by Merry Farmer
Several ooos and aahs rose up from the more well-off women of Cold Springs, including Mrs. West and Mrs. Quinlan. Roy hardly noticed their enthusiasm. The biddies had finished their little conference and were standing straighter, brushing their clothes and patting their hair as if something was in the offing. Miss Jones took a step back and grabbed Sarah’s arm, yanking her to the front.
As Sarah stumbled, Roy jerked forward.
“Running this fine hotel will be my handsome young protégé, Roy LaCroix.” Delilah made use of his sudden movement to introduce him to the crowd. She stared at him with a warning look, telling him to keep his head.
Roy forced something like a smile onto his lips. He faced the crowd and met their light applause with a wave. His eyes snapped back to Sarah, who was now being wedged between Miss Archer and Miss Pickering like she might get away.
“Roy’s been working real hard to learn the business and I’m sure he’ll do a fine job of meeting the needs of Cold Springs and its visitors.”
“Blasphemy!” Miss Jones shouted at the end of the introduction. “Sin and depravity, the lot of it!”
“Oh lord,” Delilah muttered. She forced her features into a cherry smile and said, “Good morning, Viola.”
“Friends!” Miss Jones called out, racing up three steps and turning to face the citizens of Cold Springs. “Turn away from this house of sin and fornication!”
“They got fornication too?” the old coot with the saloon girls called.
A ripple of nervous laughter followed, the crowd suddenly tense.
“This is nothing more than a house of ill-repute with a fancy title!” Miss Jones raged on.
The reporters perked up, glancing from Miss Jones to Delilah. Delilah caught their looks and sent them an apologetic smile.
“Ain’t it a blessing that we live in a place where folks are free to disagree about things,” she said and tried to laugh.
“What you see before you,” Miss Jones went on, ignoring Delilah with a haughty tilt of her chin, “is a house that sin built!”
“Looks like a hotel to me,” one of the townsmen called out. Nervous laughter bubbled.
“Do not be deceived!” Miss Jones wasn’t deterred. “Friends, I have tried to warn you before. Heed me now! What is a hotel but a brothel with a fancy title? Men and women, married or not, cohabiting under the same roof! The wily and the wicked sharing the same space! I shudder to think what kind of demonic congress goes on in establishments such as this.”
“A hotel is a home away from home,” Delilah said, fighting to keep the smile on her face. “It is a place of rest for the weary traveler.”
“It is an excuse for fornication!” Miss Jones countered.
“It’s an honest business,” Delilah argued, all humor gone. “Just because you don’t like it-”
“Have I not warned you about the mistress of this establishment before?” Miss Jones went on. Her hands were balled into fists at her sides. Red splotches formed on her face that had nothing to do with the cold. “She is nothing more than a dressed-up harlot, stealing the souls of the men of this town!”
The crowd gasped. Roy frowned and leaned closer to Delilah. The only thing keeping him from jumping to her defense was the pale look of panic on Sarah’s face as she stood at the foot of the stairs. Her head was lowered and she hugged herself tight.
“Miss Jones, please. There are children here,” Mr. West said, moving to the edge of the porch as if he could do something.
“Yes,” Miss Jones agreed, “and their parents should be ashamed for bringing innocent ones so close to the devil’s handiwork!”
“That’s right!” Miss Archer seconded her. She glared at Mrs. Quinlan. “Any woman who would bring her child to this place is no better than the degenerates running it.”
Mrs. Quinlan sent a nervous look to her husband, who put his arm around her shoulders and whispered in her ear. A few of the mothers in the crowd exchanged looks as if deciding whether the biddies were right.
“Friends, why are you celebrating the accomplishments of a whore?” Miss Jones asked.
A few gasps and rumbles of disapproval followed, but Roy couldn’t tell if they were in agreement or protest of the words Miss Jones was using.
“Mrs. Reynolds is no whore,” he said, mustering his courage and stepping forward. His gaze flickered down to Sarah as he moved to stand by Delilah’s side. “She’s a respectable woman who has turned her life around, and you all know it.”
“And you,” Miss Jones rounded on him, “are the very worst kind of degenerate!”
“Me?” Roy blinked.
Miss Jones turned back to the crowd. “Would you patronize an establishment overseen by this forsaken man? This supporter of prostitutes? Do not be deceived by his handsome appearance. This is no fine gentleman.”
Delilah sighed and planted her hands on her hips. “Leave the boy out of it, Viola. Everyone here knows why you got such a bug up your … you know.”
Miss Jones turned purple. “Vulgarities!” she shouted as if Delilah had said what she meant to say. “Do you see, ladies and gentlemen? Do you see what you are celebrating here today? This corrupter of men and defiler of our town?”
“If you got business to air with me, then come on over for tea and we can sort it out on our own,” Delilah told her. “Leave the rest of the town out of it.”
“I cannot stand by and watch you good people be deceived by this … this….”
“Viola, get down from there and leave Delilah alone!” Paul’s order silenced both Miss Jones and the buzzing crowd. Even the wind held its breath.
“You would say that,” Miss Jones finally burst, her face twisted with old pain that hadn’t been forgotten. “You stand there defending her when she ruined your life and mine.”
The silent crowd shifted its gaze between Miss Jones, Paul, and Delilah. Roy ached with the need to do something to save the situation, but he had no idea what that would be.
“Delilah did what she wanted to do,” Paul stepped in to say something instead. “You can’t blame her for that.”
“Yes, I can!” Miss Jones fired back. “She’s a sinner! A rule-breaker! I did everything right. I was respectable! It’s not fair that-” She clamped her mouth shut, eyes darting to and fro as she realized she’d said too much, and in public too.
“You got a strange notion of what makes someone respectable,” Delilah said. “Bullying and judging everyone for being human. You wanna know what a truly respectable woman looks like? Look at Sarah.”
Miss Jones’s expression flared to triumph. “Yes! Let’s look at Sarah.” The fire that lit her eyes sent a sharp chill down Roy’s back.
Before he could stop her, Miss Jones stepped down the stairs and grabbed Sarah’s arm, hauling her up where everyone could see her. Sarah gasped and stumbled, staring out at the citizens of Cold Springs in terror as Miss Jones forced her to face them. Roy leapt to rescue her, but Miss Archer and Miss Pickering scooted between them, blocking Sarah from his reach with their bodies.
“Behold this unfortunate creature!” Miss Jones announced to the crowd, a deeper menace in her voice. Roy was certain she knew full well what torture it was for Sarah to be pointed out in public. “This wretch that you see before you is a direct result of that woman’s wickedness!” She pointed up the stairs to Delilah.
“Leave Sarah out of this!” Roy shouted as Delilah echoed, “Viola, I’m warning you.”
But there was no stopping Miss Jones now. “Sarah is a whore! The very lowest of the low. She has spent years prostituting herself out to the worst sort to come through this town.”
“But … but all that’s behind me,” Sarah squeaked, face red with shame.
“There is no ‘behind’, girl,” Miss Jones sniffed. “Once a whore, always a whore.”
“That’s not true!” Roy shouted. His frustration doubled as Miss Archer and Miss Pickering refused to let him pass.
“It’s not your fault,” Miss Jones blew on. “Sara
h idolizes this woman!” She turned to point at Delilah. “She made the mistake of looking up to her as you are looking up to her now, and it caused nothing but ruin.”
Sarah gulped, tears streaming down her face as she twisted to hide from the people staring at her. There was nowhere for her to go.
“Sarah!” Roy called out, jerking this way and that in an effort to get around Miss Archer and Miss Pickering and to take Sarah away from the display.
“Do you want your daughters to end up as harlots too?” Miss Jones raged on. “Do you want them soiled with the filth of fornication, like this woman?” Sarah shrank under each accusation, face red with shame. “Do you want your precious babies laid low and shunned by those who claimed to love them? Look at this tragic young woman!” Miss Jones shook Sarah’s arm.
Roy growled in frustration, loathe to cause violence to the two women in front of him to get to Sarah, but inches away from tossing them aside anyhow.
“Listen to me, ladies of Cold Springs!” Miss Jones went on. “Unless you want your children to turn out like Sarah, or worse, like that harlot up there,” she shook her finger at Delilah, “then turn away! Leave this place and do not give it your business! Let this forsaken whore be ruined once and for all! Let this be a lesson to you. Fall under this woman’s influence and you will end up like Sarah wretched and despised. You will-”
Sarah tore out of Miss Jones’s grip before she could go on. She sobbed and ran down the porch stairs and into the crowd. Stunned men and women gave way as she pushed through them, hiding her face in her hands.
The last string of manners that Roy had been clinging on to snapped.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he shouted at Miss Jones.
“Roy,” Delilah cautioned him.
“Let him speak!” Paul shouted. “He’s got more sense than any of us.”
“You see?” Miss Jones faced the crowd, no idea how angry Roy was. “This man-”
“Viola!” Paul cut her off. Their eyes locked. The crowd hushed, afraid to breathe. Miss Jones’s color was so high that Roy thought smoke might curl out of her ears. “Let it be!”
“How can you say that?” Miss Jones squeaked. She balled her hands into fists at her sides. “How can you rush to defend deplorable women? You rushed into Delilah’s bed like the very devil when I offered you so much!”
“What you offered me was a life of starched shirts and Sunday prayer meetings. It wasn’t what I wanted. I knew that from day one. I’m sorry you expected a proposal and got a goodbye instead, but stop taking out twenty years’ worth of disappointment on these innocent young people!”
“They are not innocent!” Miss Jones railed, splotched and shaking. “They are not worthy of the happiness that I should have had! No whore should be happy when I’m miserable!”
“Get off my porch!” Roy shouted, patience at an end. “I will not have the likes of you spouting off, upsetting folks because you had your heart broke twenty years ago.”
“Why, I never!” Miss Jones balked. She started and fell back a step when she saw the depth of the fury in Roy’s eyes, as if her joke had gone too far.
“You can insult me all you want,” Roy went on. “You can try to insult Delilah, but I know she won’t stand for it. But you insult Sarah and you’ll have me to deal with!”
“Sarah is a-”
“Sarah is the finest lady in this town!” Roy barked, glancing from Miss Jones to the stunned crowd as though they too had bought into the accusations. “She is a good and kind woman. Yeah, she may have been a whore, but only because she had to. Folks do hard things when they have to. But she never takes advantage of no one and she always pulls her weight and more.”
“She does,” Mrs. West agreed. A few others hummed in approval.
“You might not think much of her, but she’s helped all of you just the same.” He searched through the faces in the crowd. “You, Mrs. McGee. Hasn’t Sarah come out and helped you with your midwifing in the middle of the night a time or two?”
“She has.” Mrs. McGee nodded.
“And she’s helped you over at the store too,” he said to Mrs. West.
“All the time,” Mrs. West answered, voice strong. “She’s a godsend.”
“And you, Mr. Jones.” Roy pointed through the crowd to where Lewis Jones stood blinking at the scene his sister was causing. “Sarah helped you out with the mail when your back was busted up last month, didn’t she.”
“She … she did,” Lewis admitted, shrinking back when his sister glared at him.
“In fact, I defy you to find one person here in Cold Springs who is willing to say that Sarah’s not the sunshine of the town.”
“I don’t think-”
“Anyone?” Roy cut Miss Jones off by. The crowd was silent. “Anyone here at all willing to throw stones at Sarah with this lot?”
The hush seemed to spread through the people watching the spectacle. A few whispered to their neighbors. Even more shuffled and stared at their feet. But the bulk of the crowd watched the scene on the hotel porch, frowns of concern or outright hostility directed straight at Miss Jones and the biddies. Now it was Miss Jones’s turn to slump and swallow, fighting back her own tears and shame.
“I thought so,” Roy said at length. His shoulders unbunched and he took a few steps down to the street level. “Now if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I want you all to enjoy the food and entertainment that Delilah’s got set up for this hotel opening, but I am not going to repeat the mistakes of others and let the word of a nasty, bitter spinster keep me from the woman I love. I’m gonna go find Sarah and ask her to marry me, and I don’t care what any one of you think about it.”
He marched off, the crowd stepping aside for him as he cut a path straight through them. The tense whispers of his neighbors was replaced by murmurs and then by loud chattering, like rain swirling into a storm. One or two people even clapped. A few others caught on. Before Roy made it to the back of the crowd they were all applauding.
“Well I won’t stand by and be a part of this!” Roy heard Miss Jones cry over the applause. “If you want to support wickedness, then you can all burn in hell!”
On any other day, Roy would have laughed up a storm at the fierce comment. Some people were just too stubborn to know when they were beat. But he had other things on his mind. It was time he stopped worrying about his future and started making it.
Chapter Ten
Sarah rushed through the empty side streets of Cold Springs, tears close to blinding her, lungs aching with sobs. She tried to blot her face with the corner of the shawl Roy had given her, but its comfort only made her cry harder. The shawl still smelled like him.
He would never want her now, not when she had been humiliated in front of the entire town. Just like Mr. Sutcliffe, he would turn his back on her and that would be the end of that.
She charged around the corner onto Main Street, wiping her eyes only to have them cloud with more tears. Everything she’d tried to do, every step she’d tried to take to get away from the girl she’d been, had been for naught. Miss Jones had said it for all of Cold Springs to hear: once a whore, always a whore. That was all she had to show for her life.
Main Street was eerily quiet as she picked up her speed and ran towards Mr. Bell’s house. She charged up onto the porch and reached for the door, but it was locked. All she got for her efforts to turn the doorknob was bruised knuckles when her hand slipped and banged against the frame. That tiny pain added to the rest made her cry harder. She spun and leaned against the door, throat and chest aching with tears and despair.
“Sarah!”
Roy’s cry from the other end of Main Street shocked her to her senses. She pushed herself away from the door. He couldn’t find her, not in this state, not now. She flew off of the porch and cut around the side of the house, searching frantically for a place to hide, a way to get away. The yard in back of Mr. Bell’s house bordered one of the smaller streets. If she was lucky, no one would see her.
“Sarah, hold up!”
Roy was faster than her. It didn’t matter which way she turned or how hard she tried to run, the inevitable was going to catch up with her. She stopped, wracked with sobs, and turned to face him, braced herself to hear him tell her Miss Jones was right and he never wanted to see her again.
“Sarah!” he panted as he drew near.
She swallowed and forced herself to say, “Roy, I know you don’t want me after-”
Her words were silenced as Roy reached her and threw his arms around her in a tight embrace. He squeezed her so close that the shock of it pushed all the air out of her lungs. His chest heaved against hers and his heart raced, but at the same time she felt every one of his muscles relax.
“Thank God,” he said, resting his cheek against the top of her head. “You had me truly worried for a moment there.”
She was too astonished to move or speak for a moment. Her mind looped over and over itself as she tried to catch up. When at last it did, she wriggled out of Roy’s arms and took a step back.
“You shouldn’t be here, Roy. You got a hotel to open.”
Roy shook his head, reaching for her. “Nothing in the world is as important to me as you.”
Her mouth dropped open.
“That’s wrong. That’s just wrong.”
“It’s the most right thing in the world, Sunshine.”
A tiny spark of hope leapt up in her gut, but the rest of the weight of the world rushed in to smother it.
“But you heard her,” she told him, her throat closing up over her words. “You heard all them things that Miss Jones said about me. She’s right. I’m never going to be anything better than a whore.”
“She is not right,” Roy insisted, gripping her arms to hold her steady.
“But last night,” Sarah said. “Last night we did what we always do, what we been doing at the saloon for years. The only difference-”
“There is no difference,” Roy declared.
Panic closed Sarah’s throat. “But-”
“I loved you then and I love you now.” He said it with such feeling that tears stung her eyes. “If there is a difference, it’s that now, after years, we will finally be able to truly love each other without anyone else telling us how or whether we should.”