Part 26 (1/2)
”Don't muddy the water, please. Let's whittle on one stick at a time.
Have you played fair?”
”Of course, I have!”
”That's all I want to know.”
But this reply suggested a subtle accusation which she did not like, and she asked:
”What do you mean?”
”Only this,” he leaned so that his words could not be overheard, and his voice was tense with a strange seriousness. ”You knew perfectly well that I was hardly to blame--and, blamable as that defense may be, what I did was done reverently. You may not know, though I'll tell you now, that you were the most exquisite thing I have ever beheld!--absolutely the most adorable and exquisite! You literally balanced yourself before my eyes, you literally taunted me with words which were a challenge of unresisting sweetness, you literally drew me, and when I came, you flew into a rage. You call that fair? I call it grossly unfair! Take it from me, Jane, that a girl who willfully fires a man, as Almighty G.o.d fires the heavens in a tempest, and then springs behind her propriety to escape, has a serious form of pyromania that'll consume her some day, just as sure as I'm talking to you--but not before it drives a lot of decent fellows to eternal flames!”
”You're talking like a madman!” she gasped.
”Far from it. I'm talking the most rational stuff you ever heard in all your life! In fact, your very presence compels me to be rational.”
”An enigmatic compliment,” she could not help smiling. ”What kind of deliriant have you been taking tonight?”
”You!” he whispered. ”Just you, who intoxicate and torture me! And as for enigmatic compliments, I swear that you inspire me with only the highest reverence at all times. Don't think the library episode indicates a lack of respect! It was the very soul of reverence speaking--though,” he slowly added, ”it would not have spoken in just that way if Zack's toddy--”
”I'm beginning to hate the very word of julep and toddy,” she said pa.s.sionately; and the Colonel, hearing this, turned with an amused expression of surprise.
Ann had let Dale off her leash, and he now was making mental charges across the table to Jane, very much as a playful puppy would physically have done to one it wished to attract. She caught his eye and smiled, and then saw the haunted look in his face which aroused her at once to what was going on.
The table had centered in a general conversation, and Miss Liz, without suspecting the sting it carried, had launched into a tirade against the lawlessness of the mountaineers who killed and were killed with an abandon worthy of Apaches. That he should now be so frantically signalling, as though he knew in her would be found help, touched the girl's responsive nature. Brent, seeing this--as he saw much that pa.s.sed about him--whispered to her:
”After all's said and done, it's a good feeling--that of being needed, isn't it?”
”Our mountaineers are not law breakers, Lizzie,” the Colonel was saying with more than ordinary sharpness in defense of his guest--and of his State. ”They keep the law extraordinarily well.”
”How can you make such a statement!” the good lady cried. ”I constantly hear of men being killed up in that wicked country!”
”It's very much exaggerated, as Brent would say,” he chuckled. ”At any rate,” he cleared his throat, ”I refer to the common law.”
Bob and Brent exchanged winks. They knew the old gentleman was getting frightfully tangled, and were curious to see how he would work himself out of it.
”Then I suppose you mean,” her voice rang with the challenge, ”that killing people is compatible with the common law?”
”Legal hangings are,” he smiled blandly. ”But, what I do seriously mean is this: the common law of a country, and therefore the common law of a place, is merely--and nothing more than--a common custom plus the power to change that custom. This being the case, the mountaineer of Kentucky is within the common law of his section, providing that he kills only within that section where it is a common custom--plus the power to change that custom.”
Miss Liz sighed. ”It doesn't sound like good sense,” she said, ”but may be correct. I have always thought that law is law, everywhere.”
”Law is law, my dear,” he gently explained to her, ”until it is changed; certainly. But it is not always good sense. Take our waterways hereabouts! They are every one governed by the same old law of riparian rights which we took from England, whose waterways are no more like those in this country than threads are like ropes. And, moreover, England's law was construed long before the dream of artificial power, having to do merely with streams adapted to navigation. Who cared then for a falls or rapids? Who would have been mad enough to think of bridled electricity? So today, these falls and rapids, which are quite out of the question for navigable purposes, but possess as great a value in other respects to the people at large, are entirely demoralized through the application of an antiquated law framed to deal with streams of a totally different character. Don't you see, my dear, how fallible may be the thing called law if it runs counter to public good? And does it not show you that every common law must be--in order to be sensible--a consensus of public consent? Therefore, do I maintain that the mountaineers of our proud State, who in common consent prosecute their own feuds in their own domain, are within the common law of that domain. Some day, when Brent's and other railroads have poured into them a different civilization, their environment will be changed;--there will arise amongst them a giant to turn things upside down--as Jeremy Bentham threw defiance to the law of diodens.”
The Colonel now, having distorted a little knowledge into a great flow of verbal pyrotechnics which hopelessly confused and downed Miss Liz, turned back to Nancy with a satisfied smile.
”Wasn't diodens a sort of old law that confiscated anything which destroyed life?” Brent, in an undertone, asked Jane.