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Empty Sack

<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> "And yet it's one of the commonest types of the criminal mind," Stenhouse was explaining to Bob during the following forenoon. "Fellows perfectly normal in every respect but that of their own special brand of crime. See no harm in that whatever. Won't have a cigar?" Having declined the cigar for the third time, Bob found a subconscious fascination in watching the lawyer's Havana travel from one corner to the other of his long, mobile, thin-lipped mouth. It was interesting, too, to get a view of Teddy's case different from Jennie's. There was nothing about Stenhouse, unless it was his repressed histrionic intensity, to suggest the saver of lives. Outwardly, he was a lank, clean-shaven Yankee, of ill-assorted features and piercing gimlet eyes. But something about him suggested power and an immense persuasiveness. He had only to wake from the quiescent mood in which he was talking to Bob to become an actor or a demagogue. With laughter, tears, pathos, vituperation, satire, and repartee all at his command, together with an amazing knowledge of criminal law, he was born to commend himself to the average juryman. Little of this was apparent, however, except when he was in action. Just now, as he lounged in his revolving chair, his limber legs crossed, his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his perfecto moving as if by its own volition along the elastic lines of his mouth, he was detached, impartial, judicial, with that manner of speaking which the French describe as "from high to low"—"de haut en bas"—the "good mixer," with a sense of his own superiority. The lack of the human element was to Bob the most disconcerting trait in the lawyer's frame of mind. To him the case was a case, and neither more nor less. The boy's life, so precious to himself, was of no more account to Stenhouse than that of a private soldier to his commanding officer on the day when a position must be rushed. Stenhouse was interested in the professional advantage he himself might gain from the outcome of the trial. In a less degree, he was interested in Teddy's psychology as a new slant on criminal mentality in general. But the results as they affected his client's fate concerned him not at all. "I'm talking to you frankly," he went on, "because it's the only way we can handle the business. You're making yourself responsible in the case, and so I must tell you what I think." "Oh, of course!" "I quite understand your connection with this young fellow, and why you're taking the matter up, but I must treat you as if you were as aloof from it in sentiment as I am myself." "That's exactly what I want." "Well, then, the boy's in a bad fix. It's a worse fix because he belongs to the dangerous criminal type for whom you can never get a jury's sympathy. Roughly speaking, there are two classes of criminals—the criminals by accident and the criminals born. This boy is a criminal born." "Oh, do you think so?" "I know so. Yes, sir! You can't have as much to do with both lots as I've had without learning to read them at sight; and when it comes to drawing them out—why, he hadn't told me a half of his story before I could see he'd had murder on the brain for the best part of his life." "I shouldn't have thought that." "No, you wouldn't. Lot of it subconscious—suppressed desire, Freud, and all that. But start him talking, and it's 'God! I'd have shot that fellow if I'd had a gun!' or it's, 'If I'd had a dose of poison, they'd never have got me alive.' Mind ran on it. Yes, sir! Always thinking of doing somebody in—if not another fellow, then himself." "I don't think he knew it." "Of course he didn't know it. Seemed natural to him. Our own vices always do seem natural to us. If you put it up to him now, he'd say he'd never had a thought of shooting up anyone, and he wouldn't be lying out of it, either. Way it seems to him. Way it seems to every criminal of the class. But to judges and juries it's just so much 'bull,' and tells against the accused in the end. Sure you won't have a cigar?" Having again declined the cigar, Bob argued in favor of Teddy, but Stenhouse was fixed in his convictions. "I'll do what I can for him, of course; only, I'm blocked by his refusal to plead guilty. Pleading guilty might—I don't say it would, but it might—incline the judge to mercy. It would get him off, too, with the second degree, only that, when his own story shows him as guilty as hell, he keeps pulling the innocent stuff to beat a jazz band. The rascal who plumps with his confession will always get the clemency, while the fellow with a mouthful of innocence will be sent to the chair." "But if he does feel that he's innocent—" "Sure he feels that he's innocent! That's it! That's what I'm talking about—the ingrained criminal's lack of consciousness that his kind of crime is crime. The other fellow's—yes; but his—why, the law is a fool to be made that way and trip a good fellow up! To hear this young shaver talk, you'd think the courts should be manned by pickpockets." "All the same, he was in a tight place—" "What's that got to do with it? If we didn't get into tight places, there'd be no need for laws of any kind." "I was only thinking of his motive—" "His motive may have been all right. I'll not dispute you there, because you'll find that legally there's a difference between motive and intent. His motive may have been to provide for his mother, just as he says. Good! No harm in that whatever. But his intent was to rob a bank and shoot the guy that came out after him. The court won't go into his motives. It'll deal only with his intent, and with what came of it." There was more along these lines which sent Bob away with some questioning as to himself. Being of a law-respecting nature, he was anxious not to uphold the transgressor to anything like a danger point. And he ran that risk. Having undertaken to help Teddy on Jennie's account, his heart had gone out beyond what he expected to the boy himself. It was the first time he had ever been in contact with a prisoner, the first time he had ever come face to face with a lone individual against whom all the organized forces of the world were focused in condemnation. His impulse being to range himself on the weaker side, he had, in a measure, so ranged himself. He had told Teddy that he stood by him, and would continue to stand by him through thick and thin. But was he right? Had he shown the proper severity? Hadn't he been sloppy and sentimental, without sufficiently remembering that a man who had killed another man was not to be handled as a pet? It was not common sense to treat the breaker of laws as if he hadn't broken them or as if his punishment had made him a sympathetic figure. Too facile a pity might easily become a sin against the community's best standards, and by putting himself on the weaker side a man might find himself on the worse one. Even the fact that the wrongdoer was a relative ought not to blind the eyes to his being a wrongdoer. It was his duty as a citizen, Bob argued, to support the charter of the Rights of Man as set forth in the Old Testament—thou shalt not kill—thou shalt not steal—the ideal of the New Testament, "Neither was there among them any that lacked, for they had all things common," never having been called to his attention. As to Teddy's being a criminal born, he was not sure. Perhaps he was. Such "sports" appeared even from the most respectable stock. There was a dark tradition, never mentioned now except between Edith and himself, of a Collingham—they were not sure of the relationship—who had died in jail somewhere in the West. Of the Follett stock Bob knew nothing. Jennie was the other half of himself; but such affinities, he was sheepishly inclined to feel, dated from other worlds and other planes of existence, though finding a manifestation in this one. But it was Jennie who gave him the lead he was in search of. "I should think there were plenty of them to attend to that," she said, when he had expressed, as delicately as he could, his misgivings as to his own lack of rigor. "Whatever he did, and however bad it was, they've got all the power in the world to punish him, and they're going to do it. When there's just one person on earth to show him a little pity, I shouldn't think it could be too much." She added, after a second or two of silence: "He was sorry you didn't go in to see him. He missed you. I—I think he's going to cling to you just like a drowning man, you know, to a hand that's stretched out to him from a boat. Very likely he'll have to drown; but so long as the hand is there, it's—it's something." In this speech, which was long for Jennie and betokened her growing authority, there were two or three points on which Bob pondered as he drove them homeward from the Brig. Jennie sat beside him, Lizzie in the back seat. He took the longest and prettiest ways so as to give them something like an outing. It was the afternoon of the day on which he had seen Stenhouse, and in the interval he had been thinking out a program. Whatever the restrictions he must put upon himself with regard to the boy, his duty to protect and distract Jennie and her family was clear. Teddy had also given him to understand that, more than anything done for himself, this would contribute to his peace of mind. Done for his mother and sisters, it would be done for him, and the doer could be sure that he wasn't loosening the foundations of society. Even where there was a born criminal to be judged, and perhaps put out of the way, something was gained when the innocent could be saved to any possible degree from suffering with the guilty. In this, too, he was not without an eye to Indiana Avenue. Though he had no experience of suburban life, he was intuitive enough to feel sure that, to the neighbors, Jennie's marriage had a "queer look," and the more so since she was not living with her husband, now that he was back from South America. To counteract this, he meant to show himself in the street as much as possible, parading his car before the door. There must be no cheap gossip as to Jennie based on lack of his devotion, even though all arrangements between her and himself were no more than provisional. To that point, then, his course was clear. He could not console the mother, whose reason was stricken at its base, nor the three young girls whose lives were overshadowed by tragedy; but he could divert their minds from dwelling too much on calamity by bringing in a new interest. He could make it a big interest. He could enlarge the interest in proportion to their need; and, as Jennie spoke, it dawned on him that they themselves began to foresee that their need might be great indeed. "They've got all the power in the world to punish him; and they're going to do it." "He's going to cling to you like a drowning man. Very likely he'll have to drown." Jennie had had one or two interviews with Stenhouse, and perhaps had inferred from that great man's talk the difficulties of his task. But the help she gave Bob was in her response to his misgivings. "When there's just one person on earth to show him a little pity, I shouldn't think it could be too much." It couldn't be too much—not possibly. The worst enemy of mankind had a right to "a little pity," and even Judas Iscariot had received it. If Teddy didn't get it from him, Bob, he wouldn't get it from anyone—his mother and sisters apart. All civilized men were lined up against him, and doubtless could not be lined in any other way. In that case, punishment was assured, and, as Jennie said, there were plenty of people to take care of its infliction. He, Bob Collingham, since he stood alone, might well forget the heavy score against the boy in "bucking him up" to meet what lay ahead of him. He worked this out before driving Jennie and her mother to their door, after which he waited for Gussie and Gladys to come home from work to take them, too, for an airing. Jennie sat beside him, as on the earlier drive, the two younger girls in the seat behind. To both, the expedition was as the first stage of a glorification which might carry them up to any heights. Taken in connection with what they suffered on account of Teddy, it was like drinking an unmingled draught of the very bitter and the very sweet. Hardly able to lift up their heads from shame, they nevertheless felt the distinction of going out in an expensive high-powered car with a gentleman of wealth and position, who thus publicly proclaimed himself their relative. "This'll settle Addie Inglis and Samuella Weatherby," Gladys whispered, in reference to some taunt or aspersion which Gussie understood. "Say, Gus, he's some sport, isn't he? Jen sure did cop a twenty-cylinder." But Gussie had already turned over her new leaf. From the corner where she reclined with the grace of one accustomed from birth to this style of conveyance, she arched her lovely neck and turned her lovely head just enough to convey a hint of reprimand. "Gladys dear, momma wouldn't like you to use that kind of language. Remember that now we must carry out her wishes all the more because she isn't able to enforce them. Your companions may not always be Hattie Belweather and Sunshine Bright, and so—" "Say, Gus, what's struck you? Has goin' out in a swell rig like this gone to your head?" "Yes, dear; perhaps it has. And if you'll take my advice you'll let it go to yours." The only immediate response from Gladys was a cocking of the eye and a "clk" of the tongue against the cheek, something like a Zulu vowel; but Gussie noticed that in Palisade Park, where they descended from the car to make Bob's acquaintance, Gladys reverted to the intonation and idiom in which she had first picked up her English. The jaunt tended to deepen the sensation which had been creeping over the girls within the past few days, that they were heroines of a dramatic romance. They had figured in the papers, their beauty, personalities, and histories becoming points of vital national concern. One legend made them the scions of an ancient English family fallen on evil days, but now to be revived through alliance with the Collinghams, while another came near enough to the truth to embody the Scarborough tradition and connect them with the historic house in Cambridge. In no case was there any waste of the picturesque, the detail that Jennie had been an artist's model and "the most beautiful woman in America" being especially underscored. It was only little by little that Gussie and Gladys came to a sense of this importance, thus finding themselves enabled to react to some small degree against their sense of disgrace. In the shop, Gussie had heard Corinne whisper to a customer: "That pretty girl over there is the sister of Follett, who murdered Flynn, and whose sister made that romantic marriage with the banker." Though she glanced up from the feather she was twisting only through the tail of her eye, Gussie could reckon the excitement caused by this announcement. When it had been made a second time, and a third, as new customers came in, she saw herself an asset to the shop. Stared at, wondered at, discussed, and appraised, she began to feel as princesses and actresses when recognized in streets. Similarly, Hattie Belweather had run to Gladys to report what Miss Flossie Grimm had said over the counter, in the intervals of displaying stockings. "See that little red-headed, snub-nosed thing over there? That's the Follett child, sister to the guy that shot the detective and the girl that married the banker sport. Some hummer he must be. Jennie, the married one's name is. They say she's had an offer of a hundred plunks a week to go into vawdeville. Fast color? Oh, my, yes! We don't carry any other kind." Thus Gladys began to find it difficult to discern between notoriety and eminence, moving among the other cash girls as a queen incognita among ordinary mortals. Most of this publicity was over by the time Bob reached New York, though the echoes still rumbled through the press. His own arrival reawakened some of it, offering opportunities that were never ignored of drawing dramatic contrasts. He was represented as having been "born in the purple," and stooping to a "maiden of low degree." Low degree was poetically fused with the occupation of a model, and by one publication the statement was thrown in, without comment, and as it were accidentally, that the present Mrs. Robert Bradley Collingham, Junior, of Marillo Park, had been greatly admired by appreciative connoisseurs as the figure in Hubert Wray's already famous picture, "Life and Death." Hubert Wray was even credited with "discovering" this beauty when she was starving in the slums. Except for the detail of Wray's picture, the publicity was something of a relief to Bob, since it left him nothing to explain. The truth in these many reports being tolerably easy to disengage, his friends and acquaintances knew of his position, and, in view of its circumstances, they respected it. He went to the bank; he went to his club; he passed the time of day with such neighbors as remained at Marillo Park, finding it the easier to come and go because everyone knew what had happened. From almost the first day he fell into a routine—the bank, Stenhouse, Teddy, Indiana Avenue. Though he was not yet working at the bank, he felt it wise to show himself daily on the premises, in order to establish the fact that his relations with his family were unchanged. Stenhouse he didn't visit every day, but only when there were matters connected with the case to talk over. He saw Teddy as often as the Brig regulations would allow, growing more and more touched by the eagerness with which the boy welcomed him. In Indiana Avenue he was assiduous. Whatever the hints flung out by Addie Inglis and Samuella Weatherby, they received contradiction as far as that was possible from obvious devotion. As for his personal relations with Jennie, they changed little from the modus vivendi agreed upon. That she was growing more and more grateful was evident, but gratitude wasn't what he wanted. What he wanted he himself didn't know, and, in a measure, he didn't care. Till she got what she wanted, he could never be wholly satisfied; and if she wanted Wray.... But at this point his reasoning faculties failed him. If she wanted Wray and if Wray wanted her, there would, of course, be but one thing for him to do. It was that one thing itself which remained elusive or obscure, dodging, disturbing, and defying him. He could find a means to give Jennie her freedom, or he could take her by brute force, or, in certain circumstances, he could dismiss her as not worthy of his love. The trouble was that he couldn't see himself doing any of the three; and yet if what seemed to be true was true, he couldn't see himself as doing the other thing. The modus vivendi, like all other arrangements of its kind, was therefore safe and convenient. It settled nothing; but it was what the term implied, a way of living. It was not an ideal way of living, or a way that shielded anyone from comment; but it was a way. As for comment, it reached Bob only indirectly, and not oftener than every now and then. Perhaps it came in as pointed a form as it ever assumed for him in a seemingly chance remark from the chauffeur's wife, Mrs. Gull. It was not a chance remark, for the neat, pretty, thin-lipped, pinched-face Englishwoman who had passed all her life "in service" didn't make ill-considered observations. "I suppose we shall see the young lady down, sir, some day soon?" "Yes, some day soon," Bob replied, cautiously, getting ready in the hall to go to town. "To remain?" It was all summed up in those three syllables—all the gossip on the Collingham estate, and on all the estates at Marillo, not to go farther afield. "Not to remain just yet," Bob answered, judiciously. "Mrs. Follett isn't well, and Mrs. Collingham has two younger sisters whom she has to take care of." That this explanation was not adequate he knew; and yet it was an explanation. "It certainly do seem queer," Mrs. Gull observed to the gardener and the gardener's wife, in a company that included Gull; and Gull, who was from Somersetshire, replied, "It most zure and zertainly do." But on the Sunday afternoon two weeks after Bob's return "the young lady" paid her visit to Collingham Lodge, accompanied by her mother and two sisters. The journey was made in what Gladys characterized as "style," the style being mainly supplied by Gull in his sedate chauffeur's uniform. But the fact that he drove the car left Bob free to sit with his guests in the tonneau. He put Jennie, as hostess and mistress of the car, in the right-hand corner, Mrs. Follett in the left one, and Gussie in the middle. He and Gladys occupied the adjustable seats behind the chauffeur. At sight of the light linen rug with the Collingham initials in crimson appliqué, Gussie and Gladys exchanged appreciative glances, and they both searched the neighboring piazzas for a glimpse of Addie Inglis or Samuella Weatherby. Acquainted now with the fact that Jennie had viewed the celestial country whither they were traveling, and with her descriptions of the wonders she had seen almost learned by rote, the girls came near to forgetting that Teddy was in a cell. But his mother didn't forget it. Silent, austere, incapable of pleasure, and waiting only the moment of the boy's release and her own, her eyes roamed the parched September landscape and saw none of it. She did not appear unhappy—only removed into a world of her own, a world of long, long thoughts. No one said much. There was not much to say and a great deal to think about. Even the house, the terraces, the gardens called forth no more than "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" of approval. Gladys declared that she felt herself wandering through the castle scenes in "The Silver Queen," the latest screen masterpiece, but no one else descended to such comparisons. "It's like heaven," Gussie murmured timidly, to Bob, as they strolled between hedges of dahlias. "Oh no, it isn't!" he laughed. "Three or four places at Marillo are much finer than this." Subdued by sheer ecstasy, they assembled on the flagged terrace, where Mrs. Gull brought out tea. Bob was pleased at Jennie's bearing toward the chauffeur's wife—friendly with just the right touch of dignity. "Mr. Collingham tells me you're English. We're almost English ourselves, since we were born in Canada. I've never been in England, but I should so love to go, though they say it's quite different since the war." There was no more to it than that, but Mrs. Gull reported to her husband: "As much a lady as any I've ever served under—and I do know a lady when I see her. Miss Edith's a lady, too, but not a patch on this one. She may have been just as bad as they say she was, but you'd never believe it to look at her, and the sisters be'ave as pretty as pretty. Oh dear! And they with a murderer for a brother! It do seem queer, now don't it?" To which Gull replied in his usual antiphon, "It most zure and zertainly do." The jarring chord in this harmony came from Lizzie, while Bob was in search of Gull to bid him bring round the car. Lizzie stood looking down the two flowered terraces, where in honor of the visitors the fountains had been turned on. "I understand now why they couldn't afford to pay your father his forty-five a week. It must cost a great deal of money to keep this establishment going." "Oh, momma," Gussie pleaded, "don't begin to hang crape just when we're able to enjoy ourselves a little." Lizzie turned on her daughter her rare and almost forgotten smile. "Very well, dear; enjoy yourself. Only a world in which enjoyment must be bought at such a price is not a fit world for human beings to live in." Gladys crept up, snuggling against her mother's shoulder. "Yes, momma darling; but you won't say that any more till we get home, now will you? It might hurt poor Bob's feelings if you did, and you can't say that he's ever done us any harm." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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