"But the papers say you can't get near the door."
"Father's given me a card to the judge—he knows him. Come on—Vivie's waiting at the corner."
In such heady excitement the three girls raced to the criminal court building and were smuggled by a fat bailiff through the judge's private chambers into the crowded scene. There was not six inches of standing room to be had in the place except beside the judge, and there the bailiff installed the young women in comfortable chairs, much to the envy of the perspiring throng beneath.
There, behold, beside the grave judge, facing the court-room, above the counsel, the reporters, the prisoners, sat Milly Ridge and Sally and Vivie Norton, in their best clothes, with the sweeping plumed hats that had just come into fashion then.... Milly beamed with pleasure and excitement, casting alluring glances from beneath her great hat at the severe judge. It was like a play, and she had a very good seat.
It was a play that went on day after day for weeks, sometimes dull with legal formalities, sometimes tense with "human" interest. And, day after day, the three girls occupied their favored seats beside the judge, listening to the evidence of the great conspiracy against Society, watching the prisoners—a sorry lot of men generally—and staring haughtily down at the jammed court-room. Their presence, of course, was noted by the reporters and mentioned as at a social event "among our society leaders in daily attendance at the trial." Their names and dresses were duly recorded, along with pen pictures of the anarchists. It quite fluttered Milly, this prominence,—"the Misses Norton and Miss Mildred Ridge, etc."
The three girls became deeply interested in the prisoners and picked their favorites among them. Sally was for a German because he looked to be "such an interesting devil," and Vivie was intrigued by the newspaper stories about another. Milly was drawn to the youngest of all,—a mere lad, blue-eyed and earnest, who had evidently "got into bad company" and been led astray. Vivie sent her man flowers,—a bunch of deep red roses,—and the next day he appeared wearing one conspicuously pinned to his coat. Sally coaxed the obliging bailiff to smuggle them all into the jail so that they might see the prisoners and talk to them through the bars. But the great event was when Spies made his celebrated speech of defiance, breathing scorn and hatred of his captors. Sally Norton rose in her seat and threw him kisses with both hands. A bailiff came, put his hand on her shoulder, and forced her to be quiet. It made something of a scene in court. The judge looked annoyed. Then Sally had a fit of the giggles and finally had to leave the room.
But when the turn of Milly's hero came to speak in his own defence, Milly had a choking sensation in her throat and felt the warm tears run over her cheeks. He, too, was brave. He talked of the wrongs of society, and Milly realized somehow that she was part of the society he was condemning,—one of the more privileged at the feast of life, who made it impossible for the many others to get what they wanted. Of course his views were wrong,—all the men she knew said so,—but the pity of it all in his case, so young and handsome and brave he appeared!
While counsel wrangled and pleaded, while this little group of men rounded up by the police to stand sponsors for Anarchy and expiate its horrid creed, so that good citizens might sleep peacefully nights, faced death, the three girls sat and stared at the spectacle. It passed slowly, and the prisoners were condemned by a jury of their peers quite promptly, and the grave judge sentenced them "to hang by their necks until dead." At the dreadful words Milly gasped, then sobbed outright.
No matter what they had done, at least what he had done, how wrong his ideas about society were, he was too young and too handsome for such an awful fate. If he had only had about him from the beginning the right influences, if some woman had loved him and guided him aright,—Milly hoped that he might yet be spared, pardoned if possible. Mopping the tears from her eyes she left the court-room for the last time, with a vague sense of the wretchedness of life—sometimes.