The sodden, dazed woman before him did not immediately get the full meaning of his words. She still stood there, swaying a bit, and staring unintelligently at the judge. Then, quite suddenly, she realized it. She took a quick step forward. Her hand went up to her breast, to her throat, to her lips, with an odd, stifled gesture.
“You ain’t going to take him away! From me! No, you wouldn’t do that, would you? Not for—not for always! You wouldn’t do that—you wouldn’t—”
Judge Wheeling waved her away. But the woman dropped to her knees.
“Judge, give me a chance! I’ll stop drinking. Only don’t take him away from me! Don’t, judge, don’t! He’s all I’ve got in the world. Give me a chance. Three months! Six months! A year!”
“Get up!” ordered judge Wheeling, gruffly, “and stop that! It won’t do you a bit of good.”
And then a wonderful thing happened. The woman rose to her feet. A new and strange dignity had come into her battered face. The lines of suffering and vice were erased as by magic, and she seemed to grow taller, younger, almost beautiful. When she spoke again it was slowly and distinctly, her words quite free from the blur of the barroom and street vernacular.
“I tell you you must give me a chance. You cannot take a child from a mother in this way. I tell you, if you will only help me I can crawl back up the road that I’ve traveled. I was not always like this. There was another life, before—before—Oh, since then there have been years of blackness, and hunger, and cold and—worse! But I never dragged the boy into it. Look at him!”
Our eyes traveled from the woman’s transfigured face to that of the boy. We could trace a wonderful likeness where before we had seen none. But the woman went on in her steady, even tone.
“I can’t talk as I should, because my brain isn’t clear. It’s the drink. When you drink, you forget. But you must help me. I can’t do it alone. I can remember how to live straight, just as I can remember how to talk straight. Let me show you that I’m not all bad. Give me a chance. Take the boy and then give him back to me when you are satisfied. I’ll try—God only knows how I’ll try. Only don’t take him away forever, Judge! Don’t do that!”
Judge Wheeling ran an uncomfortable finger around his collar’s edge.
“Any friends living here?”
“No! No!”
“Sure about that?”
“Quite sure.”
“Now see here; I’m going to give you your chance. I shall take this boy away from you for a year. In that time you will stop drinking and become a decent, self-supporting woman. You will be given in charge of one of these probation officers. She will find work for you, and a good home, and she’ll stand by you, and you must report to her. If she is satisfied with you at the end of the year, the boy goes back to you.”
“She will be satisfied,” the woman said, simply. She stooped and taking Bennie’s face between her hands kissed him once. Then she stepped aside and stood quite still, looking after the little figure that passed out of the court room with his hand in that of a big, kindly police officer. She looked until the big door had opened and closed upon them.
Then—well, it was just another newspaper story. It made a good one. That evening I told Frau Nirlanger about it, and she wept, softly, and murmured: “Ach, das arme baby! Like my little Oscar he is, without a mother.” I told Ernst about him too, and Blackie, because I could not get his grave little face out of my mind. I wondered if those who had charge of him now would take the time to bathe the little body, and brush the soft hair until it shone, and tie the gay plaid silk tie as lovingly as “Daddy” Arnett of the Detention Home had done.
Then it was that I, quite unwittingly, stepped into Bennie’s life.
There was an anniversary, or a change in the board of directors, or a new coat of paint or something of the kind in one of the orphan homes, and the story fell to me. I found the orphan home to be typical of its kind—a big, dreary, prison-like structure. The woman at the door did not in the least care to let me in. She was a fish-mouthed woman with a hard eye, and as I told my errand her mouth grew fishier and the eye harder. Finally she led me down a long, dark, airless stretch of corridor and departed in search of the matron, leaving me seated in the unfriendly reception room, with its straight-backed chairs placed stonily against the walls, beneath rows of red and blue and yellow religious pictures.
Just as I was wondering why it seemed impossible to be holy and cheerful at the same time, there came a pad-padding down the corridor. The next moment the matron stood in the doorway. She was a mountainous, red- faced woman, with warts on her nose.
“Good-afternoon,” I said, sweetly. (“Ugh! What a brute!”) I thought. Then I began to explain my errand once more. Criticism of the Home? No indeed, I assured her. At last, convinced of my disinterestedness she reluctantly guided me about the big, gloomy building. There were endless flights of shiny stairs, and endless stuffy, airless rooms, until we came to a door which she flung open, disclosing the nursery. It seemed to me that there were a hundred babies—babies at every stage of development, of all sizes, and ages and types. They glanced up at the opening of the door, and then a dreadful thing happened.
Every child that was able to walk or creep scuttled into the farthest corners and remained quite, quite still with a wide-eyed expression of fear and apprehension on every face.
For a moment my heart stood still. I turned to look at the woman by my side. Her thin lips were compressed into a straight, hard line. She said a word to a nurse standing near, and began to walk about, eying the children sharply. She put out a hand to pat the head of one red-haired mite in a soiled pinafore; but before her hand could descend I saw the child dodge and the tiny hand flew up to the head, as though in defense.
“They are afraid of her!” my sick heart told me. “Those babies are afraid of her! What does she do to them? I can’t stand this. I’m going.”
I mumbled a hurried “Thank you,” to the fat matron as I turned to leave the big, bare room. At the head of the stairs there was a great, black door. I stopped before it—God knows why!—and pointed toward it.
“What is in that room?” I asked. Since then I have wondered many times at the unseen power that prompted me to put the question.
The stout matron bustled on, rattling her keys as she walked.
“That—oh, that’s where we keep the incorrigibles.”
