While Father Dowling was opening the windows wide to let the fresh air into the room, Ronnie had taken a bottle of cheap red wine out of the bureau drawer. Midge came back with the sandwiches wrapped in a white napkin, and a big steaming coffee pot. The priest insisted on waiting on the girls; he poured the coffee for them, he put the sandwiches on the saucers, he wanted them to like the food. “This is the first time we ever ate together,” he said, and he seemed very pleased.
And they used the coffee cups for the wine, too, and he poured the wine for them with a special graciousness, as if he were a host at a banquet. Then he began to talk about food, about savory dishes he had tasted, about recipes he knew by heart, about cheese and wines that had “a mysticism all their own,” as he put it. The girls kept looking at each other and wanted him to go on talking. He remained very late. He would not go home while there was any chance of them going out on the street. All the time he was talking he was trying to think of some one who might loan him money without asking questions. The girls began to get sleepy. It was very late when the priest went downstairs. Even the proprietor had gone to bed.
SEVENTEEN
On this night it was damp and cold and the streets were deserted, so Midge returned to the hotel. Her clothes were wet and she was chilled to the bone. She opened the white door and walked into the room. She saw two detectives talking to Ronnie and laughing. Cringing behind Ronnie was a worried little man with a thin, hatchet face, who looked as if he was going to cry. As Midge walked in, this little fellow was saying, “This guy Lou tells me to rap on the door and just ask for Ronnie and that’s God’s truth.”
When Ronnie saw Midge she put her hands up to her head and sat down slowly on the bed, and one of the detectives, the big, fair-faced, blue-eyed fellow in the hard hat, grabbed hold of Midge and said, “Here you are, baby. We’re just holding a little surprise party waiting for you,” and he started to shake her roughly and watch her head sway from side to side on her shoulders.
But Midge neither smiled nor wept. She just said, “What’s the use of being so tough?” and sitting down beside Ronnie, she asked her, “What happened?”
“I don’t know. These guys just walked in.”
The two policemen began to joke at the two girls and jeer at the little fellow who had really begun to cry. “Doesn’t he look like the answer to a woman’s prayer, Joe? I’ll bet he never has to pay a girl. They probably pay him,” one said. Then they pushed him one way, and then pushed him back again. And they kept this up till Midge said wearily, “Oh, leave the guy alone, why don’t you?” So the cops turned roughly on the girls. Ronnie jumped up and started kicking at them with her heels while Midge sat there full of hate, but too scared to move.
“Take it easy, Sam,” the smaller detective in the light overcoat said. “We’ve got nothing much against these kids.”
Scratching his head thoughtfully, the big, fair fellow said, “That’s right. Maybe you’re right at that, Joe. I never looked at it in that way,” and turning to Ronnie, he said, “What’s the use of making trouble, sister?”
“All right. Keep your hands off me, that’s all,” she said.
Every one in the room was silent and peaceful now while they waited, and then Midge, who was sitting rigid with her hands in her lap and her face white, suddenly began to cry. She did not know what was the matter with her, except that she felt weak and was trembling; and as she kept on wishing she could stop crying, she was steadily hating herself, for she knew that Ronnie was resenting such an exhibition of weakness. Pleading for something she herself did not understand, she said to Ronnie, “Please don’t let me bother you, kiddo. What are we waiting for?”
Nodding laconically to the girls, the fair detective thumbed toward the door, and when they got up, he stood between them, holding their arms and whispering, “Mind now, kids, no fuss. Take it easy,” and with the other detective following with the little man, who was still pleading desperately, they went downstairs to the desk. And there was the proprietor, red-faced, expostulating, shaking his fist and cursing to an enormous detective who was smiling good-naturedly and saying, “You’ll have lots of time to talk about that to-morrow.”
Then they all went out to the street where a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk and on the road around the open door of the police wagon. A thin, misty rain, making the lamplights dim and the streets glisten, was falling on the upturned faces of the crowd. Lights from the barber shop shone on the open wagon door. Ducking their heads down in the collars of their coats, the two girls were pushed toward the wagon, but at the curb Midge slipped and fell, hurting her knee, and some one in the crowd started to laugh. The girls were helped into the wagon along with the proprietor and the sobbing little man.
On the drive over to the station no one spoke. The wagon began to smell of steaming wet clothes. Midge was beside Mr. Baer, who had his hands folded angrily across his chest, and next to him, only huddled by himself in the corner as if he dreaded the contamination that would come from sitting close to one of the girls, was the little lean man who had asked at the door for Ronnie.
At the station they were put in separate cells, but just before they were separated, Ronnie whispered to Midge, with her voice breaking with anxiety, “You don’t think Lou’s in wrong, too, do you, Midge? They couldn’t do anything to Lou, could they?” On her angular face there was fear and desperate unhappiness. All the time in the wagon she had been thinking of Lou, for if Lou remained secure and free there somehow seemed to be so much to hope for.
And even when Midge was alone in the cell she was still thinking how foolish it was of Ronnie to worry about a man like Lou. “He’d bleed her to the bone. He’d pick the last scrap of flesh from her bones and then roll her over with his boot.” And having these thoughts, and feeling terribly tired and without any hope, she sat there till a policeman came to the cell door, peered in, tramped back along the corridor and then returned with another cop who said, “She’s not bad at all, heh? Heh, cutie, come here.” They both laughed hoarsely but they couldn’t get her to notice them. “Maybe you want a lawyer, little one,” they said. “No, thanks,” she said bluntly. She cupped her chin in her hands and put her elbows on her knees until they went away.
“Maybe it might help to get Father Dowling,” she thought. “Maybe he could get us out. But no, he couldn’t, and it wouldn’t do any good and I couldn’t stand the way he’d feel and have that hurt look on his face. There was that look on his face the other night. I won’t drag him into it.” For a long time she sat there, motionless, rigid, while it got very late; there were footsteps in the corridor and footsteps on the street outside. She could not sleep. She began to feel scared. Her knee was paining her. The stocking was torn at the spot. You could hardly see it in that light. One by one, she began to think of all her sisters in their home in Montreal, one by one, remembering little things about them, their clothes, their hair, their voices, and she wanted to see every one of them before she died.
“Why do I have to think of dying? I’m not going to die.” But she was even more scared and she tried eagerly to think again of Father Dowling; but now there were flowing within her all the noises and the cries of that city where she had been born, the noises of the waterfront, the strange guttural voices of drunken sailors calling, softly calling, her fearful going away and her return to the flowing water, the lapping restless heaving water, flowing so steadily in her now and filling her with dread. And at last there floated into her thoughts the face of Father Dowling. She liked to think of his face now, his thick hair and the gentleness in his smile. She began, too, to think of his big, soft, strong hands as if they might hold her and strengthen her even as these thoughts were strengthening her. “I’ll never see him again. I’ll bet a dollar I never see him again,” she thought, and saying this, she was suddenly left without any feeling of security at all as if she were utterly alone. She thought that maybe she might have done something to please him, or even now she might yet do something. She tried
to remember one short prayer she had known years ago, but the words came so slowly, the words were fumbled and twisted and she frowned, felt shy and was puzzled by her own feeling as she said, “He knew there wasn’t much wrong with me except this.”
Shaking her head, she suddenly laughed and jumped up and began to walk up and down the narrow cell. “What on earth was the matter with me sitting there,” she thought. Then she went over to the door and called, “Heh, sweetie.” When the policeman on duty came, she put her lips against the bars, smiling, coaxing, “Don’t you think you might slip your little girl friend a cigarette?”
“Can’t be done, sister,” he said.
“Please, darling, not for little me? To little me from little you? Isn’t that pretty? It would be like a valentine.”
“A few minutes ago you were mighty snooty to us, weren’t you. You’ve changed your tune now,” he said.
“Oh, not so much, just a little, but it’s still a good tune,” she said.
“Well, try and smoke it, then,” he said, walking away.
In the morning the two girls were taken to the city hall and put in the cells below the court; later they were brought into the courtroom and sat drooping on a bench by the dock. The woman magistrate, in her black robe, a Mrs. Helen Hendricks, was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand, staring out the window. This woman had been a magistrate for the last five years. It had been felt at the time of her appointment that a woman judge would be more tolerant, or at least more understanding of women than a man would be, but this nervous, severe little woman was often inexcusably harsh. Women dreaded to come before her. There seemed to be some deep restless cruelty within her that often made her savage, particularly when there was a charge of immorality being considered. She often smiled, particularly when some woman tried to faint or grow hysterical, and then she would stand up, lean over the desk and snap, “Stop that sort of thing around here. Try and fool your husband with that sort of nonsense. Don’t try and fool me.”
The court clerk said, “Catherine Bourassa and Veronica Olsen,” and the constable at the door shouted, “Catherine Bourassa and Veronica Olsen,” and another policeman outside the door shouted along the corridor, “Catherine Bourassa and Veronica Olsen,” all their voices roaring hoarsely, and while all this shouting was being done the girls were sitting beside a sad-looking colored woman charged with vagrancy, a thief from the department stores, a gray-haired member of the Salvation Army and three prim, confident, tired-looking social service workers. When the last voice had echoed outside with their names, the two girls stood up slowly and a constable beckoned them toward the stand. In the courtroom, among the lawyers, the other vagrant women and the constables, Ronnie and Midge looked plain, shabbily dressed and almost unnoticeable. Ronnie had her old red coat thrown over her arm and was standing there in the black silk dress the priest had given her, which was spotted now and badly wrinkled; Midge, too, wore Father Dowling’s gray dress and the badly discolored gray shoes.
No one paid much attention to them. There was nothing remarkable about the case. Four similar cases were on the court calendar for that same morning. To the court officials all these women, after a little while, began to look alike. So the magistrate went on staring out the window, waiting, and hardly glanced at Midge and Ronnie. “You are charged with being found in a common bawdy house. How do you plead, guilty, or not guilty?”
“Guilty,” they both said, without lifting their heads.
“Just a minute, Your Honor,” the court clerk said. “There are others charged along with them. There’s a charge of procuring against Lou Wilenski, a charge of keeping a bawdy house against Henry Baer, and a charge of being found in against Raymond Frizzel.”
“Bring them in then,” the magistrate said. There was once again the loud shouting and echoing of names. First Lou came in with a constable, wearing his green sweater and with his hair combed smooth, glancing around contemptuously at everybody in the court. Among the big policemen he looked even smaller, but this distinction seemed to make him feel all the more independent and stronger. Glancing over at the girls, he smiled once and winked, and then he became perfectly enigmatic.
Still fussing and expostulating, Mr. Baer was insisting the case be adjourned till he could get a lawyer. His black hair still had the sharp white part. His face was quivering with indignation and his glasses helped to make him look like a respectable taxpaying citizen.
When Ronnie saw Lou, she grabbed Midge’s arm, her hand began to tremble, she kept muttering, “What have they got against Lou? They’re not going to do anything to Lou.” For the first time she was suddenly alive, angry and eager. As she stood up, with Midge tugging at her, trying to restrain her, her face had that honest, direct expression that Father Dowling had loved. She wanted to plead with the magistrate and explain that Lou should not be there at all.
The little man with the hatchet face, who never raised his head, willingly gave evidence against the girls, for he understood he would escape without even a fine. He said Lou had met him in the poolroom and had sent him to the hotel and he had given money to Ronnie. While he was speaking an extraordinary viciousness crept into his voice; he wanted to hurt the girls so deeply they would never forget him. His face lit up triumphantly when he finished, for he knew he would be free. Then he added hastily, for fear of forgetting something, “That man,” pointing at Mr. Baer, “was at the hotel desk and he pointed to the stairs and said, ‘Go up there.’”
“Is there any previous conviction against these girls?” the magistrate asked.
“Last year they were convicted of similar offences, Your Honor.”
“You’ve been here before, then?” she said to the girls.
“Yes, ma’am,” they said.
“Old offenders,” she said. “Back as usual.”
The tips of her fingers were caressing her plump chin as she said, “The most horrible offence here was on the part of the man who was procuring. He’s little better than the scum of the earth. There’s no previous conviction against him but I’m going to send him down for three months. The city is well rid of such rattlesnakes.”
Then Ronnie screamed, “That’s not fair to Lou. He’s done nothing to nobody. He’s never been in trouble. He’s a good man. He never treated anybody bad. Look at his face. Look at him standing there, ma’am. He’s full of kindness. Please, ma’am, you don’t know him like I do. If he’s done anything it’s my fault, because I got him to do it and he did it for me.” Ronnie started to cry as she pleaded with the magistrate, who only smiled and said, “My goodness, girl, what eloquence for such a wastrel.” And then she went on, “You, Veronica Olsen, where do you come from?”
“Detroit, Your Honor.”
“And you, Catherine Bourassa?”
“Montreal, ma’am.”
The magistrate, with her chin on her hand, looked at the girls wearily, peering steadily into their faces, trying to find something special about them; the little dark one, she thought, might have been graceful at one time, for even now there was an odd, almost amused bit of a smile hovering around her mouth, though her eyes were wide, soft and scared. From the great window the strong morning sunlight came in a thick shaft across the room and struck the upturned pale, tired face of the tall angular girl; and when the magistrate saw Ronnie’s face in this light, full of misery, pleading now because of Lou, she thought the girl looked awkward and ugly. “They’re both very commonplace, it seems to me,” the magistrate was thinking. “I can’t see why anybody should mention those two to me. Why did anybody bother speaking to me about them and intimating what disposition ought to be made of their case? It’s beyond me.” They seemed to fit so easily into that long procession of girls that kept straggling before her every morning, making her disgusted and angry. “I’d never remember them if I saw them again,” she thought.
“I’m going to give you girls till this afternoon some time to get out of town,” she said. “I’m going to hand you over to the custody of the Salvation
Army to see that you’re put on trains. You must never come back here again, or you’ll be taken into custody at once. Do you hear? Take them away now.”
EIGHTEEN
In the early evening Father Dowling went to the hotel. He had borrowed ten dollars from Father Jolly. As he went along the street the feeling of early spring weather softening the night air delighted him and made him walk faster.
When he rapped on the white door, as he had so often done, and waited, with no one answering, he could really feel the emptiness in the room on the other side of the door, feel the darkness there, too, and that the time he had so often dreaded had come at last, when he would keep on knocking and waiting and knocking with no hope of an answer. He tried the knob, the door swung open and he stepped into the room. A little moonlight, coming through the window, shone on the trampled and mussed-up carpet, on the dresser where there was no comb, nor looking-glass, nor small vase, nor brush, nor powder puff. He did not turn on the light because he knew with certitude that there was no one there and yet he called out, “Midge, Ronnie, Midge, Ronnie,” and he walked over to the window and then back again, as if his presence alone might make the room seem not so empty.
Gripping the banister, he went downstairs, thinking, “Something has happened to them. They would not go like that. Something dreadful must have happened,” and he looked over eagerly at the desk. No one was there. He called out, “Hello, hello, hello there,” and he pounded the desk with his fist.
“Just a minute,” Mr. Baer called. Coming out, he stared at Father Dowling through his glasses without speaking, staring as if it would never be necessary to see the priest again, and then he snapped, “You get the hell out of here, you fornicatin’ friar, and never come back. I’ve got a hunch you’re the cause of a lot of trouble.”
Such Is My Beloved Page 13