Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

But she turned a set and stern face on him. That soft echo of Shipman's "Courage!" had sent the flame of all her ancestors in her. "You are not fair," she stammered. "I am ready to—to"—Sard quivered over the hard word, "obey, but I can't be cut off, dried up, stopped in all that I really care about." She stiffened suddenly, flaring on him with hot mouth. "Oh, you can't be my father, not in spirit, or you wouldn't stand off and judge me, condemn me, like this; you'd help me, you'd be," the tortured girl caught her breath, "a friend; you wouldn't be willing to——"

For answer the Judge rose. He cast an eye to the sky and took out his watch. "You have an aunt," he said sententiously, "a woman, and a lady, to talk things over with." He saw the curling lip of rebellion, adding, "Of course, if you have no use for the society of ladies and social equals, if you care only for gutter snipes and wharf rats, that's your own loss. My business," said the Judge, getting heavily down from the car, "my business is to see that you remember you're my daughter, even if I have to use pretty severe means to make you.... My daughter, flirting with a tramp, making herself the comment of the town and the clubs, is a thing I will not allow!" said the magistrate. "That is a little too low!"

The cheap word "flirting," its hopeless connotation, the inhuman density and commonplace acceptance of the whole matter, seemed to goad Sard into a frenzy.

"Ah, I'm not your daughter," burst out the girl wildly. "I'm not the daughter of coarse, narrow, cruel, smug things."

With the familiar eyes slowly turning on her, with their awful arraignment of her as something vulgar, unworthy, she quivered like a frightened animal. "I don't feel like you—I couldn't! Such disgusting thoughts couldn't stay in my mind—I couldn't be so—so common as you."

It was out now, her condemnation of him. They were pitted against each other, and Sard with a feminine prophetic pang knew to what extent. The only way to influence the Judge would have been her mother's way, the little helpless scented timid lady's way, and the girl knew miserably that hers could never be that way. Yet here she was fighting, not only for her integrity as a dignified woman, but for—for someone who until now, but for her, had been helpless, dazed, a fine sensitive being shut out of all human contacts by his ignorance of what contacts were normally his.

The man turned and faced his daughter; something remorseless came into his eyes. His mouth gripped the cigar. "Either," said the Judge slowly, "either you are my daughter and do as I say, or you don't do as I say—and go——" he muttered doggedly, adding, "I don't care where!"

Then, his eyes professionally piercing, he remarked coolly, over his cigar, "There, that'll do, you've worked yourself up enough, you don't need to be theatrical! Your duty," said the Judge pompously, "is to drop all this poppy-cock about unfortunates, the under-dogs and gutter snipes, whom you affect. Be natural, be normal," said the Judge largely. "Go around with your kind and your own age, though, as far as I can see, they're as addle-pated as yourself. Drop all this nonsense, I say, and don't see Colter again—do you hear?" For the girl, now that he was out of the car, could turn her face from him.

The Judge slowly fulminated, gradually bulged with authority. He seemed solemn even to himself as he laid down his final command. He took the cigar from his mouth. "Don't see Colter again!" His eyes, reading his daughter's, he was looking mercilessly on her young agony, making it naked and flaying it, saw the writhings of her as she took the lash.

Sard made a slow desperate gesture; she had winced, half shrunk from him, but she seemed resolved now to meet the thing in its entirety.