“Are you? Every newspaper in town had a big story this morning, and of course the news has gone all over the country. Nothing else is to be heard in the trains or in Park Row. Oh, you will have plenty to sustain you. Lots of women would give their heads to be in your place.”
He dined with her and remained until eight o’clock. After he had gone, Patience sat for some time lost in a pleasurable reverie. He always left her in a good humour, and she unquestionably loved him. Few women could help loving Morgan Steele. She sighed once as she reflected that love was not the tremendous passion she had once imagined it to be; in all her dreams she had never pictured it as a restful and tranquillising element; but she conceded that Steele’s philosophy was correct.
And if he did not inspire her with a mightier passion it was her fault, not his. Miss Merrien had told her of one brilliant newspaper woman who had made a wilful idiot of herself on his behalf, and of a popular and gifted actress who at one time had taken to haunting the “Day” office, much to the enjoyment of his fellow editors and to his own futile wrath.
“No,” she thought, “I made a mistake once, and the shock was so great that it either benumbed or stunted me; or else the imaginary me was killed and the real developed. And after such a marriage I doubt if there are depths or heights left in one’s nature.”
Then her mind drifted to her predicament, and she wondered that the workings of fear had so wholly ceased. “I suppose it is because that man is going to defend me,” she said, ruthlessly, at last. “They say he could save a man that had been caught driving a knife into another man’s heart with a hammer; so it is quite natural that I should feel safe.”
VII
The next day a box of books and periodicals arrived from Steele. Rosita thoughtfully subscribed to a clipping bureau, and sent Patience daily a heavy package of “stories,” editorials, and telegrams of which she was the heroine. Patience became so bewildered over the contradictory descriptions of her personal appearance, the various versions of her marital drama, the hundred and one theories for the murder and defence, the ingenious analyses of her character, and the conflicting information regarding her girlhood, that she wondered sometimes if a person could come forth from the hands of so many creators and retain any original birthmarks. The “Eye” telegraphed to its correspondent in San Francisco to investigate her childhood, and the correspondent evidently interviewed all her old enemies. Her mother’s happy career was detailed with glee, and her own “sulky, moody, eccentric, murderous propensities” were brilliantly epitomised. The story was entitled “She Tried To Murder Her Mother,” and the “Eye’s” perfervid joy at this discovery throbbed in an editorial.
The story was copied the length and breadth of the United States; but it is only fair to add that Mr. Field’s eloquent leaders in her defence were as widely quoted.
Miss Beale came to see her at once, and after a few tears and an emphatic warning that “this terrible ordeal was the logical punishment of her blasphemy of and disrespect to the Lord,” announced her intention to sit by her during the trial, and let the jury see what a president of the W. C. T. U. thought of a prisoner whose life was in their hands. Patience told her that she loved her, and indeed was deeply grateful.
She spent her mornings reading the newspapers and attending to her correspondence. Tarbox always paid her a short call, and usually discoursed of Garan Bourke, whom he admired extravagantly. For a half hour before luncheon she permitted her fellow prisoners to sit before her in a wondering semi-circle while she manicured her nails and drew vivid word-pictures of the superior comforts incident upon the resignation of alcohol. With the exception of Mag they were weather-beaten creatures, with hollow eyes and weak pathetic mouths. They admired Patience superlatively. She was touched by their devotion, and occasionally read them the funny stories in the illustrated weeklies. They listened with open mouth and voiceless laughter, which, however, expressed itself vocally when the stories were told in Irish or German dialect. Patience gave them the papers, and they pasted the pictures on the walls of the corridor. Never before had the female ward of the White Plains Jail presented so festive an appearance. When the W. C. T. U. ladies came to sing to the prisoners they were inclined to be horrified; but Patience assured them that love of art, however manifested, was a hopeful sign.