Part 20 (1/2)
”Yes; I'm afire, and I'm mad! They put a officer of some kind at the gate last night, and this morning he caught a woman leavin' a baby.
An' how do you suppose he caught her? The man was hid and couldn't catch the woman when the baby was left, and he waited and pinched the baby and made it cry, and then the poor little mother who was waitin'
somewhere to see her baby took in, come to see what was the matter, and they took her. I can jest see it all--the poor little mother in hidin', waitin' to see her baby took in the house, and, hearin' it cry, her mother heart drew it back to comfort it, and she was caught.
Mr. Thornton tells me she was taken to court, and that's where we're a-goin' this minute. I want to see that mother, and find out why she left the baby.”
When they arrived at the court, Dr. Eaton and Drusilla found a seat up near the front. They were wedged in between wives with anxious faces wondering if their husbands would be taken away from them, or watching them pay in fines the dollars that were so badly needed in the home. They were all there, those hangers-on of misery--the policemen, the plain clothes men, the probation officers, the cheap lawyers, the reporters. Here and there was an artist or a writer looking for ”copy,” or some woman from Fifth Avenue trying to get a new sensation from the troubles of her less fortunate sisters. Over it all there was a silence that was heavy and dead. A silence born of fear--the fear of the law.
Several cases were called before the case for which Drusilla waited, and then a young girl not more than eighteen years old rose and stood before the Judge with a baby in her arms. At first she was so frightened that she could not answer the questions; but the Judge, a kindly man, waited for her to become more calm, and then, in a quiet voice, he began to question her.
”Now do not be frightened; we will not hurt you. Just tell me why you left the baby.”
The scared voice spoke so low that her words could scarcely be heard.
”I didn't know it was wrong.”
”If you didn't know it was wrong, why did you hide?”
”I--I--wanted to see that nothin' happened to her. I kind of--kind of--wanted to see her as long as I could. She's my baby--and--and--I wouldn't see her again--and I just kind of waited round--” Here the girl started to cry. ”I didn't know it was wrong. There was nothing else to do. I--I--”
”You were willing to give her away, yet you cared enough to go to her when she cried. I don't understand it.”
”I don't know, but she cried and I thought somethin' might be hurtin' her or she wasn't covered up warm enough--and I wanted to touch her again--and--and--”
”But if you feel that way, how could you leave her?”
”What was I to do with her? I couldn't take her back home. I come from the country and I couldn't go back with a baby. No one would speak to me, and it would hurt Mother so. I jest _couldn't_. She's only two weeks old, and you know when you leave the hospital with a baby two weeks old in your arms, and you can't go home and you've no money, what are you goin' to do?”
And she turned the tear-stained, questioning face of a child up to the Judge.
”What were you going to do if the baby was taken in?”
”I'd have tried to get work somewhere, but you can't get work with a baby.”
”Have you no friends?”
”No; only some girls in the store where I worked.”
”How did you come to leave the baby where you did?”
”A girl in the hospital read in a paper about an old lady who had no children and who took a baby left on her doorstep, and so I left mine, thinking that if she saw her once, she is so pretty that she'd _have_ to love her, and she'd have a chance to grow up like other girls. And I'd 'a' gone to work feeling that my baby had a home which I knowed I couldn't give her.”
”But why didn't you go to some of the homes that are open to girls like you?”
”Homes? I didn't know of any.”
”There are many inst.i.tutions that would have helped you. Didn't any one tell you about them?”
”No; I wouldn't talk much with people. I was afraid that they'd send word to Mother, and I didn't want her to know and feel bad, so I didn't talk about myself. It's been awful hard--” and the babyish lips began to tremble.
”Do you want to keep the baby?”