Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

There was a long silence, Sard trying to understand this change in her friend. She began suddenly to see as if unrolled on a flaming scroll another great law of lives like Minga's, that whoever tries to control them will lose them, but whoever knows how to control them and does not try has them bound fast and submissive. In the new days of the rapid rising of women this fact contains a new challenge for men. There is no reason why women should not rise but there also is no reason why men, once superior, now rapidly being rated as inferior, at least by women, should not look into this challenge. If woman grows more fine, why should not a man also rise and create a new fineness that shall still dominate her and make her happy in that mastery for which she will forever ask.

The moonlight shone through the long luxurious rooms, the silver patterns threw their strange symbols on the floor until almost morning, and the dawn became a steadiness of gray and rose.

When at last they parted, Sard looked thoughtfully at her friend. "The trial's on to-day," she said slowly, "and the Bunch are all mad, so they won't go; and I don't think you ought to go, Minga."

"Just the same, I shall," whispered Minga doggedly. "I'm going with Dunce." Then a thought struck her. "Oh, Sard, did Dunce tell you what Judgie is going to do to Colter?"

The other girl started. "Do to Colter!" Sard paused at the door, her face scared inquiry through the dawn-light.

"Well," Minga was sleepily yawning, "I think Dunce said that Judgie had heard some of all this mess and so he had told Colter to get out. He seems to think it doesn't do to have a gentleman—well, you know what I mean, for a hired man, anyway." Minga, seeing her friend's face, was a little nervous. "That's what Dunce said; you'd better ask him. Imagine!" said little heavy-eyed Minga. "Imagine!"

Something slow, defined, inevitable crept around Sard's heart, with a shiver; the girl tried to face it, tried with her ardent and alert soul to know it for what it was. It was hate, and it was hate of her father. She trembled slightly, for as she looked into her heart and saw that dark shape of Hate lying at its door, she heard a soft whisper again in her ear; little curls tickled her ears, soft whispering came to her and her head was laid on a soft pulsating little breast.

"We aren't afraid of Foddy, little Sard; we love him; he won't put us in prison."

Softly closing the door, softly stumbling up the steps to the tower-room, the girl tried to put these things against that dark shape lying across the threshold of her heart. "Oh, but he has put me in prison," she sobbed, "he has put me in prison—I—I—could never make him understand." Sard threw herself face downward on her bed. The birds were all singing, the sun came with bright morning over the happy sparkle of the river. A girl lay tearless before the dark shape of hate and the memory of love and before a slow dawning of a new feeling she could not name, the old cry came:

"Oh, Mother!" whispered Sard. "Oh, Mother! Mother!"