Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

"You beast! Why did you do that?" Gertrude's mouth was large and apt to be a little over-delicious in some of her planned scenes; but now it was hard bitted, twitching, like the mouth of a wicked horse; her eyes, long and liquid, were artificially enhanced with violet shadows and her face set between great rolls of lacquered hair, had moments of extreme craft seen under a curious mask of self-indulgent ease and gluttony. She reached over and, taking a chocolate, bit into it with white teeth that seemed to have a meaning of their own, her mocking eyes fixed on the sulky boy on the bank.

"Have some delirium tremens?" Gertrude waved the box of chocolates. It was a gift from Tawny and contained three pounds of candy filled with varying liquors, French and Greek condensations that were rather intense for the American head.

Dunstan glowered scornfully down on the girl. "Ah! Why don't you stop eating that rat poison?" he demanded fretfully. He turned to Tawny Troop, now tickling Cinny's sleepy face with a grass blade. "You thing in the bath-towel sweater, you thought it was funny to bring doped candy, I suppose. They like that at the Chinamen's balls and the other festivities you frequent, hey? Aw, old stuff, old stuff!"

The tones were purposely insulting, but at first the Troop merely chuckled for answer. Then he leaned forward and kissed Cinny lightly. At this, something latent in Dunstan seemed to take fire—he turned and muttered things uncomplimentary. "Aw," he snarled, "aw, cut it out."

"Now, Dunce, now, Tiger!" this from Gertrude. But the boy turned to her with an ugly look in his eyes. "Well, Gertrude Farum," said Dunstan slowly and impressively, "now that we're here where decent girls are, don't you think you'd better take a day off, clean up, burn up the trash—y' know?"

Disgust was quivering all over the boy's face, but his own accent was also thick, his eyes heavy; he had had his share of the doped candy and something else from the absurd gold flask that Tawny sported. Dunstan, to his shame, had also had his share of such diversion as this frivolous society afforded. Suddenly at sight of the things belonging to his sister and the girl staying with her, all the clean gentleman in him rose up and accused him, and he suddenly found himself entangled with things which he did not know how to unravel.

But Troop, the exquisite, now spoke up. He appealed to the girls.

"By heck! the darned lobster. Say, I think he ought to apologize. Gert—Cin—don't yew? Yep, by heck, I do. Say, man, you're, by heck, you're rotten insulting. I'll tell the world you ought to be crowned. You're rotten insulting, I'll tell the little old world!"

Dunstan heard the squeaking voice in silence. The afternoon had been long and hot. Things had risen in him that made his veins seem full of fire. He looked this way and that, like a trapped creature that smells clean water and wants to get to it. His ears were singing, his eyes burning, and he dreaded both the return of the two decent girls whom he loved and a possible evening spent with the two girls before him. He tried to speak but he knew that his own accent was thick and uncertain, and he could have burst into tears. There was Cinny lying abandoned, disheveled, her small beautiful form too well revealed by the large meshed transparent jersey she wore, her white face soggy and debauched, her corn-silk hair dampened and matted. A sense of degradation came to Dunstan. The fact that the other two could not and would not feel this obsessed him. Cinny was such a little fool. He stood on the bank and raged childishly.

"We couldn't be commoner if we were wharf rats! I've seen Chinatown people behaving better than—than we have. We're a lot of vile pigs." It was characteristic of Dunstan that he included himself in the indictment. He turned toward the snake-wreathed Gertrude.