Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

The dance at the Willow Roads Country Club took place the night before Terry O'Brien's trial. Watts, with some feeling of wanting the life pulses of the Minga Bunch about him, went leisurely down the mountain road clad in the golf tweeds against which a club dance would not discriminate. As he looked in through the long windows that opened on the river, the lawyer was thinking that the indiscretions and bold franchises of the youth of the day were somehow, though coarser, a less harmful thing than the evasions and concealments of earlier days. One thing the man, staring in upon the throngs watching the little cubs of the "stag line" with their important faces, noting the calm, inexpressive faces of the girls, would have asked for—enthusiasm. Watts reviewed the whole history of the dance, Bacchante and stately minuet and folk dance, gigue and morrice, and wondered what good the dance was without the laughing lips, the light of the eyes, the merry face. He saw the young figures of the girls coming down the staircase, faces washed of all human expression, calm, subtle, in some instances of a Cleopatra-like Eastern subtlety, but never gay. The tall, dark man, accustomed to reading faces, wondered if indeed gayety had gone out of the world. "Gayety," thought Watts, "means innocence. Perhaps in a machine-run world there can be no innocence."

Down the staircase they came, scarlet and white satin, blue tulle, black tulle, pretty gold and silver slippers. Little necks filmy with powder, smooth heads, coiled, puffed and banded, long white arms, smooth white sides visible to the waist. Feet and legs devoid of grace, thickened by athletics and crudely pushed and planted in the unlovely strutting dances, yet not so unnatural, not so different, just young things pushed about by the great Energy—Life.

Any ballroom, the lawyer knew, spells but one thing. In spite of its protected, assured air, its look of flowered convention and jeweled dames playing propriety, it is, in all truth, the scene of the play of young blood, the attraction of young creatures. Since the days of the excitement over Byron's "Waltz" the eternal comment of men and women, wall-flowers and chaperons evades this evident truth and registers the same objection to all that is not sentimental convention.

But ballrooms go on existing. Watts, with a smile, wondered how many dances were in full blast along the Hudson River, so many fields of flower-pollen flying that Friday night. His mind wandered back over the fair old stately days of the great mansions of the early Americans. He thought about Colonial dances up and down this river, visualized homes along the great stream, the time of Cooper's "Satanstoe," of Irving's homesteads, of belles of the Revolution and the days of Lincoln. Shipman, with his own peculiar imagination, reviewed the youth and beauty of those days when, we are told, youth was so pure and innocent, beauty so lovely and soft and mild and biddable.

Yet the lawyer, staring at the purple night of river, pondered. If old pictures and old letters told the truth there was always, even in those crinolines, in those little cream and rouge pots and dainty curls and fichus, Revolt. Who, dear indignant Mama, wore those exceedingly décolleté ball gowns where half the bosom was exposed? Does not old poetry hint at delicious skins, and curves and fragrances and coiled enticements? Watts grinned. "Funny," the man thought, "it was all a heap more sensuous than those skinny little muscular worldlings in there, only it was unconscious. The Victorian tradition was somehow able to have kisses stolen and little ankles noted and a fervid, tight clasping waltz danced without for one moment facing what the thing meant; so mid-Victorians got by with little censure; but it was far away from frankness and honesty and truth."

The tall, dark man staring through the windows caught sight of Minga, standing alone near the entrance, and he hastened toward her. The girl in the blue gown with its orange butterflies had a curious look of defiance and of being at bay that the lawyer instantly noticed. Watts bent over her with real tenderness. The little bobbed head was held very high.

"All alone?" The lawyer was no habitué of stag lines; he did not know that this was a fatal thing to say to a girl of Minga's group. But the music struck up, and he, a lover of music and dancing, felt the answering striking up of his being. "Will you dance?" he asked her, a little awkwardly.

To the man's surprise, Minga, with a curious little catch of the breath, almost flung herself into his clasp. Considering the difference in their height, they went well together. Watts, with a sort of boyish pride, saw the wondering, derisive glance of the important "stag line" as they slid by. The room rapidly filled; the babel and clash of the regulation dance was on.

Shipman loved dancing almost childishly. His head, dappled dark, was picturesque; the curious grim look of his dark face made him conspicuous among the couples that interlaced each other in pacing, gliding, backing measures. Miss Aurelia, seated in a row of commenting elders, noticed Minga, her vivid face laid not too restrainedly along the dark line of the lawyer's arm; she indicated this to Sard, who had brought Tawny Troop up to introduce him.

"My dear!" Miss Aurelia in gray satin and lace was pontifical, "Isn't Minga too familiar, a little conspicuous? Mr. Shipman is such a dignified man. I'm sure he doesn't like it; but, of course, he doesn't know what to do. What man would?"