Manslaughter

by Alice Duer Miller

"Thank heaven for you, Eleanor!" she said. "You have certainly worked a miracle." Eleanor looked uncomprehending, and she went on: "At first she was so naughty to poor Mr. Wiley—would hardly discuss the case at all; but now since you've talked to her she is quite different. She has even consented to send for Governor Albee—the obvious thing, with his friendship and political power."

Eleanor's shoulders were rather high anyhow, and when she drew them together she looked like a wooden soldier. She did it now as she said with distaste, "But is this a question of politics?"

"My dear, you know the district attorney is a political officer, and they say this young man is extremely ambitious. Certainly he would listen—he'd have to—to a man at the head of the party like Albee. I feel much easier in my mind. The governor can do anything, and now that Lydia has come to her senses she is determined to go into court with the best case possible, and you know how clever she is. Thank you, Eleanor, for all you have done for us."

Like many workers of miracles, Eleanor went away surprised at her own powers. The idea of O'Bannon being coerced or rewarded into letting Lydia off gave her exquisite pain. She felt like warning him to do his duty, even if it meant Lydia's being found guilty. Yet she sincerely wanted Lydia saved—meant to go as far as she could to save her. She knew with what a perfect surface of honesty such things could be done; how a district attorney, while from the public's point of view prosecuting a case with the utmost vigor, might leave open some wonderful technical escape for the defense. It could be done without O'Bannon losing an atom of public respect. But she, Eleanor, would know; would know as she saw him conducting the case; would know when a year or so later, after everyone else had forgotten, he would receive his reward—some political appointment or perhaps a financial chairmanship. Albee had great powers in business as well as politics. In her own mind she formulated the words, "I have the utmost confidence in O'Bannon." But she knew, too, how all people of passionate, quick temperaments are sometimes swept by their own desires, and how easily most lawyers could find rational grounds for taking the position they desired to take. It would be so natural for any man under the plea of pity for a young woman like Lydia to allow himself to be subtly corrupted into letting her off.

Eleanor's own position was not simple. She faced it clearly. She was for Lydia, whatever happened, as far as her conduct went; but in spite of herself her sympathies swung to and fro. When women like Fanny Piers and May Swayne said, with a certain relish they couldn't keep out of their tones and reluctant dimples at the corners of their mouths, "Isn't this too dreadful about poor Lydia?" then she was whole-heartedly Lydia's. But when she detected in all her friends—except Bobby, who was frankly frightened—the belief that they were beyond the law, that nothing could happen to any member of their protected group, then she felt she would enjoy nothing so much as seeing one of them prove an exception to the general immunity.

The coroner held Lydia for the grand jury in ten thousand dollars' bail. This had been considered a foregone conclusion and did not particularly distress or alarm Eleanor. What did alarm her was her inability to get in touch with O'Bannon. In all the months of their quick, intimate friendship this had never happened before. Press of business had never kept him entirely away. Now she could not even get him to come to the telephone.

She was not the only person who was attempting to see him on Lydia's behalf. Bobby Dorset had made several efforts, and finally caught him between the courthouse and his office. Bobby took the tone that the whole thing was fantastic; that O'Bannon was too much of a gentleman to send any girl to prison, irritating the man he had come to placate by something frivolous and unreal in his manner—the only manner Bobby knew.

And then as Lydia's case grew darker Albee came. O'Bannon was in his study at home, the low-ceilinged room opening off the dining room. It had a great flat baize-covered desk, and low open shelves running round the walls, containing not only law books, but novels and early favorites—Henty and Lorna Doone and many records of travel and adventure.

Here he was sitting, supposed to be at work on the Thorne case, about nine o'clock in the evening. Certainly his mind was occupied with it and the papers were laid out before him. He was going over and over, the same treadmill that his mind had been chained to ever since he had stood by Drummond's bedside with Alma Wooley clinging, weeping, to his hand.

Lydia Thorne had committed a crime, and his duty was to present the case against the criminal. Sometimes of course a district attorney was justified in taking into consideration extenuating circumstances which could not always be brought out in court. But in this case there were no extenuating circumstances. Every circumstance he knew was against her. Her character was harsh and arrogant. She had already violated the law in bribing Drummond. First she had corrupted the poor boy, and then she had killed him. She deserved punishment more than most of the criminals who came into his court, and his duty was to present the case against her. He repeated it over and over to himself. Why, he was half a crook to consider this case as different from any other case—and if she did get off she wouldn't be grateful. She'd just assume that there had not been and never could be any question of convicting a woman like herself. He remembered her bending to look at him under the candle shades of the Piers' dinner table and announcing her disbelief in the equal administration of the laws. But yet, if she should come to him—if she would only come to him, pleading for herself as she had once for a few minutes pleaded for Evans——He could almost see her there in the circle of his reading light, close to him—could almost smell the perfume of violets.