The police were excited, of course, at this open challenge to their authority. Mrs. Jameson was served with a summons. She called her friend Judge Flint—he was a member of the Club—and asked him to fix it. He said that he would, but later that afternoon he had an attack of acute appendicitis and was taken to the hospital. When Mrs. Jameson’s name was called in traffic court and there was no response, the police were alert. A warrant for her arrest was issued, the first such warrant in years. In the morning two patrolmen, heavily armed and in fresh uniforms and in the company of an old police matron, drove to Mrs. Jameson’s house with the warrant. A maid opened the door and said that Mrs. Jameson was sleeping. With at least a hint of force, they entered the beautiful drawing room and told the maid to wake Mrs. Jameson. When Mrs. Jameson heard that the police were downstairs she was indignant. She refused to move. The maid went downstairs, and in a minute or two Mrs. Jameson heard the heavy steps of the policemen. She was horrified. Would they dare enter her bedroom? The ranking officer spoke to her from the hall. “You get out of bed, lady, and come with us or we’ll get you up.” Mrs. Jameson began to scream. The police matron, reaching for her shoulder holster, entered the bedroom. Mrs. Jameson went on screaming. The matron told her to get up and dress or they would take her to the station house in her nightclothes. When Mrs. Jameson started for the bathroom, the matron followed her and she began to scream again. She was hysterical. She screamed at the policemen when she encountered them in the upstairs hallway, but she let herself be led out to the car and driven to the station house. Here she began to scream again. She finally paid the one-dollar fine and was sent home in a taxi.
Mrs. Jameson was determined to have the policemen fired, and the moment she walked into her house she began to organize her campaign. Counting over her neighbors for someone who would be eloquent and sympathetic, she thought of Peter Dolmetch, a free-lance television writer, who rented the Fulsoms’ gatehouse. No one liked him, but Mrs. Jameson sometimes invited him to her cocktail parties, and he was indebted to her. She called and told him her story. “I can’t believe it, darling,” he said. She said that she was asking him, because of his natural eloquence, to defend her. “I’m against Fascism, darling,” he said, “wherever it raises its ugly head.” She then called the mayor and demanded a hearing. It was set for eight-thirty that night. Mr. Jameson happened to be away on business. She called a few friends, and by noon everyone in Proxmire Manor knew that she had been humiliated by a policewoman, who followed her into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub while she dressed, and that Mrs. Jameson had been taken to the station house at the point of a gun. Fifteen or twenty neighbors showed up for the hearing. The mayor and his councilmen numbered seven, and the two patrolmen and the matron were also there. When the meeting was called to order, Peter stood and asked, “Has Fascism come to Proxmire Manor? Is the ghost of Hitler stalking our tree-shaded streets? Must we, in the privacy of our homes, dread the tread of the Storm Troopers’ boots on our sidewalks and the pounding of the mailed fist on the door?” On and on he went. He must have spent all day writing it. It was all aimed at Hitler, with only a few passing references to Mrs. Jameson. The audience began to cough, to yawn, and then to excuse themselves. When the protest was dismissed and the meeting adjourned, there was no one left but the principals, and Mrs. Jameson’s case was lost, but it was not forgotten. The conductor on the train, passing the green hills, would say, “They arrested a lady there yesterday”; then, “They arrested a lady there last month”; and presently, “That’s the place where the lady got arrested.” That was Proxmire Manor.
The village stood on three leafy hills north of the city, and was handsome and comfortable, and seemed to have eliminated, through adroit social pressures, the thorny side of human nature. This knowledge was forced on Melissa one afternoon when a neighbor, Laura Hilliston, came in for a glass of sherry. “What I wanted to tell you,” Laura said, “is that Gertrude Lockhart is a slut.” Melissa heard the words down the length of the room as she was pouring sherry, and wondered if she had heard correctly, the remark seemed so callous. What kind of tidings were these to carry from house to house? She was never sure—how could one be, it was all so experimental?—of the exact nature and intent of the society in which she lived, but did it really embrace this kind of thing?
