Part 9 (1/2)
The elevator jiggled to a stop and they stepped into the corridor.
Scrawny-faced women were crawling patiently down the floor. They slopped wet brushes before them, wrung mops out over pails, and crawled an inch farther down the floor. Hazlitt smiled. This, too, was a part of life--keeping the floors of the building scrubbed. He won law cases.
Old women scrubbed floors. It fitted into an orderly pattern with a great meaning to its order. He paused for a moment to admire the cleanliness of the washed surface. Homage to the work of others--of old women on their knees scrubbing floors.
”Well, it's all over, Miss Pollard.”
She was sitting beside the desk where she had sat the first time they had discussed her defense. Hazlitt, unloading his brief-case, looked at her. Uncommonly pretty. Trusting eyes. What a rotten fellow, the interne!
”I don't know why I wanted to come here.” Pauline's eyes stared sadly about the room. ”I'm free, but ...” She covered her face and wept.
”Now, now, Miss Pollard!”
”Oh, it's still awful.”
”You'll forget soon.”
”I'll go away. Somewhere. Alone.” A louder sob.
”Please don't cry.”
Hazlitt watched her tenderly. The weeping increased. A lonesomeness and a vagueness were in the girl's heart. The tick-tock of the city had a foreign sound. She was a stranger in its streets. There had been something else, and now it was gone. A wilderness, a tension, the familiar face of Frankie Hamel telling her to go to h.e.l.l one night and stop bothering him with her d.a.m.ned wailing ... and Frankie dying at her feet whispering, ”What the devil, Pauline?” Then the trial. Hot and cold hours. A roomful of silent, open-mouthed faces listening to her weep, watching her squirm with proper shame and anguish as she told her story to the jurors ... the details of the abortion. ”And then I couldn't stand it. I don't remember what happened. Oh, I loved him! I don't remember. He cursed me. He called me a ... Oh, G.o.d, names. Awful names! I told him I was going to kill myself. I couldn't live, disgraced ... without his love. I'd bought a gun to kill myself. And he laughed. I don't remember after that; except that somehow he was ... he was dead.
And I wasn't....”
These things were gone. The trial was over and done. Now there was nothing left but the city with its street-cars and offices.
”Oh, everything's so changed,” she murmured. Hazlitt stood behind her chair, hand on her shoulder. Poor child! The law could not free her from the remorse for her crime and mistake. Lawlessness carried its own punishment. Virtue its own rewards, sin its own torments.
”You'll forget,” he answered softly. The law sometimes punished. But after all this was the real punishment ... beyond the power of the law to mete out. Punishment of sin. Conscience. Poor child! Inexorable fruit of evil. Despair, remorse....
”You must forget. You're young. You can begin over. Please don't cry.”
Thus Hazlitt comforted her who was weeping not with remorse for what had been, but that it had gone. No word consciousness stirred her grief. An unintelligible sorrow, it swelled in her heart and filled her with helplessness. Life had gone from her. She was mourning for it. Mourning for a murderess and a sinner who had gone, abandoned her and left her a naked, uninteresting Pauline Pollard again--a n.o.body surrounded by n.o.bodies. And once it had been different. Lighted faces listening to her in a room. Frankie whispering, ”What the devil, Pauline?”
A fresh burst of tears brought Hazlitt in front of her. Gently he moved her hands from her face.
”You mustn't,” he began over again.
”Oh, I won't ever be able to....”
”Yes you will, little girl.”
”No, no!”
She was standing. Snow outside. Rows of lighted windows drifting.
Thoughts slipped out of his head. Traffic probably tied up.
”Please don't cry.”
She dropped her head against his shoulder and wept anew. It was nice to have somebody asking her not to cry. It made it easier and more purposeful to weep.
Hazlitt sighed. Tears ... tears ... the live odor of hair. Arms that felt soft. She was mumbling close to him, ”I can't help it. Please forgive me.”