Within the Law | Page 4

her blood.
And earnest effort had ended at last under an overwhelming
accusation--false, yet none the less fatal to her. This accusation, after
soul-wearying delays, had culminated to-day in conviction. The
sentence of the court had been imposed upon her: that for three years
she should be imprisoned.... This, despite her innocence. She had
endured much--miserably much!--for honesty's sake. There wrought the
irony of fate. She had endured bravely for honesty's sake. And the end
of it all was shame unutterable. There was nought left her save a wild
dream of revenge against the world that had martyrized her.
"Vengeance is mine. I will repay, saith the Lord."... The admonition
could not touch her now. Why should she care for the decrees of a God
who had abandoned her!

There had been nothing in the life of Mary Turner, before the
catastrophe came, to distinguish it from many another. Its most
significant details were of a sordid kind, familiar to poverty. Her father
had been an unsuccessful man, as success is esteemed by this
generation of Mammon-worshipers. He was a gentleman, but the trivial
fact is of small avail to-day. He was of good birth, and he was the
possessor of an inherited competence. He had, as well, intelligence, but
it was not of a financial sort.
So, little by little, his fortune became shrunken toward nothingness, by
reason of injudicious investments. He married a charming woman, who,
after a brief period of wedded happiness, gave her life to the birth of the
single child of the union, Mary. Afterward, in his distress over this loss,
Ray Turner seemed even more incompetent for the management of
business affairs. As the years passed, the daughter grew toward
maturity in an experience of ever-increasing penury. Nevertheless,
there was no actual want of the necessities of life, though always a
woful lack of its elegancies. The girl was in the high-school, when her
father finally gave over his rather feeble effort of living. Between
parent and child, the intimacy had been unusually close. At his death,
the father left her a character well instructed in the excellent principles
that had been his own. That was his sole legacy to her. Of worldly
goods, not the value of a pin.
Yet, measured according to the stern standards of adversity, Mary was
fortunate. Almost at once, she procured a humble employment in the
Emporium, the great department store owned by Edward Gilder. To be
sure, the wage was infinitesimal, while the toil was body-breaking
soul-breaking. Still, the pittance could be made to sustain life, and
Mary was blessed with both soul and body to sustain much. So she
merged herself in the army of workers--in the vast battalion of those
that give their entire selves to a labor most stern and unremitting, and
most ill rewarded.
Mary, nevertheless, avoided the worst perils of her lot. She did not
flinch under privation, but went her way through it, if not serenely, at
least without ever a thought of yielding to those temptations that beset a

girl who is at once poor and charming. Fortunately for her, those in
closest authority over her were not so deeply smitten as to make
obligatory on her a choice between complaisance and loss of position.
She knew of situations like that, the cul-de-sac of chastity, worse than
any devised by a Javert. In the store, such things were matters of course.
There is little innocence for the girl in the modern city. There can be
none for the worker thrown into the storm-center of a great commercial
activity, humming with vicious gossip, all alive with quips from the
worldly wise. At the very outset of her employment, the
sixteen-year-old girl learned that she might eke out the six dollars
weekly by trading on her personal attractiveness to those of the
opposite sex. The idea was repugnant to her; not only from the
maidenly instinct of purity, but also from the moral principles woven
into her character by the teachings of a father wise in most things,
though a fool in finance. Thus, she remained unsmirched, though well
informed as to the verities of life. She preferred purity and penury,
rather than a slight pampering of the body to be bought by its
degradation. Among her fellows were some like herself; others, unlike.
Of her own sort, in this single particular, were the two girls with whom
she shared a cheap room. Their common decency in attitude toward the
other sex was the unique bond of union. In their association, she found
no real companionship. Nevertheless, they were wholesome enough.
Otherwise they were illiterate, altogether uncongenial.
In such wise, through five dreary years, Mary Turner lived. Nine hours
daily, she stood behind a counter. She spent her other waking hours in
obligatory menial