The Law-Breakers and Other Stories.

by Robert Grant.

THE LAW-BREAKERS

I

George Colfax was in an outraged frame of mind, and properly so.

Politically speaking, George was what might be called, for lack of a better term, a pa.s.sive reformer. That is, he read religiously the New York _Nation_, was totally opposed to the spoils system of party rewards, and was ostensibly as right-minded a citizen as one would expect to find in a Sabbath day's journey. He subscribed one dollar a year to the civil-service reform journal, and invariably voted on Election Day for the best men, cutting out in advance the names of the candidates favored by the Law and Order League of his native city, and carrying them to the polls in order to jog his memory. He could talk knowingly, too, by the card, of the degeneracy of the public men of the nation, and had at his finger-ends inside information as to the manner in which President This or Congressman That had sacrificed the ideals of a vigorous manhood to the bra.s.s idol known as a second term.

In fact, there was scarcely a prominent political personage in the country for whom George had a good word in every-day conversation. And when the talk was of munic.i.p.al politics he shook his head with a profundity of gloom which argued an utterly hopeless condition of affairs--a sort of social bottomless pit.

And yet George was practically pa.s.sive. He voted right, but, beyond his yearly contribution of one dollar, he did nothing else but cavil and deplore. He inveighed against the low standards of the ma.s.ses, and went on his way sadly, making all the money he could at his private calling, and keeping his hands clean from the slime of the political slough. He was a censor and a gentleman; a well-set-up, agreeable, quick-witted fellow, whom his men companions liked, whom women termed interesting. He was apt to impress the latter as earnest and at the same time fascinating--an alluring combination to the s.e.x which always likes a moral frame for its fancies.

It was to a woman that George was unbosoming his distress on this particular occasion, and, as has been already indicated, his indignation and disgust were entirely justified. Her name was Miss Mary Wellington, and she was the girl whom he wished with all his heart to marry. It was no hasty conclusion on his part. He knew her, as he might have said, like a book, from the first page to the last, for he had met her constantly at dances and dinners ever since she "came out" seven years before, and he was well aware that her physical charms were supplemented by a sympathetic, lively, and independent spirit. One mark of her independence--the least satisfactory to him--was that she had refused him a week before; or, more accurately speaking, the matter had been left in this way: she had rejected him for the time being in order to think his offer over. Meanwhile he had decided to go abroad for sixty days--a shrewd device on his part to cause her to miss him--and here he was come to pay his adieus, but bubbling over at the same time with what he called the latest piece of disregard for public decency on the part of the free-born voter.

"Just think of it. The fellow impersonated one of his heelers, took the civil-service examination in the heeler's name, and got the position for him. He was spotted, tried before a jury who found him guilty, and was sentenced to six months in jail. The day he was discharged, an admiring crowd of his const.i.tuents escorted him from prison with a bra.s.s band and tendered him a banquet. Yesterday he was chosen an alderman by the ballots of the people of this city. A self-convicted falsifier and cheat! A man who snaps his fingers in the face of the laws of the country! Isn't that a commentary on the workings of universal suffrage?" This was a caustic summing up on George's part of the story he had already told Miss Wellington piecemeal, and he looked at her as much as to ask if his dejection were not amply justified.

"It's a humiliating performance certainly," she said. "I don't wonder you are exercised about it. Are there no extenuating circ.u.mstances?"

Miss Wellington appeared duly shocked; yet, being a woman of an alert and cheery disposition, she reached out instinctively for some palliative before accepting the affair in all its stark offensiveness.

"None which count--none which should weigh for a moment with any one with patriotic impulses," he answered. "The plea is that the people down there--Jim Daly's const.i.tuents--have no sympathy with the civil-service examination for public office, and so they think it was rather smart of him than otherwise to get the better of the law. In other words, that it's all right to break a law if one doesn't happen to fancy it. A nation which nurses that point of view is certain to come to grief."

Mary nodded gravely. "It's a dangerous creed--dangerous, and a little specious, too. And can nothing be done about it? About Daly, I mean?"

"No. He's an alderman-elect, and the hero of his district. A wide-awake, square-dealing young man with no vices, as I heard one of his admirers declare. By the time I return from my trip to the Mediterranean I expect they will be booming him for Congress."

Looking at the matter soberly, Mary Wellington perceived that Jim Daly's performance was a disreputable piece of business, which merited the censure of all decent citizens. Having reached this conclusion, she dismissed George Colfax on his travels with a sense of satisfaction that he viewed the affair with such abhorrence. For, much as she liked George, her hesitation to become his wife and renounce the bachelor-girl career to which, since her last birthday--her twenty-fifth--she had felt herself committed, was a sort of indefinable suspicion as to the real integrity of his standards. He was an excellent talker, of course; his ideals of public life and private ethics, as expressed in drawing-rooms, or during pleasant dialogues when they were alone together, were exemplary. But every now and then, while he discoursed picturesquely of the evils of the age and the obligations of citizenship, it would occur to her to wonder how consistent he would be in case his principles should happen to clash with his predilections. How would he behave in a tight place? He was a fashionable young man with the tastes of his cla.s.s, and she thought she had detected in him once or twice a touch of that complacent egotism which is liable to make fish of one foible and flesh of another, as the saying is, to suit convention. In short, were his moral perceptions genuinely delicate?

However, she liked him so well that she was anxious to believe her questionings groundless. Accordingly, his protestations of repugnance at Jim Daly's conduct were rea.s.suring. For though they were merely words, his denunciation appeared heartfelt and to savor of clean and nice appreciation of the distinction between truth and falsehood.

Indeed, she was half-inclined to call him back to tell him that she had changed her mind and was ready to take him for better or for worse. But she let him go, saying to herself that she could live without him perfectly well for the next sixty days, and that the voyage would do him good. Were she to become his wife, it would be necessary to give up the Settlement work in which she had become deeply interested as the result of her activities as a bachelor-girl.

She must be certain that he was all she believed him to be before she admitted that she loved him and burned her philanthropical bridges.

Returning to her quarters in the heart of the city, Mary Wellington became so absorbed in her work of bringing cheer and relief to the ignorant and needy that she almost forgot George Colfax. Yet once in a while it would occur to her that it would be very pleasant if he should drop in for a cup of tea, and she would wonder what he was doing. Did she, perchance, at the same time exert herself with an ardor born of an acknowledged inkling that these might be the last months of her service? However that may have been, she certainly was very busy, and responded eagerly to every call upon her sympathy.

Among the cases of distress brought to her attention which interested her most was that of two children whose mother had just died. Their father was a drinking man--a reeling sot who had neglected his family for years. His wife, proud in her dest.i.tution, had worked her fingers to the bone to maintain a tenement-roof over the heads of their two little boys and to send them neat and properly nourished to school.

This labor of love had been too much for her strength, and finally she had fallen a victim to consumption. This was shortly after her necessities had become known to the Settlement to which Mary Wellington belonged. The dying mother besought her visitor to keep watch over her boys, which Mary promised faithfully to do.

The waifs, Joe and Frank, were two bright-eyed youngsters of eleven and nine. They stood so well in their cla.s.ses at school that Mary resolved that their attendance should not be interrupted during the interval while a new home was being found for them. She accompanied them to the school-house, on the morning after the funeral, in order to explain the situation to their teacher and evince her personal interest. Miss Burke was a pretty girl two or three years younger than herself. She looked capable and attractive; a little coquettish, too, for her smile was arch, and her pompadour had that fluffy fulness which girls who like to be admired nowadays are too apt to affect. She was just the sort of girl whom a man might fall desperately in love with, and it occurred to Mary, as they conversed, that it was not likely she would remain a public-school teacher long.

Miss Burke evidently knew the art of ingratiating herself with her pupils. Joe and Frank smiled bashfully, but contentedly, under her sympathetic, sunny welcome. The two young women exchanged a few words, the sequel of which was that Mary Wellington accepted the invitation to remain and observe how the youthful mind was inoculated with the rudiments of knowledge by the honeyed processes of the modern school system. While the teacher stepped to the blackboard to write some examples before the bell should ring, Joe, the elder of the two orphans, utilized the occasion to remark in a low voice intended for Mary's ear:

"She's Jim Daly's mash."

Mary, who failed on the instant to grasp the meaning of this piece of eloquent information, invited the urchin to repeat it, which he did with the sly unction of one proud of his secret. Mary laughed to herself. Some girls would have repressed the youthful gossip, but she was human. Somehow, too, the name sounded familiar.

"Who's Jim Daly, Joe?"

"He's the boss of the Ninth Ward."

"The Daly who has just been elected alderman?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Then Mary understood. "Really, Joe!" she said in the stage whisper necessary to the situation.

"Maybe she's going to be married after Easter," the guileless prattler continued, to make his confidence complete.

"Then you and Frank would lose her." This was the answer which rose to Mary's lips, partly prompted, doubtless, by her own instinctive aversion to the match.

The suggestion of another loss worked upon Joe's susceptible feelings.

Evidently he had not taken this side of the matter into consideration, and he put up one of his hands to his eyes. Fortunately the bell for the opening of the session broke in upon the conversation, and not only diverted him, but relegated the whole subject to the background for the time being. Nevertheless, the thought of it continued in Mary's mind as she sat listening to the exercises. How could an attractive girl like this take a fancy to such a trickster? It seemed totally incompatible with the teacher's other qualities, for in her att.i.tude toward her pupils she appeared discerning and conscientious.

When the time came to go, Mary referred to her connection with the Settlement work in the course of the few minutes' further conversation which they had together. Miss Burke expressed so lively an interest in this that it was agreed before they parted that the schoolmistress should pay Mary a visit some day later in the week, with the twofold object of taking tea with the two orphans and of being shown the workings of the establishment.

At this subsequent interview, the two young women chatted briskly in a cosey corner. Each found the other sympathetic, despite Mary's secret prejudice; and it happened presently that Miss Burke, whose countenance now and again had seemed a little pensive, as though she had something on her mind, said after a pause:

"I'd like to ask your advice about something, Miss Wellington, if you don't object."

Mary thought she knew what was coming, surprising as it was to be consulted. She smiled encouragingly.

"It's about a gentleman friend of mine," continued Miss Burke, with rising color, "who wishes me to marry him. Perhaps you have heard of him," she added with a suggestion of furtive pride. "His name is Jim Daly."

"I know all about him."

Miss Burke was evidently not prepared for such a sweeping answer. "You know what he did, then?" she a.s.serted after a moment's hesitation.

"He pretended to be some one else, and pa.s.sed a civil-service examination, wasn't it?"

"Yes. I can tell by your tone that you think it was disreputable. So do I, Miss Wellington; though some of my friends say that it was Jim's desire to help a friend which led him to do it. But he had to serve his time in jail, didn't he?" She looked as though she were going to cry. Then she said awkwardly: "What I wished to ask was whether you would marry him if you were I."

Mary frowned. The responsibility was disconcerting. "Do you love him?"

she asked plumply.

"I did love him; I suppose I do still; yes, I do." She jerked out her answers in quick succession. "But our engagement is broken."

"Because of this?"

"Because he has been in jail. None of my family has ever been in jail." Miss Burke set in place the loose hairs of her pompadour with a gesture of severe dignity as she spoke.

"And he knows, of course, that his dishonesty is the reason why you feel that you cannot trust him?" inquired Mary, who, being a logical person, regarded the last answer as not altogether categorical.

"It wasn't like stealing," said the girl, by way of resenting the phrase.

"It was dishonorable and untrue."

"The people down my way don't think much of the civil-service laws.

They call them frills, something to get round if you can. That's how they excuse him." She spoke with nervous rapidity and a little warmth.