Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

"I must not tell you all the circumstances, they are not mine to tell. Colter will want to tell you himself, but I have been able to help a little and I am rejoiced for the man you helped to save. Our friend Colter has surely come into his own, Miss Sard, and it is rather a magnificent Own. I do congratulate you on your discrimination in tramps. I suspect you have created a tradition that will some day be like a final degree. 'In 19— he was discovered by Miss Sard Bogart, which justified his previous achievements in a blaze of glory. Forgive me for being enigmatic. Courage! Miss Winged Victory, that you may be happy in a parlous world is the deep wish of your true friend, "Watts Shipman."

Sard went over it hungrily for the hundredth time. She knew this paragraph by heart; it swept her with impatient excitement. Why was it all so obscure? Why was so little told her? Had Colter really found himself? What was that real self? The girl's heart stood still; perhaps since Watts wrote this something had happened....

The afternoon wore on; the girl, with an ejaculation, sprang up. "What do I mean by loafing around like this?" Sard inquired hotly. "Colter never loafed, he was always busy mending, rearranging, working, studying. I can't stand this lazy life, I won't, I won't just drift; I will be like Colter."

She went into the little dressing-room and bathed her face, looking with wonder into the eyes grown so dark and wide, so strangely listening and startled. She flung open a drawer and lifted out a clean white dimity, a frock with fresh frills and a soft sash. Sard rustled into it with a little winged sense of pining for the air, to be moving, going somewhere, experiencing something. But the soft white seemed vapid to the serious brown eyes so unaware of their own vitality. Sard, frowning upon this absence of color, opened a casket and took out a long rope of cut amber beads. Her mother's necklace, a thing honey-like with sun-color, quivering with golden lights. "Funny," thought the girl, ruminatively, "I never cared to wear these before." She ran the smooth clicking morsels of amber through caressing fingers. "Little Mother," she thought tenderly, "I suppose these reached almost to your knees; they hardly come to my waist. I'm not a bit like you."

With yearning face, the girl turned to her bookshelves. Sard vaguely thought of going down to the river edge to read. The young fingers paused over "The Sonnets from the Portuguese"; not until this summer had Sard understood these exquisite verses. Now, almost with reverence she drew the volume forth. It was a girl's way to evade all the cold questions, all the sneering comments, the Gorgon stare of "practical life." With some sense of being companioned by the little book, Sard gave a touch here and there to her pretty room, patted a pillow, pulled down a shade and started to leave it.

Miss Aurelia's flat heels clapped up the stairs; the face that met Sard's look was mystified and potential. Her aunt, taking a chair, gasped a little.

"Aunt Reely," scolded Sard, "how you pant; you take these stairs too fast. I do believe you get more tired than you let us see; you've got to go easier," said Sard in gentle bullying.

The girl these days had been wistfully tender of her aunt. Sard had great need to be tender to someone. Miss Aurelia exulted in the solicitude. "Sard and I are very much alike," she had told Mrs. Spoyd; "we are congenial." The timid lady exulted in what seemed to her like the opening of a new régime. To have Sard's companionship in all her little flutters and wonderings and excitements! Miss Aurelia had carefully swept up Sard's heart for her. Everything to the aunt's perception was neatly ticketed and put away; all reminiscence of that er—unfortunate—er, infatuation for the "Man on the Place." Now, however, the rabbity mouth looked awed. Miss Aurelia was more uncertain than usual; she eyed Sard irresolutely.

"Someone has er—called—could you go down at once—I see you are presentable. I—you see," said Miss Aurelia with elaboration, "I am very untidy."

Miss Bogart was invariably perfectly groomed and arranged; Sard giggled in derision.