Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

"I cannot imagine your having ever to apologize." Watts' eyes were upon her, the expression in them very different from that with which he had subdued Minga. He looked a sort of wondering admiration, as a man may at the young face and figure so exquisitely balanced in so complete a dignity. To Watts' keen knowledge of human personality, Sard spelled clarity, essential purity; but it was not ignorant purity nor insulated clarity. It was the healthy nerve and sparkle of an original daring nature, something direct and vigorous that went straight to its interests and issues in a direct, fresh way, that looked things in the face and tackled them in front.

"We,"—Sard looked around at her rather ineffectual supporters,—"we believe that you can help us about something—someone—Terence O'Brien," the girl blurted it out to the famous lawyer with a little catch of the breath. Her voice, naturally liquid, was a little husky, but she held herself admirably.

"The man who is held for murder?" the lawyer's voice was grave.

"The boy,"—with ever so slight an insistence on "the boy,"—"who killed that old cobbler." Sard glanced eagerly into Watts' face. "We have been talking about it, all of us, a great deal; all Willow Roads is excited over it because he is so young." The girl hesitated a moment, then she said simply, "I haven't been able to discuss it with my father but——" Sard paused; something she had not reckoned with of embarrassment seemed to thicken her throat, but she plunged bravely on. "Life sentence is what everyone thinks he will get, life sentence." Her hand went out with a curious despairing little gesture that Watts noted with concern. She turned on him dark eyes, womanly, tragic. "Life! Have we—has anyone the right to take from anyone so young the chance to try again?"

The lawyer instinctively admired the girl for her directness, and he met her with equal directness. "No," he said, "we haven't, no one has, under any circumstances, the right to take life but in such cases we choose a lesser evil instead of a perfect good. Here the problem is that this boy, for a small amount of money, wantonly killed an old man, who had befriended him, trusted him; 'murder,'" said Watts emphatically, "is on his soul—do you think he would have strength to live again?"

It was stated very simply, but with such unadorned clearness that Sard shivered. Shipman, without speaking, got up and went into the house, presently emerging with some light steamer rugs and Italian blankets, one of which he drew around Sard's shoulders. He motioned in a big brotherly way to the somewhat subdued girls of the party, "I'm afraid you're all cold. Shall we go in? Haven't you sweaters or something?"

But something stiff in this little party made them refuse to enter the house; it might almost have been that this strange man who lived in the organ builder's house had so impressed them by a sense of inherent personal power that they felt actually safer outdoors. Anyway, Minga, the little scarlet leader of all their pranks and escapades, their rather elaborately planned defiances and simulated viciousness, had been shamed by this man. Sard, it seemed, also remembered it; however, she did not refuse the Italian blanket, though she let it slip to her knees. The lawyer noted this, and the corners of his mouth moved slightly.

He turned to the younger practitioner of his profession. "It is an ugly case," he remarked gravely. "The way it was done," he made a gesture of disgust, "the boy must have something essentially sneaky and cold in him. There are natures like that," he turned to Sard, "natures that you could hardly, with all your imagination, realize or comprehend."

So the group sat in the moonlight discussing the thing. One by one the lawyer drew the young philanthropists out. Under the rather marked paucity of expression he found the same impulse, the broad human wish to give this boy, caught like a fly in the net of the law, "another chance." Watts quietly relaxed, sat there in the moonlight, studying the sober young faces. Finally he spoke the thing that had first of all come into his mind.

"Perhaps I ought not to ask this," turning to Sard, "but your father, in this county, is the Law and Prophets. The country people dote on his judgments; they trust him; somehow I should think no lawyer would influence his decision, no jury's verdict interfere with his sentence. He, I should think in talking with you, would be able to make you feel the essential inevitability of the thing."