Alice Duer Miller

“ Benny had been born knowing just what everyone else wanted—eager to get all men their hearts' desire.
Lydia was not religious by temperament. She had now none of the joy of a great revelation. But she had the courage, unsupported by any sense of a higher power, to look at herself as she was. She saw now that her relation to life had always been ugly, hostile, violent. Everyone who had ever loved her had been able to love through something beautiful in their own natures—in spite of all the unloveliness of hers. ”

“ Here I am—I've killed a man! Why shouldn't I go to prison? I'm not quixotic. I didn't want to be convicted, but Wiley shocks me, assuming that I can't be because I'm a woman and rich and he can play on the jury."
"I should not say that he assumed that you were safe, Lydia."
"Oh, yes, he does! Don't be like Benny. She sees me in stripes at once. What Wiley means is that as long as I am fortunate enough to have the benefit of his services I'm perfectly safe, not because I did not mean to kill Drummond, but because he, Wiley, will make the jury cry over me. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Eleanor loved O'Bannon, but with so intellectual a process that she was not far wrong in considering it was a friendship. She would have married him if he had asked her, but she would have done so principally to insure herself of his company. If anyone could have guaranteed that they would continue all their lives to live within a few yards of each other she would have been content—content even with the knowledge that every now and then some other less reasonable woman would come and sweep him away from her. ”

“ It gives me more power to hurt you. It must make it worse for you to know how I hate, how I despise you, everything about you; your using your looks and your fine figure to hypnotize simple people like Eleanor and Miss Bennett and poor Evans; the vanity that makes you hate me for being free of your charms; and all the petty, underhanded things you did in the trial; all your sentimental buncombe with the poor little Wooley girl; and your twisting the law—the law that you are supposed to uphold—in order to get that bracelet before the jury; your mouthing and your cheap arts with the jury ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lydia did not know Washington at all. She had been taken there once as a child by one of the energetic young American governesses—had gone to Mt. Vernon by boat and home by trolley, had whispered in the rotunda and looked at the statues and seen the House and been secretly glad that the Senate was in secret session so that she couldn't see that, and there would be time to go up the monument—something that she really had enjoyed—not only on account of the view, but because her governess was afraid of elevators and was terrified in the slow, jerky ascent. ”

“ Miss Bennett came regularly, and Eleanor had come more than once. Lydia was very eager to see these two, but was not eager to see anyone else. There was always a terrible moment of shyness with newcomers—an awkward ugly moment. She did not wish to see anyone who did not love her in a simple human way that swept away restraint.
She did not want to see Albee, and she was equally sure he did not want to see her but had been driven by the politician's fear of leaving behind him in his course onward and upward any smoldering fires of hatred which a little easy kindness might quench. ”

“ Tim Andrews interrupted.
"My dear Lydia," he said, "I feel it only right to tell you that the Anti-Lydia Club was being organized when you arrived. Its membership consists of all those you have bullied, and its object is to oppose you in all small matters."
"Whether I'm right or not, Tim?"
"Everybody's worst when they're right," murmured Eleanor.
"We decided before you came that we all wished to play five cents a point," Tim continued firmly.
"All right," said Lydia briskly. "Only you know it bores me, and it bores Bobby, too, doesn't it, Bobby?" ”

“ We build better cars than that!"
The jury smiled, the spectators laughed, the gavel fell for order, and Mr. Wiley sat down. He had told Lydia that a jury, like an audience, loves those who make them laugh, and he sat down with an air of success. But Lydia, watching them more closely, was not so sure. As O'Bannon rose she noted the extreme gravity of his manner, his look at the jury, which seemed to say, "A man's life—a woman's liberty at stake, and you allow a mountebank to make you laugh!" ”

“ As it turned out, her coming weakened Thorne's power; not that she wasn't usually on his side—she was—but she was an audience, and Thorne had some sense of shame before an audience, while Lydia had none at all.
Many a time she had seen him box Lydia's ears and, mild as she was, had been glad to see him do it. But it was his violence that undid him. It was then that Lydia became suddenly dignified and, unbroken, contrived to make him appear like a brute.
There is nothing really more unbreakable than a child who considers neither her physical well-being nor public opinion. ”

“ One juror who had wept over Alma Wooley now shed an impartial tear for Lydia.
"Gentlemen of the jury," Wiley ended, "I ask you to consider this case on the facts and the facts alone—not to be led away by the emotional appeals of an ambitious and learned young prosecutor who has the ruthlessness that so often goes with young ambition; not to convict an innocent girl whose only crime seems to be that she is the custodian of wealth that her father, an American workingman, won from the conditions of American industry. ”

“ I see her every week. She's like an animal in a trap. Perhaps you never saw one—in a trap, I mean. Lydia had a gray wolfhound once, and in the woods it strayed away and got caught in a mink trap. It was almost dead when we found it, but so patient and hopeless. She's getting to be like that—each week a little more patient than the week before—she who was never patient. Oh, Mr. O'Bannon, I feel sometimes as if I couldn't bear it—the way they've ground it out of her in a few months! She seems like an old woman in a lovely young woman's body. They haven't spoiled that—at least they haven't yet. ”

“ It was a long time since Lydia had heard any music, and the music of the second act of Samson and Delilah, the long sweeping chords on the harp, began to trouble her, as the coming thunderstorm seemed to be troubling Delilah.
Her long abstraction from any artistic impression made her as susceptible as a child. The moonlight flooded her with a primitive glamour, her nerves crept to the music of the incredibly sweet duet; and when at last Samson followed Delilah into her house Lydia felt as if the soprano's triumph were her own. ”

“ Only Evans seemed to feel that her sentence had been just.
"No, it wasn't right what I did," she said, and she stood out like a star, superior to her surroundings. She only was learning and growing in the terrible routine. It soon began to seem to Lydia that this little fool of a maid of hers was a great person. Why?
Locked in her cell from dark to daylight, Lydia spent much of the time in thinking. Like a great many people in this world, she had never thought before. She had particularly arranged her life so she should not think. Most people who think they think really dream. ”

“ Lydia opened her eyes as if she couldn't imagine whom she meant.
"Of Dan?"
"Dan O'Bannon."
"Oh, it's got as far as being 'Dan' now, has it?"
"You dislike him for these very qualities you say you demand," Eleanor went on—"force and strength——"
Lydia broke in.
"Strength and force! What I really dislike about him, Eleanor dear, is that you take him so seriously. I can't bear to see you making yourself ridiculous about any man." ”

“ The county court room with its faded red carpet and shabby woodwork had the dignity of proportion which marks rooms built a hundred years ago under the solemn Georgian tradition.
Miss Bennett and Eleanor, guided by Judge Homans' secretary, came in through a side door, and passing the large American flag which hung above the judge's empty chair, they sat down in some cross seats on the left. Beyond the railing the room was already well filled with the new panel of jurors, the witnesses, the reporters and many of Lydia's friends, who were already jostling for places. ”

“ Eleanor was a satisfactory listener. She did not begin scolding you, telling you what you ought to have done before you had half finished. She did not allow herself to be reminded of adventures of her own and snatch the narrative away from you. She sat silent but alert, conveying by something neither words nor motion that she followed every intricacy.
Her comment was, "I feel rather sorry for Albee."
"You mean you don't think he's a worm?" Lydia was genuinely surprised.
"Oh, yes, I think he is just as you represent him! I feel sorry for people whose faults make them comic and defenseless. ”

“ A blow awaited Lydia at the outset. She had not understood that the defense summed up first—that the prosecution had the last word with the jury. What might not "that man" do with the jury by means of his hypnotic sincerity? She dreaded Wiley's summing up, too, fearing it would be oratorical—all the more because he kept disclaiming any such intention.
"The day has gone by for eloquence," he kept saying. "One doesn't attempt nowadays to be a Daniel Webster or a Rufus Choate. But of course it is necessary to touch the hearts of the jury." ”

“ Thought leading quickly to action in Lydia, she arranged through Miss Bennett, allowing it to be supposed to be Miss Bennett's enterprise, to finance the visits of families to the prison. Everyone rejoiced, as if it were a common benefit, over the visit of Muriel's mother and the beautiful auburn-haired daughter of the middle-aged real-estate operator. Lydia felt as if she had been outside the human race all her life and had just been initiated into it. She said something like this to Evans.
"Oh, Louisa, rich people don't know anything, do they?" ”

“ All pure white souls are criminals—all of us are criminals at heart. The only way not to be is to recognize the fact that you are. It's a terrible idea at first—at least it was to me. It was like going through death and coming out alive." Lydia paused, staring before her, and anyone in the world except Eleanor would have thought she had finished; but Eleanor's fine ear caught the beat of an approaching idea. "But it's such a comfort, Nell, to belong to the tribe—such a relief. ”

“ Evans tried to console her.
"If they want to they always can."
It was true, Lydia thought; she had not wanted to know. She had not wanted anything but her own way, irrespective of anyone else's. That was being criminal—to want your own way too much. That was all that these people about her had wanted—these forgers and defrauders—their own way, their own way. Though she still held her belief that the killing of Drummond had been an accident, she saw that the bribing of him had been wrong—the same streak in her, the same determination to have her own way. ”

“ She must have a routine immediately. She was not strong enough yet to live without one. Only one thing must take precedence of everything else—a pardon for Evans. She could not bear to remain at liberty with Evans still serving a sentence. With that accomplished, she could go forward in peace. In peace? As she thought of it she knew that there was one corner of her mind where there was not and never would be peace. Only last evening, in the first happiness of being at home, the mention of O'Bannon's name had threatened to destroy it. ”

“ The remoteness that came to their relation now indicated another woman, and yet she knew his everyday life well enough to know that he was seeing no one except herself and Alma Wooley; and though there was some gossip about his attention to the girl, Eleanor felt she understood the reason for it. Alma made him feel emotionally what he knew rationally—that his prosecution of Lydia had been merely an act of justice. Alma thought him the greatest of men and was tremulously grateful to him for establishing her dead lover as a hero—a man killed in the performance of his duty. ”

“ When she walked into her bedroom and found her things laid out just as usual, and a new maid—a Frenchwoman, brown and middle-aged and competent—waiting for her, just as Evans had waited, one of her moods of deep depression engulfed her, just as those who fear death are sometimes brought to a realization of its approach by some everyday symbol. Lydia did not fear death, but sometimes she hated life. ”