Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

The kitchen of the Bogart House was a pleasant room whose two doors opened out into a tidy latticed vegetable garden and whose outer arrangement of entry and drying yard were of the "save steps" description. Sard and her mother had worked these things out together, for at college, under one of the few strong souls and true brains that are still left unmartyred in American colleges, the girl had learned practical ideals of what should be the attitude of the employer to those who toil for his comfort. It was Sard who had the kitchen walls painted a sunshiny yellow, selected pretty rag rugs and placed bookshelves and good reading lights in the room; it was she who had insisted upon the lattices and ladyslippers and morning-glory vines. All with the sense of her own pleasure in them, though none of the people the Bogarts employed seemed to care much for these things. The young daughter of the house soon began to realize that any bright sport-hat she herself wore, the set of her skirts, the make of her shoes, interested Dora and Maggie better than the books she tried to discuss with them. The name of Edith Cavell did not thrill them as did the name of the most recent screen actress. They cared only, it seemed, to catch up with the joy and pleasure of the life ahead of them. They seemed always to feel that the very stuff of life was arrayed against them—and sometimes they had reason.

Now as the girl pushed aside the swinging door of the old-fashioned "butler's pantry," she was half prepared for the interrupted Irish sentences, the hot questions and answers.

"Is it justice, I ask you; is it justice? To take him now—only nineteen. When he's sort of wild and notional by nature and traps set for him? Maybe he dunnit—maybe he dunnit, but he keeps saying he ain't done it. Oh, my God, my God, I don't know."

The girl stood before the two women in the kitchen, the cook who, like Sard, wiped her hands and silently handed her the ordering list.

"Thank you, Maggie," said Sard; then, her forehead drawing together, "Dora, is there anything new?"

The waitress with a gesture of dumb inability to answer, turned away, and Sard, no asperity in her voice, saw that it was to a resolutely turned back that she was speaking.

"She blames me, somehow," the girl sighed, "as if I could help it!"

"Please put the north room to air. Miss Gerould arrives late in the afternoon—I think there isn't a waste-paper basket in the room, so, Dora, will you hunt one up, and see to all the electric bulbs, won't you? And towels, the little embroidered ones——" Sard waited, half contemplating, thinking of reproof for the back turned so rudely and obstinately toward her direction, then she looked at the slight, slender figure in its gray gown, the apron tied so carefully and delicately, the capless, pretty hair, and was conscious suddenly of someone young like herself. Through this veil of youth she saw what kind of sorrow it was that bowed the head of the woman standing there; something that she did not know was the most glorious passion in the world beat up through Sard's heart into her brain; it was the passion for humanity, for justice and fairness for all. "Why should I be giving orders to her when she is suffering? Supposing Dunstan were in trouble and—and shame, and I had to take orders from the very people that——Dora—Dora," the girl persisted, "is there nothing I can do?"

There was no answer, only dry coughing sobs. The cook turned. "Ah, don't bother your head with it all, dear. It ain't nothing to you—only, Gawd help the poor thing! Er course," said the cook somewhat bitterly, "we're all under this law; the boy done wrong; he done awful, and they'll be able to prove it against him, and your papa—well," the cook sighed, "only he's young, a rill smart curly-headed young feller and his chanst is gorn."

Then cook, with a curious rising howl, turned away herself.