RHONA

When the policeman with Rhona and Blondy passed up the steps between the green lamps of the new station-house, they found themselves in a long room whose warmth was a fine relief. They breathed more easily, loosened their coats, and then stepped forward. A police sergeant sat behind a railing, writing at a low desk, a low-hanging, green-shaded electric bulb above him.

Rhona felt that she had to speak quickly and get in her word before the others. She tried to be calm, but a dull sob went with the words.

“That man struck me knocked me down. I’ve had him arrested.”

The sergeant did not look up. He went on writing. Finally he spoke, easily:

“True, Officer?”

The policeman cleared his throat.

“The other way round, Sergeant. She struck the man.”

Rhona breathed hard, a feeling in her breast of her heart breaking. She gasped:

“That’s not true. He struck me he struck me.”

The sergeant glanced up.

“What’s your name?”

Rhona could not answer for a moment. Then, faintly:

“Rhona Hemlitz.”

“Age?”

“Seventeen.”

“Address?”

“ Hester Street.”

“Occupation?”

“Shirtwaist-maker.”

“Oh!” he whistled slightly. “Striker?”

“Yes.”

“Picketing?”

“Yes.”

“Held for Night Court trial. Lock her up, Officer.”

Blackness closed over the girl’s brain. She thought she was going into hysterics. Her one thought was that she must get help, that she must reach some one who knew her. She burst out:

“I want to telephone.”

“To who?”

“Mr. Blaine Mr. Blaine!”

“West Tenth Street feller?”

“Yes.”

The sergeant winked to the policeman.

“Oh, the matron’ll see to that! Hey, Officer?”

Rhona felt her arm seized, and then had a sense of being dragged, a feeling of cool, fetid air, a flood of darkness, voices, and then she knew no more. The matron who was stripping her and searching her had to get cold water and wash her face....

Later Rhona found herself in a narrow cell, sitting in darkness at the edge of a cot. Through the door came a torrent of high-pitched speech.

“Yer little tough, reform! reform! What yer mean by such carryings-on? I know yer record. Beware of God, little devil....”

On and on it went, and Rhona, dazed, wondered what new terror it foreboded. But then without warning the talk switched.

“Yer know who I am?”

“Who?” quavered Rhona.

“The matron.”

“Yes?”

“I divorced him, I did.”

“Yes.”

“My husband, I’m telling yer. Are yer deef?”

Suddenly Rhona rose and rushed to the door.

“I want to send a message.”

“By-and-by,” said the matron, and her rum-reeking breath came full in the girl’s face. The matron was drunk.

For an hour she confided to Rhona the history of her married life, and each time that Rhona dared cry, “I want to send a message!” she replied, “By-and-by.”

But after an hour was ended, she remembered.

“Message? Sure! Fifty cents!”

Rhona clutched the edge of the door.

“Telephone I want to telephone!”

“Telephone!” shrieked the matron. “Do yer think we keep a telephone for the likes of ye?”

“But I haven’t fifty cents besides, a message doesn’t cost fifty cents ”

“Are yer telling me?” the matron snorted. “Fifty cents! Come now, hurry,” she wheedled. “Yer know as yer has it! Oh, it’s in good time you come!”

Her last words were addressed to some one behind her. The cell door was quickly opened; Rhona’s arm was seized by John, the policeman, and without words she was marched to the curb and pushed into the patrol wagon with half a dozen others. The wagon clanged through the cold, dark streets, darting through the icy edge of the wind, and the women huddled together. Rhona never forgot how that miserable wagonful chattered that noise of clicking teeth, the pulse of indrawn sighs, and the shivering of arms and chests. Closer and closer they drew, as if using one another as shields against the arctic onslaught, a couple of poor women, and four unsightly prostitutes, the scum of the lower Tenderloin. One woman kept moaning jerkily:

“Wisht I was dead down in my grave. It’s bitter cold ”

The horses struck sparks against the pave, the wheels grided, and the wagon-load went west, up the shadowy depths of Sixth Avenue, under the elevated structure, and stopped before Jefferson Market Court. The women were hustled out and went shuddering through long corridors, until at last they were shoved into a large cell.

At about the same moment Myra and Joe emerged from the West Tenth Street house and started for the court-house. They started, bowing their heads in the wind, holding on to their hats.

“Whew!” muttered Joe. “This is a night!”

Myra did not dare take his arm, and he spoke a little gruffly.

“Better hang on to me.”

She slipped her arm through his then, gratefully, and tried to bravely fight eastward with him.

Joe was silent. He walked with difficulty. Myra almost felt as if she were leading him. If she only could have sent him home, nursed him and comforted him! He was so weary that she felt more like sending him to bed than dragging him out in this bitter weather.

More and more painfully he shuffled, and Myra brooded over him as if he were hers, and there was a sad joy in doing this, a sad glory in leading him and sharing the cruel night with him.

In this way they gained the corner of Sixth Avenue. Across the way loomed the illuminated tower-topped brick court-house.

“Here it is,” said Joe.

Myra led him over, up the steps, and through the dingy entrance. Then they stepped into the court-room and sat down on one of the benches, which were set out as in a school-room.

The place was large and blue, and dimly lighted. The judge’s end of it was screened off by wire netting. Up on a raised platform sat the magistrate at his desk, his eyes hidden by a green shade, his bald head radiant with the electric light above him. Clerks hovered about him, and an anæmic indoor policeman, standing before him, grasped with one hand a brass rail and with the other was continually handing up prisoners to be judged. All in the inclosed space stood and moved a mass of careless men, the lawyers, hangers-on, and all who fatten upon crime careless, laughing, nudging, talking openly to the women of the street. A crass scene, a scene of bitter cynicism, of flashy froth, degrading and cheap. Not here to-night the majesty of the law; here only a well-oiled machine grinding out injustice.

Joe and Myra were seated among a crowd of witnesses and tired lawyers. The law’s delay seemed to steep the big room with drowsiness; the air was warm and breathed in and out a thousand times by a hundred lungs. Myra looked about her at the weary, listless audience. Then she looked at Joe. He had fallen fast asleep, his head hanging forward. She smiled sadly and was filled with a strange happiness. He had not been able to hold out any longer. Well, then, he should sleep, she thought; she would watch alone.

Then, as she sat and gazed, a drunken woman in the seat before her fell sound asleep. At once the big special officer at the little gate of wire netting came thumping down the aisle, leaned close, and prodded her shoulder with his forefinger, crying:

“Wake up, there!”

She awoke, startled, and a dozen laughed.

Myra had a great fear that the officer would see Joe. But he didn’t. He turned and went back to his post.

Myra watched eagerly aware of the fact that this scene was not as terrible to her as it might have been. The experience of the day had sharpened her receptivity, broadened her out-look. She took it for what it was worth. She hated it, but she did not let it overmaster her.

There was much business going forward before the judge’s desk, and Myra had glimpses of the prisoners. She saw one girl, bespectacled, hard, flashy, pushed to the bar, and suddenly heard her voice rise shrill and human above the drone-like buzzing of the crowd.

“You dirty liar; I’ll slap yer face if yer say that again!”

A moment later she was discharged, pushed through the little gateway, and came tripping by Myra, shouting shrilly:

“I’ll make charges against him I’ll break him I will!”

Several others Myra saw.

A stumpy semi-idiot with shining, oily face and child-staring eyes, who clutched the railing with both big hands and stood comically in huge clothes, his eyes outgazing the judge. He was suddenly yanked back to prison.

A collarless wife-beater, with hanging lips and pleading dog’s eyes, his stout Irish wife sobbing beside him. He got “six months,” and his wife came sobbing past Myra.

Then there was an Italian peddler, alien, confused, and in rags, soon, however, to be set free; and next a jovial drunk, slapping the officers on the back, lifting his legs in dance-like motions and shouting to the judge. He was lugged away for a night’s rest.

And then, of course, the women. It was all terrible, new, undreamed of, to Myra. She saw these careless Circes of the street, plumed, powdered, jeweled, and she saw the way the men handled and spoke to them.

Scene after scene went on, endless, confused, lost in the buzz and hum of voices, the shuffle of feet. The air grew warmer and more and more foul. Myra felt drowsy. She longed to put her head on Joe’s shoulder and fall asleep sink into peace and stillness. But time and again she came to with a jerk, started forward and eagerly scanned the faces for Rhona. What had happened to the girl? Would she be kept in jail overnight? Or had something worse happened? An increasing fear took possession of her. She felt in the presence of enemies. Joe was asleep. She could not question him, could not be set at ease. And how soundly he slept, breathing deeply, his head hanging far forward. If only she could make a pillow for that tired head!

She was torn between many emotions. Now she watched a scene beyond the netting something cynical, cheap, degrading watched it with no real sense of its meaning wondered where she was and how she had come and why all this was going on. Then she would turn and look piteously at Joe, her face sharp with yearning. Then she would drowse, and awake with a start. She kept pinching herself.

“If I fall asleep Rhona may get through without us something will happen!”

It must have been past midnight. There was no sign of Rhona. Each new face that emerged from the jail entrance was that of a stranger. Again an overwhelming fear swept Myra. She touched Joe’s arm.

“Joe! Joe!” she whispered.

He did not answer; his hand moved a little and dropped. How soundly he slept! She smiled then, and sat forward, determined to be a brave woman.

Then glancing through the netting she spied Blondy and his friends laughing together. She saw the evil monkey eyes. At once she was back sharply in Great Jones Street, trembling with outrage and humiliation. She tried to keep her eyes from him, and again and again looked at him and loathed him.

“If,” she thought, “he is here, perhaps the time has come.”

Again she searched the new faces, and gave a little cry of joy. There was Rhona, pale, quiet, her arm in the hand of the policeman who had made the arrest.

Myra turned to Joe.

“Joe! Wake up!”

He stirred a little.

“Joe! Joe! Wake up!”

He gave a great start and opened his eyes.

“What is it?” he cried. “Do they want union cards?”

“Joe,” she exclaimed, “Rhona’s here.”

“Rhona?” He sat upright; he was a wofully sleepy man. “Rhona?” Then he gazed about him and saw Myra.

“Oh, Myra!” He laughed sweetly. “How good it is to see you!”

She paled a little at the words.

“Joe,” she whispered, “we’re in the court. Rhona’s waiting for us.”

Then he understood.

“And I’ve been sleeping, and you let me sleep?” He laughed softly. “What a good soul you are! Rhona! Come, quick!”

They arose, Joe rubbing his eyes, and stepped forward. Myra felt stiff and sore. Then Joe spoke in a low voice to the gate-keeper, the gate opened, and they entered in.