CHAPTER XIII
"Sleep," said Max Elmen to Joan Daisy. "Sleep is all I order now. Do not worry for one wink. All is ready; you are prepared. Every word you understand. Sleep, now, for the brightness of the eye beyond any which belladonna can give you. Besides," interpolated Max, "belladonna relaxes altogether too much the pupils, reducing the iris which in you is such beautiful blue. So simply sleep, until to-morrow Herman calls you. That is all."
Sleep, for to-morrow starts the trial; to-morrow Ket will be led from the jail across the Bridge of Sighs into court, where, although for the first time in three months he will not see steel bars between himself and daylight, he is granted this indulgence only because he is called, at last, to answer for his life.
To-morrow, in the morning, the People of Illinois—the millions and millions of people of the State, which Joan Daisy now knows to mean not merely the State of Illinois nor the State of all the United States, but the State of civilized people—the State will set in motion its terrible, merciless machinery designed to kill Ket. Assistant State's Attorney Clarke will start it; and Joan Daisy Royle is to be placed in its path to stop it. Max Elmen, patiently and repeatedly, has drilled her in what she shall say and do; but at the most critical moment, he can not help her; he must say to the State, "Take the witness," and she must depend upon herself thereafter. Maybe throughout two days; perhaps through three or four. Who knows?
At every moment, throughout these days, Ket's life will depend upon her wit instantly to answer, never to contradict herself or become confused, never to falter, never to lose faith or courage. To-morrow, to be sure, will be a day for selecting the jury and no one will go upon the witness stand; but already, upon to-morrow morning, her appearance in court becomes of vital concern. Therefore it is essential for her to sleep.
Joan Daisy tried to obey her orders, and she began preparations for bed at the unheard—of hour of nine. It was a night upon which mamma's back was unusually bad, as it was likely to be at a time of trouble; so Joan Daisy rubbed mamma's body for half an hour and, when mamma was better, massaged mamma's face and, with endless patience and meticulous exactness pasted about mamma's eyes and mouth fourteen tiny strips of plaster optimistically applied to banish wrinkles and crows'-feet of ten years standing.
"I suppose now," complained mamma, "you want me to go to sleep. Give me that glass." And thus making the affair a favor to Daisy, she dosed herself, sighed and turned over. "All right; run along, Daisy; never mind me."
Joan Daisy closed mamma's door with hands atremble from muscular exhaustion of the prolonged massage, and her whole body became aquiver, now that she was alone, as she felt the awful imminence of the trial. Plucking at the snaps over her shoulders, she dropped off her dress for relief of its weight before bending to pull out the couch to make it her bed.
Vaguely she heard the usual drum of music, which resounded constantly through the floors at this hour when loud-speakers were operating and mechanical pianos played; and when suddenly a nearer beat assailed her, absurdly she imagined Ket in the empty room below. She denied the accent of the music, thinking, "Ket never would play like that," before she logically considered that Ket to-night was on his cot in his cell, where lights were out, and where a prisoner, who was not to be tried to-morrow, snored upon the pallet overhead and a third partner of the cell slept below.
To-morrow night, although the trial would have begun, he would lie similarly in the jail cell and likewise throughout the trial for ten nights, perhaps, or for two weeks or possibly for more. But the end must come; and then?
Joan Daisy had laid the white cotton pad over the couch and now she was spreading the sheets; and smoothing them, she felt her quivering hands and her face go cold as she thought, "Would Ket lie down next in the death cell?"
If not, would it be upon a cot in the penitentiary upon which he would lie every night for all the rest of his life?
If not, if he won the verdict, if she, as she was sworn and determined to do, won his freedom for him, where would he sleep? Ina bed with her, under fine sheets like these?
With chill, quivering hands she smoothed the linen which his money had paid for. "I'll marry you, Kid, I'll marry you," he had whispered again and again, recently, through those holes of the visiting screen, "I'll marry you, Kid, when you get me free."
What kept her quivering and cold was the idea of the death cell, she thought; was the idea of that cell in Mr. Clarke's mind to-night?
Where was he? What was he doing on this night before the trial? she wondered without any intention to have sent her mind to him, as she made her bed. He had gone home, she had heard; but it was long ago, before Christmas. In fact, it was before Christmas when Mr. Elmen had told her that Mr. Clarke was again in the city; but she had not seen him since he went home, so she had been thinking of him at home in Clarke's Ferry, in that old, old house of Queen Anne's war, of the Revolution and John Adams' administration and of Antietam, the house with the sundial over the door, the old picket gate and his mother in the garden.
To be of account, in Mr. Clarke's mind, a person had to come from a home. Not from a home like his; for even he would not expect that and, Joan Daisy suspected, he would not quite like it if every one had a home like his; for his went back to Queen Anne's war.
Joan Daisy knew about Queen Anne's war, now; she had looked it up; so she knew how impossible it was for many people to possess such a home. But a person to be trustworthy—to Mr. Clarke's mind—must have a house somewhere, and certainly at least a father who could confidently be named and a little land to give one's mother a garden.
Well—and hereupon Joan Daisy energetically finished making her bed—a person could be as good as any one else and have none of those things. She would show Mr. Calvin Clarke, of Clarke's Ferry, Massachusetts, that a boy could come out of a barber-shop with a manicurist for a mother and no father at all and make himself a great musician like Mozart, instead of a murderer; and she would show him that a girl could get from Chicago, from the street, from hotels and flats, from newspapers telling about great people, from motion pictures of things everywhere, from the radio, even from the fronts of buiidings which spell in stone—Wagner—Beethoven—Mozart—the idea and determination to be decent and to try to do something, if Dads did come home dizzy every night and mamma doped herself to sleep and the three of them never had inhabited the same place for as long as two months, until Elmen took supervision of the family affairs.
Joan Daisy felt invigorated; she splashed her cheeks and showered her slim, white body with cold water. She switched off the living-room light and, clad in pajamas, she swung wide the window, welcoming the stinging cold of the dry, January night.
Snow lay upon the stone sill and clung to the copings; a white sheen shrouded the sod of the court, glittering where it caught the glint of the street lamps and over all spread the magic, silver refulgence of the midwinter moon.
The air had a metallic tang; and underfoot, or rather underwheel, where the dry snow was pressed beneath the tires of a truck, was a creaking cold. People passed briskly upon the walk with breath like smoke and their voices floated up, articulate and amazingly distinct.
"Come in and get warm," a man invited a girl to his room.
"No; I gotta go home," objected the girl.
"Come in; you can say you was at a show," commanded the man; and Joan Daisy bent forward and saw him escorting her into the first entry.
It reminded Joan Daisy of Ket and herself, of Ket and of other girls similarly led up to the room below hers. Many a one of them, she knew, had not run out when Ket sat on the couch beside her. Joan Daisy drew back; she stretched up to tiptoe, turned and ran on light tiptoe to bed, slipped under the soft covers and lay, shivering slightly.
Sleep, Max Elmen had commanded; and she shut her eyes, but her mind visited in the empty room below and ran the rounds of the walls covered with women's pictures; and she thought of Ket in his cell in jail, where he had lain every night for three months.
She opened her eyes and turned over.
A taxi, with clinking chains, halted and the driver said with deference, "a dollar ten, sir."
"Keep the change," bid Dads' dignified intonation.
"Sober!" thought Joan and glowed with gratefulness to Dads for keeping control of himself to-night. But it was like Dads to rise to an emergency when mamma, on the other hand, would collapse.
Dads stepped steadily up the walk and when he inserted his key in the door lock, it was the right key at once and he found the keyhole without scraping around it.
Since he had noticed that the room was dark and the window open, he entered noiselessly until she spoke to him, "Dads!"
"Did I wake you?" he asked.
"No. Close the window. Talk to me, Dads."
He fastened the sash, switched on the light, and she saw, as she had begun to feel in the dark, that Dads not only was wholly sober to-night, but that he had returned in a rare mood of his which reminded her always of his talk with her on her twelfth birthday.
"Do you not like the light?" he questioned as he faced her.
"Let's look out at the moonlight," she replied; so he turned the switch again. He laid down his hat and stick but he merely unbuttoned his overcoat, as he seated himself on a chair near her.
"You are worrying," he said.
"Some," she admitted, thrusting an arm from the covers, and he drew off a glove and clasped her hand.
"Over Ketlar?"
"Ket, of course, Dads."
"He will be acquitted," assured Dads, releasing her hand, but keeping it upon his knee and patting it gently.
"I think so."
"Then what do you think?" demanded Dads suddenly, poising his hand over hers and ceasing to pat her. "What for you, Joan—little, little Joan? Have you thought it through?"
"What through?"
"What he will do, and you will do, when he is freed—if he is. How long since he was jailed?"
"More than three months, Dads."
"That's it. All that time, he has not had his hands on a girl; he has not seen any woman, but his mother, except through the holes of a double steel screen. He will see women in court to-morrow and during the trial; he will see you and several others of his friends, but he will be shut up at night in the jail until the tremendous day when he is freed.
"That night he will not spend alone. Do you want to be the girl to spend it with him?"
Joan withdrew her hand, thrusting it under the covers.
"Do you care," demanded Dads, "that if he does not have you, he will be with another girl?"
"He always," whispered Joan, with lips and tongue dry, "he always was with other girls. That was Ket."
"But he didn't have you. Is he going to?"
"He's going to have me," she whispered, "to make him a musician." She gasped, "Why, that's all my life, Dads!"
"How's he done with the book you bought him?" challenged Dads.
"He hasn't read it, yet."
"Not even read it!"
"That's not his fault. The jail's the trouble. The jail isn't what I thought it'd be for music. I guess that men who were made great in jails weren't in ones much like the Cook County jail. Everybody's crazy about Ket in jail, Dads; he's a riot, when he plays his jazz, and he's written a lot of jazz in jail; but that's all he wants to do. He likes to please people, you see; and jazz does. But it'll be different when he gets out. I mean, he'll work, then; he'll do big things, I know he will."
"How do you know it?"
"I can make him want to work, Dads!"
"How can you?"
"I can," she cried, clutching the covers and gathering them close about her throat.
Dads leaned over and patted her cheek, softly. "Don't dream you can by giving him yourself."
"I can!" she cried again, and he arose, looking down at her. For a moment he debated whether to argue more; then she saw him draw suddenly aloof. He opened wide her window, arranging it with care precisely as he had found it, and he strode into the bedroom without another word.
Joan Daisy lay with the bed covers clutched about her and she closed her eyes as she tried to reassemble the elements of her old dream of Ket and of the C Major concerto, of his name in stone beside Mozart's and of herself; but the vision, which Dads had presented, replaced it, and she quivered as she imagined Ket seizing her, as he would have on that night he struck his head on the door, only more grossly for his three months in jail.
Fear of the gallows filled her, and against it she repeated phrases taught her by Elmen to confuse Assistant State's Attorney Clarke, who would ask for Ket's life in the morning; so she marshaled herself to the trial.
Calvin attempted to convince himself, while he prepared to start for the court to open the trial, that he was in complete control of his emotions and that the sight of the Royle girl could not again affect him. His nervousness he deemed only natural upon a morning when he was to represent the State in a capital case.
The day, like the night, was clear and cold, and Calvin decided to walk, partly out of liking for the weather, partly from impatience which made it difficult for him to wait idly in his room, and partly because he was aware that every appearance of himself, as a representative of the State, would be set and balanced against a corresponding appearance of the persons opposed to the State.
The Royle girl, he knew, undoubtedly was acting under most explicit orders from Elmen, who would direct her to travel from her flat by street car and to proceed from the car-line on foot; and Calvin wished to avoid arriving in a cab when the Royle girl and Ketlar's mother appeared on the walk.
To-day, with the call of his trial, Ketlar's name again captured the headlines; and portraits of Ketlar, of his wife, now three months buried, of the Royle girl and Calvin Clarke preëmpted the picture pages. One paper had taken the trouble to obtain a view of Adele Ketlar's grave in Minnesota, with Ketlar's child posed beside the stone cross.
The child remained in Minneapolis, although Ellison had argued that she should be brought back and exhibited in sight of the jury for at least one court session, to offset the sympathy certain to be stirred by the presence of Ketlar's mother; but Calvin opposed the plan and Ellison himself reflected that the little girl might prove a doubtful ally.
"Suppose she reminded a juryman of a child of his own and set him to thinking of himself in Ketlar's place; we'd never win," Ellison commented. "You can't take any chance when you have a hanging case."
Calvin wished that Ellison would not refer to "hanging"; the phrase, a capital case, adequately classified it in Calvin's mind, and he did not permit himself to dwell upon the infliction of the extreme penalty which it was his duty to procure.
Under his picture, this morning, was a line designating him as the officer who would demand Ketlar's life; and since it was his clear duty, Calvin never considered any evasion of it. When such words as Ellison's gave him, in spite of himself, a quiver of repulse, he recollected the portrait of Jeremy at home and that of Jeremy's son, his great grandfather, who in their day had defended and preserved the State by procuring the punishment of its enemies. Undoubtedly, when first they went to court to ask the life of a prisoner, each of them also suffered from qualms of weakness such as distressed Calvin on his walk to the Criminal Courts' building; but never had they faltered, and no more would he.
He was walking down the wide boulevard of upper Michigan Avenue with the new, tremendous towers of office buildings standing on right and left, and ahead he saw the sun shining from the lake upon the endless stone and glass water-front of the city and he thought how to-day no stone or brick of it would be here, how it would have remained a sandy swamp of wild onion grass if Jeremy Clarke and other public prosecutors had failed to enforce discipline when civilization had fringed the Atlantic shore. Not having failed, they had preserved order and law so that Chicago had risen here.
Calvin turned abruptly from the boulevard and soon came in sight of the grim grayness of the jail. A few loiterers stamped feet and rubbed mittened hands as they stood looking up at the barred windows; around the corner, at the doors of the Criminal Courts' building, a crowd was skewing and arguing for admittance; and Calvin's pulse hastened as he approached.
He recognized policemen, a couple of plain-clothes men and clerks of the courts; he recognized vaguely a few girls as persons whom he had seen in some connection with Ketlar; but he did not see the Royle girl or Ketlar's mother. Police opened a way and he went up to his office, where photographers with flashlights banging awaited him at the door. Scarcely had he passed them, when he heard them calling to each other and scurrying away; and he knew that Elmen and the Royle girl were downstairs.
"All set?" Ellison asked him.
Ellison, who had come in several minutes earlier, had lost his pinkness from the cold and become pale, and Calvin felt the flush leaving his face as he hung up his overcoat.
"I guess they're all upstairs now," said Ellison, nervously, after a few minutes. "We might as well go up."