Not Under the Law

by Grace Livingston Hill

The stab of that question came into her morning with renewed sharpness as she was compelled to sit and listen, as were all the rest of the passengers in the car, to this crude man’s conversation.

There was nothing to fear of course, for it was broad daylight and there were plenty of men in the car whose faces told that they would defend her. They might be all common workingmen, but they had homes and mothers and wives and sisters and they respected them. There was a kind of nobleness in their faces that made one sure of that.

Joyce sat motionless and tried to still the trembling of her lips, tried to control the foolish desire to let the tears come into her eyes, tried to tell herself she was silly, and only needed her breakfast and there was no sense in her giving way to her feelings like this. This man did not know her. He had no idea that she had been the intruder at his midnight work. Oh, that work—that terrible work! What was it that bound these men together, the one so coarse, the other who had always seemed so fine? It haunted her with dark possibilities. Some money making scheme of course it was. But—it must be something terrible! She could not forget the look, the droop of the man in the darkness, when she had asked him about it.

And this other one. He must live somewhere near where he had boarded the car. He was not any one from Meadow Brook. The business was a partnership with strangers, yet the one she knew had been the captain, the head of it all. It was his voice that had given the orders, that had told them to go back and not come after her. Why should he be bound up in something that all too clearly was illicit—something of which he was ashamed? How she wished she had not had to know this about her one time friend. Of course she had not seen him much since the old school days—but it had never seemed possible that anything gruesome, mysterious,—wrong, could be connected with him. It would have been much pleasanter to have gone away from home carrying with her to the end of life the pleasant thoughts of those she left behind, those who were connected in any way with the dearness of the old days.

But this was no time to think of such things. The morning was full upon them in a flood of sunshine, and the car was coming to a halt at what seemed like some kind of a terminal. There was a platform, and a shed-like shelter, and the entire car arose as one man and crowded out on the platform. Joyce waited until they were gone and slipping out the other end went around the back of the car, crossed the tracks and walked rapidly up a side street, rejoicing to hear the hum of the cross line trolley for which the men seemed to be waiting. It would be good to know that that dreadful man was gone.

On the first corner was a small grocery whose door was just being unlocked by a sleepy looking lad, and Joyce went in and bought a box of crackers and some cheese. This would reinforce her and save time. She wanted to get well out of this region before people began to be about much. She did not care to run any risk of meeting any one she knew who would go back home and talk about it.

So, munching her crackers and cheese, she walked briskly down the street, a new one evidently, filled with rows of neat two-story houses, some of which were not yet fully finished, for workmen were about and signs were up for rent and sale.

At a broader cross street she turned the corner and came full upon a band of men who were working away at a sewer that was being laid, and suddenly from out of the group arose the noxious laughter of the red-haired man of the trolley. She stopped as if she had been shot, and wheeled, back to the quieter street of the small houses. But not back in time to escape the mocking words that were flung after her:

“There she comes! That’s my girlie! Isn’t she a pippin? Oh, don’t run away darling! I won’t let the naughty men hurt you!”

Words could not describe the taunting tone nor her horror, as if she had been desecrated. She was trembling and the tears were flowing down her cheeks as she fled, block after block without knowing whither she went. It seemed so degrading that she could not rally her usual common sense. She began to wonder if perhaps all this was to teach her that she ought not to have gone away from home? That she should have remained and borne all there was to bear and just waited until relief came. But at that her sound sense came to her rescue and she began to breathe more freely.