Chapter 4. While The Mob Waited

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_ CHAPTER IV. WHILE THE MOB WAITED

The next day but one, in the huge old-fashioned mansion of the Wrandalls in lower Fifth Avenue, in the drawing-room directly beneath the chamber in which Challis was born, the impressive but grimly conventional funeral services were held.

Contrasting sharply with the sombre, absolutely correct atmosphere of the gloomy interior was the exterior display of joyous curiosity that must have jarred severely on the high-bred sensibilities of the chief mourners, not to speak of the invited guests who had been obliged to pass between rows of gaping bystanders in order to reach the portals of the house of grief, and who must have reckoned with extreme distaste the cost of subsequent departure. A dozen raucous-voiced policemen were employed to keep back the hundreds that thronged the sidewalk and blocked the street. Curiosity was rampant. Ever since the moment that the body of Challis Wrandall was carried into the house of his father, a motley, varying crowd of people shifted restlessly in front of the mansion, filled with gruesome interest in the absolutely unseen, animated by the sly hope that something sensational might happen if they waited long enough.

Men, women, children struggled for places nearest the tall iron fence surrounding the spare yard, and gazed with awed but wistful eyes at the curtained windows and at the huge bow of crepe on the massive portals. In hushed voices they spoke of the murder and expressed a single opinion among them all: the law ought to make short work of her! If this thing had happened in England, said they who scoff at our own laws, there wouldn't be any foolishness about the business: the woman would be buried in quick-lime before you could know what you were talking about. The law in this country is a joke, said they, with great irritability. Why can't we do the business up, sharp and quick, as they do in England? Get it over with, that's the ticket. What's the sense of dragging it out for a year? Send 'em to the chair or hang 'em while everybody's interested, not when the thing's half forgotten. Who wants to see a person hanged after the crime's been forgotten? And then, think of the saving to the State? Hang 'em, men or women, and in a couple of years' time there wouldn't be a tenth part of the murders we have now. Statistics prove, went on the wise ones, that only one out of every hundred is hanged. What's that? The jury system is rotten! No sirree, we are 'way behind England in that respect. Just look at that big murder case in London last month! Remember it? Murderer was hanged inside of three weeks after he was caught. That's the way to do it! And the London police catch 'em too. Our police stand around doing nothing until the criminal has got a week's start, and then--oh, well, what can you expect? "Now if I was at the head of the New York department I'd have that woman behind the bars before night, that's what I'd do. You bet your life, I would," said more than one. And no one questioned his ability to do so.

And then all of them would growl at the policemen who pushed them back from the gates, and call them "scabs" and "mutts" in repressed tones, and snarl under their breath that they wouldn't be pushing people around like that if they didn't have stars and clubs and a great idea of their own importance. "If it wasn't for the family at home dependin' on me for support, I'd take a punch at that stiff, so help me God, even if I went to the Island for it!"

And so it WAS and ever shall be, world without end.

Newsboys, hoarse-voiced and pipe-voiced, mingled with the crowd, and shrieked their extras under the very noses of the always-aloof Wrandalls, who up to this day had turned them up at the sight of a vulgar extra, but who now looked down them with a trembling of the nostrils that left no room for doubt as to their present state of mind.

Up to the very portals these assiduous peddlers yelped for pennies and gave in exchange the latest headlines. "All about Mr. Challis Wran'all's fun'ral!" "Horrible extry!" Ding-donging the thing in the very ears of the dead man himself!

Motor after motor, carriage after carriage, rolled up to the curb and emptied its sober-faced, self-conscious occupants in front of the door with the great black bow; with each arrival the crowd surged forward, and names were muttered in undertones, passing from lip to lip until every one in the street knew that Mr. So-and-So, Mrs. This-or-That, the What-do-you-call-ems and others of the city's most exclusive but most garishly advertised society leaders had entered the house of mourning. It was a great show for the plebeian spectators. Much better than Miss So-and-So's wedding, said one woman who had attended the aforesaid ceremony as a unit in the well-dressed mob that almost wrecked the carriages in the desire to see the terrified bride. Better than a circus, said a man who held his little daughter above the heads of the crowd so that she might see the fine lady in a wild-beast fur. Swellest funeral New York ever had, remarked another, excepting one 'way back when he was a kid.

At the corner below stood two patrol wagons, also waiting.

Inside the house sat the carefully selected guests, hushed and stiff and gratified. (Not because they were attending a funeral, but because the occasion served to separate them from the chaff: they were the elect.) It would be going too far to intimate that they were proud of themselves, but it is not stretching it very much to say that they counted noses with considerable satisfaction and were glad that they had not been left out. The real, high-water mark in New York society was established at this memorable function. It was quite plain to every one that Mrs. Wrandall,--THE Mrs. Wrandall,--had made out the list of guests to be invited to the funeral of her son. It was a blue-stocking affair. You couldn't imagine anything more so. Afterwards, the two hundred who were there looked with utmost pity and not a little scorn on the other two hundred who failed to get in, notwithstanding there was ample room in the spacious house for all of them. There wasn't a questionable guest in the house, unless one were to question the right of the dead man's widow to be there--and, after all, she was upstairs with the family. Even so, she was a Wrandall--remotely, of course, but recognisable.

Yes, they counted noses, so to say. As one after the other arrived and was ushered into the huge drawing-room, he or she was accorded a congratulatory look from those already assembled, a tribute returned with equal amiability. Each one noted who else was there, and each one said to himself that at last they really had something all to themselves. It was truly a pleasure, a relief, to be able to do something without being pushed about by people who didn't belong but thought they did. They sat back,--stiffly, of course,--and in utter stillness confessed that there could be such a thing as the survival of the fittest. Yes, there wasn't a nose there that couldn't be counted with perfect serenity. It was a notable occasion.

Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, had made out the list. She did not consult her daughter-in-law in the matter. It is true that Sara forestalled her in a way by sending word, through Leslie, that she would be pleased if Mrs. Wrandall would issue invitations to as many of Challis's friends as she deemed advisable. As for herself, she had no wish in the matter; she would be satisfied with whatever arrangements the family cared to make.

It is not to be supposed, from the foregoing, that Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, was not stricken to the heart by the lamentable death of her idol. He WAS her idol. He was her first-born, he was her love-born. He came to her in the days when she loved her husband without much thought of respecting him. She was beginning to regard him as something more than a lover when Leslie came, so it was different. When their daughter Vivian was born, she was plainly annoyed but wholly respectful. Mr. Wrandall was no longer the lover; he was her lord and master. The head of the house of Wrandall was a person to be looked up to, to be respected and admired by her, for he was a very great man, but he was dear to her only because he was the father of Challis, the first-born.

In the order of her nature, Challis therefore was her most dearly beloved, Vivian the least desired and last in her affections as well as in sequence.

Strangely enough, the three of them perfected a curiously significant record of conjugal endowments. Challis had always been the wild, wayward, unrestrained one, and by far the most lovable; Leslie, almost as good looking but with scarcely a noticeable trace of the charm that made his brother attractive; Vivian, handsome, selfish and as cheerless as the wind that blows across the icebergs in the north. Challis had been born with a widely enveloping heart and an elastic conscience; Leslie with a brain and a soul and not much of a heart, as things go; Vivian with a soul alone, which belonged to God, after all, and not to her. Of course she had a heart, but it was only for the purpose of pumping blood to remote extremities, and had nothing whatever to do with anything so unutterably extraneous as love, charity or self-sacrifice.

As for Mr. Redmond Wrandall he was a very proper and dignified gentleman, and old for his years.

Secretly, Vivian was his favourite. Moreover, possessing the usual contrariness of man, and having been at one time or other, a hot-blooded lover, he professed--also in secret--a certain admiration for the beautiful, warm-hearted wife of his eldest son. He looked upon her from a man's point of view. He couldn't help that. Not once, but many times, had he said to himself that perhaps Challis was lucky to have got her instead of one of the girls his mother had chosen for him out of the minute elect.

It may be seen, or rather surmised, that if the house of Wrandall had not been so admirably centred under its own vine and fig tree, it might have become divided against itself without much of an effort.

Mrs. Redmond Wrandall was the vine and fig tree.

And now they had brought her dearly beloved son home to her, murdered and--disgraced. If it had been either of the others, she could have said: "God's will be done." Instead, she cried out that God had turned against her.

Leslie had had the bad taste--or perhaps it was misfortune--to blurt out an agonised "I told you so" at a time when the family was sitting numb and hushed under the blight of the first horrid blow. He did not mean to be unfeeling. It was the truth bursting from his unhappy lips.

"I knew Chal would come to this--I knew it," he had said. His arm was about the quivering shoulders of his mother as he said it.

She looked up, a sob breaking in her throat. For a long time she looked into the face of her second son.

"How can you--how dare you say such a thing as that?" she cried, aghast.

He coloured, and drew her closer to him.

"I--I didn't mean it," he faltered.

"You have always taken sides against him," began his mother.

"Please, mother," he cried miserably.

"You say this to me NOW," she went on. "You who are left to take his place in my affection.--Why, Leslie, I--I--"

Vivian interposed. "Les is upset, mamma darling. You know he loved Challis as deeply as any of us loved him."

Afterwards the girl said to Leslie when they were quite alone: "She will never forgive you for that, Les. It was a beastly thing to say."

He bit his lip, which trembled. "She's never cared for me as she cared for Chal. I'm sorry if I've made it worse."

"See here, Leslie, was Chal so--so--"

"Yes. I meant what I said a while ago. It was sure to happen to him one time or another. Sara's had a lot to put up with."

"Sara! If she had been the right sort of a wife, this never would have happened."

"After all is said and done, Vivie, Sara's in a position to rub it in on us if she's of a mind to do so. She won't do it, of course, but--I wonder if she isn't gloating, just the same."

"Haven't we treated her as one of us?" demanded she, dabbing her handkerchief in her eyes. "Since the wedding, I mean. Haven't we been kind to her?"

"Oh, I think she understands us perfectly," said her brother.

"I wonder what she will do now?" mused Vivian, in that speech casting her sister-in-law out of her narrow little world as one would throw aside a burnt-out match.

"She will profit by experience," said he, with some pleasure in a superior wisdom.

In Mrs. Wrandall's sitting-room at the top of the broad stairway, sat the family,--that is to say, the IMMEDIATE family,--a solemn-faced footman in front of the door that stood fully ajar so that the occupants might hear the words of the minister as they ascended, sonorous and precise, from the hall below. A minister was he who knew the buttered side of his bread. His discourse was to be a beautiful one. He stood at the front of the stairs and faced the assembled listeners in the hall, the drawing-room and the entresol, but his infinitely touching words went up one flight and lodged.

Sara Wrandall sat a little to the left of and behind Mrs. Redmond Wrandall, about whom were grouped the three remaining Wrandalls, father, son and daughter, closely drawn together. Well to the fore were Wrandall uncles and cousins and aunts, and one or two carefully chosen blood-relations to the mistress of the house, whose hand had long been set against kinsmen of less exalted promise.

The room was dark. A forgotten French clock ticked madly and tinkled its quarter-hours with surpassing sprightliness. Time went on regardless. One of the Wrandall uncles, obeying a look from his wife, tiptoed across the room and tried to find a way to subdue the jingling disturber. But it chimed in his face, and he put his black kid glove over his lips. The floor creaked horribly as he went back to his chair.

Beside Sara Wrandall, on the small pink divan, sat a stranger in this sombre company: a young woman in black, whose pale face was uncovered, and whose lashes were lifted so rarely that one could not know of the deep, real pain that lay behind them, in her Irish blue eyes.

She had arrived at the house an hour or two before the time set for the ceremony, in company with the widow. True to her resolution, the widow of Challis Wrandall had remained away from the home of his people until the last hour. She had been consulted, to be sure, in regard to the final arrangements, but the meetings had taken place in her own apartment, many blocks distant from the house in lower Fifth Avenue. The afternoon before she had received Redmond Wrandall and Leslie, his son. She had not sent for them. They came perfunctorily and not through any sense of obligation. These two at least knew that sympathy was not what she wanted, but peace. Twice during the two trying days, Leslie had come to see her. Vivian telephoned.

On the occasion of his first visit, Leslie had met the guest in the house. The second time he called, he made it a point to ask Sara all about her.

It was he who gently closed the door after the two women when, on the morning of the funeral, they entered the dark, flower-laden room in which stood the casket containing the body of his brother. He left them alone together in that room for half an hour or more, and it was he who went forward to meet them when they came forth. Sara leaned on his arm as she ascended the stairs to the room where the others were waiting. The ashen-faced girl followed, her eyes lowered, her gloved hands clenched.

Mrs. Wrandall, the elder, kissed Sara and drew her down beside her on the couch. To her own surprise, as well as that of the others, Sara broke down and wept bitterly. After all, she was sorry for Challis's mother. It was the human instinct; she could not hold out against it. And the older woman put away the ancient grudge she held against this mortal enemy and dissolved into tears of real compassion.

A little later she whispered brokenly in Sara's ear: "My dear, my dear, this has brought us together. I hope you will learn to love me."

Sara caught her breath, but uttered no word. She looked into her mother-in-law's eyes, and smiled through her tears. The Wrandalls, looking on in amaze, saw the smile reflected in the face of the older woman. Then it was that Vivian crossed quickly and put her arms about the shoulders of her sister-in-law. The white flag on both sides.

Hetty Castleton stood alone and wavering, just inside the door. No stranger situation could be imagined than the one in which this unfortunate girl found herself at the present moment. She was virtually in the hands of those who would destroy her; she was in the house of those who most deeply were affected by her act on that fatal night. Among them all she stood, facing them, listening to the moans and sobs, and yet her limbs did not give way beneath her....

Some one gently touched her arm. It was Leslie. She shrank back, a fearful look in her eyes. In the semi-darkness he failed to note the expression.

"Won't you sit here?" he asked, indicating the little pink divan against the wall. "Forgive me for letting you stand so long."

She looked about her, the wild light still in her eyes. She was like a rat in a trap.

Her lips parted, but the word of thanks did not come forth. A strange, inarticulate sound, almost a gasp, came instead. Pallid as a ghost, she dropped limply to the divan, and dug her fingers into the satiny seat. As if fascinated, she stared over the black heads of the three women immediately in front of her at the full length portrait hanging where the light from the hall fell full upon it: the portrait of a dashing youth in riding togs.

A moment later Sara Wrandall came over and sat beside her. The girl shivered as with a mighty chill when the warm hand of her friend fell upon hers and enveloped it in a firm clasp.

"His mother kissed me," whispered Sara. "Did you see?"

The girl could not reply. She could only stare at the open door. A small, hatchet-faced man had come up from below and was nodding his head to Leslie Wrandall,--a man with short side whiskers, and a sepulchral look in his eyes. Then, having received a sign from Leslie, he tiptoed away. Almost instantly the voices of people singing softly came from some distant, remote part of the house.

And then, a little later, the perfectly modulated voice of a man in prayer.

Back of her, Wrandalls; beside her, Wrandalls; beneath her, friends of the Wrandalls; outside, the rabble, those who would join with these black, raven-like spectres in tearing her to pieces if they but knew!

Sitting, with his hand to his head, Leslie Wrandall found himself staring at the face of this stranger among them; not with any definable interest, but because she happened to be in his line of vision and her face was so singularly white that it stood out in cameo-like relief against all this ebony setting.

The droning voice came up from below, each well-chosen word distinct and clear: tribute beautiful to the irreproachable character of the deceased. Leslie watched the face of the girl, curiously fascinated by the set, emotionless features, and yet without a conscious interest in her. He was dully sensible to the fact that she was beautiful, uncommonly beautiful. It did not occur to him to feel that she was out of place among them, that she belonged downstairs. Somehow she was a part of the surroundings, like the spectre at the feast.

If he could have witnessed all that transpired while Sara was in the room below with her guest--her companion, as he had come to regard her without having in fact been told as much,--he would have been lost in a maze of the most overwhelming emotions.

To go back: The door had barely closed behind the two women when Hetty's trembling knees gave way beneath her. With a low moan of horror, she slipped to the floor, covering her face with her hands.

Sara knelt beside her.

"Come," she said gently, but firmly; "I must exact this much of you. If we are to go on together, as we have planned, you must stand beside me at his bier. Together we must look upon him for the last time. You must see him as I saw him up there in the country. I had my cruel blow that night. It is your turn now. I will not blame you for what you did. But if you expect me to go on believing that you did a brave thing that night, you must convince me that you are not a coward now. It is the only test I shall put you to. Come; I know it is hard, I know it is terrible, but it is the true test of your ability to go through with it to the end. I shall know then that you have the courage to face anything that may come up."

She waited a long time, her hand on the girl's shoulder. At last Hetty arose.

"You are right," she said hoarsely. "I should not be afraid."

Later on, they sat over against the wall beyond the casket, into which they had peered with widely varying emotions. Sara had said:

"You know that I loved him."

The girl put her hands to her eyes and bowed her head.

"Oh, how can you be so merciful to me?"

"Because he was not," said Sara, white-lipped. Hetty glanced at the half-averted face with queer, indescribable expression in her eyes.

Then her nerves gave way. She shrank away from the casket, whimpering like a frightened child, mouttering, almost gibbering in the extremity of despair. She had lived in dread of this ordeal; it had been promised the day before by Sara Wrandall, whose will was law to her. Now she had come to the very apex of realisation. She felt that her mind was going, that her blood was freezing. In response to a sudden impulse she sprang up and ran, blindly and without thought, bringing up against the wall with such force that she dropped to the floor, quite insensible.

When she regained her senses, she was lying back in Sara Wrandall's arms, and a soft faraway voice was pleading with her to wake, to say something, to open her eyes.

If Leslie Wrandall could have looked in upon them at that moment, or at any time during the half an hour that followed, he would have known who was the slayer of his brother, but it is doubtful if he could have had the heart to denounce her to the world.

When they were ready to leave the room, Hetty had regained control of her nerves to a most surprising extent, a condition unmistakably due to the influence of the older woman.

"I can trust myself now, Mrs. Wrandall," said Hetty steadily as they hesitated for an instant before turning the knob of the door.

"Then, I shall ask YOU to open the door," said Sara, drawing back.

Without a word or a look, Hetty opened the door and permitted the other to pass out before her. Then she followed, closing it gently, even deliberately, but not without a swift glance over her shoulder into the depths of the room they were leaving.

Of the two, Sara Wrandall was the paler as they went up the broad staircase with Leslie.

The funeral oration by the Rev. Dr. Maltby dragged on. Among all his hearers there was but one who believed the things he said of Challis Wrandall, and she was one of two persons who, so the saying goes, are the last to find a man out; his mother and his sister. But in this instance the mother was alone. The silent, attentive guests on the lower floor listened in grim approval: Dr. Maltby was doing himself proud. Not one but all of them knew that Maltby KNEW. And yet how soothing he was.

Thus afterwards, to his wife, on the way home after a fruitful silence, spoke Colonel Berkimer, well known to the Tenderloin:

"When I die, my dear, I want you to be sure to have Maltby in for the sermon. He's really wonderful."

"You don't mean to say you BELIEVED all that he said," cried his wife.

"Certainly NOT," he snapped. "That's the point."

Once at the end of a beautifully worded sentence, eulogistic of the dead man's character as a son and husband, the tense silence of the room upstairs was shattered by the utterance of a single, poignant word:

"God!"

It was so expressive of surprise, of scorn, of contempt, although spoken in little more than a whisper, that every one in the room caught his or her breath in a sharp little gasp, as if cringing from the effect of an unexpected shock to a sensitive nerve.

Each looked at his neighbour and then in a shocked sort of way at every one else, for no one could quite make out who had uttered the word, and each wondered if, in a fit of abstraction, he could have done it himself. It unmistakably had been the voice of a woman, but whose? Hetty knew, but not by the slightest sign did she betray the fact that the woman who sat beside her was the one to utter the brief but scathing estimate of the minister's eulogy.

The hatchet-faced little undertaker stood in the open door again and solemnly bowed his head to Leslie, lifting his dolorous eyebrows in lieu of the verbal question. Receiving a simple nod in reply, he announced that as soon as the guests had departed he would be pleased to have the family descend to the carriages.

Outside, the shivering, half-frozen multitude edged its way up to the line of blue-coats and again whispered the names of the departing guests, and every neck was craned in the effort to secure the first view of the casket, the silk-hatted pall-bearers and the weeping members of the family.

"They'll be out with 'im in a minute now," said a hoarse-voiced man who clung to the ornamental face of the tall gate and passed back the word, for he could see beyond the stream of guests into the hallway of the house.

"Git down out o' that," commanded a policeman tapping him sharply with his night-stick.

"Aw, I ain't botherin' anybody--"

"Git down, I say!"

Grumbling, the man slunk back, and a woman took his place. This was better for the crowd, as her voice was shriller and she had less compunction about making herself heard.

A small boy crept beyond the line and peered, round-eyed, up the carpeted steps. He received a sharp push from a night-stick and went blubbering back into the crowd.

And all through the eager, seething mob went sharp-eyed men in plain clothes, searching each face with crafty eyes, looking for the sign that might betray the woman who had brought all this about. They were men from the central office. Another of their ilk had the freedom of the house in the guise of an undertaker's assistant. He watched the favoured few!

There is a saying that a strange, mysterious force drags the murderer to the scene of his crime, whether he will or no, to look with others upon the havoc he has wrought. He has been known to sit beside the bier of his victim; he has been known to follow him to the tomb; he has been known to betray himself at the very edge of the grave. A grim, fantastic thing is conscience!

At last the crowd gave out a deep, hissing breath and surged forward. They were bearing Challis Wrandall down the steps. The wall of policemen held firm; the morbid hundreds fell back and glared with unblinking eyes at the black thing that slowly crossed the sidewalk and slid noiselessly into the yawning mouth of the hearse. No man in all that mob uncovered his head, no woman crossed herself. Inwardly they reviled the police who kept them from seeing all that they wanted to see. They were being cheated.

Then there was an eager shout from the foremost in the throng, and the word went singing through the crowd, back to the outer fringe, where men danced like so many jumping-jacks in the effort to see above the heads of those in front.

"Here they come!" went the hoarse whisper, like the swish of the wind.

"Stand back, please!"

"That's his mother!" cried a shrill voice, triumphantly,--even gladly. She was the first to give the news.

"Keep back!" growled the police, lifting their clubs.

"Which one is his wife?"

"Has she come out yet?"

"Get out of my way, damn you!"

"Say, if these cops was doing their duty they'd--"

"That's what I say! No wonder they never ketch anybody."

"Say, they don't seem to be takin' it very hard. I thought they'd be cryin' like--"

"Is that his wife?"

"Poor little thing! Ouch! You big ruffian!"

"Swell business, eh?"

"She won't be sayin' 'Where's my wanderin' boy--'"

"If we had police in this city that could ketch a street car we'd--"

"That's old man Wrandall. I've waited on him dozens o' times."

"Did they have any children?"

Up in the front rank stood a slim little thing with yellow hair and carmined lips, wrapped in costly furs yet shivering as if chilled to the bone. Four plain clothes men were watching her narrowly. She was known to have been one of Challis Wrandall's associates. When she shrank back into the crowd and made her way to the outskirts, hurrying as if pursued by ghosts, two men followed close behind, and kept her in sight for many blocks.

The motors and carriages rolled away, and there was left only the policemen and the unsatiated mob. They watched the undertaker's assistant remove the great bow of black from the door of the house.

By the end of the week the murder of Challis Wrandall was forgotten by all save the police. The inquest was over, the law was baffled, the city was serenely waiting for its next sensation. No one cared.

Leslie Wrandall went down to the steamer to see his sister-in-law off for Europe.

"Good-bye, Miss Castleton," he said, as he shook the hand of the slim young Englishwoman at parting. "Take good care of Sara. She needs a friend, a good friend, now. Keep her over there until she has--forgotten." _

Read next: Chapter 5. Discussing A Sister-In-Law

Read previous: Chapter 3. Hetty Castleton

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