Part 28

"Well, at any rate, do all your talking in court. These fellows will twist everything you say."

"Take her to the station house," interrupted Hanlon.

"But I'm innocent," said Hilda, clasping her hands on her heart and looking appealingly at the captain.

"Take her along, Casey."

Casey laid hold of her arm, but she shook him off. They went through the sitting-room of the saloon and out at the side door. When Hilda saw the great crowd she covered her face with her hands and shrank back. "There she is! There she is! They're taking her to the station house!" shouted the crowd.

Casey closed the door. "We'll have to get the wagon," he said.

They sat waiting until the patrol wagon came. Then Hilda, half-carried by Casey, crossed the sidewalk through a double line of blue coats who fought back the frantically curious, pushed on by those behind. In the wagon she revived and by the time they reached the station house, seemed calm. Another great crowd was pressing in; she heard cries of "There's the girl that killed him!" She drew herself up haughtily, looked round with defiance, with indignation.

Her father and Otto rushed forward as soon as she entered the doors. She broke down again. "Take me home! Take me home!" she sobbed. "I've not done anything." The men forgot that they had promised each the other to be calm, and cursed and cried alternately. The matron came, spoke to her gently.

"You'll have to go now, child," she said.

Hilda kissed her father, then she and Otto clasped each the other closely. "It'll turn out all right, dear," he said. "We're having a streak of bad luck. But our good luck'll be all the better when it comes."

Strength and hope seemed to pass from him into her. She walked away firmly and the last glimpse they had of her sad sweet young face was a glimpse of a brave little smile trying to break through its gray gloom. But alone in her cell, seated upon the board that was her bed, her disgrace and loneliness and danger took possession of her. She was a child of the people, brought up to courage and self-reliance. She could be brave and calm before false accusers, before staring crowds. But here, with a dim gas-jet revealing the horror of grated bars and iron ceiling, walls and floor--

She sat there, hour after hour, sleepless, tearless, her brain burning, the cries of drunken prisoners in adjoining cells sounding in her ears like the shrieks of the damned. Seconds seemed moments, moments hours. "I'm dreaming," she said aloud at last. She started up and hurled herself against the bars, beating them with her hands. "I must wake or I'll die. Oh, the disgrace! Oh! the shame!"

And she flung herself into a corner of the bench, to dread the time when the darkness and the loneliness would cease to hide her.

XII

EXIT MR. FEUERSTEIN

The matron brought her up into the front room of the station house at eight in the morning. Casey looked at her haggard face with an expression of satisfaction. "Her nerve's going," he said to the sergeant. "I guess she'll break down and confess to-day."

They drove her to court in a Black Maria, packed among thieves, drunkards and disorderly characters. Upon her right side pressed a slant-faced youth with a huge nose and wafer-thin, flapping ears, who had snatched a purse in Houston Street. On her left, lolling against her, was an old woman in dirty calico, with a faded black bonnet ludicrously awry upon scant white hair--a drunkard released from the Island three days before and certain to be back there by noon.

"So you killed him," the old woman said to her with a leer of sympathy and admiration.

At this the other prisoners regarded her with curiosity and deference. Hilda made no answer, seemed not to have heard. Her eyes were closed and her face was rigid and gray as stone.

"She needn't be afraid at all," declared a young woman in black satin, addressing the company at large. "No jury'd ever convict as good-looking a girl as her."

"Good business!" continued the old woman. "I'd 'a' killed mine if I could 'a' got at him--forty years ago." She nodded vigorously and cackled. Her cackle rose into a laugh, the laugh into a maudlin howl, the howl changing into a kind of song--

"My love, my love, my love and I--we had to part, to part! And it broke, it broke, it broke my heart --it broke my heart!"

"Cork up in there!" shouted the policeman from the seat beside the driver.

The old woman became abruptly silent. Hilda moaned and quivered. Her lips moved. She was murmuring, "I can't stand it much longer--I can't. I'll wake soon and see Aunt Greta's picture looking down at me from the wall and hear mother in the kitchen--"

"Step lively now!" They were at the Essex Market police court; they were filing into the waiting-pen. A lawyer, engaged by her father, came there, and Hilda was sent with him into a little consultation room. He argued with her in vain. "I'll speak for myself," she said. "If I had a lawyer they'd think I was guilty."

After an hour the petty offenders had been heard and judged. A court officer came to the door and called: "Hilda Brauner!"

Hilda rose. She seemed unconcerned, so calm was she. Her nerves had reached the point at which nerves refuse to writhe, or even to record sensations of pain. As she came into the dingy, stuffy little courtroom she didn't note the throng which filled it to the last crowded inch of standing-room; did not note the scores of sympathetic faces of her anxious, loyal friends and neighbors; did not even see her father and Otto standing inside the railing, faith and courage in their eyes as they saw her advancing.

The magistrate studied her over the tops of his glasses, and his look became more and more gentle and kindly. "Come up here on the platform in front of me," he said.