Bambi
"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 passionate 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 assented. 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 God! 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-lust 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 institutions 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."
"Do you mean to say that we pay the machinery of the law to put these
cases through the courts, over and over again, and then provide no place
to harbour the derelicts?"
"That's about the case," she replied.
"How can we live and endure such things?" Jarvis demanded passionately.
"I used to feel that way about it. I used to be sick through and through
with it, but I have grown to see that there is improvement, that there
is a new social sense growing among us. Uptown women of leisure come to
our night courts, take part in our working-girls' strikes, and women,
mind you, are always slowest to feel and react to new forces. Don't be
discouraged," she smiled at him, stopping at the door.
"May I come and see you, some time? Are you ever free, or would that be
asking too much?"
"No. Come! Come in Sunday afternoon if you like."
She held out her hand, and he grasped it warmly.
"You're great," he said boyishly, at which she laughed.
"We need you young enthusiasts," she said.
As he walked uptown to his lodgings Jarvis faced the fact that up to
this present moment he had been on the wrong track. He had tried to pull
from the top. That was all right, if only he also tried to push from the
bottom. The world needed idealists, but not the old brand, blind to the
actual, teaching out of a great ignorance. This probation officer woman,
she was the modern idealist, as modern as Jesus Christ, who worked in
the same spirit.
He would finish his vision-plays, as he called them, because he believed
in them. But, in the meantime, he would learn something of the real
issues of men and women as they live in great cities, so that he could
write a play which would be so true, so vital, that it would be like
watching the beating of the hot heart of life. That night was the
beginning of a new era for Jarvis.
XVII
Bambina Parkhurst was a young woman not much given to wrath, but as she
read the two letters from New York she grew thoroughly enraged at
Jarvis. Evidently, he had been exceedingly rude to Mr. Strong, and
evidently Mr. Strong had been exceedingly annoyed. She was so furious at
him that when she sat down to her desk to write her daily chapters no
ideas came. Her mind just went over and over the situation of kind Mr.
Strong putting himself out to be polite for her sake--Jarvis, stiff and
ill-mannered, repulsing him. She determined to omit the daily letter to
the offender until she cooled off. She gave up work for the morning and
descended upon Ardelia.
"Ardelia, I am so mad I can't think of anything to do but put up fruit."
"Law, Miss Bambi, you ain't mad wif me, is you?"
"No. I'm mad with man."
"Man! Wat's the Perfessor bin doin'? Has he don' forgot somfin'?"
"It isn't the Professor. It's the sex."
"Well, don' you go meddlin' round wid fruit and gettin' yo' hands
stained up, jus' caus' yo's mad wid de sex."
"I have got to do something violent, Ardelia. I am going to jerk the
stems off of berries, chop the pits out of cherries, and skin peaches."
"Laws a-massy, you suttinly is fierce this mohnin'. All right, go ahead,
but der ain't no need of it. I mos' generally always has put up the
fruit for the fam'ly wifout no help."
"I know you don't need me, Ardelia, but I need you."
"Well, chile, heah's de fust few bushels ob cherries."
"Bushels? Mercy on us! Are you going to do all those?"
"Yassum. And den some more. Dat's the Perfessor's favourite fruit."
Bambi was promptly enveloped in a huge apron and settled on the back
piazza, surrounded with pans and baskets. Ardelia stood by, and handed
her things, until she got started.
"Hurry up, and come out, Ardelia. I want you to talk to me and take my
mind off of things."
"I'll be 'long, by and by."
Bambi held up a bright-red cherry, named it Jarvis, pulled out its stem,
cut out its heart, and finally plumped it into her mouth and chewed it
viciously. Then she felt better. There was a cool morning breeze lifting
the leaves of the big elms, and nodding the hollyhocks' heads. The sound
of late summer buzzing and humming, and bird songs, made the back porch
a pleasant, placid spot--no place in which to keep rage hot.
Ardelia lumbered out, after a while, to sit near by, her slow movements
and her beaming smile far from conducive to a state of excitement.
"Mighty purty out here, ain't it?"
"Yes."
"I reckon Massa Jarvis be mighty glad to be home, a-sittin' here
a-seedin' cherries 'longside ob you?"
"Jarvis never did anything so useful. As for being alongside of me, that
doesn't interest him at all."
"Yo're suttinly the onlovingest bride and groom I've eber seen. You
ain't neber lovin' nor kissin' nor nottin', when I come aroun'."
"Mercy no, Ardelia!"
"I 'low if I was married to such a han'som' man, like Massa Jarvis, I'd
be a lovin' ob him all the time."
"Suppose he wouldn't let you?"
"Can't tell me der's a man libin' who wouldn't be crazy fur yo' to lub
him, Miss Bambi. Look at dat Mister Strong keeps a-comin' here."
"What about him?" asked Bambi in surprise.
"I see him lookin' at you. I see him."
"Nonsense! He has to look at me to talk with me."
"He don' need to do no talkin', wid his eyes a-workin' like dat."
"You old romancer!"
"Look a-heah, chile, dose cherries fo' to preserve. Dey ain't fo'
eatin'. You're eatin' two and puttin' one in de pan."
Bambi made a face at her.
"What is your opinion of men, Ardelia?"
"I tink dey's all right in dey place."
"Where's their place?"
"Out in the kennel wid the dawg!" said Ardelia, shaking with laughter.
"All 'cepin' the Perfessor and Massa Jarvis," she added.
"You think they are a lower order, do you?"
"Yassum. I sho' do. Mos' of dem just clutterin' up the earth."
"That's the reason you don't take that Johnson man on for good, is it?"
"Sho'! I ain't a-goin' to cook and wash fo' no nigger dat ain't got no
appreciashun, when I can cook and wash fo' the Perfessor dat know a lady
when he sees her."
"But he so infrequently sees her," giggled Bambi, _sotto voce_.
"No, ma'am, I's eatin' my white bread right here, and I knows it. I
ain't goin' to experimentify wid no marryin', nor givin' in marriage."
"In your case, I believe you're right. In my own, however, I know that,
mad as I am this morning, 'experimentification' is the breath of life
to me."
They spent the morning in such peaceful converse. While Bambi may not
have added greatly to the cherry-pitting, she rose rested and with a
collected mind.
"Ardelia, I thank you for a dose of calm," she said, laying her hand
affectionately on the black woman's broad shoulder.
"Law, honey, I done enjoyed your sassiety," she said, laughing and
patting her hand.
Within the course of a few days Bambi had an appeal from Jarvis:
"Are you ill? Is anything the matter? Are you merely tired of me that
you do not write? Your letters are the only event of my days."
This gave her the chance she wanted.
"You seem to be unaware, my dear Jarvis, that in offering a rude rebuff
to Mr. Strong you offended me, since he is my good friend and came to
see you at my request. I think you made as poor an impression on him as