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The Law-Breakers
by
“When he isn’t too busy with politics. He says that he will give them up, if I insist; but my doing so might prevent his being chosen to Congress.” There was again rueful pride in her plaint.
Mary sat silent for a moment. “He stands convicted of falsehood.” She seemed to be speaking to herself.
“Yes,” gasped the girl, as her mentor paused to let the fell substantive be weighed.
“That seems terrible to me. But you know him better than I do.”
Miss Burke’s face lighted at the qualification. Yet her quick intelligence refused to be thus cajoled. “But what would you do in my place? That’s what I wish to know.”
Mary winced. She perceived the proud delicacy of the challenge, and recognized that she had condescendingly shirked the real inquiry.
“It is so hard to put oneself in another’s place. The excuses you have given for his conduct seem to me inadequate. That is, if a man gave those reasons to me–I believe I could never trust him again.” Mary spoke with conviction, but she realized that she felt like a grandmother.
“Thank you,” said Miss Burke. “That’s what I wished to know.” She looked at the floor for an instant. “Suppose you felt that you could trust him?”
Mary smiled and reflected. “If I loved him enough for that, I dare say I should forgive him.”
“You really would?” Then Miss Burke perceived that in her elation she had failed to observe the logical inconsistency which the counsel contained. “I don’t know that I understand exactly,” she added.
Mary smiled again, then shook her head. “I doubt if I can make it any plainer than that. I mean that–if I were you–I should have to feel absolutely sure that I loved him; and even then–” She paused without completing the ellipsis. “As to that, dear, no one can enlighten you but yourself.’
“Of course,” said poor Miss Burke. Yet she was already beginning to suspect that the sphinx-like utterance might contain both the kernel of eternal feminine truth and the real answer to her own doubts.
II
Some two months later the Meteoric, one of the fast ocean greyhounds, was approaching the port of New York. At sight of land the cabin passengers, who had been killing time resignedly in one another’s society, became possessed with a rampant desire to leave the vessel as soon as possible. When it was definitely announced that the Meteoric would reach her dock early enough in the afternoon to enable them to have their baggage examined and get away before dark, they gave vent to their pent-up spirits in mutual congratulations and adieus.
Among those on board thus chafing to escape from the limitations of an ocean voyage was George Colfax, whose eagerness to land was enhanced by the hope that his absence had made the heart of his lady-love fonder. His travels had been restful and stimulating; but there is nothing like one’s own country, after all. So he reflected as, cigar in mouth, he perused the newspapers which the pilot had brought, and watched the coast-line gradually change to the familiar monuments of Manhattan.
Yet apparently there was a subconsciousness to his thought, for as he folded his last newspaper and stretched himself with the languor of a man no longer harried by lack of knowledge as to what has happened during the last seven days, he muttered under his breath:
“Confound the customs anyway!”
A flutter of garments and a breezy voice brought him politely to his feet.
“That’s over with, thank Heaven!” The speaker was a charming woman from Boston, whose society he had found engrossing during the voyage–a woman of the polite world, voluble and well informed.
“I just signed and swore to the paper they gave me without reading it,” she added, with a gay shrug of her shoulders, as though she were well content with this summary treatment of a distasteful matter. “Have you made your declaration yet?” she asked indifferently.