Bambi Part 39

Then his girl was brought in. He saw her clearly for the first time. A thin, wizened little face, framed in curly red hair, with bright, birdlike eyes. Her thin, flat child's figure was outlined in a tight, black satin dress, with a red collar and sash. Her quick glance darted to him, and she smiled. The policeman made his charge. The judge glanced at her.

"Anything to say for yourself?"

She shook her head wearily. Jarvis was out of his seat before he thought.

"I have something to say for her. I am the man she was supposed to have approached."

"Silence in the courtroom," said the judge, sternly.

"She didn't say one word to me, except 'Good evening,'" shouted Jarvis.

"Is that the man?" the judge asked the officer.

"Yes. He's made a lot of trouble, too, trying to make me arrest him."

"If you have any evidence to give in this case, come to the front and be sworn in."

Jarvis jumped the railing and stood before him. The oath was administered.

"Now, tell me, briefly, what the girl said to you."

"She said, 'h.e.l.lo, kid!'"

A t.i.tter went over the courtroom. The clerk rapped for order.

"Then what happened?"

"This officer arrested her. I told him what had pa.s.sed between us, and insisted on being arrested, too. We said the same thing, the girl and I."

"The girl has been here before. She has a record."

"Where are the men she made the record with?" demanded Jarvis.

"We do not deal with that feature of it," replied the judge, turning to the officer.

"And why not?" demanded Jarvis. "It takes a solicitor and the solicited to make a crime. What kind of laws are these which hound women into the trade and hound them for following it?"

"It is neither the time nor the place to discuss that. The case is dismissed. This court has no time to waste, Flynn, in cases where there's no evidence," he added, sternly, to the detective.

The girl nodded to Jarvis and beckoned him, but instead of following her he went back to his seat. He would follow this ghastly puppet show to its end.

At a word from the judge a tall, handsome, gray-haired woman approached the bench. She wore no hat, and Jarvis marked her broad brow and pleasant smile and the wise, philosophic eyes. Her face looked cheerful and normal in this place of abnormalities.

"Who is that woman?" Jarvis asked his neighbour.

"Probation officer," came the answer.

Jarvis watched her with pa.s.sionate interest. He noted her low-voiced answers to the judge's questions about the girl in hand. The curiosity seekers in the audience could not hear, no matter how they craned their necks. He watched her calm smile as she turned to take the girl off into her own office. He made up his mind to talk with her before the night was over.

Case followed case as the night wore on. It seemed to Jarvis that this bedraggled line had neither beginning nor end. He saw it winding through this place night after night, year after year, the old-timers and the new recruits. Uptown reputable citizens slept peacefully in their beds; this was no concern of theirs. He was no better than the rest, with his precious preaching about the brotherhood of man. What the body politic needed was a surgeon to cut away this abscess, eating its youth and strength.

The screams of a girl who had just been given a sentence to Bedford startled him out of his thoughts. She pleaded and cried, she tried to throw herself at the judge's feet, but the policeman dragged her out, the crowd craning forward with avid interest. She was the last case before the court adjourned. Jarvis leaned across the rail and asked the probation officer if he might speak to her.

"Perhaps you will walk along with me toward my home?" she suggested. He gladly a.s.sented. In a few moments she came out, hatted and ready for the street. She looked keenly at this tall, serious youth who had so unexpectedly arraigned the court.

"My name is Jarvis Jocelyn," he began. "There are so many things I want to ask you about."

"I shall be glad to tell you what I can," she said quietly.

"Have you been in this work long?"

"Eleven years."

"Good G.o.d! how can you be so calm? How can you look so hopeful?"

"Because I am hopeful. In all the thousands of cases I have known I have never once lost hope. When I do, my work is over."

"You're wonderful!" he exclaimed.

"No, I am reasonable. I don't expect the impossible. I am glad of every inch of ground gained. I don't demand an acre. If one girl is rescued out of twenty----"

"But why does it need to be at all?" Jarvis interrupted her.

"Why does disease need to be? Why does unhappiness need to be, or war, or the money-l.u.s.t that will one day wreck us? We only know that these things are. Our business is to set about doing what we can."

"One girl out of twenty," he repeated. "What becomes of the other nineteen?"

"I said I was glad of one girl in twenty. Sometimes several of the nineteen come out all right. Bedford helps a great many. They marry, they keep straight, or--they die very soon."

"Tell me about Bedford."

She outlined the work done in that farm home, which is such a credit to New York. She told him of the honour system, and all the modern methods employed there.

"Can you get opportunities for girls who want the chance?"

"Plenty of them. I have only to ask. When I need money, it comes. Lots of my girls are employed in uptown shops, leading good, hard-working lives."

"Where does this money come from?"

"Private donations. That is one of my hope signs--the widespread interest in rescue work."

"The old ones--those aged women?"

She sighed. "Yes, I know, they are terrible! There is a mighty army of them in New York. We grind them in and out of our courts, month after month. The inst.i.tutions are all full. There is so much grafting that the poor-farm has been delayed, year after year, so there is no place to send them."

"Where do they go?"

"Into East River, most of them, in the end."