were dry and matter-of-fact, his language bald; but he made a

direct vigorous and enthusiastic speech. The jury was informed that it

was there to save the life of one of the most brilliant and high-minded

young women of the age,—a woman utterly incapable of murder or of any

violent act, a woman with the mild and meditative mind of the student.

That it would be proved not only that she was far too clever to take

life by such clumsy methods, but that she had no object, as she had

gained her liberty, and the lover was a myth. The whole prosecution was

a malignant and personal prosecution of an innocent but too gifted woman

by an absurdly conceited family that had resented her superior

intelligence. This and much more of fact and fancy. But Patience, with

perverse feminity, liked him none the better, and would not even look at

him when he sat down.

Mr. Field was the first witness for the defence. Although compelled

under cross-examination to admit the prisoner’s interest in subtle

poisons, he managed to convey to the jury that it was merely the result

of an unusually brilliant and inquiring mind, a thought born of the

moment, of his suggestion. He gave the highest tribute to her

cleverness, her work on his paper, and to her reputation.

Latimer Burr was called next, and spoke with enthusiasm of her

“unfailing submission to a man of abominable and savage temper until

submission ceased to be a virtue.” He had never heard her utter any

threats to kill. Yes, it was true that he had engaged counsel for

defence. He believed in her thoroughly.

Miss Merrien, her landlady, and Mrs. Blair were put on the stand next

morning, and the good character they gave Patience was unshaken by the

nagging of the district attorney. Mr. Tarbox testified to her demeanour

of innocence during her imprisonment.

“But the defence is weak all the same,” whispered Patience to Lansing.

“Not a word can be said in rebuttal. Only Mr. Bourke’s eloquence can

save me.”

“Good character goes a long way,” replied Lansing. “You have no idea of

its weight with a jury, particularly with a jury of this kind.”

Patience was put on the witness stand next. The supreme effort to

overcome nervousness gave her an icy and repellent demeanour. Never had

she held her back as erect, her head as high. She kept her eyelids half

lowered, and spoke with scarcely any change of inflection. She told the

story of the night as she had told it in rehearsal many times. There had

been a quarrel an hour before she heard the deceased get up and go to

the lavatory. She offered to drop his morphine, and he replied with an

oath that she should never do another thing for him as long as he lived,

that he hoped she would leave the house by the first train next morning.

His sudden silence upon his return to his bed excited her apprehension,

and she called the family.

When Bourke sat down and the district attorney arose and confronted her

she shivered suddenly. Bourke’s rich strong voice and kind magnetic gaze

had given her courage, but this man with his eyes like grey ice, his

mechanical smile, and cold smooth voice conjured up a sudden awful

picture of the execution room at Sing Sing. Her insight appreciated with

exactitude the pitiless ambition of the man, knew that he stood pledged

to his future to send her to her death. He made her admit all the

damning facts of the evidence against her, the facts which stood out

like phosphorescent letters on a black wall, and to acknowledge her

abhorrence of the man that had been her husband. But all this had been

anticipated: at least he could not confuse her.

Again two days and a part of a third were monopolised by experts. These

two illustrious chemists testified, through the same bewildering mass of

detail as that employed by their equally illustrious predecessors, that

there was not enough morphine in Beverly Peele’s stomach to kill a cat.

There was a short interval, after the second expert had been permitted

to leave the stand, during which Bourke and Simms and Lansing conferred

together, preparatory to the summing up of the former. As Bourke was

about to rise, the district attorney stood up, cleared his throat, and

said: “One moment, please. Will Miss Honora Mairs kindly take the

stand?”

Bourke was on the alert in an instant. “The case for the prosecution has

closed,” he said.

“This is by special permission of the Court,” replied the district

attorney, coldly.

As Honora ascended the stand there was a deep murmur of admiration. She

looked like an angel, nothing less. She wore a white lawn frock, girt

with a blue sash; a large white leghorn lined with azure velvet, against

which the baby gold of her hair shone softly. Her great blue eyes had

the clear calm serenity of a young child. Patience drew her breath in a

series of short gasps. Bourke sat with clenched hands.

“We understand,” said the district attorney, severely, “that you did not

tell all you knew the other day, and that you have signified your

willingness to now tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the

truth. Is this true?”

Honora bowed her head with an expression of deep humility, as a child

might that had been justly rebuked.

“You had not slept at all upon that fatal night?”

“No.”

“Your door was open?”

“Yes.”

“You did see somebody enter the lavatory?”

“Yes.”

“Whom did you see?”

There was a moment’s breathless silence, during which Patience wondered

if a clock had ever ticked so loudly, or if the sun had ever shone with

so vicious a glare.

“Whom did you see?” repeated the district attorney.

“The prisoner.”

“What did she do?”

“She dropped some thirty or forty drops of morphine, I should say, then

half filled the glass with water, as usual.”

“You did not see the deceased go to the lavatory that night.”

“No.”

“Nor any one else until the defendant called you?”

“No.”

“That is all.”

Mr. Bourke sprang to his feet, his nostrils dilating, his fine face

quivering with unassumed scorn and indignation.

“You admit that you perjured yourself the other day?”

“I could not make up my mind to—”

“Never mind what you had not made up your mind to do. You admit that you

perjured yourself?”

“Yes,” gently.

“That in other words you lied.”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice was like the quiver of a violin.

“What proof are we to have that you are not lying now?”

“I am not lying. My conscience gave me no rest.”

“It will give you more, I suppose, if you will have succeeded in

swearing away the life of an innocent woman. Yes, yes!—Exactly how long

did Mrs. Peele remain in the lavatory?”

“I cannot remember. Five or ten minutes.”

“State the exact time.”

“Perhaps five.”

“And a few moments later when she ran into your room you pretended to be

asleep: Why did you assume sleep; what reason had you for lying at that

time?”

“I had dropped off.”

“You had been sufficiently wide awake five minutes before to note

precisely all these other things, and then had promptly fallen into a

sound sleep. Is that your usual habit?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you speak to the prisoner when she came into the lavatory?”

“No.”

“Were not you in the habit of holding a conversation with her upon such

occasions?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why did you not address her on that night?”

“I was very sleepy, and had nothing in particular to say.”

“But you were not too sleepy to note carefully all the details in the

evidence you have just given. You can go,—and to the devil,” he

muttered. He thrust his hands into his pockets and wheeled about,

looking at Patience with such intensity of gaze that she moved suddenly

forward. Her face was pale, but her eyes blazed with rage. Bourke

glanced at the clock.

“It is twenty minutes to one,” he said. “I would ask your honour to

adjourn until two. I must have time to digest this new testimony. Its

remarkable glibness prevented me from giving it the running deliberation

that it demanded.”

The judge sulkily dismissed the court. As Patience passed out of the

room with Tarbox she heard the word “angel” more than once, and knew

that it did not refer to her.

Patience was not conscious of fear as she ate her luncheon. Her heart

was black with rage. “I’d willingly murder _her_,” she thought, “and my

conscience wouldn’t trouble me the least little bit.”

XVI

Immediately after recess Mr. Bourke began his summing up. He commenced

quietly, shaking the loose cloth of the table in an absent manner. His

language was colloquial as he spoke to the jury of its grave

responsibilities, and complimented it upon the “unusual intelligence

which it had so far made evident.” He passed naturally to the subject in

hand, and dwelt eloquently upon the character of the defendant, of her

lonely pathetic youth, her high ideals, her remarkable intelligence, her

ignorance of the world which had led her to fall in love with the first

handsome and attractive man that had addressed her.

His voice rose to tragic pitch as he dwelt upon the terrible awakening

of such a woman, bound for life to such a man,—a sensual, ill-tempered,

selfish brute, who was a disgrace to the nineteenth century.

He depicted two years of uncomplaining wifely devotion (until Patience

became lost in admiration of the defendant), the husband’s frantic rages

about nothing, his unrecognition of her superiority, his ignorant

determination to make her his slave—his plaything—she, a woman whom

such men as James E. Field and Gardiner Peele delighted to honour.

Then he dropped again into pathos (which never for a moment degenerated

into bathos) and described the desolate life of such a woman in an empty

frivolous brainless society (faint murmur and indignant rustle in the

gallery), a society of idle people with neither soul nor intelligence,

but who squandered the money wrested from the People, the great People,

of whom the Gentlemen of the Jury were twelve worthy and doubtless long

suffering members.

It was not until he had emphasised and recapitulated with every resource

of his splendid vocabulary, every modulation of his glorious voice, by

controlled and telling gesture, by sudden tremendous bursts of

indignation, the married life of the prisoner, that he passed to the day

and night of the tragedy. He began with the morning, and dwelt upon

every detail of the day. Before he reached midnight he had Beverly Peele

in a frame of mind for both suicide and murder. He sent him to bed with

black skin and white flecked nose and chaos in his heart. With a

magnificent burst of scorn he quoted his shameful language when his wife

had offered to get him the morphine, the oaths he had used to a “refined

and elegant and patient woman.” Then he took him to the lavatory, showed

him jerking the stopper from the morphine bottle, and recklessly pouring

a fourth of its contents into a glass. “He knew that he had to die

anyhow, and he could at least die happy in a hideous revenge.” In brief

and vivid phrase he cited several similar instances in legal history.

Then he returned to Peele Manor and denounced the jealous woman who for

five years had nursed fury in her heart, and who, on the witness stand,

here, Gentlemen of the Jury, conceived, at the unfortunate suggestion of

the speaker, the frightful revenge upon a woman who had treated her with

unvarying kindness. She did not speak at once, partly because her lying

tale needed rehearsing, partly because she believed that the case for

the prosecution would win without her. But when she saw that the case

for the prosecution was wholly lost she arrayed herself like an angel,

that she might the better impose upon the unworldly Gentlemen of the

Jury, and swore away a woman’s life.

The several assertions on the defendant’s part that she felt disposition

to murder he tore to rags and flung in the face of the jury. Had not

every high tempered person—could not the Gentlemen of the Jury recall

having exclaimed in bitter moments: “I wish you were dead! I could kill

you!” With deep regret and remorse he would confess that he had used

similar expressions many times.

Then with consummate skill he dilated upon the impossibility of so

clever a woman as the defendant doing aught so stupid as to murder in

the manner of the accusation. When there was nothing left to say on this

subject he expatiated upon the lack of motive with a technical and

personal brilliancy which made even the cross-grained old judge lean

forward with a cynical smile.

The interviews, even the final ones, with the mysterious stranger, he

treated with contempt, although the contempt was sufficiently long drawn

out to impress the jury with every most insignificant detail. It, was

the mere longing for companionship of a lonely woman: that was the

beginning and the end of it. The lover, the intention of either to

marry, he disposed of with a vehemence which made Simms twist about

suddenly and look at Lansing; but the young man was regarding his chief

with rapt admiration.

Not so much as the scraping of a boot heel was heard in the court room.

Patience glanced at the district attorney. His face was set and sullen.

After every possible point had been considered Bourke concluded with an

appeal so stirring, so ringing, so thrilling that every person in the

court room except the district attorney sat forward and held his breath.

No such burst of passion had ever been heard in that room before.

Patience covered her face with her hands. Her heart beat suffocatingly.

The blood pounded in her ears; but not one note of that wonderful voice,

not one phrase of fire, escaped her.

Is there any possible condition in which a man can appear to such

supreme advantage as when pleading for the life of a fellow being, more

particularly of a young and beautiful woman? How paltry all the

time-worn rescues of woman from sinking ship and runaway horse and

burning house. A great criminal lawyer standing before the jury box with

a life in his hand has the unique opportunity to display all the best

gifts ever bestowed upon man: genius, brain, passion, heart, soul,

eloquence, a figure instinct with grace and virility, a face blazing

with determination to snatch a man or woman from the most awful of

dooms.

And all in two short hours.

If those in the court room for whom the case had no personal interest

were at Bourke’s feet, hanging upon his words, adoring him for the

moment, what were the feelings of the woman for whom he was making so

desperate and manly a fight? She forgot her danger, forgot everything

but the man, the reckless joy of loving, of being swept out of her calm

orbit at last. Her analytical brain was dulled, her arms ached, her

heart shook her body.

As Bourke made a few supplementary remarks calculated to take the wind

out of the district attorney’s sails,—references to the young man’s

ambition, his youthful eagerness to become famous, what the winning of

such a great case would mean to him, and to his remarkable cleverness

and skill with a jury,—Patience heard Simms say to Lansing: “My God!

Bourke has surpassed even himself. Even he never got as high as that

before.”

“He’s the greatest man in the country, God bless him!” said Lansing.

As Bourke finally dropped upon his chair he turned to Patience. Their

eyes met and lingered; and in that moment each passed into the other’s

keeping.

XVII

Sturges lost no time taking his stand before the jury box. It was the

hour of his life, but he was not nervous. His long thin figure leaning

toward the box as he rested his finger tips on the table, showed as fine

a repose of nerve as of brain. His clear-cut face with the cruel mouth

and pleasant smile was calm and unclouded.

He began by defending himself against Mr. Bourke’s remarks, and asserted

with convincing emphasis that when he had taken the oath of office he

had left his personal ambition behind him with his personal interests,

and had given himself body and soul and brain to the People of

Westchester County. Then he made an equally earnest statement of the

grave responsibilities of a district attorney, his solemn duty to the

People, the necessity to smother all promptings of humanity that he

might do what was best for the People—“The greatest good of the

greatest number.”

Then he painted Patience as black as Bourke had enamelled her white.

With masterly ingenuity he made each juror feel what an awful being a

bad woman was, an unloving undutiful wife; what a curse each man of them

would writhe under had Fate played him as scurvy a trick as it had

played poor Beverly Peele; that no unloved husband’s life would be safe

were not such women exploited and punished, that if the Gentlemen of the

Jury were weak enough to consider her sex they might be imperilling the

lives of countless thousands. For the matter of that, he reiterated,

crime had no sex.

He took up each detail of the story, and in the light of his

interpretation Patience was the modern Lucretia Borgia and Beverly Peele

an injured, peaceable, affectionate husband, who had been sacrificed by

an abandoned woman to whom he had given his honoured name, his fortune,

and his love.

He scarcely raised his voice. There was no passion in his utterance; but

he manufactured a mosaic, bit by bit, each fragment fitting so exactly

that the design was without crevice or crack. He demonstrated

mathematically that the tardy evidence of Miss Mairs had been

superfluous; that the chain of circumstantial evidence was symmetrical

and complete, and that no possible motive beyond duty to her conscience

could be attributed to her. With devilish adroitness, without a direct

phrase, he managed to filter into those twelve small brains the secret

of the inspired eloquence of the eminent counsel for the defence,—in

behalf of his young and beautiful client.

While he was talking, the skeleton trees beyond the windows grew dim of

outline, the mass of colour in the gallery faded. An official came out

of the library behind the court room and lit the tall gas lamps on

either side of the bench. The judge looked like a bas-relief in pink and

silver against the dark panelling of the background. The rest of the

room was in shadow. The light of the near jet fell full upon Sturges’

stern face.

Patience’s life from “its fiendish childhood” was rehearsed with such

consecutive logic that crime at some point of such a woman’s career was

inevitable. The only wonder was that it had not been committed sooner.

The threats, he demonstrated, whether uttered in moments of passion or

not, were the significant output of a brooding mind. The “cruel letter

to a dying man” was read with slow and indignant emphasis. Then the

events of the fatal day and night, the quarrels, the prisoner’s fury at

being denied a divorce, the deceased’s threat to live twenty years to

spite her, her carefully rehearsed and absurd story that her husband had

dropped the morphine himself,—something he knew himself physically

incapable of doing,—the equal absurdity of his suicide when a greater

revenge lay in his hands, her brutal indifference while he lay dying,

were deliberately gone over with passionless and insidious effect. The

quiet half-lit room was oddly in keeping with the deadly methods of the

man.

When he had made the most of her flight on the morning of the “Eye”

story, he paused a moment, during which the rising wind could be heard

in the trees. Within, there was no sound. No one seemed breathing.

Bourke and Patience were in deep shadow. With an instinct of protection

he clasped his hand suddenly about hers.

Sturges resumed, with lowered and vibrating voice:

“And—where—Gentlemen of the Jury,—was—this—woman—arrested?——_In

the house of a harlot!_” He paused another half moment. “In the house of

her oldest friend, La Rosita, one of the most abandoned women in

America.”

Bourke’s hand twitched spasmodically. Simms twisted his neck, and shot

at Lansing an uneasy glance. Patience shuddered. For the moment she

forgot Bourke. She felt as if a cobra were folding her about,—very

slowly, and gently, and inexorably.

When Sturges sat down the jury was told to rise. The judge stood under

one of the lamps and read them his charge. He explained that unless they

could find the prisoner guilty of murder in the first degree—of

deliberate premeditated murder—they must acquit her. As the final

quarrel had taken place an hour before the killing it was obviously

impossible that she could have dropped the morphine in a moment of

excitement; and a verdict of self-defence would be equally absurd. He

also charged them that they were to consider the law in the case and

nothing but the law,—that human sympathy must have no place in their

verdict.

Bourke was too able a lawyer not to have the last word. As the judge sat

down, he arose with several sheets of manuscript, and for twenty minutes

asked the judge to charge the jury so and so, practically recapitulating

all the strong points of the defence. The judge answered mechanically,

“I so charge,” and at last the patient jury was conducted out of the

court room and locked up. Bourke was surrounded at once.

As Tarbox, with Patience on his arm, left the court house and its crowd

behind him, he exclaimed, “By God, that was a great speech of Bourke’s!

There never has been a summing up like that in my time before, not even

by him. But he’s the smartest man in Westchester County! Hanged if I

don’t think he’s the smartest man in the State of New York. He’ll be in

the United States Senate yet.”

XVIII

After dinner Patience went back to the court room to remain until ten

o’clock, at which time the jury, if it had not come to a decision, would

be locked up for the night. She sat surrounded by her counsel and the

lawyers that had taken so deep an interest in the case. Bourke sat very

close to her, and once or twice as she met his eyes she forgot the

terrible moment to come. Few people were in the court house. No one

expected a verdict that night.

It was exactly at half-past nine that the jury filed solemnly in.

Patience’s knees jerked suddenly upward. She lost her breath for a

moment. Bourke leaned over her and took her hand, regardless of the

curious people surrounding them.

“Be brave. Be brave,” he said hurriedly. “Now is the time for all your

pride and disdain.”

When she was ordered to stand up and face the jury, she did so with an

air so collected and so haughty that even Simms murmured: “By Jove, she

is a thoroughbred.”

There was a moment of horrible and vibrating silence, during which

Patience’s brain reiterated hilariously: “Twelve little Jurymen all in a

row. Twelve little heads all in a row.” Then the foreman was asked for

the verdict. He cleared his throat, and without moving a muscle of his

face, remarked,—

“Guilty.”

The district attorney sat down suddenly and hid his face with a

convulsive hand. Patience resumed her seat with a mien as stolid as that

of the twelve jurors. Bourke’s face blanched, but he sprang to his feet

and demanded that the jury be polled. Each solemn “Yes,” twelve and

unhesitating, sounded like a knell. Then Bourke demanded a Stay, which

was granted by the impassive judge, and Patience was led through the

silent crowd from the court room to her cell. Tarbox escorted her

mutely, his face turned away. At the door of her cell he attempted to

speak, but gave it up and retreated hastily.

Patience threw off her hat and sat down on the edge of the bed. The

verdict, she knew now, had not been a surprise. But she thought little

of the verdict. She was waiting for something else. It came in a moment.

She heard a quick impatient step on the ground below, then a rapid

ascent of stair, a word or two at the door, Tarbox’s retreating step.

Bourke was in the cell. His face was white, but that of Patience as she

rose and confronted him was not.

“I don’t care!” she said. “I don’t care! I believe I am happier than any

woman alive.”

The red sprang to his face. He took her outstretched hands and held them

to lips and eyes for a moment, then caught her in his arms and kissed

her until the rest of the world lay dull, and all life was in that quiet

cell.

XIX

A year later they took her to Sing Sing. The General Term had refused

her a new trial, the Court of Appeals had sustained the lower court.

Bourke had won nothing but additional glory.

He did not go with her to Sing Sing. She saw him alone for an hour

before Tarbox came to take her away. Her composure was greater than his.

He was torn with horror and defeat, and his surpassing love for the

woman. Not that he had given up hope by any means, nor the fight; but he

knew the fearful odds, and he cursed the law which he had outwitted and

played with so often and so brilliantly.

“I wish we were back in the middle ages,” he said savagely, “when a man

took his rights and regulated justice by brute force. We are not half

men now that we are under the yoke of a thing that operates blindly, and

strikes by chance where it should strike, in nine cases out of ten. Good

God! Good God! it seems incredible that I can _let_ you go, that I shall

stand by and see Tarbox lead you away. Think of the combined intellect

of the world and the centuries having done no more for man than that. I

must stand aside and see you go to a hideous cell in the Death House—O

my God!”

He had awakened the woman down to the depths; to-day he called to life

the maternal instinct in her. She put her arms about him with the

passionate strength of one who would transmit courage and hope through

physical pressure.

“Listen,” she said; “I don’t mind one cell more than another—and I

know, I _know_, that you will save me. I feel it. I am not going to die.

You are a man of genius. Everybody says that—everybody—I know that you

will have an inspiration at the last minute. And I have been happy,

happy, happy! Don’t forget that—not ever. I would go through twenty

times what I have suffered in all my life for this past year. Don’t you

think I can live on that for a month or two? Why, I can feel your touch,

the pressure of your arms for hours after you leave me. I shall be with

you every minute—”

He threw back his head, shaking it with a brief violent motion

characteristic of him.

“Very well,” he said, “very well; it is not for me to be weak when you

are strong. Perhaps it is because the prize is so great that the fight

is so long and desperate. Oh, you wonderful woman!

“Tell me,” he said after a moment, “that it has all been as perfect to

you as to me. I want to hear you say that, but I know it, I know it.”

“Oh,—I—I—”

* * * * *

Tarbox came and took her away. He looked as if he had lost home and

friends and fortune, and did not speak from White Plains to Sing Sing.

The details of the trip interested her less than such details are

supposed to interest the condemned that look their last on sky and land;

her head ached, and the glare of the Hudson blinded her; but as the

train neared Sing Sing she opened her eyes suddenly, then sat forward

with a note of admiration.

The river was covered with a dense rosy mist which half obscured the

opposite shore, giving it the effect of an irregular group of islands.

Above was a calm lake of yellow fire surrounded by heavy billows of

boiling gold; beyond, storm clouds, growing larger and darker.

As they drove, a few moments later, to the prison, the great grey

battlemented pile was swimming in the same rosy glow. Patience murmured

satirically:

“‘The splendour falls on castle walls.’”

Tarbox looked at her in amazement. “Oh,” he said, “how do you manage

it?”

“All hope is not gone,” she replied; “there is still the governor.” But

she knew how slender that hope was. The governor was on the eve of

re-election; public feeling was multiplied against her; the “Eye” was

clamouring for her life, and strutting like a turkey cock; the “Eye” and

Tammany Hall were one; the governor was the creature of Tammany Hall.

The warden was in his office. He greeted her with elaborate politeness,

albeit puffed with alcohol and pride. She handed him what valuables she

had not presented to Tarbox, and answered his questions in a manner not

calculated to placate his Irish dignity. Then she turned to say good-bye

to Tarbox, but he had disappeared. The head-keeper, a big kindly man,

who pressed her arm in a paternal manner, led her down long echoing

corridors, past rows and tiers of cells, and yards full of Things in

striped garments, and talked to her in the manner one adopts to a

frightened child, until she said:—

“I am not going to have hysterics; nor am I at all sure that I am to be

executed—but please don’t imagine that I don’t appreciate your

kindness.”

“Well, I like that,” he said. “To tell the truth the prospect of having

a woman here has half scared me out of my wits. But if you won’t take

on, I’ll do everything I can to make you comfortable. We’ve put a woman

servant in there to wait on you. I hope myself it won’t be for long. The

evidence is pretty black, but some of us has our opinion all the same.”

“Must I go into the Death House? I think I shouldn’t mind it so much if

they’d put me anywhere else.”

“I’m afraid you must, ma’am. That’s the custom in these parts.” He

opened a door with a huge key, and Patience did not need to be told that

she was in the famous Death House.

A long corridor with a high window at either end; on one side a row of

cells separated from the main corridor by an iron fence sufficiently

removed from the cells to make space for a narrow promenade. Where the

middle cell should have been was a dark arched stone passage terminated

by a stout oaken door. Patience knew that it led to the execution room.

Two guards walked up and down the corridor. At the end, a sullen-looking

woman stood over a stove, making tea.

“You’ve got the house all to yourself,” said the keeper, with an attempt

at jocularity. “If there’d been any men here I guess you’d have been

sent to Dannemora, but it’s always Sing Sing for the swells, when it’s

possible, you know.”

He opened the gate of the iron fence and led her down to the cell at the

extreme end. It was large and well lighted, but very different from the

cell at White Plains.

“Are you going to lock me in?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am, I must. If everything ain’t comfortable, just let me know.”

The key grated in the lock. The head-keeper with an encouraging smile

walked away. Patience crouched in a corner, for the first time fully

realising the awfulness of her position, her imagination leaping to the

room beyond the passage. What did it look like, that horrible chair? How

long—how long—the hideously practical details of electric

execution—the awful mystery of it—the new death to which imagination

had not yet become accustomed—

There was no sound but the monotonous pacing of the death watch. The

world beyond those stone walls might have sprung away into space,

leaving the great beautiful prison alone on a whirling fragment.

She sprang to her feet and clenched her hands. “I’ll not go mad and make

an everlasting fool of myself,” she thought. “If I have to die, I’ll die

with my head up and my eyes dry. If I have the blood of the aristocrat

in me I’ll prove it then, not die like a flabby woman of the people. The

people! O God, how I hate the people!”

XX

A great petition was sent to the governor. It was signed uniformly by

men and women of the upper class.

It is not the aristocrats that do the electing in the United States. The

lower classes were against her to a man. Her personality enraged them;

her unreligion, her disdainful bearing, her intellect, her position,

antagonised the superstitious and ambitious masses more than her crime.

Inevitable result: the governor refused to pardon.

Honora returned to Peele Manor from town in April. Bourke’s attempts to

see her were frustrated by a bodyguard of servants. He took up his

residence in the little village adjoining the grounds. He hardly knew

what he hoped. But Honora Mairs was the last and only resource, and he

could not keep away from her vicinity. He did not go to Sing Sing. It

had been agreed between himself and Patience that he should stay away:

they had no desire to communicate through iron bars.

The execution was set for the seventh of May. On the evening of the

sixth, while walking down the single street of the village Bourke came

face to face with the new priest of the district.

“Tim Connor!” he exclaimed, forgetting for the moment, in the sudden

retrospect which this man’s face unrolled, the horror that held him.

“Well, it’s me, sure enough, Garan, and I’ve been hunting for you these

two days. I heard you were here, but faith, I’ve been busy!—not to say

I’ve been away for two weeks.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Six months, come June, it is since I left old Ireland; and I’m wanting

to tell you that the creek we used to wade in is as tempting to the boys

as ever, and that the bog you pulled me out of has moved on a mile and

more. Twenty times I’ve been for going across the country to call on you

and have a good grip of the hand, and to bless you again for letting me

live to do good work; but I was caught in a net here—But what’s the

matter—Are you ill?—Oh, sure! sure! This terrible business! I

remember! Poor young thing!”

He laid his arm about the shoulders of the other man and guided him to

his house. There, in his bare little study, he brewed an Irish toddy,

and the two men drank without a spoken toast to the old times when they

had punched each other’s head, fought each other’s battles, and shared

each other’s joys, two affectionate rollicking mischievous Irish lads.

The priest spoke finally.

“Nothing else is talked of here in the village,” he said; “but you don’t

hear a word of it mentioned over at the house.”

“What house?”

“Peele Manor, to be sure.”

“Do you go there?”

“Occasionally—to dine; or to talk with Miss Mairs. We are amiable

friends, although she doesn’t confess to me.”

Bourke raised his head slowly. Something seemed to swirl through his

heavy heart.

“Is Honora Mairs a Catholic?” he asked.

“She is indeed, and, like all converts, full to the brim and running

over.”

Bourke leaned forward, his hand clinching about his chin, his elbow

pressing his knee with such force that his arm vibrated. He had been

raised a Catholic—he knew its grip. His mind was trained to grasp

opportunities on the moment, to work with the nervous yet mathematical

rapidity of electric currents. And like all great lawyers he was a great

actor.

“Tim,” he said meditatively, “I’m feeling terribly bad over that poor

girl I couldn’t save.”

“Sure and I should think you would, Garan. My heart’s breaking for her

myself.”

“Did you read the trial, Tim?”

“No, faith, I didn’t. I’ve been too busy with these godless folk. Sure

they get away from us priests when they get into America. It’s only one

more drop to hell.”

“You’re right, Tim, you’re right. You always saw things at a glance. But

I’ve got a great work for you to do,—a great work for you and for the

Church.”

“You have, Garan? You have? Out with it, my boy.”

“Do you remember the time when Paddy Flannagan was accused of murdering

his old grandmother for the sake of the money in her stocking?”

continued Bourke, in the same half absent tone, and lapsing gradually

into brogue. “He was convicted, you know, and the whole town was set on

him, and we two boys were the worst of the lot. Do you remember how we

used to hoot under his jail window at night? And then, quite by

accident, at the last minute, two days before he was going to be hanged,

you discovered the man that had committed the murder, and you ran as

fast as your legs could carry you to save Paddy, shouting all the

way,—and that it was the happiest day of your life?”

“Yes, yes!” exclaimed the priest, his face aglow. Bourke had thrown

himself back in his chair, his eyes dwelling on his old friend with a

smile of affectionate satisfaction.

“It’s a grand thing to save a human life, isn’t it, Tim?”

“It is, indeed; the grandest, next to saving an immortal soul.”

“I’m going to give you a chance to do both,—the soul of one woman and

the life of another.”

“Garan, Garan, what do you mean?”

“Just let me tell you a few things first, a few things you don’t know

already.” He gave a concise but picturesque and thrilling account of

Patience’s life and of her trial. As he repeated Honora’s testimony, the

priest, who had followed his recital with profound interest, leaned

forward with sombre brows.

“That woman lied,” concluded Bourke, abruptly.

“I’m afraid so. I’m afraid so.”

“And if she doesn’t open her accursed perjured lips between now and

to-morrow morning at eleven o’clock, that woman up there—” he caught

the priest’s shoulders suddenly, his face contracting with agony—“the

woman I love, Tim, will be murdered. My God, man, don’t you see what

you’ve got to do?”

XXI

Honora was lying on a couch in her celestial bedroom. No incense burned.

The screen was folded closely about the altar. The windows were open.

The pure air of spring, the peaceful sounds of night,—disturbed now and

again by the hideous shriek of an engine,—the delicate perfume of

flowers, played upon her irritated senses. She held a bottle of smelling

salts in her hand. On the table beside her was a jolly looking bottle of

Benedictine.

There was a tap at the door. Honora answered wearily. A maid entered.

“It’s Father Connor, miss, and he wants to see you particular.”

“Tell him I cannot see him—no, tell him to come up.”

She rose hurriedly and smoothed her hair. Mr. and Mrs. Peele had gone

South. She was alone in the house, and welcomed the brief distraction of

the priest’s visit.

“You will pardon me for asking you to come up here,” she said as he

entered. “But I am in dishabille, and I did not want to keep you

waiting. How kind of you to come!”

“Sure it is always a pleasure to see you anywhere, Miss Mairs,” he said,

taking the seat she indicated. “What should I do without you in this

godless place?”

Several candles burned. The moonlight wandered in, making a ghastly

combination. Honora lay back in her chair, looking very pale and

beautiful. The priest’s profile was toward her for a moment after he

ceased speaking, a strong lean determined profile. She watched it

warily. But he turned suddenly to her and smiled, and told her an absurd

episode of one of his village delinquents.

“Faith, Miss Mairs,” he concluded, “you’ve got to help me. They’re too

much for one poor priest. I’m not one to flatter, but your face would be

enough to make a sinner think of heaven—sure it’s the face of an angel!

Between the two of us and with the Grace of God we’ll reform the village

and drive the dirty politicians into the Church or out of the country.”

Honora smiled radiantly, and held out her hand. “I will work with you,”

she said. “I intend to devote my life to the Church.”

He held her hand closely, in a strong masculine clasp.

“I believed it of you. But why don’t you go to confession, my child?”

The muscles under Honora’s fair skin contracted briefly, and she

attempted to withdraw her hand; but the priest held it closely.

“I shall go to you next week.”

“To-night,” he said with soft insistence; “to-night. Do you know it was

that brought me here to-night? I’ve been knowing ever since I came that

something troubled you—was eating your heart out—but I didn’t like to

speak. I thought every day you would come to me, and I didn’t like to

intrude. But to-night I said, ‘I will!’ I couldn’t get up my courage

when I first came in; but I’m glad I’ve spoken, for I know you’ll be

after confessing now. Poor girl! But remember, dear child, the comfort

and consolation our blessed Church has for every sinner. Come.”

Honora turned her face away, and shook her head.

The priest put out a long arm, and grasping the screen drew it away from

the altar. Then he leaned forward, and laying his hands on her shoulders

drew her slowly forward and pressed her to her knees. He laid his hand

on her head.

“Confess,” he said, solemnly.

And Honora suddenly burst into wild sobbing, and confessed that Beverly

Peele had dropped his own morphine that night, that his shaking hand had

refused to obey his will, and that, blind with pain, he had poured a

fourth of the contents into the glass, mixed it with water, and gulped

it down; that she had not gone to his assistance because she wished him

to die, and the responsibility to fall upon his wife.

Then she sprang to her feet and smote her hands together.

“I did not intend to confess until all was over, but—I—Oh—it has been

horrible here alone these two days—but I would not yield to

superstition and go away—and you found me in a weak moment.”

She walked up and down the room, talking the more rapidly, the more

unreservedly, as the priest made no comment. And after all the years of

immobility it was joy to speak out everything in her crowded heart and

brain.

“Oh, I am not a monster, I am not abnormal, I am merely a result. It

began—when did it begin? I was a child when I came here—I remember

little that happened before—it has always been the _rôle_ of the poor

cousin, I remember no other—no other! never! never! I had to learn

patience at an age when other children are clamouring for their little

desires. I had to learn humility when other children—while I watched my

cousins take all the goods and joys of childhood as their divine right.

While their little world was at their feet I was learning to cringe and

watch and wait and smile upon people I hated, and listen to people that

bored me to death, and suffer vicariously for all the shortcomings of

the Peele family when my aunt was in one of her cold rages. It was early

that I learned the lesson that if I would occupy a supportable position

in life I must ‘work’ people; I must cultivate will and tact—how I hate

the loathsome word—and study the natures of those about me, and play

upon them; that I must acquire absolute self repression, be a sort of

automaton, that, being once wound up properly, never makes a false move.

I believe that was one thing which drove me to the Catholic Church,—the

unspeakable relief that I should find in confession,—that and one other

thing—”

She paused abruptly, and pressed her hands to her face, to which the

blood had sprung.

“I loved Beverly Peele,” she continued violently. “I do not know when it

began; when I was old enough to fall in love, I suppose, and that is

young enough with a woman. When we were children we used to play at

being married. Even after he was grown and was rather wild, he used to

come back to me in the summer time and tell me that he cared for no one

else. I knew all his faults, his weaknesses, his limitations, mental and

moral and spiritual,—none better. But I loved him. I worshipped him. He

was not even a companion to me, for I was always intellectually

ambitious. Not a taste but music did we have in common. I have seen him

in raging tempers that would make any other woman despise him—when he

seemed an animal, a savage. But nothing made any difference to me. A

woman loves or she does not love—that is the beginning and the end.

There is no more relation between cause and effect in an infatuated

woman’s mind than—Oh, well, I can’t be finding similes.

“One night he came in here. The next night I kissed the pillow his head

would lie on. For a year I was happy; for another I alternated between

joy and anguish, jealousy and peace, despair and hope. Then a year of

misery, during which he brutally cast me off. It was that which drove me

to the Catholic Church—not only the peace it promised, but the

knowledge that with baptism my sin would be washed away—for when

happiness went remorse began. I have not a brain of iron, like that

woman he married. She could snap her past in two and fling it behind

her. She could snap her fingers at moral laws, if it suited her purpose,

and know no regret, provided she had had nothing to regret meanwhile.

That was one reason why I hated her.

“Oh, how I hated her! How I hated her! Beverly never had any reserve,

and he made love to her before my eyes. He was infatuated. His affection

for me was an incidental fancy compared to his mad passion for that

woman. And month after month! Month after month! And I loved him still!

“I never dared say to myself that when the time came I should have

vengeance, for such a resolution I should be obliged to confess; and the

priest would make me promise to thrust it out, or refuse me absolution.

But down in my heart I knew that when the hour came the temptation would

conquer. It came first when I let him drink the morphine. And when I saw

her in court, when her lover gave me that sudden suggestion, when I knew

that I could send her to that horrible chair—” She threw out her arms

and laughed hysterically, “O God, I was almost happy again.”

The priest rose and stood before her. There were tears in his eyes.

“Poor woman!” he said. “Poor woman!”

Honora’s face convulsed, but she shut her lips resolutely and tapped the

floor with her foot.

“There is pardon and peace in the Church,” he continued softly; “and not

only for the sake of that poor girl at Sing Sing, battling to-night with

horror and terror, sleepless, listening to the solemn tramp of the death

watch, counting the hours that are marching her to that hideous death,

but for the future peace of your own soul, speak out and save her. Think

of the years of torment, of remorse, when you will not have the

excitement of the present, the pressure of your wrongs to sustain you.

Speak out, and I will give you absolution, and your soul shall know

peace.”

But Honora threw back her head and laughed.

“No! No!” she said. “I am not so weak as that. I have no intention of

going to pieces at the last moment. It is only her death that will give

me peace.”

He bent his long body backward, drawing himself up to his full imposing

height.

“And have you thought of what will be the penalty?” he said, in a low

voice, and with an intonation that was almost a chant.

She shuddered, but dragged her eyes away.

“I don’t care!” she said passionately. “I don’t care!”

“You are sure?” he said, in the same voice.

She drew two short breaths. “Oh, go away and leave me,” she said. “Why

did you come here? I did not intend to confess until all was over.”

“And you expected absolution?”

“I would have done any penance. I would have burnt my flesh with red-hot

irons—”

He gave a short, scornful laugh.

“The Church wants no such makeshift penances,” he said passionately. “It

has no use for the sinner that commits deliberate crime to-day and comes

cringing and triumphant to the confessional to-morrow. We have no use

for such as you,” he suddenly shouted, flinging out his arm and pointing

his index finger at her. “You are a disgrace to the Church, a pollution;

you are the lips of the leper upon the pure body of a Saint. We have no

place for such as you. We have only one method by which to deal with you

and such as you—” He curved his body, and his voice fell to a hollow

monotone: “Ex-commu-nica-tion.”

The woman stared at him with pale distended eyes, no breath issuing from

her dry lips, then sank to the floor, a miserable, collapsed, quivering

heap. The priest went to the window and called to a man who stood on the

walk below.

XXII

Bourke was pacing up and down among the trees, his eyes seldom absent

from the man standing motionless in front of the house, or from the

light in Honora Mairs’ window. He struck a match every few moments and

looked at his watch. He lit a cigar, then found himself biting rapidly

along its length with vicious energy. He flung it away and lit another,

puffed at it violently, then let it fall to the ground as he pressed his

hands suddenly to his eyes, shutting out the picture of Patience in her

cell.

All the agony and doubt and despair of the past year were crowded into

this hour. Would the priest succeed? Was he clever enough to outwit a

clever and implacable woman? If he had only caught her in a moment of

weakness. But was there any weakness in that organisation of knit and

tempered steel? “He’ll blarney her,” he thought, with sudden hope,—“but

bah! you can’t blarney a snake. That will go so far with her and no

farther. Only acting can save us. If he can act well enough to fill the

stage on which this terrible tragedy is set, and conquer that woman’s

imagination, he can save my poor girl, but not otherwise.”

His hands clutched the bushes as he passed. He kicked the gravel from

his feet. He cursed aloud, not knowing what he was saying. He felt an

intolerable thirst; his eyeballs burned; his heart hammered

spasmodically.

He looked at his watch. It was twelve o’clock. His spinning brain

conceived the wild project of forcing himself up to that lighted room at

the corner of the house and putting the woman to the torture. And at

that moment he saw the priest lean out of the window and speak to the

notary public, who immediately entered the house.

A half hour later the priest came out of the front door and toward him.

He held a paper in his hand.

Bourke was waiting at the door. He took the affidavit from the priest,

glanced over it, and thrust it into his pocket.

“Come,” he said. “I’ll get one of the men here to hitch up a team and

drive us to the One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street station. There we’ll

take the train for Forty-second Street, and at the Grand Central the

train for Albany. No south bound local will pass here for an hour. I

happen to know that the governor is in Albany to-night attending a

banquet.”

XXIII

Patience had given up hope at last. Its death had been accompanied by

wonder rather than by despair. Her remarkable experience with Bourke had

led her to idealise him even beyond the habit of woman, and her faith in

his ability to save her had been absolute. Nevertheless, woman like, she

wove elaborate excuses for him, and loved him none the less.

The day had dragged itself into twenty years. The chaplain had called

and been dismissed. The warden had visited her and uttered the

conventional words of sympathy, to which Patience had listened without

expression, loathing the coarse ungrammatical brute. The head-keeper she

liked, for she was the first to recognise true sympathy and nobility

within whatever bark. Miss Beale had come and wept and kissed her hands

through the bars.

“Patience! Patience!” she sobbed. “If it could only be said that you

died like a Christian!”

“It can be said that I died like an American gentlewoman of the

nineteenth century,” replied Patience. “I am quite satisfied to know

that they will be obliged to say that.”

Miss Beale shook her head vigorously. “You will fail when the time

comes,” she said. “Only the Lord can sustain you. Please, Patience, let

me pray with you.”

“Please let me die in peace,” said Patience, wearily, “and consistently.

I shall not make a spectacle of myself. Don’t worry.”

After Miss Beale had gone the prison barber came and shaved a bald spot

on the back of her head. She kept her face in the shadow, her teeth set,

her skin thrilling with horror.

* * * * *

She sat on the edge of her bed until midnight. In the past two months,

despite her faith in Bourke, she had deliberately allowed her mind to

dwell upon the execution until fear had worn blunt. She was conscious of

none to-night. Moreover, she had the poise of one that has lived close

to the great mysteries of life. Were she free she might have a lifetime

of happiness with Bourke, but in degree there were many hours of the

past year that in mortal limitations could never be surpassed. The

people had won their fight, but she felt that she had cheated them at

every other point. For, after all, happiness is of kind, not of

quantity. They could strike from her many years of life, but had she not

lived? And a few years more or less—what mattered it? One must die at

the last. She had realised an ideal. She had known love in its

profoundest meaning, in its most delicate vibrations. A thousand years

could give her no more than that.

Suddenly she lifted her head. The rain was dashing against her high

window and against the windows of the corridor. She flushed and trembled

and held her breath expectantly. In a moment she lay along the bed, and

in a moment more forgot her evil state. Memories without form trooped

through her brain: snatches and flashes of childhood and adolescence,

glimmers of dawn, and stirrings of deeps, vistas of enchanted future,

the rising and receding, rising and receding of Mystery, the vague

pleasurable loneliness—the protest of separateness.

Then she pressed her face into the pillows, weeping wildly that she

should see Bourke no more. The rain gave him to her in terrible mockery.

Every part of her demanded him. She cared nothing for the morrow; she

had thought of no to-morrows when with him. Morrows were naught, for

there was always the last; but the present are always there to fulfil or

torment. She shuddered once. The rain had given her back the power to

long and dream; and to longing and dreaming there could be no

fulfilment, not in this world, now nor ever.

She beat her clenched hand against the bed, not in fear, but in

passionate resentment that she with her magnificent endowment for

happiness should be snuffed out in her youth, and that there was no

power on earth to assuage her lover’s agony. She wondered where he was,

what he was doing. She knew that there was no sleep for him.

Her philosophy deserted her, as philosophy will when the sun is under

the horizon. She ceased to be satisfied with what had been; the great

love in her soul cried out and demanded its eternal rights. And her

fainting courage demanded the man. . . .

Her thoughts suddenly took a whimsical turn. What should she be like in

eternity shorn of her stronger part?—for assuredly in her case the man

and the woman were one. Was space full of those incomplete

shapes?—roaming—roaming—for what?—and whither? She recalled a

painting of Vedder’s called “Identity” and Aldrich’s verses beneath:—

“Somewhere, in desolate, wind-swept space,

In Twilight land, in No-man’s land,

Two wandering shapes met face to face,

And bade each other stand.

“‘And who are you?’ cried one, agape,

Shuddering in the gloaming light,

‘I know not,’ said the second shape,

‘I only died last night.’”

The picture had fascinated her profoundly until she had suddenly noticed

that one of the shapes looked as if she had left her teeth on her

death-bed. She laughed aloud suddenly. . . .

For the first time she felt curious about the hereafter. Poetry had

demonstrated to her that hereafter of some sort there must be: the poet

sees only the soul of his creations, makes the soul talk as it would if

untrammelled of flesh, and in unconscious forecast of its freedom.

Browning, alone, would have taught her this. His greater poems were

those of another and loftier world. No wonder poets were a mad unhappy

race with their brief awakenings of the cosmic sense, their long

contemplations of what should be, in awful contrast to what is. . . .

Patience suddenly turned from the thoughts of the hereafter in

shuddering horror. Then, as now, she should be alone. Perhaps it would

be as well, if she were to look like that shape. . . . But she should

know soon enough!

Whimsies deserted her as abruptly as they had come. She realised with

terrible vividness all that she was leaving, the sweetness of it, the

beauty of it—and the awful part allotted to the man.

She had imagined that in her last night on earth—if it came to

that—her mind would dwell on the great problems of life; but she cried

herself to sleep.

XXIV

Bourke and the priest arrived in Albany at two minutes past eight in the

morning. A hack carried them to the governor’s house in less than ten

minutes.

Bourke’s ring was answered immediately. He had his card ready, also that

of the priest.

“Take these to the governor,” he said to the butler. “We must see him at

once.”

“The governor took the 8.13 express for New York.”

Bourke uttered an oath which the priest did not rebuke.

“Did he leave an answer to a telegram he received between two and five

this morning?”

“No, sir; no telegrams are ever sent here—by special orders, sir. They

are all sent to the State House.”

Bourke’s skin turned grey; his eyes dulled like those of a dying man.

But only for a moment. His brain worked with its customary rapidity.

“Come,” he said to the priest. “There is only one thing to do.”

To the hackman he said: “Twenty dollars if you get to the station in

five minutes.”

He and the priest jumped into the hack. The driver lashed the horses.

They dashed down the steep hills of Albany. Two policemen rushed after

them, shouting angrily; but the horses galloped the faster, the driver

bounding on his seat. People darted shrieking out of their way. Other

teams pulled hastily aside, oaths flying.

They reached the station in exactly four minutes and a half. Bourke had

little money with him, but he was well known, and known to be wealthy.

In less than five minutes the superintendent, in regard for a check for

two hundred and fifty dollars, had ordered out the fastest engine in the

shop. In ten minutes more it was ready, and the message had flashed

along the line to make way for “45.”

By this time every man in the yard was surging about the engine in

excited sympathy. As the engineer gave the word and Bourke and the

priest climbed in, the men cheered lustily. Bourke raised his hat.

Father Connor waved them his blessing. The engine sprang down the road

in pursuit of the New York express.

Despite the flying moments, the horror that seemed to sit grimacing upon

the hour of eleven every time that he looked at his watch, Bourke felt

the exhilaration of that ride, the enchantment of uncertainty. The

morning air was cool; the river flashed with gold; the earth was very

green. They seemed to cut the air as they raced through fields and

towns, dashed and whizzed round curve after curve. People ran after

them, some shouting with terror, thinking it was a runaway engine.

Father Connor had bought some sandwiches at the station, and Bourke ate

mechanically. He wondered if he should ever recognise the fine flavour

of food again.

The priest put his lips to Bourke’s ear and spoke for the first time.

“Where do you expect to catch the train?”

“At Poughkeepsie. It waits there ten minutes.”

“And what shall you do if you don’t catch it?”

“Go on to Sing Sing, and do the best I can. I have made one fatal

mistake: I should have telegraphed to Sing Sing. But I was mad, I think,

until I reached Albany, and there it is no wonder I forgot it. The

regular time for—that business is round eleven o’clock, about a quarter

past; but if the warden happens to be drunk there’s no telling what he

will take it into his head to do. But I dare not stop.”

Suddenly they shot about a curve. The engineer shouted “There! There!” A

dark speck was just making another curve, far to the south.

“The express!” cried the engineer. “We’ve side-tracked everything else.

We’ll catch her now.”

An hour later they dashed into Poughkeepsie, the express only two

minutes ahead of them. Amidst a crowd of staring people, Bourke and the

priest, begrimed, dishevelled, leaped from the engine and boarded a

parlour car of the express. Alone, Bourke would probably have been

arrested as a madman, controlled as was his demeanour; but the priest’s

frock forbade interference.

The governor was not in the parlour car, nor in the next, nor in the

next.

Yes, he had been there, a porter replied, and would be there again; but

he had left the train as soon as it had stopped. No, he did not know in

what direction he had gone; nor did any one else.

There was nothing to do but to wait. Bourke sent a telegram to Sing

Sing, but it relieved his anxiety little: he knew the languid methods of

the company’s officials in country towns.

There were five of those remaining seven minutes when he thought he was

going mad. An immense crowd had gathered by this time about the station.

Nobody knew exactly what was the matter, and nobody dared ask the man

walking rapidly up and down the platform, watch in hand, gripping the

arm of a priest; but hints were flying, and no one doubted that this

sudden furious incursion of a flying engine and the extraordinary

appearance of Bourke had to do with the famous prisoner at Sing Sing.

At exactly three minutes to starting time the governor came sauntering

down the street, a tooth-pick in his mouth, his features overspread with

the calm and good-will which bespeak a recently warmed interior. Bourke

reached him almost at a bound. He was a master of words, and in less

than a minute he had presented the governor with the facts in the case

and handed him the affidavit.

“Good,” said the governor. “I’m glad enough to do this. It’s you that

will understand, Mr. Bourke, that I would have been violating a sacred

duty if I’d slapped public opinion in the face before.”

He wrote rapidly on the back of the affidavit.

“This will do for the present,” he said. “I’ll fix it up in style when I

go back. You’re a great man, Mr. Bourke.”

But Bourke had gone. Whistles were sounding, train men were yelling. He

and the priest barely had time to jump on their engine when they were

ordered to clear the track.

Bourke glanced at his watch as they sprang out of the station. The time

was twenty minutes past ten. It was barely possible to reach Sing Sing

in three quarters of an hour. Lead was in his veins. His head felt

light. The chances for his last and paramount success were very slim.

But the great engine dashed along like an inspired thing, and seemed to

throb in sympathy. There was a note of triumphant encouragement in its

sudden piercing shrieks. It tossed a cow off the track as lightly as the

poor brute had lately whisked a fly from its hind-quarters. It whistled

merrily to the roaring air. It snorted disdainfully when Bourke,

refusing to heed its mighty lullaby, curved his hands about his mouth

and shouted to the engineer:—

“For God’s sake, go faster!”

XXV

The town of Sing Sing was awake at daylight. It was the most exciting

and important day of its history. The women, even the pitiful ones,

arose with a pleasurable flutter and donned their Sunday frocks. The

matrons dressed the children in their brightest and best, and laid the

gala cover on the baby carriage. The men of the village took a

half-holiday and made themselves as smart as their women. The saloon

keepers stocked their shelves and spread their counters with tempting

array of corned beef, cold ham, cheese, crackers, pickles, and pretzels.

By ten o’clock a hundred teams had driven into the town, and were

hitched to every post, housed in every stable. A number stood along that

part of the road which commanded a view of the prison towers.

The women sat about on the slope opposite the prison, pushing the baby

carriages absently back and forth, or gossiping with animation. Other

women crowded up the bluff, settling themselves comfortably to await,

with what patience they could muster, the elevation of the black flag.

The reporters and witnesses of the execution sat on a railing near the

main entrance, smoking cigarettes and discussing probabilities. Inside

and out the atmosphere of intense and suppressed excitement was trying

to even the stout nerves of the head-keeper. The assistant keepers, in

bright new caps, moved about with an air of portentous solemnity.

Never had Sing Sing seen a more beautiful day. The sky was a dome of

lapis-lazuli. The yellow sun sparkled down on the imposing mediæval pile

of towers and turrets, on the handsome grey buildings above the green

slopes near by, on the graveyard with its few dishonoured dead, on the

gayly dressed expectant people, as exhilaratingly as had death and

dishonour never been. The river and the wooded banks beyond were as

sweet and calm as if the great building with the men in the watch towers

were some feudal castle, in which, perchance, a captured princess pined.

The head-keeper walked once or twice to the telegraph table in a corner

of the office, and asked the girl in charge if any message had come.

“It’s the wish that’s father to the thought,” he said to the warden;

“but I can’t help hoping for a reprieve or a commutation or something.

Poor thing, I feel awful sorry for her.”

“Damn her,” growled his chief. “She’s too high-toned for me. When I read

the death warrant to her this morning she turned her back on me square.”

“She’s awful proud, and I guess she has a hard time keeping up; but it

ain’t no time for resentment. I must say I did think Mr. Bourke’d save

her, and I can’t help thinking he will yet.”

“Time’s getting short,” said the warden, with a dry laugh. “It’s 10.40,

and the execution takes place at 11.12 sharp.”

“Couldn’t you make some excuse to put it off a day or so? It ain’t like

Mr. Bourke.”

“Not much. Off she goes at 11.12.” And he got up heavily and shuffled

out.

The head-keeper took a decanter of brandy from the sideboard and placed

it, with a number of glasses, on the table. Then he called in the

newspaper men and other witnesses.

He wandered about restlessly as the men entered and drank in silence. He

carried a stick of malacca topped with silver. One or two of the

newspaper men shuddered as it caught their eye. They knew its hideous

portent.

“Guess we’d better go,” he said, after one more fruitless trip to the

telegraph table. “It takes time to go through those underground

passages.”

As the great gates were about to close behind them he turned suddenly

and called a guard.

“If it should so happen that Mr. Bourke should come, or telegraph, or

that anything should happen before—11.16—I can delay it that

long—just you be on hand to make a bolt. It ain’t like Mr. Bourke to

sit down and do nothing. I feel it in my bones that he’s moving heaven

and earth this minute.”

XXVI

It was five minutes after eleven. Patience sat on the edge of her bed,

her hands clenched, her face grey. But she was calm. The horror and

sinking which had almost mastered her as the warden read the death

warrant, she had fought down and under. And she had drunk a quantity of

black coffee. She had but one thought, one desire left,—to die bravely.

Even Bourke was forgotten, and hope and regret. She was conscious of but

one passionate wish, not to quail, not for a second. Perhaps there was a

slight touch of the dramatic instinct, even in this last extremity, for

she imagined the scene and her attitude again and again. In consequence,

there was a sense of unreality in it all. She felt as if about to play

some great final act; she could not realise that the climax meant her

own annihilation. Physically she was very tired, and should have liked

to lie down for hours, although the coffee had routed sleep. Once she

half extended herself on the bed, then sat erect, her mouth contracting

spasmodically.

Suddenly she heard the noise of many feet shuffling on a bare floor. She

knew that it came from the execution room. She shuddered and bit her

lips. Now and again, through the high windows, came the shrill note of a

woman’s voice, or a baby’s soft light laugh.

A moment later she sprang to her feet, quivering in every nerve, her

hands clenched in a final and successful attempt at absolute

self-mastery. On the door separating the Death House from the main

building, resounded three loud raps, slow and deliberate. They

reverberated in the ears of the condemned like the blast of the last

trumpet.

The door opened, and the head-keeper entered, walking slowly, and

stopping once to hold whispered converse with the death watch. Patience

controlled an impulse to call to him to hurry and have it over.

He came forward at last, tapping his malacca stick on the floor,

unlocked the door of her cell, and offered her his arm. He bent to her

ear as if to whisper something, then evidently thought better of it, and

led her slowly to the passage facing the execution room. Again she

wanted to ask him to hurry, but dared not speak. The death watch turned

away his head. The lace of her low shoe untied, and she stooped

mechanically and fastened it.

The head-keeper asked her if she would like some brandy,—he would send

and get it for her. She shook her head emphatically. The exaltation of

heroism was beginning to possess her, and she would give no newspaper

the chance to say that she owed her fortitude to alcohol.

They walked down the narrow vaulted way through which so many had gone

to their last hideous moments. The head-keeper fumbled at the lock. The

door swung open. For a moment Patience closed her eyes; the big room of

yellow wood was a blaze of sunlight. Then she opened them and glanced

curiously about her.

The execution room was large and high and square and cheerful. On the

left, many feet above the floor, was a row of windows. At the far end a

number of men that had been sitting on stools stood up hurriedly as the

prisoner entered, and doffed their hats. They were the newspaper men.

She recognised most of them, and bent her head. At the opposite end near

the door leading to the Death House was a chair. Patience regarded it

steadily in spite of its brilliancy. It was a solid chair of light

coloured oak, like the room, and supported on three legs. Two were at

the back; in front was one of curious construction, almost a foot in

breadth. This leg was divided in two at the extremity. Half way up there

was a cross piece which spread the full width of the chair. To this was

fastened the straps to hold the ankles of the condemned. The chair stood

on a rubber mat to ensure perfect insulation. It was studded with small

electric lamps, dazzling, white-hot.

Behind the chair was a square cupboard in which stood the unknown, who,

at a given signal, would turn on the current.

Two prison guards stood by the chair, one behind it and one on the

right. The State electrician, two surgeons, and a man in light blue

clothes stood near.

Patience turned her eyes to the reporters. The young men were very pale.

They regarded her with deep sympathy, and perhaps a bitter resentment at

the impotence of their manhood. One looked as if he should faint, and

turning his back suddenly raised something to his lips. Even the “Eye”

man still held his hat in his hand, and had not resumed his seat. Only

one watched her with eager wolfish curiosity. He was the youngest of

them all, and it was his first great story.

Patience wondered if she looked ugly after her long confinement, and

possibly ridiculous, as most women look when they have dressed without a

mirror. But there was no curve of amusement on the young men’s faces,

and they were shuffling their feet uneasily. Her hair hung in a long

braid. She looked very young.

She dropped the head-keeper’s arm and walked deliberately to the chair;

but he caught her hand and held her back.

“Wait a minute,” he said, with affected gruffness. He went to the chair

and examined it in detail. He asked a number of questions, which were

answered by the electrician with haughty surprise. In a moment the

reporters were staring, and like a lightning flash one brain informed

another that “something was in the wind.”

When the head-keeper had lingered about the chair as long as he dared he

returned to Patience, who was standing rigidly where he had left her,

and drawing a short breath said,—

“If you have any last words, ma’am, you are at liberty to speak.”

“I have nothing to say,” replied Patience, wondering if her mouth or

brain were speaking.

“Yes, yes, speak,” exclaimed several of the reporters. They had out

their pads in an instant; but, for once, it was not the news instinct

that was alert. The most quick-witted men in the world, they realised

that the head-keeper was endeavouring to gain time. Their stiff felt

hats dropped to the floor and bounced about. Their hands shook a little.

For perhaps the first time in their history they were more men than

journalists.

“I don’t wish to speak,” said Patience, and again she walked toward the

chair. The newspaper men sprang forward with an uncontrollable movement,

but the guards waved them back.

“Be careful, young men,” said the head-keeper with pompous severity.

“Any more of that, and you go out.” Taking advantage of the momentary

scraping of boots, he whispered in Patience’s ear, “For God’s sake

speak—and a good long one. You must have something to say; and it’s

your last chance on earth.”

“I have nothing to say,” she replied, her brain closed to all

impressions but one. “Can’t you see that I need all my strength? If you

have any mercy in you put me in that chair and have done with it.”

“Oh, you are not the kind to break down—my God!”

The silence of the prison, the hush without the walls, was pierced by a

single shriek, a shriek which seemed shot from earth to heaven, a mighty

shriek of furious warning.

Every man in the room jumped. The newspaper men drew their breath with a

hard sound. Only Patience gave no heed.

“It’s an engine,” stuttered the head-keeper, “and there’s no train due

at this hour—”

The outer door was flung violently open. The warden stamped heavily into

the room. His face was purple.

“Why in hell hasn’t this execution taken place?” he roared. “Get to

work!”

The head-keeper’s face turned very white. His hand shook a little. The

men stared at him with jumping nerves. Patience and the warden were the

only persons in the room unaffected by the inexplicable excitement which

had taken possession of the atmosphere.

“Get to work,” repeated the warden.

Patience walked to the chair and seated herself, extending her arms in

position. Once more her brain relaxed its grasp on every thought but the

determination not to scream nor quiver. She closed her eyes and set her

teeth.

The guards began to fasten the straps, but slowly, under the significant

eyes of the head-keeper. The warden stamped up and down. The electrician

came forward. The surgeon went into an adjoining room and cast his eyes

over his instruments, laid out on a long table.

The brain works eccentrically in such moments. Patience’s suddenly flung

upon her consciousness a picture of Carmel tower. She speculated upon

the fate of her owl. She recalled that the Mission had been restored,

and wondered if Solomon, that proud and elderly hermit, had turned his

haughty back upon civilisation to dwell alone in the black arbours of

the remote pine tops of the forest. She saw the spray toss itself into

scattering wraiths, as when she had knelt there—a thousand years ago—a

little lonely girl in copper-toed boots, dreaming dreams that were

pricked with no premonition of life’s tragic horrors.

She frowned suddenly, recalling her long-lived determination to take

life as a spectacular drama. Life had gotten the best of her! Assuredly

there was nothing impersonal about this ignominious and possibly

excruciating death. The thought banished Carmel tower. Her mind was a

sudden blaze of light—white light she thought with a stifled shrink—in

which every detail of the room was sharply accentuated. She opened her

eyes, but only a trifle, lest these men see the horror in them. Her

blood was curdling, but she knew that she was making no sign.

Her sensitised mind received the immediate impression that the

atmosphere of the room was vibrating with excitement. She saw the

head-keeper’s neck crane, his furtive glance at the outer door. He

expected some one. Bourke!

She set her teeth. She had believed up to last night that he would save

her. Why had she doubted him for an instant? She understood now the

diplomacy of the head-keeper. Why had she not spoken when he had

implored her?

It seemed to her that the men fastening the straps were racing each

other. She wanted to whisper to them to lag, but pride stayed her

tongue.

The warden was striding about and swearing. The electricians and

surgeons were whispering in a group.

She looked at the newspaper men. She met their gaze of excited sympathy,

understood at last the spirit that animated them, and bowed her head.

She dared not speak.

But in a moment indignation routed gratitude. Why did they not rescue

her, these young vigorous men! They knew her to be innocent. They

outmatched in number the guards. Where was their manhood? What had

become of all the old traditions? Then her anger left as suddenly as it

had come. They were not knights with battle axes, but the most

exaggerated product of modern civilisation. It was almost a miracle that

they passionately wished to save her.

Her head was drawn gently back, her eyes covered. Something leapt and

fought within her. Horror tore at her vitals, snarling like a

wolf-hound. But once more her will rose supreme. Then, as she realised

that her last moment had come, she became possessed by one mighty

desire, to compel her imagination to give her the phantasm, the voice,

the touch of her lover.

The wrench with which she accomplished her object was so violent, the

mental concentration so overmastering, that all other consciousness was

extinguished.

Suddenly her ears were pierced by a din which made her muscles leap

against the straps. Was she in hell, and was this her greeting? She felt

a second’s thankfulness that death had been painless.

Then, out of the babel of sound she distinguished words which made her

sit erect and open her eyes, her pulses bound, her blood leap, hot and

stinging, her whole being rebound with gladness of life.

The cap had been removed, the men were unbuckling the straps. The

head-keeper had flung his cap on the floor and run his hands through his

hair until it stood up straight. Round her chair the newspaper men were

pressing, shouting and cheering, trying to get at her hand to shake it.

She smiled and held out her hand, but dared not speak to them. Pride

still lived, and she was afraid that she should cry.

Then she forgot them. A sudden parting in the ranks showed her the open

door. At the same moment the men stopped shouting. Bourke had entered.

He had followed the guard mechanically, neither hoping nor fearing until

the far-reaching cheers sent the blood springing through his veins once

more.

He was neither clean nor picturesque, but Patience saw only his eyes. He

walked forward rapidly, and lifting her in his arms carried her from the

room.

* * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

A Table of Contents was added for the convenience of the reader.

Hyphenation and archaic spellings have been retained as in the original.

Punctuation and type-setting errors have been corrected without note.

Other corrections are as noted below.

page 301, not by a long short ==> not by a long shot

page 343, and the diplomate kissed ==> and the diplomat kissed