The Law-Breakers and Other Stories | Page 7

frowned at her insistence.
"Miss Golightly," continued Mary, "explained to us yesterday how she got all her things through the custom-house by giving the inspector twenty-five dollars. She gloried in it and in the fact that, though her trunks were full of new dresses, she made oath that she had nothing dutiable."
He suspected now her trend, yet he was not certain that he was included in its scope. But he felt her eyes resting on him searchingly.
"Did she?" he exclaimed, with an effort at airy lightness which seemed to afford the only hope of escape.
"How did you manage?"
"I?" He spoke after a moment's pause with the calm of one who slightly resents an invasion of his privacy.
"Did you pay the duties on your things?"
George realized now that he was face to face with a question which, as lawyers say, required that the answer should be either "yes" or "no." Still, he made one more attempt to avert the crucial inquiry.
"Does this really interest you?"
"Immensely. My whole future may be influenced by it."
"I see." There was no room left for doubt as to her meaning. Nor did he choose to lie. "No, I paid no duties."
"I feared as much."
There was a painful silence. George rose, and walking to the mantel-piece, looked down at the hearth and tapped the ironwork with his foot. He would fain have made the best of what he ruefully recognized to be a shabby situation by treating it jocosely; but her grave, grieved demeanor forbade. Yet he ventured to remark:
"Why do you take this so seriously?"
"I expected better things of you."
He felt of his mustache and essayed extenuation. "It was--er--unworthy of me, of course; foolish--pig-headed--tricky, I suppose. I got mad. I'd nothing to sell, and the declaration is a farce when they examine after it. So I left them to find what they chose. I'm terribly sorry, for you seem to hate it so. But it's an idiotic and impertinent law, anyway."
"In other words, you think it all right to break a law if you don't happen to fancy it."
George started visibly and colored. He recognized the aphorism as his, but for the moment did not recall the occasion of its use. He chose to evade it by an attempt at banter. "You can't make a tragedy, my dear girl, out of the failure to pay duties on a few things bought for one's personal use, and not for sale. Why, nearly every woman in the world smuggles when she gets the chance--on her clothes and finery. You must know that. Your sex as a class doesn't regard it as disreputable in the least. At the worst, it is a peccadillo, not a crime. The law was passed to enable our native tailors to shear the well-to-do public."
Mary ignored the plausible indictment against the unscrupulousness of her sex. "Can such an argument weigh for a moment with any one with patriotic impulses?"
Again the parrot-like reminder caused him to wince, and this time he recognized the application.
"Oh!" he exclaimed, with sorry yet protesting confusion.
"It's the inconsistency," she answered without flinching, perceiving that he understood.
George flushed to the roots of his hair. "You compare me with that--er--blatherskite?" he asked, conscious as he spoke that her logic was irrefutable. Yet his self-respect cried out to try to save itself.
"Why not? The civil-service law seemed a frill to Jim Daly; the customs law an impertinence to you."
He looked down at the hearth again. There was an air of finality in her words which was disconcerting.
"I've been an ass," he ejaculated. "I'll give the things up; pay the duties; go to prison, if you like. The punishment is fine or imprisonment." He intended to be sincere in his offer of self-humiliation, though his speech savored of extravagance.
Mary shrugged her shoulders. "If you did, I dare say a bevy of society women would tender you a banquet when you were released from jail."
He bit his lip and stared at her. "You are taking this seriously with a vengeance!"
"I must."
He crossed the room and, bending beside her, sought to take her hand. "Do you mean that but for this--? Mary, are you going to let a little thing like this separate us?"
He had captured her fingers, but they lay limp and unresponsive in his.
"It is not a little thing; from my standpoint it is everything."
"But you will give me another chance?"
"You have had your chance. That was it. I was trying to find out whether I loved you, and now I know that I do not. I could never marry a man I could not--er--trust."
"Trust?" I swear to you that I am worthy of trust."
She smiled sadly and drew away her hand. "Maybe. But I shall never know, you see, because I do not love you."
Her feminine inversion of logic increased his dismay. "I shall