The Eleventh Virgin by Dorothy Day (important books to read .TXT) 📕

And June turned to find Helen Drummond straightening her disordered hair and dress.

“It reminds me of a stiff hockey game,” June said, “when the other side plays dirty,” and she too straightened her middy and felt tenderly of her arms and legs.

One by one, the suffragists were being led past the cell door and placed in cells along the corridor. Miss Drummond called to each as they passed, asking them if they were all right and trying to find out what had become of all her thirty-four charges.

And while she talked, Morrison stood at the door, his black eyes burning and his grey hair disheveled and threatened her with the straightjacket, a gag, handcuffs⁠—whatever he could think of. But he received no attention whatever and wrathfully ordered the guard to bring the bracelets and chain her arms high to the door of the cell. Which was done, much to Miss Drummond’s satisfaction.

“Splendid,” she murmured to June, her eyes shining. “It gets worse and worse.” She was almost disappointed when an hour later the old guard who had obeyed Morrison’s orders, shuffled quietly to their cell and unlocked the cuffs around her numb wrists.

“Got to keep ’em on all night, I’m sorry, Miss,” he said. “I call it a shame the way that old brute⁠—” and he went away mumbling to himself.

“Well, child, you’ll just have to help me off with my shoes and you’ll find two blankets over there in the corner. They’re filthy, but we can’t sleep without covers in this dampness. Do you suppose we can squeeze up together on that little slab?”

A slab was all it was and obviously meant for only one person. But Miss Drummond and June both being very slim, were able to stretch out on one of the coarse thick blankets which they had spread beneath them and keeping the other one well away from their faces, tried to rest.

And ever after that night, June loved the memory of Helen Drummond, not because she was a suffragist, but because she didn’t talk of it at a time when it was quite pardonable to talk of nothing else. It was Conrad’s novels and travelling and the spell of the sea which they talked of until they fell asleep which was very shortly, for both had the healthy weariness of youth which enabled the one to sleep in spite of handcuffs and the other in spite of continuous fear of falling off the narrow ledge on which she was poised.

They were awakened by a guard who came to the cell in the early morning to lead Miss Drummond away to what June afterwards learned was a padded cell reserved for delirium tremens patients. Not that any such slight matter could disturb her nerve.

All the long morning, June lay there on her stiff blankets waiting for something to happen, and nothing happened. Guards were stationed at the end of the corridor and when any of the women tried to call to each other, they were immediately silenced harshly. There was a disagreeable feeling of suspense in the air, and the suffragists worn out with the excitement of the day before, remained silent. Through the narrow ventilators at the top of the rear wall of the cell, the sun shone dimly for a time and then disappeared. But there was a remaining brightness which allowed June to examine her surroundings.

It was a small, square stone room with an opening into the corridor which was barred. At night the guards hung blankets from the outside to keep out the light from the electric lamp in the middle of the hall.

There was a straw mattress flung in one corner which the two women had not noticed the night before. This June put on the bunk which had been built in one side of the cell and covered with one of her blankets. At that, it was anything but comfortable. There was nothing else in the cell, which was scantily heated by a pipe which ran through one wall.

Towards noon, June judged it must be noon because the sun had disappeared from the slit at the back of her cell, the guard came and told her she was allowed to wash and she accompanied him thankfully to a toilet room at the other end of the building.

And her oppression lifted for a moment when she saw Billy being led out of her cell at the same time, evidently for the same purpose. There was just time for a few moments whispered conversation while the two guards waited outside the washroom door.

“They’ve taken all the older women somewhere else,” Billy told her “and there’s just six of the youngest left here. These are the punishment cells and I guess they think we can stand it better than the old ladies.”

“We’ll probably all get pneumonia,” June said cheerfully. “This is worse than I thought it could possibly be. I’m aching with the cold and starving besides. How would you like to have a big steak from Brown’s Chop House?”

“Shut up, for goodness’ sake. Look, I slipped a couple of pencils in my shoe and some paper down the front of my dress. I’ve been drawing cartoons of Morrison all morning. If I only had some pins or something, I’d hang them on the wall for his approval when he makes his rounds.”

June accepted her friend’s offer to share the paper and take one of the pencils.

“I’ve gone through every pocket I have and only found a nail file and three handkerchiefs and I’ve been driven to making rag dolls as I did in school when I was bored to death.”

“I’m two cells away from you,” Billy said. “Get close to your door and holler to me whenever you want to. I’m not afraid of their old gags.”

There was no time for more than this for the guards were indelicately pounding at the door, and Billy just as indelicately irritating them by calling “come in,” which