The Law-Breakers
Kate withdrew her gaze from the village below and looked into her sister’s pretty face with smiling, indulgent eyes.
“Well?” she said.
The other shook her fair head. Her eyes were still laughing, but their expression did not hide the seriousness which lay behind them.
“It’s not ‘well’ at all,” she cried. She drew herself up from the ground into a kneeling position, which left her sitting on the heels of shoes that could never have been bought in Rocky Springs. “Now, listen to me,” she went on, holding up a warning finger. “I’m just going to state my case right here and now, and – and you’ve got to listen to me. Five years ago, Kate Seton, aged twenty-three, and her sister, Helen Seton, were left orphans, with the sum of two thousand dollars equally divided between them. You get that?”
Her sister nodded amusedly. “Well,” the girl went on deliberately. “Kate Seton was no ordinary sort of girl. Oh, no. She was most unordinary, as Nick would say. She was a sort of headstrong girl with an absurd notion of woman’s independence. I – I don’t mean she was masculine, or any horror like that. But she believed that when it came to doing the things she wanted to do she could do them just as well, and deliberately, as any man. That she could think as well as any man. In fact, she didn’t believe in the superiority of the male sex over hers. The only superiority she did acknowledge was that a man could ask a woman to marry, while the privilege of asking a man was denied to Kate’s sex. But even in acknowledging this she reserved to herself an alternative. She believed that every woman had the right to make a man ask her.”
The patient Kate mildly protested. “You’re making me out a perfectly awful creature,” she said, without the least umbrage. “Hadn’t I better stand up for the – arraignment?”
But her sister’s mock seriousness remained quite undisturbed.
“There’s no necessity,” she said, airily. “Besides, you’ll be tired when I’m through. Now listen. Kate Seton is a very kind and lovable creature – really. Only – only she suffers from – notions.”
The dark-eyed Kate, with her handsome face so full of decision and character, eyed her sister with the indulgence of a mother.
“You do talk, child,” was all she said.
Helen nodded. “I like talking. It makes me feel clever.”
“Ye – es. People are like that,” returned the other ironically. “Go on.”
Helen folded her hands in her lap, and for a moment gazed speculatively at the sister she knew she adored.
“Well,” she went on presently. “Let us keep to the charge. Five years ago this spirit of independence and adventure was very strong in Kate Seton. Far, far stronger than it is now. That’s by the way. Say, anyhow, it was so strong then that when these two found themselves alone in the world with their money, it was her idea to break through all convention, leave her little village in New England, go out west, and seek ‘live’ men and fortune on the rolling plains of Canada. The last part of that’s put in for effect.”
The girl paused, watching her sister as she turned again toward the valley below.
With a sigh of resignation Helen was forced to proceed. “That’s five years – ago,” she said. Then, dropping her voice to a note of pathos, and with the pretense of a sob: “Five long years ago two lonely girls, orphans, set out from their conventional home in a New England village, after having sold it out – the home, not the village – and turned wistful faces toward the wild green plains of the western wilderness, the home of the broncho, the gopher, and the merciless mosquito.”
“Oh, do get on,” Kate’s smile was good to see.
“It’s emotion,” said Helen, pretending to dab her eyes. “It’s emotion mussing up the whole blamed business, as Nick would say.”
“Never mind Nick,” cried her sister. “Anyway, I don’t think he swears nearly as much as you make out. I’ll soon have to go and get the Meeting House ready for to-morrow’s service. So – ”
“Ah, that’s just it,” broke in Helen, with a great display of triumph in her laughing eyes. “Five years ago Kate Seton would never have said that. She’d have said, ‘bother the old Meeting House, and all the old cats who go there to slander each other in – in the name of religion.’ That’s what she’d have said. It’s all different now. Gone is her love of adventure; gone is her defiance of convention; gone is – is her independence. What is she now? A mere farmer, a drudging female, spinster farmer, growing cabbages and things, and getting her manicured hands all mussed up, and freckles on her otherwise handsome face.”
“A successful – female, spinster farmer,” put in Kate, in her deep, soft voice.
Helen nodded, and there was a sort of helplessness in her admission.
“Yes,” she sighed, “and that’s the worst of it. We came to find husbands – ‘live’ husbands, and we only find – cabbages. The man-hunters. That’s what we called ourselves. It sounded – uncommon, and so we used the expression.” Suddenly she scrambled to her feet in undignified haste, and shook a small, clenched fist in her sister’s direction. “Kate Seton,” she cried, “you’re a fraud. An unmitigated – fraud. Yes, you are. Don’t glare at me. ‘Live’ men! Adventure! Poof! You’re as tame as any village cat, and just as – dozy.”
Kate had risen, too. She was not glaring. She was laughing. Her dark, handsome face was alight with merriment at her sister’s characteristic attack. She loved her irresponsible chatter, just as she loved the loyal heart that beat within the girl’s slight, shapely body. Now she came over and laid a caressing hand upon the girl’s shoulder. In a moment it dropped to the slim waist about which her arm was quickly placed.
“I wish I could get cross with you, Helen,” she said happily. “But I simply – can’t. You know you get very near the mark in your funny fashion – in some things. Say, I wonder. Do you know we have more than our original capital in the bank? Our farm is a flourishing concern. We employ labor. Two creatures that call themselves men, and who possess the characters of – hogs, or tigers, or something pretty dreadful. We can afford to buy our clothes direct from New York or Montreal. Think of that. Isn’t that due to independence? I admit the villagy business. I seem to love Rocky Springs. It’s such a whited sepulcher, and its inhabitants are such blackguards with great big hearts. Yes, I love even the unconventional conventions of the place. But the spirit of adventure. Well, somehow I don’t think that has really gone.”
“Just got mired – among the cabbages,” said Helen, slyly. Then she released herself from her sister’s embrace and stood off at arm’s length, assuming an absurdly accusing air. “But wait a moment, Kate Seton. This is all wrong. I’m making the charge, and you’re doing all the talking. There’s no defense in the case. You’ve – you’ve just got to listen, and – accept the sentence. Guess this isn’t a court of men – just women. Now, we’re man-hunters. That’s how we started, and that’s what I am – still. We’ve been five years at it, with what result? I’ll just tell you. I’ve been proposed to by everything available in trousers in the village – generally when the ‘thing’ is drunk. The only objects that haven’t asked me to marry are our two hired men, Nick and Pete, and that’s only because their wages aren’t sufficient to get them drunk enough. As for you, most of the boys sort of stand in awe of you, wouldn’t dare talk marrying to you even in the height of delirium tremens. The only men who have ever had courage to make any display in that direction are Inspector Fyles, when his duty brings him in the neighborhood of Rocky Springs, and a dypsomaniac rancher and artist, to wit, Charlie Bryant. And how do you take it? You – a man-hunter? Why, you run like a rabbit from Fyles. Courage? Oh, dear. The mention of his name is enough to send you into convulsions of trepidation and maidenly confusion. And all the time you secretly admire him. As for the other, you have turned yourself into a sort of hospital nurse and temperance reformer. You’ve taken him up as a sort of hobby, until, in his lucid intervals, he takes advantage of your reforming process to acquire the added disease of love, which has reduced him to a condition of imbecile infatuation with your charming self.”
Kate was about to break in with a laughing protest, but Helen stayed her with a gesture of denial.
“Wait,” she cried, grandly. “Hear the whole charge. Look at your village life, which you plead guilty to. You, a high-spirited woman of independence and daring. You are no better than a sort of hired cleaner to a Meeting House you have adopted, and which is otherwise run by a lot of cut-throats and pirates, whose wives and offspring are no better than themselves. You attend the village social functions with as much appreciation of them as any village mother with an unwashed but growing family. You gossip with them and scandalize as badly as any of them, and, in your friendliness and charity toward them, I verily believe, for two cents, you’d go among the said unwashed offspring with a scrub-brush. What – what is coming to you, Kate? You – a man-hunter? No – no,” she went on, with a hopeless shake of her pretty head, “’tis no use talking. The big, big spirit of early womanhood has somehow failed you. It’s failed us both. We are no longer man-hunters. The soaring Kate, bearing her less brave sister in her arms, has fallen. They have both tumbled to the ground. The early seed, so full of promise, has germinated and grown – but it’s come up cabbages. And – and they’re getting old. There you are, I can’t help it. I’ve tripped over the agricultural furrow we’ve ploughed, and – . There!”
She flung out an arm dramatically, pointing down at the slight figure of a man coming toward them, slowly toiling up the slope of the valley.
“There he is,” she cried. “Your artist-patient. Your dypsomaniac rancher. A symbol, a symbol of the bonds which are crushing the brave spirits of our – ahem! – young hearts.”
But Kate ignored the approaching man. She had eyes only for the bright face before her.
“You’re a great child,” she declared warmly. “I ought to be angry. I ought to be just mad with you. I believe I really am. But – but the cabbage business has broken up the storm of my feelings. Cabbage? Oh, dear.” She laughed softly. “You, with your soft, wavy hair, dressed as though we had a New York hairdresser in the village. You, with your great gray eyes, your charming little nose and cupid mouth. You, with your beautiful new frock, only arrived from New York two days ago, and which, by the way, I don’t think you ought to wear sprawling upon dusty ground. You – a cabbage! It just robs all you’ve said of, I won’t say truth, but – sense. There, child, you’ve said your say. But you needn’t worry about me. I’m not changed – really. Maybe I do many things that seem strange to you, but – but – I know what I’m doing. Poor old Charlie. Look at him. I often wonder what’ll be the end of him.”
Kate Seton sighed. It seemed as though there were a great depth of motherly tenderness in her heart, and just now that tenderness was directed toward the man approaching them.
But the lighter-minded Helen was less easily stirred. She smiled amusedly in her sister’s direction. Then her bright eyes glanced swiftly down at the man.
“If all we hear is true, his end will be the penitentiary,” she declared with decision.
Kate glanced round quickly, and her eyes suddenly became quite hard.
“Penitentiary?” she questioned sharply.
Helen shrugged.
“Everybody says he’s the biggest whisky smuggler in the country, and – and his habits don’t make things look much – different. Say, Kate, O’Brien told me the other day that the police had him marked down. They were only waiting to get him – red-handed.”
The hardness abruptly died out of Kate’s eyes. A faint sigh, perhaps of relief, escaped her.
“They’ll never do that,” she declared firmly. “Everybody’s making a mistake about Charlie. I’m – sure. With all his failings Charlie’s no whisky-runner. He’s too gentle. He’s too – too honest to descend to such a traffic.”
Suddenly her eyes lit. She came close to Helen, and one firm hand grasped the soft flesh of the girl’s arm, and closed tightly upon it.
“Say, child,” she went on, in a deep, thrilling tone, “do you know what these whisky-runners risk? Do you? No. Of course you don’t. They risk life as well as liberty. They’re threatened every moment of their lives. The penalty is heavy, and when a man becomes a whisky-runner he has no intention of being taken – alive. Think of all that, and see where your imagination carries you. Then think of Charlie – as we know him. An artist. A warm-hearted, gentle creature, whose only sins are – against himself.”
But the younger girl’s face displayed skepticism.
“Yes – as we know him,” she replied quickly. “I’ve thought of it while he’s been giving me lessons in painting, when I’ve watched him with you, with that wonderful look of dog-like devotion in his eyes, while hanging on every word you uttered. I’ve thought of it all. And always running through my mind was the title of a book I once read – ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’ You are sure, and I – I only wonder.”
Kate’s hand relaxed its hold upon her sister’s arm. Her whole expression changed with a suddenness which, had she observed it, must have startled the other. Her eyes were cold, very cold, as she surveyed the sister to whom she was so devoted, and who could find it in her heart to think so harshly of one whom she regarded as a sick and ailing creature, needing the utmost support from natures morally stronger than his own.
“You must think as you will, Helen,” she said coldly. “I know. I know Charlie. I understand the gentle heart that guides his every action, and I warn you you are wrong – utterly wrong. Everybody is wrong, the police – everybody.”
She turned away and moved a few steps down the slope toward the approaching figure.
CHAPTER VII
CHARLIE BRYANT
As Kate stood out from the shadow of the trees, the man approaching, looking up, beheld her, and his dark eyes gladdened with a smile of delight. His greeting came up to her on the still air in a tone thrilling with warmth and deep feeling.
“Ho, Kate,” he cried, in his deeply musical voice. “I saw you and Helen making this way, and guessed I’d just get around.”
He was breathing hard as he came up the hill, his slight figure was bending forward with the effort of his climb. Kate watched him, much as an anxious mother might watch, with doubtful eyes, some effort of her ailing child. He reached her level and stood breathing heavily before her.
“I was around watching the boys at work down there on the new church,” he went on. His handsome boyish face was flushing. The delicate, smooth, whiskerless skin was almost womanish in its texture, and betrayed almost every emotion stirring behind it. “Allan Dy came along with my mail. When I’d read it I felt I had to come and tell you the news right away. You see, I had to tell someone, and wanted you – two to be the first to hear it.”
Kate’s eyes were full of a smiling tender amusement at the ingenuousness of the man. Helen was looking on with less tenderness than amusement. He had not come to tell her the news – only Kate. The Kate whom she knew he worshipped, and who was the only rival in his life to his passionate craving for drink.
She surveyed the man now with searching eyes. What was it that inspired in her such mixed feeling? She knew she had a dislike and liking for him, all in the same moment. There was something fascinating about him. Yes, there certainly was. He was darkly handsome. Unusually so. He had big, soft, almost womanish eyes, full of passionate possibilities. The delicate moulding of his features was certainly beautiful. They were too delicate. Ah, that was it. They were womanish. Yes, he was womanish, and nothing womanish in a man could ever appeal to the essentially feminine heart of Helen. His figure was slight, but perfectly proportioned, and quite lacking in any suggestion of mannish strength. Again the thought of it brought Helen a feeling of repugnance. She hated effeminacy in a man. And yet, how could she associate effeminacy with a man of his known character? Was he not the most lawless of this lawless village? Then there was his outward seeming of gentleness. Yes, she had never known him otherwise, even in his moments of dreadful drunkenness, and she had witnessed those frequently enough during the past few years.
The whole personality of the man was an enigma to her. Nor was it altogether a pleasant enigma. She felt that somehow there was an ugly streak in him which her sister had utterly missed, and she only half guessed at. Furthermore, somehow in the back of her mind, she knew that she was not without fear of him.
In spite of Kate’s denial, when the man came under discussion between them, her conviction always remained. She knew she liked him, and she knew she disliked him. She knew she despised him, and she knew she feared him. And through it all she looked on with eyes of amusement at the absurd, dog-like devotion he yielded to her strong, reliant, big-hearted, handsome sister.
“What’s your news, Charlie?” she demanded, as Kate remained silent, waiting for him to continue. “Good, I’ll bet five dollars, or you wouldn’t come rushing to us.”
The man turned to her as though it were an effort to withdraw his gaze from the face of the woman he loved.
“Good? Why, yes,” he said quickly. “I’d surely hate to bring you two anything but good news.” Then a shadow of doubt crossed his smiling features. “Maybe it won’t be of much account to you, though,” he went on, almost apologetically. “You see, it’s just my brother. My big brother Bill. He’s coming along out here to – to join me. He – he wants to ranch, so – he’s coming here, and going to put all his money into my ranch, and suggests we run it together.” Then he laughed shortly. “He says I’ve got experience and he’s got dollars, and between us we ought to make things hum. He’s a hustler, is Bill. Say, he’s as much sense as a two-year-old bull, and just about as much strength. He can’t see the difference between a sharp and a saint. They’re all the same to him. He just loves everybody to death, till they kick him on the shins, then he hits out, and something’s going to break. He’s just the bulliest feller this side of life.”
Kate was still smiling at the man’s enthusiasm, but she had no answer for him. It was Helen who did the talking now, as she generally did, while Kate listened.
“Oh, Charlie,” Helen cried impulsively, “you will let me see him, won’t you? He’s big – and – and manly? Is he good looking? But then he must be if he’s your – I’m just dying to see this Big Brother Bill,” she added hastily.
Charlie shook his head, laughing in his silent fashion.
“Oh, you’ll see him all right. This village’ll just be filled right up with him.” Then his dark eyes became serious, and a hopeless shadow crept into them. “I’m glad he’s coming,” he went on, adding simply, “maybe he’ll keep me straight.”
Kate’s smile died out in an instant. “Don’t talk like that Charlie,” she cried almost sharply. “Do you know what your words imply? Oh, it’s too dreadful, and – and I won’t have it. You don’t need anybody’s support. You can fight yourself. You can conquer yourself. I know it.”
The man’s eyes came back to the face he loved, and, for a moment, they looked into it as though he would read all that which lay hidden behind.
“You think so?” he questioned presently.
“I’m sure; sure as – as Fate,” Kate cried impulsively.
“You think that all – all weakness can be conquered?”
Kate nodded. “If the desire to conquer lies behind it.”
“Ah, yes.”
The man’s eyes had become even more thoughtful. There was a look in them which suggested to Helen that he was not wholly thinking of the thing Kate had in her mind.
“If the desire to conquer is there,” he went on, “I suppose the habits – diseases of years, even – could be beaten. But – but – ”
“But what?” Kate’s demand came almost roughly.
Charlie shrugged his slim shoulders. “Nothing,” he said. “I – I was just thinking. That’s all.”
“But it isn’t all,” cried Kate, in real distress.
Helen saw Charlie smile in a half-hearted fashion. For some moments his patience remained. Then, as Kate still waited for him to speak, his eyes abruptly lit with the deep fire of passion.
“Why? Why?” he cried suddenly. “Why must we conquer and fight with ourselves? Why beat down the nature given to us by a power beyond our control? Why not indulge the senses that demand indulgence, when, in such indulgence, we injure no one else? Oh, I argue it all with myself, and I try to reason, too. I try to see it all from the wholesome point of view from which you look at it, Kate. And I can’t see it. I just can’t see it. All I know is that the only thing that makes me attempt to deny myself is that I want your good opinion. Did I not want that I should slide down the road to hell, which I am told I am on, with all the delight of a child on a toboggan slide. Yes, I would. I surely would, Kate. I’m a drunkard, I know. A drunkard by nature. I have not the smallest desire to be otherwise, from any moral scruple. It’s you that makes me want to straighten up, and you only. When I’m sober I’d be glad if I weren’t. And when I’m not sober I’d hate being otherwise. Why should I be sober, when in such moments I suffer agonies of craving? Is it worth it? What does it matter if drink eases the craving, and lends me moments of peace which I am otherwise denied? These are the things I think all the time, and these are the thoughts which send me tumbling headlong – sometimes. But I know – yes, I know I am all wrong. I know that I would rather suffer all the tortures of hell than forfeit your – good will.”
Kate sighed. She had no answer. She knew all that lay behind the man’s passionate appeal. She knew, too, that he spoke the truth. She knew that the only reason he made any effort at all was because his devotion to herself was something just a shade stronger than this awful disease with which he was afflicted.
The hopelessness of the position for a moment almost overwhelmed her. She knew that she had no love – love such as he required – to give him in return. And when that finally became patent to him away would go the last vestige of self-restraint, and his fall would be headlong.
She knew his early story, and it was a pitiful one. She knew he was born of good parents, rich parents, in New York, that he was well educated. He had been brought up to become an artist, and therein had lain the secret of his fall. In Paris, and Rome, and other European cities, he had first tasted the dregs of youthful debauchery, and disaster had promptly set in. Then, after his student days, had come the final break. His parents abandoned him as a ne’er-do-well, and, setting him up as a rancher in a small way, had sent him out west, another victim of that over-indulgence which helps to populate the fringes of civilization.
The moment was a painful one, and Helen was quick to perceive her sister’s distress. She came to her rescue with an effort at lightness. But her pretty eyes had become very gentle.
She turned to the man who had just taken a letter from his pocket.
“Tell us some more about Big Brother Bill,” she said, with the pretense of a sigh. Then, with a little daring in her manner: “Do you think he’ll like me? Because if he don’t I’ll sure go into mourning, and order my coffin, and bury me on the hillside with my face to the beautiful east – where I come from.”
The man’s moment of passionate discontent had passed, and he smiled into the girl’s questioning eyes in his gentle fashion.
“He’ll just be crazy about you, Helen,” he said. “Say, when he gets his big, silly blue eyes on to you in that swell suit, why, he’ll just hustle you right off to the parson, and you’ll be married before you get a notion there’s such a whirlwind around Rocky Springs.”
“Is he – such a whirlwind?” the girl demanded with appreciation.
“He surely is,” the man asserted definitely.
Helen sighed with relief. “I’m glad,” she said. “You see, a whirlwind’s a sort of summer storm. All sunshine – and – and well, a whirlwind don’t suggest the cold, vicious, stormy gales of the folks in this village, nor the dozy summer zephyrs of the women in this valley. Yes, I’d like a whirlwind. His eyes are blue, and – silly?”
Charlie smiled more broadly as he nodded again. “His eyes are blue. And big. The other’s a sort of term of endearment. You see, he’s my big brother Bill, and I’m kind of fond of him.”