BY-LAWS
The Judge opened the door and propelled himself into the room in a
finicking, faultfinding way, peculiarly inappropriate to his massive
shoulders and head. He grunted something to Sard's "Good-morning, Dad,"
picked up his paper and flapped it into a fold. His slow eyes, seeming
like ground glass set in front of the remorseless deliberations of his
mind, paused at the coffee-urn, as he made inquiry:
"Dunstan not down yet?"
For answer Dunstan Bogart shuffled down the broad stairs and, slipping
on a rug, entered the dining-room with an operatic air of being in
extreme haste. Half tumbling into the room, he halted, dramatically,
appearing to remind himself that the breakfast-room was holy ground.
"Greeting to thee, fellow sufferers," he announced cheerfully. He made
passes at his father's back, stared his aunt solemnly in the face,
ruffled Sard's hair and finally took his seat.
"Frogs in the finger-bowls again?" he questioned sepulchrally. "Else
why all this gloom?"
The Judge, unnoticing, motioned his finished grapefruit away. No one
appearing to effect this transfer, he indicated the butler's pantry
back of him and Sard felt anew for the electric bell.
"I wonder if this thing works--it doesn't seem to ring in the kitchen."
"It is at present ringing in the chicken-coop and the garage,"
announced Dunstan; "I heard it as I dressed--it is ringing in
the furnace and in the fountain; it is ringing in Heaven, it is
ringing--in--excuse me."
The Judge, twitching the paper, looked at his son. "She ought to hear
it," he growled; "ring it again."
Dunstan suddenly dived under the table, feeling for the button.
"Blame not the damsel," came the lad's voice, this time near Sard's
feet.
"Cuss the battery if you must cuss." He emerged from under the table
and catapulted into the kitchen, where he nearly upset the cook,
entering with a tray of smoking Sally Lunn. His father followed him
with a cold eye of disgust.
"Does he think that sort of thing amusing?" he inquired. The sacks
under the Judge's dull eyes had a slightly swelled, feverish look.
The eyes themselves were leaden gooseberry and boiled hard in the
pupil. The Judge's nose, aristocratic and sharp, held a fearful look
of pride, and the grizzled hair, scant on his head, was heavy on ears
and eyebrows. Sard had often thought that the men and women brought
before her father must have had dread long before the slightly nasal
voice deliberately twanged out the sentence. But as a little girl she
remembered her mother always said to her, "Baby, we love Foddie, don't
we? Foddie won't send _us_ with the naughty pwisoners to pwison.
Foddie won't take away all our nice toys and put us in dungeons." There
was invariably a smell of cologne and little soft tickles of curls that
went with this, and a rustle of spreading ruffled silks and laces.
With these things, part of their pretty feminine play, Sard could hear
the whisper, that strange mother whisper, the whisper which is back
of the building of the whole world, the whisper which is responsible
for the best men and the best women, for all greatness and heroism
and sometimes for the weakness and foolishness and decadence--The
Mother-whisper.
"We love Foddie, little Sard, don't we? We aren't afraid of him--he
won't send us to pwison." Then over their own clasping had come the
man's bear hug and little laughs and screams from her pretty mother.
Then Sard had always gone gravely and happily away to play.
Dunstan returned from the kitchen with the air of news. "Cook hath
secured the main part of the breakfast booty, but thy maiden hath
left--she answers not to her name in the scullery."
Miss Aurelia Bogart, the Judge's sister, sighed deeply. "Poor Dora, she
never came in at all last night--she--I--you--well, she is taking this
thing very hard--I suppose," with another sigh, "it is natural."
Dunstan grinned. "You are right, Aunt Reely; right, delicate nun! It is
not unnatural to be sad when your only brother is indicted for murder.
So the fair nymph never came in at all last night? Queer about these
women." Dunstan winked at his sister, then stared blankly into his
father's equally blank face.
"I say, Pop, are you really going to jug him for life, meaning the
tow-headed murderer brother of our esteemed waitress?"
The Judge turned. It might have been a veritable mask of implacability
that met the young brown faun-like gaze turned toward it, except that
plaster is tenderer and softer than the human face devoid of the
emotions of the human heart. A human face controlled by machine action
is a terrible thing to see. The Judge had for years been a machine.
Dunstan's own face reddened and turned away. Sticking out his cup in
the direction of the breakfast urn, the Judge remarked curtly, "More
sugar." Then to his son, "I rather fancy your sort of levity is not as
amusing as you seem to think. It is merely underbred and oafish, a sort
of nigger minstrel's buffoonery." The Judge paused a moment and then
added coolly, "As for what you wish to know, I am always ready to talk
with you on any subject that is not pure meddling on your part."
"Ah----" remarked Dunstan, with reverent aplomb. "I heard the kitchen
door bang; she's back. 'Tis well; ring for hot muffins." With a curious
glint of the brown eyes, Dunstan looked back into the cold gaze fixed
upon him. But pure animal joy cannot long survive the mortal ice of
the glacial human spirit. The dark eyes fell and the youth murmured
thoughtfully, _"and be hanged by the neck till you are dead"_.
Then the Judge rose and after they had heard the whine of his car
swinging out of the drive, Sard and her brother looked at each other.
Together they had noted the red eyes of the maid who, high-heeled of
shoe and extravagant of dark hair, had replenished the muffins and
brought back the coffee-urn.
"I don't envy you your job, Sard," Dunstan rose, went to the glass and
settled his tie. "You were a gump not to go on with college and get a
'kayrear' like the other flappers. 'Father needs you'--poof! He needs
nothing but that ice-box he calls himself. By heck!" Dunstan turned
suddenly. "Do you know I believe it is sentencing people to death and
the Can that makes him like that? It--it does something to him, don't
you see?" But from his interest in the idea Dunstan went to concern for
his sister. "Aunt Reely could run this joint. You go in for a career,
Sard, and get out from under."
His sister laughed. "After all, he's the only father we've got, Dunce.
Maybe after I've been around home a bit--it seemed dreadful when Father
wanted me here not to come--for him to have nothing that belonged to
him." Sard frowned a little. "Don't you think parents do an awful lot
for us, and what do we do for them? Look at poor little mother. I
used to visit for months at a time and leave her. She must have been
lonely--she never said so--and then those two years at college and
then--she went----" Sard's eyes widened with the sense of what those
lonely months had been--of the companionship she herself had lost.
"Well," Dunstan loomed over her gloomily, "you'll turn into an old
maid, a wall flower, a sort of solemn crow." He stood on his heels,
hands in his pockets, surveying her. "It's all of a piece," he said
fretfully. "You took down those bally chromos of Paw's and you got
pretty chintz for the chairs and put around bright candles--and he
hated it. You begged him to let you cut windows into the hall and he
squashed you. You can't get sun and joy into this house, and you can't
get sun and human warmth into that jellyfish." With a sudden squirm
Dunstan struck a match. "Oh, he's so plaguy sure," he growled. "Law?
law?--a lot of stuff in books brought down from the funny old bigwigs
in England--all scared of their king; all hanging on to rotten things
they called 'precedents' for fear somebody would get something away
from them; charters, burning of witches, dungeons, strait-jackets,
ducking-stools; Father belongs to those days! Well," the young fellow
turned upon his sister fiercely, "they know no better, but you and I do
know better. We belong to a different age, and we sit here comfortable
and happy while our smug parent does for a young fellow, a young
blood-and-bone man, full of grit and sap and dreams, a fellow that
could sail a boat and cut down a tree! We send him to a filthy, smelly
hell of a prison with a lot of awful men!" Dunstan stopped. "I went
through State prison once, and the smell of it alone would rot a man's
soul--keep him hating good forever--you realize it? A curly-headed
fellow, a man younger than I!"
The girl sitting soberly behind the silver coffee-urn looked wistfully
at her brother. Dunstan's brown face was long, and his ears just a
trifle pointed like a faun's; his voice was young and crackling, like
a tongue of young flame trying to push up through heaped-up brush. He
smoked silently, staring down at his sister. "It's good-bye for him,"
he said slowly, "good-bye to green trees and swimming in the pools and
climbing mountains and hearing a girl's voice. Oh! to just being a man!
Good-bye forever to everything but smells and rats and the minds of
decayed men and we--you, Sard, and my father are doing this thing."
Dunstan suddenly pushed back a chair. "Drat parents!" he said fiercely,
"drat law, drat the system," then he laughed. "Aunt Reely, don't
shudder; if a man on the stage talked that way, you'd think it was
lovely. Did you see my tennis racket?" demanded Dunstan in his usual
voice. "Oh, I guess I jammed it in the rack of the car. Well, so long;
don't grieve for me if I don't turn up for lunch. I guess I'll mess
with Prudy Anterp and her bunch."
Sard and her aunt watched the light reedy figure swing around the
little footpath to the garage, and in a few minutes Dunstan's car had
glided out of sight.