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Title: The White Flag
Author: Gene Stratton-Porter
Release Date: June 28, 2019 [eBook #59823]
[Most recently updated: February 25, 2021]
Language: English
Produced by: Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WHITE FLAG ***
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WHITE FLAG
------------------------------------------------------------------------
BOOKS BY GENE STRATTON-PORTER
_Nature_
THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL
HOMING WITH THE BIRDS
BIRDS OF THE BIBLE
MUSIC OF THE WILD
FRIENDS IN FEATHERS
MOTHS OF THE LIMBERLOST
MORNING FACE
_Novels_
FRECKLES
AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW
A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST
THE HARVESTER
LADDIE
MICHAEL O’HALLORAN
A DAUGHTER OF THE LAND
HER FATHER’S DAUGHTER
THE WHITE FLAG
_Poetry_
THE FIRE BIRD
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: “What does my heart know of the heart of a child beating
beneath it?”]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WHITE FLAG
BY
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
FRONTISPIECE
BY
LESTER RALPH
S. B. GUNDY TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
1923
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
GENE STRATTON-PORTER
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE COMPANY
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
_First Edition_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
THE BOYS AND GIRLS “GROWN TALL”
WITH WHOM, IN CHILDHOOD,
I PASSED UNDER
THE WHITE FLAG
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
I “He That Was Cold and Hungry”
II The Gifts of Light and Song
III An Inquisition According to Mahlon
IV “Strength from Weakness”
V The Verdict Goes Against Jezebel
VI The Golden Egg
VII Field Mice Among the Wheat
VIII A Secret Among the Stars
IX Sometimes Your Soul Shows
X A Trick of the Subconscious
XI The Driver of the Chariot
XII Those Who Serve
XIII Only Three Words
XIV The Cloud That Grew
XV The Last Straw
XVI The Eyes of Elizabeth
XVII “A Millstone and the Human Heart”
XVIII A Triumph in Millinery
XIX Rebecca Pronounces Judgment
XX The Decision Marcia Reached
XXI “Whatsoever a Man Sows”
XXII Behind the Lilac Wall
XXIII The Flag on Its Journey
------------------------------------------------------------------------
LIST OF CHARACTERS
MAHALA SPELLMAN, the Model Child
MAHLON SPELLMAN, the Dry-goods Merchant
ELIZABETH SPELLMAN, a Fine Lady
MARTIN MORELAND, the Harvester of Riches
MRS. MARTIN MORELAND, a Bewildered Wife
MARTIN MORELAND, Junior, a Chip from the Paternal Block
BECKY SAMPSON, Bearer of the White Flag
EDITH WILLIAMS, the Child of Discontent
MARCIA PETERS, the Bearer of Chains
JASON PETERS, Walking the Road
MEHITABLE ASHCROFT, Teacher of Room Five
PETER POTTER, the Village Grocer
ELLEN FORD, a Wild Rose
JEMIMA DAVIS, a Friend in Need
NANCY BODKIN, Who Believed in Face Values
Remainder of characters: School children, villagers, a minister, a
doctor, a lawyer, etc.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE WHITE FLAG
CHAPTER I
“HE THAT WAS COLD AND HUNGRY”
Elizabeth Spellman opened her eyes, turned on her pillow, and minutely
studied the face of her sleeping husband. To her, Mahlon Spellman was
not a vain, pompous, erratic little man of fifty. When she looked at him
she saw the man who had courted her, of whose moral and mental
attainments she had been so sure. She had visioned him as a future
deacon of the Methodist Church, a prominent member of the School Board
and the city council, and her vision had materialized; reality had been
better than the Dream. He was Chairman of the County Republican
Committee, frequently a delegate to state conventions, the Methodist
Sunday School Superintendent, the richest dry-goods merchant of the
town. As she studied his features that particular September morning, she
choked down a rising flutter of satisfaction. Mahlon, as he lay there,
represented success, influence, wealth. He slept as fastidiously as he
walked abroad; he seemed conscious of his dignity and pride even as he
lay unconscious.
Her home, of which she was inordinately proud, was his gift to her. The
very satisfactory life she was living was possible because she was under
the shelter of his sufficient hands. The child she mothered was the
offspring of her love for him. She did not know that the elements in him
which she mentally labelled “neat” and “thorough,” were denominated
“fussy” by his neighbours. She lauded the scrupulous cleanliness and
precision which kept him constantly flicking invisible dust from his
sleeve and straightening his tie. To her this only meant that personally
he was as scrupulous as she was herself; to her these traits never
revealed the truth that Mahlon was an egoist, who kept himself
constantly foremost in his own mind, a man selfish to a degree that
would have been unendurable had not his selfishness encompassed his
pride in her, their child, and their home as the fulfilment of one
branch of his personality. His craze for power she denominated laudable
ambition. The position in which he was able to place her socially, she
accepted as her due; she spent her days prettifying her really beautiful
home, doing everything in her power to pamper Mahlon physically, to
uphold and further his ambitions, because she was comfortably certain
that there was no eminence to which she could boost him that she might
not share in proud security with him. Among the demands of society, her
position as a Colonial Dame, a pillar of the Church, leader of social
activities, charities, and the excruciating exactions she bestowed upon
the office of motherhood, she was a busy person.
At that minute she sighed with satisfaction, thinking of her wonderful
achievement in marrying Mahlon Spellman; but with the thought came the
memory of the duties that such a marvellous alliance entailed. At the
present minute it was her duty to slip from their bed so quietly that
Mahlon, the bread winner, the bearer of large gifts, the roof of the
house, might have a few minutes more sleep. She slipped her feet into
her bedroom shoes, tiptoed to the closet, and gathering up her clothing,
stole softly to her one of the three bathrooms of the town, where, with
exacting care, she made her toilet for the morning, aided by the
magnificence of a tin tub and a marble bowl that absorbed stains with
disconcerting ease.
She glanced from the window to watch the small town of Ashwater waking
to the dawn of the first Monday of September. It lay among the hills and
valleys of rolling country. A river wound around it following a
leisurely course toward the sea. Ashwater was one of the oldest towns of
the state, peopled by self-respecting merchants, professional men who
took time to follow the ramifications of their business in a deliberate
manner, and retired farmers who were enjoying, in late life, the luxury
of being in close touch with social, political, and religious
activities.
It was early morning. The sun was slanting across the hills, showing the
country brilliant in autumnal foliage. A blood-red maple lifted like a
flame in her line of vision, and close to it was the tapestry of buckeye
and the rich brown of oak. The big white colonial house in which she,
the wife of the wealthy dry-goods merchant, lived, was surrounded with
gorgeous colour from every shrub, bush, and tree that would endure the
rigours of winter. She looked approvingly on the white picket fence that
shut off her small world from the worlds of her less fortunate
neighbours. She approved of the screening evergreens that made homing
places for the birds, and the gorgeous beds of chrysanthemums brocading
the smooth turf of the lawn. Her view from the bathroom window was
restricted, but mentally she envisaged her surroundings and knew that
they made a picture which would indicate to any passer-by that here was
a home of wealth and comfort. She was certain that any one going by
would think it a home of happiness.
She stood a minute before the mirror, studying her pretty little face.
She was nearly twenty years younger than her husband, an exacting woman,
perfectly capable of muttering “prunes and prisms” by the hour for the
shaping of her mouth as she moved about her occupation of being her
husband’s wife, her daughter’s mother, her own social Influence.
Elizabeth Spellman believed in Influence. It was her duty to set a
shining example. She had no vision of a modest candle—when she let her
light “so shine” she meant it to be a headlight, and of no mean
proportions at that. As she patted her hair in place, set the bow at her
throat with exact precision, she smiled with pleasure over the picture
her mirror held facing her. But Elizabeth Spellman was a woman who
firmly held duty above pleasure, or rather, who found her greatest
pleasure in her personal conception of her duty; so she turned from the
mirror, gathered up her belongings, and leaving everything in place,
went hurriedly down the hall. She softly opened a white door and her
eyes instantly sought a small bed, standing in a room made dainty with
pale pinks and blues. She hurried to the bed, and bending, laid her hand
upon the little girl sleeping there.
“Mahala,” she said softly, “you must wake up now, dear. It’s the first
day of school, you know, and you mustn’t spoil a year, that I hope will
be extremely beneficial to you, by being late. And certainly you must
not slight your other duties in order to be on time.”
Elizabeth Spellman said this because she was the kind of woman who would
say exactly this without the slightest regard as to whether her little
daughter were sufficiently awake either to hear or to understand it. She
said it in order to give herself the satisfaction of knowing that in
case Mahala did hear any part of it she would have got the right
impression. She believed in impressions quite as firmly as she believed
in influence—possibly even more strongly—for if one did not make a good
impression, she would lose her influence, or, fatal thing! have none to
lose. Elizabeth Spellman was a firm believer in the fact that, if the
twig is bent in the proper direction, the tree will be inclined in the
right manner.
Mahala opened her eyes and looked at her mother. Then she shut them and
tried to decide how long she might lie still before she made a move to
get up. She discovered that there was no time to waste that morning. A
firm hand turned back the covers and gripped her shoulder. So she
mustered a smile, swung her feet to the floor, and still half asleep,
stumbled down the hall before her mother.
Her bath thoroughly awakened her. She was old enough to have been of
some help to herself, but helping herself with her toilet was not a
point stressed by her mother, who took particular pride and pleasure in
bathing the exquisitely shaped little body under her hands. She examined
the ears particularly. She made sure there were no obtrusive “boos”
disfiguring the small nose by the use of a handkerchief stretched over a
hairpin. Mahala’s hair curled naturally around her face. Her mother
assisted the long heavy back hair occasionally. She now unwound the
golden curls from their papers and brushed them into place with
exquisite precision. Every small undergarment she put upon the child was
of fine material, hand made, elaborately trimmed. A mirror was lifted
from the closet and set upon the floor before which Mahala had to stand
and see that her stocking seams were straight in the back. The ruffles
of her pantalettes were carefully fluffed; her slippers were securely
buttoned. Her petticoats and her wide-skirted dress were in the height
of style and of expensive material. The finishing touch to her toilet
was a white apron having a full skirt, and wide shoulder pieces meeting
at the band, then curving to form deep pockets. From an open drawer a
handkerchief was taken from a box and carefully scented.
“Please, Mother, put some on me,” begged Mahala.
Elizabeth Spellman laughed softly. She tipped the contents of the bottle
against the glass stopper which she touched in several spots on the
golden curls and over the shoulders.
“My little girl likes to be sweet like a flower, doesn’t she?” she
asked.
And the child answered primly: “Yes, Mama, so that Papa will be pleased
with me.”
Whereupon her mother immediately kissed her and commended her for
thinking of anything that would be a pleasure to her father.
As she gathered up Mahala’s nightdress and turned the bed to air, she
said to the child: “Now run, dear, and waken your father, but remember
you must not muss yourself or spend too much time.”
Mahala hurried down the hall, softly opened the door to her parents’
bedroom, and poised on her tiptoes. Her heart was racing. Her eyes were
big pools having dancing lights. Her muscles cried for exercise. She
wanted to make a flying leap and land on the bed, but she knew what her
reception would be if she did; so she crossed the room very primly and
laid a soft hand on her father’s face.
“Papa, dear,” she said, “wake up! School begins this morning and you
won’t be in time to have breakfast with me unless you hurry.”
She leaned over and kissed him and patted his face, but, when he reached
up and drew her down in his arms, she was instantly on the defensive.
“Papa, be careful!” she cautioned. “Mother has my curls made and I am
all dressed for school. She wouldn’t like it if you were to muss me.”
Instantly Mahlon’s arms relaxed.
“No, she wouldn’t like it,” he said, “and neither would I. Give Papa
another kiss and run to your music, like a little lady.”
So Mahala hurried back to her room, where she took in her arms a
beautiful wax doll, almost as large as herself, carefully carrying it
down the stairs and into the living room. With her keen eyes she
surveyed this familiar place, but the same stiffly starched lace
curtains depended from the fringed lambrequins, the same gorgeous
flowers spread among the scrolls of the Brussels carpet, the same
mahogany chairs stood, each in its exact spot, each picture covered its
size in the original freshness of the wall paper. She could not see a
thing to arrest or interest her, so she proceeded to the parlour, where
the big square piano stood among the real treasures of the house:
rosewood sofa and chairs, a parlour table having leaves, cabinets for
books and bric-a-brac, a loaded what-not, and the roses of the velvet
carpet so big and so bright that it was a naughty trick of Mahala to
pretend she stubbed her toes and stumbled over them. Here the lace
curtains fell from velvet draperies and spread widely on the floor; a
china dog guarded glass-encased hair flowers on the mantel, while the
morning-glories climbing up the wall paper must have sprung from the
same exuberant soil that furnished the originals of the carpet roses.
Mahala swept this room also with a bird-alert glance and seeing not the
change of a fleck of dust anywhere, set Belinda on a chair beside the
piano stool and surveyed her minutely.
“Belinda, can’t you sit like a little lady?” she said reprovingly. “Two
curls over each shoulder, the rest down your back; heels touching, toes
out. If I got to wear a silk dress every day, let me tell you, I’d swish
it properly.”
She spread the silken skirts, fixed the curls, and placed a hymn book in
the hands of the doll. Carefully spreading her own skirts, she climbed
to the piano stool. Hearing her mother’s step on the stairs, in a sweet
little voice she began singing, to her own accompaniment: “I thank thee,
Father, for the light.” Then she slid from the stool, exchanged the hymn
book in the doll’s lap for a piece of sheet music, and climbing back,
began practising her lesson. She worked with one eye on the door of the
living room and the other on the keyboard. Every time her mother’s back
was turned, she stuck her feet straight out, and with propulsion
attained by setting her hands against the piano, whirled in a circle on
the stool, first to the left until the stool was too low, and then to
the right until the stool was the required height. She was so dexterous
at this that she could accomplish one revolution between the measures of
the music in places where a rest occurred. Her face was sparkling with
suppressed laughter whenever she feelingly struck a chord and then
accomplished a revolution before catching the next note and continuing
her exercise. But she was quite serious, seemingly intent upon her work,
when her mother stepped to the door to announce: “Your time is up,
Mahala. You have still a few minutes remaining that you might profitably
spend with your needle.”
Mahala slipped to the floor, put away her music and Belinda’s, and going
to the living room, took from a cupboard a small sewing basket. She sat
down in a rocking chair beside the window, placing the doll in a chair
near her. She put a piece of sewing into her hands and gravely reproved
her for careless work. Her own fingers were weaving a needle in and out,
executing a design in cross stitch in gaudy colours on a piece of
cardboard. When her mother was within hearing she leaned toward the doll
and said solicitously: “Now be careful, my dear child. You never will be
a perfect lady unless you learn to take your stitches evenly. No lady
makes a crooked seam.”
But, when her mother stepped to the adjoining dining room, with her
brows drawn together she said sternly to the doll: “Belinda, if you
don’t sit up straight and make your stitches even, I’ll slap you to
pieces. You needn’t look as meek as a mouse. I shall do it for your own
good; although, of course, it will hurt me more than it does you.”
When the breakfast bell rang, Mahala folded her sewing neatly, returned
to the basket the piece she had given Belinda, put the basket where it
belonged, and the doll on the sofa, and then walked to the dining-room
door. She held her apron wide at each side and made a low formal
courtesy to each of her parents exactly as if she had not seen them
before that morning.
Primly she said: “Good morning, Papa dear. Good morning, dear Mama. I
hope you slept well during the night.”
This drilling Elizabeth Spellman insisted upon because she considered it
very pretty when there were guests in the house. When there were not,
she thought it better to have it rehearsed in order that it should
become habitual.
When they were seated at the table Mrs. Spellman and Mahala bowed their
heads while Mr. Spellman addressed the Lord in a tone which was meant to
contain a shade more deference than he would have tried to put into
addressing the President or a Senator. He thanked the Lord for the food
that was set before them, asked that it might be blessed to their good,
prayed that all of them might execute the duties of the day faithfully,
and returned all of their thanks for the blessing they were
experiencing. Then they ate the food for which they had given thanks
because it was very good food. They had every reason to be thankful for
such cooking as Jemima Davis had accomplished in their kitchen during
all the years of their wedded life.
It was just as Mr. Spellman was buttering his fourth pancake that the
voice of Jemima Davis arose in the regions of the back porch in a shrill
shriek. Mahala laid down her fork and stared with wide, expectant eyes.
Mrs. Spellman started to rise from her chair. Mr. Spellman pushed back
his own chair and looked at his wife.
“Now, now,” he said admonishingly, “be calm. You are familiar with
Jemima’s divagations.”
Another shriek, wilder than the first, broke upon them.
“I will attend to this myself,” said Mr. Spellman.
Arising, he vanished in the direction of the kitchen. Finding that room
empty, he proceeded to the back porch and there, at the corner of the
house, he saw Jemima tugging at the rear anatomy of Jimmy Price. Jimmy
Price was the village handy-man. His task that morning was to mow the
Spellman lawn and trim the grass around the trees. Just why he should
have been standing on his head in the rain barrel was a question Mahlon
Spellman did not wait to ask until he had upset the barrel and allowed
Jimmy the privilege of backing out. When Jimmy lifted his drenched tow
head and sallow, freckled face, there was no need for explanation. In
one hand he grasped a pair of sheep shears which he used to clip the
grass around the snowball and lilac bushes. Exactly why or how he had
lost them in the barrel was not a matter of concern to his employer. At
the precise minute that Jimmy backed from the barrel, soaked and
spluttering, Mahlon was felicitating himself upon the presence of mind
which had kept his wife and daughter from witnessing a sight so
ludicrous. At the same time he realized that he could not so easily
control the neighbours and the street. Mahlon felt like a fool to be
seen in proximity to such a ridiculous sight, and he hated feeling like
a fool more than almost any other calamity that could possibly overtake
him. In a voice highly touched with exasperation he cried: “James Price,
is it quite impossible for you to perform your work without having some
sort of fool accident or doing some ludicrous thing every fifteen
minutes? Are you a man or a monkey? You don’t seem happy unless you are
making a back-alley spectacle of yourself,”—“and me,” Mahlon added in
his consciousness.
Jimmy wiped the muck of the barrel bottom and the water from his face,
and looked at his employer.
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir,” he said humbly.
“I wonder what for,” muttered Mahlon Spellman, and turning, marched back
to the dining room where he resumed his place. As Mahlon went, Jimmy
squared his shoulders, smoothed his dripping hair, set in place a tie he
was not wearing, and flipped a very real bit of soil from his sleeve in
Mr. Spellman’s best manner.
Jemima launched the back porch broom at Jimmy’s head and he dodged it
expertly.
“You poor bumpkin, you,” she cried. “Don’t you dare be aping the
master!”
“But I was merely following the natural impulses of a gentleman,” said
Jimmy, as he used the sheep shears to flirt slime from his sleeves,
while Jemima suddenly retreated, but not before Jimmy in deep
satisfaction noted her heaving shoulders.
Mrs. Spellman opened her lips and an inquisitive little “What——?”
escaped therefrom.
“Nothing of the slightest importance, my dear,” said Mr. Spellman,
waving his hand to indicate that the matter was of such slight moment
that it might be carried away in the wake of the gesture without
consuming any of their valuable time for its consideration.
Mrs. Spellman bowed her head in acceptance of her husband’s ultimatum.
Mahala distinctly pouted. In the back of her small head she knew that
her mother would leave the breakfast table and go immediately to the
kitchen for information. She would be sent to school and might never
learn why Jemima had screamed so wholeheartedly. It was not fair; but
then, Mahala reflected, there were few things that were fair where young
people were concerned. That being the case, she lingered at the table,
watched her chance, and slipped to the kitchen.
“Jemima, what made you scream so?” she whispered as she watched the
doorway behind her.
Jemima wiped the batter from the pancake spoon with expert finger: “That
half-wit Jim Price laid the sheep shears on the rain barrel,” she said
scornfully. “Of course they fell in and of course he went in head first
when he tried to get them out!”
Mahala clapped her hands over her mouth and danced until her curls flew.
“Careful, honey, careful,” whispered Jemima.
Instantly Mahala became a demure little maiden again. Her glance swept
the kitchen as it had the other rooms and rested on a basket of clothes
standing ready for the washerwoman. She backed to the table, asking
questions of Jemima, snatched up a fine big apple, and with a
swallow-swift dip, tucked it under the sheet covering the basket at the
handle, covered to be sure, yet visibly there to the experienced eye.
“Mahala, what are you doing?” asked her mother at the door.
Mahala’s swift glance took in her nightdress in her mother’s hands. She
lifted her face to Jemima: “Thank you for my good breakfast,” she said.
“Allow me, Mama!” She took the nightdress from her mother’s hands,
tucked it under the sheet at the handle opposite the apple, and ran
after her books.
“Jemima, did you ever see such a darling, thoughtful child?” asked
Elizabeth Spellman, and Jemima answered wholeheartedly: “I never did!
God bless her!”
Mahala watched the filling of her book satchel with an occasional
anxious glance toward the kitchen, but nothing happened; the apple had
not been discovered. With the satchel strap over her shoulder and a
bottle of ink in her hand, accompanied by her mother, Mahala went down
the front walk. Mrs. Spellman opened the gate for her, kissed her
good-bye, and stood waiting until she should turn to look back and throw
a last kiss from the corner, the rounding of which carried her from
sight.
All the neighbours were familiar with this proceeding. They were
familiar with the demure step and studied grace with which Mahala turned
the corner and threw back the kiss; and those whose range of vision
covered the corner were also familiar with the wild leap for freedom
with which the child flew down the street, the corner having been
accomplished with due decorum. She sped up the steps of an attractive
home, rang the bell and waited for a dark, lean little girl of her own
age, dressed quite as carefully as she, to join her on their way to
school.
The contrast between the children was very marked. Edith Williams was a
sallow little creature, badly spoiled in the home of the leading
hardware merchant whose only brother had died and left his child to her
uncle’s care. She was not attractive. She was full of complaining and
fault-finding. Her little heart bore a grudge against the world because
she had not health and strength with which to enjoy the money left by
her father, which her uncle would have allowed her to use had she not
been naturally of a saving disposition.
It was a strange thing that children so different should have been
friends. It is quite possible that their companionship was not due to
natural selection, but to the fact that they lived near each other, that
they constantly met going in the same direction to church, to school,
and to entertainments, and that they had been sent to play together all
their lives. This morning they kissed, and with their arms locked,
started on their way to school.
Two blocks down the street they passed a big brick house surrounded by a
thick hedge of evergreen trees inside a high iron fence having heavy,
ornate gates. There were a few large trees scattered over the lawn and a
few flowering bushes, while among them stood cast-iron dogs, deer, and
lions. This was the home of Martin Moreland, the wealthiest man in the
county, the president and the chief stockholder of the bank, a man whose
real-estate and financial operations scattered over several adjoining
counties.
While Mrs. Spellman had been dressing her little girl for school, Mrs.
Moreland had been trying to accomplish the same feat with her only son;
but her efforts had vastly different results. Junior was a handsome boy
of eleven, with a good mind. His mother was trying to rear him properly.
His father was ostensibly trying to do the same thing, but in his secret
heart he wanted his son to be the successor not only to his business but
also to his methods of doing business.
Mr. Moreland was a man of forty, tall and slender, having a fair
complexion, light hair, and a fine, athletic figure. His eyes were
small, deep-set, and penetrating, a baffling pair of eyes with which to
deal. They looked straight in the face every one with whom he talked and
reinforced a voice of persuasive import. But no man or woman ever had
been able to see the depths of the eyes of Martin Moreland, and no man
or woman ever had been perfectly sure that what his persuasive voice
said was precisely the thing that he meant.
Mrs. Moreland was five years older than her husband, and it was
understood in the town that he had married her because of her large
inheritance from her father. She tried to be a good wife, a good mother,
neighbour, and friend. She tried with all her might to love and to
believe in her husband, and yet almost every day she noted some tendency
in him that bred in her heart a vague fear and uncertainty, and years of
this had made the big, raw-boned, dark-haired, dark-eyed woman into a
creature of timid approaches, of hesitation. Sometimes there was almost
fear in her eyes when she looked at Martin Moreland.
This morning she had tried repeatedly to awaken her son. Over and over
she called to him: “Junior, you must get up and dress! Don’t you
remember that school begins to-day? You mustn’t be late. It would be too
bad to begin a new year by being tardy.”
From a near-by room Martin Moreland listened with a slight sneer on his
handsome face. When his wife left the boy’s room in search of some
article of clothing, he stepped to the side of the bed, shook Junior
until he knew that the boy was awake, and then slid a shining dollar
into his hand.
“Get up and put on your fine new suit,” he said. “You’ll cut a pretty
figure being late for school. The son of the richest man in town should
be first. He should show the other children that he is their natural
leader. Come now, stir yourself.”
Junior immediately slid out of bed and began putting on the clothing his
mother had laid out for him, slipping the money into a pocket before she
saw it. As he dressed, an expression of discontent settled on his
handsome young face. Everything in his home was sombre, substantial, and
very expensive, but he knew that it was not a happy home. At the last
minute he entered the dining room, wearing a shirt of ruffled lawn, long
trousers, and a blouse of dark blue velvet with a flowing tie of dark
blue lined with red. His wavy black hair was like his mother’s, so were
his dark eyes, but his face was shaped very much on the lines of his
father’s. He dropped to his chair and looked at the table with eyes of
disapproval.
“Why can’t we ever have something fit to eat?” he asked.
“That is exactly what I am wondering,” added his father.
Mrs. Moreland surveyed the table critically.
“Why, what is the trouble?” she asked anxiously. “Everything seems to be
here. The food looks all right. How can you tell that it doesn’t suit
you, when you haven’t even tasted it?”
“I am going on the supposition,” said the elder Moreland, “that Hannah
hasn’t greatly changed since supper last night, which wasn’t fit for a
dog.”
“Then I’d better discharge her at once, and try to find some one else,”
said Mrs. Moreland with unexpected spirit.
In his own way the banker retreated.
“What good would that do?” he asked shortly. “You would let the next
woman you hire spoil things exactly the same way you have Hannah. We
might as well go on eating the stuff she gives us as to have somebody
else do the same thing.”
Then he proceeded to eat heartily of the food that was set before him.
But Junior fidgeted in his chair, pushed back his plate, and refused to
eat anything until the clanging of the first bell on the school house
reached his ears. Then he jumped up, and, running into the hall,
snatched his cap from the rack and clapped it on the back of his head.
He stood hesitating a second, then, returning to the dining room, caught
up all the food he could carry in his hands, rushing from the house
without taking the satchel of books his mother had ready for him.
A minute later Mrs. Moreland saw them and hurried after him. He turned
at her call, but he would not stop. He went on down the street munching
the food he carried, while she stood looking after him, unconsciously
shaking her head. In her heart, depression and foreboding almost
equalled any hope she had concerning him, yet it was on hope for him
that she lived.
Earlier than any of these households, Marcia Peters opened a door that
led to a garret of her small house and called: “Jason!” As she stood
waiting to hear the sound of a voice that would indicate that the lad
was awake, her hand rested against the door casing in a position of
unconscious grace. She was unusually tall for a woman, her clothing so
careless as completely to conceal her figure. Her hair was drawn
straight back and wadded in a tight knot on the top of her head at the
most disfiguring angle possible. She did expert laundry work and mending
for a living. Her home was a tiny house, owned by the banker, on the
outskirts of town. She made no friends and very seldom appeared on the
streets.
“Jason!” she repeated sharply, and immediately thereafter she heard the
boy’s feet on the floor. A few minutes later he came hurrying down the
stairway on the run. If he had stopped to think of it, he might have
realized that most of his life he had been on the run. He ran all over
town, collecting and delivering Marcia’s work. Between times he ran
errands for other people for the nickels and dimes that they paid him.
Mostly he was late and ran to school. This continuous running on scant
fare kept him pale and lean, but the exercise developed muscle, the
strength of which was untried, save on work. There was a wistful flash
across his thin, homely face at times, and continuous loneliness in his
heart. Being the son of the village washerwoman he had always been
snubbed and imposed upon by other children, while he never had
experienced the slightest degree of mother love from Marcia. He milked
the cow, watered and fed the chickens, and then hurried to the Spellman
home to bring a big basket of clothes for his mother to wash. With these
he stopped at the grocery of Peter Potter, on Market Street, for
packages of food which he carried home on the top of his clothes basket,
and in handling them his fingers struck the apple. How good of Jemima
Davis! She had tucked in a teacake, a cooky, a piece of candy, or an
apple for him before. Next time he must surely thank her. The apple was
firm and juicy and tasted as if flavoured with flowers. He must surely
muster courage the next time to thank her, but not if Mrs. Spellman was
in the kitchen. She might not know that Jemima gave away her apples. He
had heard her say in a sweetly inflected voice when money was being
raised in church for foreign missions: “We will give fifty dollars”; but
he had never known her to give an apple to a hungry boy. Then a thought
as delicious as the apple struck him. Maybe——just maybe——He did not even
dare think it. But she never had joined the other children in trying to
shame him. Maybe——
His position in school always had been made difficult and bitter to him
by cruel, thoughtless children. It did not help that he had an excellent
mind and very nearly always stood at the head of his classes. In school
he had a habit of setting his elbows on his desk, grasping his head with
a hand on either side, and, leaning forward, he really concentrated. He
knew that his only chance lay in thoroughly learning his lessons. He
could not be clothed as were the other children, his mother’s occupation
shut him from social intercourse with them; he was not invited to their
little parties and merry-makings. If he ever rose to a position of
wealth and distinction like Mr. Moreland or Mr. Spellman, it must be
through thorough application during school hours, because he had short
time outside. The result was that his nervous fingers, straying through
a heavy shock of silky reddish hair slightly wavy, kept it forever
standing on end, and this, coupled with his lean, freckled face, made
him just a trifle homelier than he would have been had his mother
carefully dressed and brushed him as were most of the other children.
In school he allowed himself only one distraction. When he had pored
over a book until his brain and body demanded relaxation, then he
resorted to the pleasant diversion of studying the loveliest thing
Number Five afforded. He studied Mahala Spellman. He was familiar with
every flash of her eyes, every light on her face, each curl on her head.
When she folded her hands and repeated: “Our Father Which art in
Heaven,” during morning exercises, she was like an angel straight down
from the skies. When she hid behind her Geography and surreptitiously
nibbled a bit of candy, or flipped a note to Edith Williams, the
laughter on her face, the mischief in her eyes,—Heaven had nothing in
the way of angels having eyes to begin to compare with the dancing blue
of her eyes,—the varying rose of her cheeks, the adorable sweetness of
her little pampered body were irresistible.
Jason hurried into the kitchen. Setting the basket on the floor he
snatched off the groceries and laid them on the table and looked around
to see if there was anything further he might do that would be of help
before he left for school.
“That basket is about twice as heavy as usual,” he said, “I am afraid it
means a hard day for you.”
Marcia Peters looked at the boy and in the deeps of her eyes there was a
slight flicker that he did not catch. Neither did he notice that one of
her hands slightly lifted and reached in his direction; the flicker was
so impalpable, the hand controlled so instantly, that both escaped his
notice.
“Elizabeth Spellman entertained the Mite Society last week,” she said
tersely, “and, of course, she used stacks of embroidered linen and
napkins that I must send back in perfect condition. You had better take
your books and march to school now, and be mighty careful that you keep
at the head of your class. It’s your only hope. Never forget that.”
Jason crossed the room, and from a shelf in the living room took down a
stack of books. He never forgot.
“I’ll do my best,” he said, “but it isn’t as easy as you might think.”
“I don’t know what I ever did or said,” retorted Marcia, “that would
give you the impression that I thought anything about life was easy for
either one of us. ‘Easy’ is a funny word to use in connection with this
house.”
Jason found himself standing straight, gripping his books, and looking
into her eyes.
“I’m sorry you have to work so hard,” he said.
His glance left the face of the woman before him and ran over the small
mean kitchen, the plain, ugly living room. Without seeing it actually,
he mentally saw the house outside, and the unprepossessing surroundings.
There was a catch in his breath as he again faced Marcia.
“I’ll try very hard,” he told her, “and maybe it won’t be long until I
can be a lawyer or a doctor or rent a piece of land, and then I’ll take
care of you like a real lady.”
And again a close observer could have seen a stifled impulse toward the
boy on the part of the woman; but it was not of sufficient impetus that
the boy caught it, for he hesitated a second longer, then turning on his
heel, he ran from the room and made his way down the street, happy to
discover that for once he had plenty of time.
So it happened that at the same hour these four children were on the
different streets of Ashwater, all headed toward the village school
house, a grade and high school combined in one brick building designed
for the educational purposes of the town. The day labourers of the
village had passed over those same streets earlier that morning. The
people that the children met were doctors and lawyers going to their
offices, and the housewives of the village, many of them with their
baskets on their arms, going to do their morning shopping. Front walks
were being swept and rugs shaken from verandas. Walking demurely arm in
arm, chattering to each other, went Mahala Spellman and Edith Williams.
At the same time they saw an approaching figure and their arms tightened
around each other.
Down the street toward them came a woman that all the village knew and
spoke of as Crazy Becky. She wore the usual long, wide skirt of the
period, with the neat, closely fitting waist. Her dress was of a
delicately flowered white calico carefully made, her face and head
covered by a deep sunbonnet well drawn forward. The children were
accustomed to having only a peep of her face with its exquisite
modelling, delicate colouring, and big, wide-open, blue-gray eyes with
long, dark lashes. Sometimes a little person, passing her closely and
peering up, caught a gleam of wavy golden hair surrounding her face.
Over one shoulder, firmly gripped in her hand, was a long red osier cut
from the cornels bordering the river. From it there waved behind her as
she walked, a flag of snow-white muslin, neatly tacked to its holder and
carefully fringed on the lower edge. In the other hand she carried an
empty basket. On her face was a look of expectancy. Always her eyes were
flashing everywhere in eager search for something.
Seeing the children coming in all directions, she stationed herself on
the steps leading to the lawn of a residence that stood slightly above
the street, and facing the passers-by, she began to offer them the
privilege of walking under her white flag. In a mellow voice, sweet and
pathetic, she began timidly: “Behold the White Flag! Mark the emblem of
purity.” Then, gathering courage, she cried to those approaching her:
“If you know in your hearts that you are clean, pass under the flag with
God’s blessing. If you know that your hearts are filled with evil, bow
your heads, pass under, and the flag will make you clean.”
The people passing Rebecca acted in accordance with the dictates of
common human nature. Those who knew her, humoured her, and gravely
bowing their heads, passed under the flag to her intense delight.
Several strangers in the village who had not seen her before and did not
understand her pathetic history, stared at her in amazement and hurried
past. It had been such a long stretch from the days when John had cried
in the wilderness that he was forgotten. As always, there were the
coarse and careless who sneered at Rebecca and said rough, provoking
things to her. After these she hurled threats of a dreadful nature and
the serene beauty of her face was marred with anger for a few moments.
Edith Williams walked slowly and gripped Mahala tighter.
“Let’s run across the street,” she whispered. “I’m afraid of her.”
Mahala tightened her grip on her little friend: “I sha’n’t run from
her,” she said. “I’m not afraid of her. She’s never yet hurt anybody who
treated her politely. She only fights with naughty boys who tease her.
Smile at her and say: ‘Good morning! Please, may I pass under your
flag?’ and she will do anything in the world for you. Mama always walks
under Becky’s flag. Watch me and do it as I do.”
Then Mahala, who had been taught all her life that she was to set an
example for the other children of Ashwater, dropped her arm from
Edith’s, and gripping her ink bottle and her books, bravely concealed
the flutter of fear that was in her small heart. She marched up to
Rebecca and made her a graceful bow.
“Good morning,” she said with suave politeness. “Please, may I pass
under your flag this morning?”
Encouraged by the pleased smile Rebecca gave her, she added: “I try very
hard to be a good child.”
“God has a blessing for all good children. Pass under the flag,” said
Rebecca. She drew up her form to full height, extended her arm and held
the flag in the morning sunlight. There was beauty in her figure, there
was beauty in the expression of her perfectly cut face, there was grace
in her attitude, and the white banner, hanging from its red support,
really appeared like an emblem of purity. A queer thrill surged through
Mahala. She bowed her head and with precise steps passed under the flag
reverently.
Then Edith Williams repeated her words and walked under the flag also,
joining Mahala who was waiting for her. Close behind them came Junior
Moreland surrounded by a crowd of boys of whom he was evidently the
leader. He was a handsome lad in the morning light, and the beauty of
his face and figure was emphasized by his rich suit of velveteen, his
broad collar, and his tie of silk. The instant he saw Rebecca he
whispered to the other boys: “Oh, look! There’s Crazy Becky. Come on,
let’s have some sport with her.”
Immediately the boys rushed in a crowd toward Rebecca, led by Junior.
They made faces at her, they tried to snatch the flag which she held at
arm’s length high above their heads, they tweaked her skirts, and one of
them, more daring than the others, slipped behind her and pulled the
bonnet from her head by the crown, exposing her face and uncoiling a
thick roll of waving gold hair. In an effort to be especially daring, to
outdo all the others, Junior sprang high and snatched the flag from her
hand in a flying leap. Then he trailed it in the dirt of the gutter. He
pulled off his cap, and bowing from the waist before her, he offered the
soiled emblem to her. To Rebecca this was the most horrible thing that
could happen. Her deranged brain was firm in the conviction that it was
her mission in life to keep that flag snow-white, to use it as the
emblem of purity. Instantly, a paroxysm of anger shook her. Her face
became distorted; she dropped the flag and started after the offender.
Junior was afraid of Rebecca in a spasm of anger, because he knew that
the strongest man in town could not hold her when she became violent. So
he dodged from under her clutching fingers and ran toward the school
house.
Mahala and Edith heard the cries and turned just in time to see the
white flag polluted.
“Oh, the wicked, wicked boy!” cried Mahala. She dragged Edith out of the
way of the oncoming rush, but as she did so, her eyes swiftly searched
the board walk over which they had been passing. One of her feet moved
forward from beneath the hem of her skirts and a toe tip was firmly set
on the end of a loose board. As Junior approached, running swiftly, that
board lifted slightly so that he tripped over it and fell sprawling,
soiling his hands, his face, and sliding over the walk on his velvet
suit. Unable to stop in her rush after him, Rebecca tripped and fell on
him in a heap. Jason turned a corner and came in sight, reading one of
his books as he walked.
Instantly he understood. He dropped his books on a strip of grass
between the fence and the walk, and ran to Rebecca. He helped her to her
feet, and knowing her aversion to having her head and face seen by the
public, he flew to find and replace her bonnet. He found the white flag
and did what he could to straighten and clean it, and, as he put it into
her hand, he said to her: “Never mind, you can wash it, you know. You
can make it white again in only a little while. If I were you, I’d go
back home and wash it right away.”
The fact that some one was sympathizing with her, was helping her,
comforted Rebecca. She looked at Jason intently.
“You are a good boy,” she said. “You have a white soul. I will go back
and make the flag white again.”
She turned and went back toward the small house where she lived alone on
the outskirts of the village.
Junior stood scowling, beating the dust from his clothing. He was jarred
and angry. He wanted to reinstate himself, to dominate some one. Jason
was his legitimate prey. He advanced, blocking the other boy’s way.
Jason tried to extricate himself. He wanted to avoid trouble. He put out
his hands to keep the boys from pulling at his clothing and tried to
back from the crowd. As he did so he found Mahala Spellman by his side.
She had been in the same room in school with him ever since they had
begun going to school. To his amazement he heard her whisper at his
elbow: “Out early and late like you are, I bet you ain’t afraid of any
boy in the whole world.”
Jason stopped suddenly. His figure stiffened and straightened. A queer
light passed over his face. At his elbow Mahala whispered: “Carrying
those big, heavy baskets like you do, I bet your arms are strongest of
any boy in this town.”
Jason’s fists clenched. His arms flexed involuntarily. At his elbow came
the whisper: “Remember the bugs!”
Jason’s mind flew to a poem in one of the school readers. Into his brain
rushed the lines:
Three little bugs in a basket,
And hardly room for two—
and again, with the kaleidoscopic rush of memory:
Then he that was cold and hungry,
Strength from his weakness drew,
He pulled the rugs from the other bugs
And he killed them and ate them, too.
The son of the wealthiest man in town was standing before him, tweaking
his coat, tormenting him. Suddenly Jason doubled his fists and struck
his hardest blow. Junior fell back among the other boys. They started to
close in around Jason, but they found a valiant figure blocking their
way. With her arms stretched wide, stood Mahala. Her eyes were dark and
her voice was high and shrill.
“Now you just keep back, you mean boys!” she screamed. “You just keep
out of this! Junior started this, you just let him and Jason fight it
out!”
Because there is a thing in spirit, and a power in right and fair play
that a mob always feels, silent and acquiescing, the other children
stepped back, and as they did so, the velvet-clad Junior glanced around
him. On his face, it could be seen, that he was afraid. In his heart he
knew that he was wrong. He was smarting from Jason’s blow. He would have
liked to run, but he had his position to maintain as the leader of the
other boys; he had been their leader all his life. He was accustomed to
the admiration and the praise of the girls. There was nothing to do but
to prove that he was not a coward; so he drew up and rushed Jason. The
two began to fight. Jason was taller, more slender, a few months older,
and there was untested strength in his arms, in the back and the legs
that had carried heavy baskets of clothing and delivered bundles; the
body that had been scantily fed and thoroughly exercised was the
tougher, the quicker. Only a few blows proved to Junior that he was soft
and practically helpless in Jason’s hands. In the delirium of victory,
Jason seized the velvet coat at the neck and tore it off Junior. He
snatched a ball bat from the hands of one of the boys, and hanging the
coat on it, he waved it, crying: “Behold the black flag of riches! Pass
under it and be damned!”
Then the children shouted with laughter, which so intoxicated Jason that
he went to the further extent of dragging the coat through the gutter
exactly as Junior had dragged the white flag. He threw the soiled,
rumpled thing at Junior’s feet. At the wildness of his daring, the
children stood hushed and silent. Then, suddenly, they pretended to
threaten Jason, but it was evident to him that they were delighted, that
they were only trying to make Junior feel that they were sorry that he
had been thrashed and soiled.
It was Mahala who picked up the coat, crying: “Oh, Junior, your
beautiful new coat is ruined!”
She began brushing the dust from it with her hands. Jason stared at her
in amazement, which changed to a slow daze when he saw that her swift
fingers were enlarging an ugly tear across the front of the coat even
while, with a face of compassion, she handed it back to Junior.
So Jason “learned about women from ’er.”
Junior took the coat from her hands, smarting, crestfallen and soiled,
and turned back toward his home, choking down gulping sobs that would
rise in his throat, while the other children went to school. As they
started, Mahala worked her way from among the others and dropped back
beside Jason, who was left standing alone. “Did you find your apple?”
she whispered. She slipped her hand into her pocket, took from it her
dainty little handkerchief, and offered it to him to wipe the dirt and
perspiration from his face. Jason refused to accept it, but when she
insisted, he did take it; instead of using it for the purpose for which
it had been offered he slipped it into the front of his blouse. Seeing
this, Mahala suddenly ran to overtake the other children, but when she
reached Edith Williams she found her crying and shaking with
nervousness.
“I just hate you, Mahala Spellman,” she said. “I am never going to play
with you any more, not if you get down on your hands and knees and beg
me till you are black and blue in the face! I just hate you!”
Mahala met this with the sweetest kind of a smile.
“I’d like to know what I’ve done to you, Edith Williams,” she said
innocently.
“You know what you have done to me, and I tell you I hate you, and I am
going to tell your mother on you!”
Mahala looked at her reflectively.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you did,” she said. “It would be
presackly like you. Doing things like that is why you haven’t got a
friend but me, and you have not got me any more. I’m done with you! You
needn’t hang around me any more.”
Then Mahala turned a little back, very straight, with very square
shoulders and a very high head, and marched down the street toward the
school house, while the other girls crowded around her, delighted that
she and Edith were having trouble.
Almost exploding with rage over his humiliation, hurt from his
punishment, and thoroughly frightened at the condition of his new suit,
Junior started back home, while with each step that he took in that
direction his mental stress increased. In culmination he entered the
room bellowing, while his father and mother were still at breakfast. His
mother threw up her hands and cried out in horror over his condition.
His father was not only shocked and angry over whatever it was that had
returned to him in such a condition the boy who was the pride of his
heart, the very light of his eyes, but he had a lively remembrance of
what that velvet suit had cost him and the pride he had taken in
purchasing it for Junior because he meant always that he should be the
best-dressed boy in the town. He seized Junior, shook him violently, and
raised his hand to strike, all other emotions submerged in the one
impulse that made money his God even above love. Junior tore from his
hands, and running to his mother, dodged behind her. His father pursued
him. Mrs. Moreland arose, spreading her skirts and her arms to cover
Junior.
“Wait, Martin! Wait!” she cried.
It was evident that her heart was bound up in the boy far above any
financial considerations, and it was also evident that she was afraid of
the angry man she was facing; but she was not so much afraid that she
was not willing to interpose her own body, if by so doing she could
screen the boy. At the same time she cried to him, “Junior! Tell your
father what happened to you. Explain!”
Under the shelter of her protection, Junior stopped crying. He wiped his
eyes and faced his father defiantly.
“If I was on the City Council like you are, I’d fix up the sidewalks of
this nasty old town so the boards wouldn’t fly up and throw folks down
and ruin their clothes,” he cried.
His father stared at him in amazement. Instantly Junior’s mother agreed
with him.
“That is quite true, Martin,” she said. “Only last week Jenny Sherman
tripped on a loose board on her way to church. She almost broke her knee
and ripped the whole front out of a very expensive silk dress. Some of
these days somebody’s going to sue this town for damages and you will
have the biggest part of them to pay. The only wonder is that Junior is
not in worse shape than he is.”
Reassured by her backing, Junior came from behind her, but he still held
her arm. Martin Moreland surveyed the pair scornfully.
“Will you please explain,” he said to his wife, “how merely tripping and
falling could get Junior into his present condition?”
Realizing that this was impossible, and anger and humiliation surging up
in him, Junior cried out: “Of course, just falling only started it. The
minute I was down that mean old coward of a Jason Peters took his chance
to jump on my back and start a fight when I couldn’t help myself. I took
off my coat and gave it to one of the boys to hold while I beat him up
as he deserved, and when he couldn’t do anything with me, before I saw
what he intended, Jason snatched my coat and tore it and dragged it in
the gutter on purpose.”
This immediately transferred Martin Moreland’s wrath and cupidity from
Junior to Jason.
“Why didn’t you tell your teacher?” he thundered.
“It happened on the street. I wasn’t fit to go to school,” Junior made
explanation.
The elder Moreland lost control of himself. His power had been defied.
The tangible proof of his wealth had been dragged in the gutter. The
child of his heart had been hurt and shamed. Martin Moreland did not
stop to remember that he had been at the point of hurting the boy
himself; what he really was overpoweringly angry about was that he felt
Junior’s condition to be a blow aimed vicariously at his own person. In
his heart he knew how many hands would be raised against him, if by
chance a first hand were raised by a leader. He knew what would happen
to any man attacking him; he would see to it that a blow struck at him
through his boy, even by another boy, should be so punished that another
offence of the kind could never occur. He turned to his wife.
“You see how quick you can wash Junior and put him into his other suit,”
he said. “I will take him back to school in the carriage. I intend to
have it understood by the Superintendent and the teachers that the son
of the heaviest tax payer and the president of the School Board has some
rights!”
An hour later the door of Room Five was suddenly flung wide and on the
threshold stood the imposing figure of the banker, beside him his son,
clothed in his second best suit, his composure quite recovered. The boy
marched in and found a vacant seat among his classmates. Miss Mehitable
Ashcroft dropped the book she was holding and stared at the banker. A
whiteness slowly overspread her face. She had been teaching school so
many years that she should have been fortified for anything; but she was
not. As she grew older the nerve strain of each day of noise and
confusion bit deeper into her physical strength. She lifted a bewildered
hand to smooth down the graying hair that dipped over her ears and
lifted to a meagre coil at the back, and then her hands fell and began
fingering the folds of a black calico skirt liberally sprinkled with
white huckleberries. Suddenly she found her voice and quaveringly she
said: “Good morning, Mr. Moreland. We are so glad to see you. Won’t you
have a chair?”
Mr. Moreland was a tall man with a heavy frame. The lines in his face at
that minute were not pleasant. He had eyes of intense vision; in anger
they were ugly eyes. They went flashing over the room from pupil to
pupil until they found and settled on the white face of Jason Peters.
There was something of the look on Jason’s face that was on the face of
the banker as their eyes met and clashed; a hate of arrogant
fearlessness. Martin Moreland lifted a shaking finger.
“I have come,” he said, “to accompany Jason Peters to the office of the
Superintendent. I will have it understood that while I am the president
of the School Board and while I am the heaviest tax payer in this town,
the sons of washerwomen, or the sons of any one else, will not
undertake, in a cowardly and underhand manner, to abuse my son.”
Martin Moreland was an imposing figure; he knew better than any one else
exactly how imposing. He never saw himself in a mirror or reflected on a
plate-glass window he was passing, without making sure that the imposing
part of him was well in evidence. He was at his tallest, his coldest,
his most arresting moment as he rolled out “my son” at the awed
children, pausing to allow his words to sink deeply, and well gratified
to note that they did.
The frightened children sat in silence in their seats. Mahala Spellman
looked at Jason, studying his set white face; then she glanced at
Junior, his head again lifted in prideful assurance; and then her gaze
travelled to his father. She studied him intently, and slowly upon her
little face there gathered a look of intense indignation. But on the
faces of the other children there could be seen only the deep impression
that had been made as to the power of riches.
“Jason,” said the teacher, “you will accompany Mr. Moreland to the
office of the Superintendent.”
For one instant Jason sat very still; then he arose and left the room.
It was a long time before he returned. When he came back his eyes were
dry but he was white and shaken. It was evident to every one that he had
been beaten until he was scarcely able to cross the room and reach his
seat.
Facing the school, Mehitable Ashcroft studied the children. She hated
herself as badly as she hated a number of them. She could see the
brilliant spot on the cheek and the bright eyes of Mahala Spellman. She
knew that if she asked her she would arise in her place and tell the
truth about what must have happened on the way to school. She knew that
she should have done this before she allowed Jason to leave the room.
She knew, too, that he should not have been sent to be beaten and
humiliated unless he deserved it. From what she knew of his character
and his work in school, she was certain that he did not deserve it. On
the faces of a part of the children she could read the message that they
were trying to convey to her that an injustice had been committed; that
she had countenanced an unfair thing. On the remainder of the faces she
could read the fact that they, too, had this realizing sense but that
they intended, the minute school was dismissed, to crowd around Junior
and follow his leadership. She had no doubt in her heart that whatever
had happened would be carried further and that Jason would again
experience taunts and treatment that were unjust. She stood there—hating
herself that she did nothing and said nothing. In looking back over the
years during which she had held her position because of many occurrences
of a similar nature, she might have found the answer as to why she was
already nervous and prematurely ageing—as to why she hated her
profession and herself. She had needed her position so badly, what she
must do to hold it had been made so clear to her.
At the noon hour as the children left the school grounds, Junior was
strutting proudly at the head of a group of boys, bragging about what
his father could do to the old Superintendent, about what he had done to
Jason, and about what was coming to any other boy who got smart with
him. While this was occurring on a corner Mahala passed by, surrounded
by a crowd of admiring little girl friends, who were followed by Edith
Williams, darkly frowning, walking alone.
Mahala’s quick eyes saw what was going on. Her heart was rebelling at
injustice. She stopped on the sidewalk, pointed her finger at Junior,
and began a sing-song chant:
“Cowardy calf, cowardy calf!
Teased a poor crazy woman
And got the thrashing he deserved for it.
Ran home bellowing to Papa
And told a lot of lies
To get a brave boy whipped.
Cowardy calf, cowardy calf!”
Then the other little girls and some of the boys, with the flexibility
of childhood, pointed their fingers at Junior and began shrieking,
“Cowardy calf!” until he was furious. But he was helpless among such
numbers as were ranged against him, so, breaking from the group, he ran
down the street with all his might. As far as he could hear, a shrill
chorus followed him: “Cowardy calf! Cowardy calf!”
Jason lingered in the lower hallway until the other children had left
the school grounds and were some distance ahead of him; then he
followed. In passing down Market Street on his way home, he saw Peter
Potter standing at the door of his grocery with a heaped basket in his
hand, looking up the street and down the street, evidently wondering why
his delivery wagon was not standing before his door as it should have
been. Instantly, Jason changed his course and headed toward Peter,
because he and Peter were friends. The time had been when Peter was the
leading grocer of the village, but he had not been able to make his way
against the new methods and the seductive advertising of an opponent
who, in recent years, had been able to take a good deal of his trade.
Peter was not suffering from either cold or hunger. His fifty years had
left his British face round and jolly. He was not sufficiently energetic
to exert himself to an extent that would bring him back his lost
opportunities. Instead of trying to regain his position, he tried by
closeness in all his dealings to recover his losses, but he only
succeeded in narrowing his soul, which had been fashioned rather narrow
in the making.
When he saw Jason coming toward him he began to smile. He had asked
several boys passing to deliver the groceries and they had refused; but
here was a boy who would not refuse. Here was a boy who frequently had
helped him for very small pay. Peter explained that, for some reason,
his wagon had not returned from the ten o’clock delivery and these later
orders were wanted for the dinners of some of his customers. Jason
immediately shouldered the heavy basket and started on a long trip
across town. When he returned the delivery slips, Peter understood that
Jason would not have time to go home for his dinner, so he cut him a
very small piece of cheese and gave him a handful of crackers to pay for
having delivered the orders. Jason started back to school munching as he
went.
His body was stiff and sore, but his heart was crushed. The boys knew
that he had tried to get away without trouble; several of the girls had
seen Junior push and maltreat him; at his elbow there had been the
whisper that nerved him—yet when his hour came he had stood alone. He
had felt Mahala’s eyes on him, but he would not let himself look at her,
in the fear that he would seem to be asking her help, and so involve her
in trouble. All of them, the teacher included, had kept still. He was to
understand that Junior was to do with him exactly as he chose. He was a
few months older, he was taller, he was stronger, but because he was
poor and Junior was rich, he must endure taunt, insult, even submit to
being pushed and pulled. A slow red rimmed Jason’s ears. He lifted a
hand to allay the pricking in his scalp. Would he follow alleys and back
streets, and dodge and hide from Junior, or would he meet him unafraid?
He had no reason to fear Junior, but he remembered strong men who deeply
feared the power behind the boy. As Jason slowly walked toward the
school house, his brain and blood were in tumult.
When the last companion left her, Mahala had two blocks for sober
reflection. She was ashamed of herself. She had incited Jason to strike
Junior; when his father came into the school room she should have faced
him bravely and cried out the truth. Maybe she could have saved Jason a
beating. Never having suffered a blow herself, Mahala did not fully
realize just what had happened to Jason. She did know that she had not
been brave or fair in school. At least she had shamed Junior on the
street and let him see what she thought of him. That made her feel
better, and Jason knew she felt sorry for him. He did know that; but
what must he think of her? And what ailed Edith Williams? Would Edith
start to school early and tell the other girls things that would make
them desert Mahala and be friends with her?
A daring thought flashed in Mahala’s brain. She knew how to hold her
ascendancy. Dinner was not quite ready when she entered the house. She
kissed her mother, and slipping to the living room, she snatched her
charm string from its place in the little mahogany sewing-table pocket,
and hid it in the folds of her dress. Her mother would attend the Mite
Society, held on Monday so that ladies of wealth might feel their
superiority through having freedom to attend, and those that worked
might gauge their inferiority by the amount of extra work they would be
compelled to do in order to find time for the meeting. Mahala felt
wildly daring; but her position demanded some risk. She darted across
the door yard, tucked the heavy glittering string in a grassy corner of
the fence, and managed her return unobserved. Now if only her mother
would not be so silly as to follow her to the gate—but she was! So
Mahala was forced to walk to the corner demurely, throw back a farewell
kiss, and disappear. Then she must wait a palpitant interval, fly back
on guilty feet, thrust a small hand through the fence, draw out the
precious charm string, carefully, and race headlong toward the corner
again. Safely past it, she might pause and hang the glittering length
around her neck in gleaming festoons to her knees. Edith Williams would
turn the other girls against her, would she? Mahala proudly swung the
string before her and made a tongue-exposing face at an invisible Edith.
She knew what would happen, and she was secure in her knowledge. The
first little girl who saw her ran straight to her side and remained; the
others came as they appeared around diverse corners—and remained. Every
one of them had a charm string, but what meagre little things compared
with the magnificence of the string of the merchant’s daughter who might
have the sample button from every emptied box as it left his shelves, to
whom wonderful buttons of brass and glass and bone and pearl came in
handfuls at every trip to New York to buy goods. Mahala’s eyes were
shining, her heart was throbbing. She knew the history of every button
on her string: “Post Commander Johnston cut that right from the vest of
his soldier suit, and that’s the top left-hand one from Papa’s dress
vest, and that is from the coat of Mama’s best friend——” she told them
over like a rosary as they slipped through her fingers—great,
brass-rimmed circles of glass with gay flower faces showing through,
carved insets of bird and animal, globes of every size, colour, and
cutting that ever held fast a garment worn by man or woman—Edith
Williams indeed!
Mahala could scarcely step for the eager crowd around her. She disposed
of the rule that charm strings were not to be brought to school by
leaving hers with the teacher with a polite little speech, and got it
safely back in place before her mother’s return from the Mite Society.
Such is the reward of a slight degree of daring. Edith Williams! Indeed,
twice over!
That night in her bedroom, when Mahala’s mother was undressing her, she
saw the empty pocket with eyes that nothing escaped, and exclaimed: “Oh,
Mahala! You couldn’t have lost your beautiful embroidered linen
handkerchief. I purposely make your pockets so very deep.”
Mahala hesitated. Her first impulse was to say that she had lost the
handkerchief because she knew that her mother would disapprove of her
even speaking to the son of their washerwoman. But her astute mother had
cut off that avenue of escape by pointing out the depth of her pocket.
So she assumed a look which she knew her mother considered angelic, she
clasped her little hands before her and lifted her face, exclaiming:
“Oh, Mama dear, please excuse me! I gave it to a poor boy to wipe his
tears.”
Instantly Mrs. Spellman gathered Mahala in her arms and kissed her
passionately. She sat down in a chair, drawing the child to her lap. She
was thoroughly delighted.
“Tell me, darling, tell me what happened,” she said.
Mahala, in detail, told of the troubles of the morning. She told
precisely the truth where it concerned Rebecca and the desecration of
the white flag. She left untold her part in any occurrence where she
knew her mother would disapprove. When the story was finished, Mrs.
Spellman felt that Junior Moreland was not being properly reared; that
Jason had been abused; and that her Mahala was growing into precisely
the kind of a woman that she wanted her to be. She went on undressing
the child with customary precision, hanging each of her garments upon a
hook, having her set her shoes in a certain spot with the toes even,
patiently and carefully brushing and stroking her hair and winding it
upon the curlers for the morning. Then together they knelt beside
Mahala’s bed while she said her prayers. Then the mother prayed. She
asked of the Lord that He would make of her little girl a good child, an
obedient child, and one having a fair mind and a tender heart. She
begged that Mahala might be given the courage always to set a good
example before her playmates. Then she tucked her into bed, kissed her
repeatedly, and turning out the lamp, she left her to go to sleep.
As soon as the door was closed Mahala threw back the covers and sat up
in bed. She listened until she heard the door of the living room close,
then she expertly scratched a match and relighted the lamp. She was so
accustomed to doing this that she managed the hot chimney without
burning her fingers. She took the big wax doll, a gift from her father
after one of his trips to New York, made it kneel beside the bed and
then, in exact imitation of her mother’s voice and mannerisms, she
prayed for the doll the same prayer that her mother had used for her, to
all intent. But if Mrs. Spellman had been listening she would have heard
her own tones and accents saying: “And Oh, our Heavenly Father, help my
little girl to always show the other bad, naughty children exactly how
they should behave, and how their hair should be curled, and how clean
their aprons should be, and how nice they ought to keep their slippers,
and how they should be polite to grown-up people, and slap each other
good and hard when they need it, and look like I do, and behave like I
do. Amen!”
Then she opened the door to the adjoining room, and slipping in, she
returned with an armload of clothing which she laid upon the bed. She
pressed down the wrapped-up curls and tied them with a handkerchief;
over them she put the carefully curled front which her mother wore with
her Sunday bonnet and then she put the bonnet on her head. She stripped
up her nighty and slipped into her mother’s hoop skirt, and pulling the
nightdress down over the circling hoops of the skirt, she looked at
herself in the mirror and clapped her little hands tight over her mouth
to suppress a shriek at the ludicrous aspect she presented. She unfolded
a Paisley shawl and arranged it over her shoulders; then she opened a
fan and posturing with it, minced up and down before the glass, wearing
on her face an expression of sanctified piety. She made a journey about
the room exactly in imitation of her mother, touching things here and
there and repeatedly making little speeches to the doll. Sometimes as
she passed the glass, she stuck out her tongue at her reflection, and
tilting her skirts, did daring improvisations, dancing to tunes she
softly hummed to accompany her performance.
When she was thoroughly tired of every ludicrous thing she could think
of to do, she proved how very efficient her mother’s teaching had been
by returning everything to its place in such an exact manner that the
estimable lady never realized that her precious possessions had been
touched.
In his home that night, Martin Moreland spent the supper hour telling
his wife, in Junior’s presence, what he had done at the school, how
terribly he had had Jason punished, and ended by admonishing Junior
always to let him know if he was imposed upon or any of the other
children did not treat him with respectful deference. He gave Junior a
piece of money, telling him to take his books and go to his room and
study his lessons for the coming day.
Junior said good-night to his father, kissed his mother, took up his
books, and obediently went upstairs to his room. There he promptly
climbed from the back window, slid down the slanting roof to a shed,
from which he jumped to the ground. Following the alleys, he made his
way down town where he spent the money for a deck of cards, a number of
clay pipes, and a package of smoking tobacco. Then he whistled at the
back gates of several of the boys who were his particular friends and
all of them crept up the alley beside the bankers house, entered the
barn loft, and made a deep nest in the hay so that the candle light they
used would not show from the outside. There they smoked and played cards
until it became so late that they dared not remain longer.
Jason hurried home from school, fed the chickens, which were pets of his
that he had bought with his earnings, milked the cow, and worked in the
garden until it was dark. Then he came to the house, carefully washed,
combed his hair, and sat down to a very scant supper that was awaiting
him. Marcia did not speak to him or pay the slightest attention to his
movements. She busied herself about the house or with some needlework.
It was her custom to mend all the lace and fine linen that needed
repairing in the washing that was sent to her, adding an extra charge to
her bill. When he had finished, Jason washed the dishes he had used, put
away the food, took his book, and sat down to a diligent study of his
lessons.
At an early hour Marcia ordered him to go to bed, so he climbed the
narrow stairway to the garret and undressed by the light of the moon
shining in the uncurtained window. He was so sore and stiff that he soon
fell asleep.
Immediately after he had gone, Marcia unlocked the door to one room of
the small house which was always closed. Jason had never even peeped
inside it. This room she entered and threw aside her working clothes.
She bathed, unloosed and combed out a coil of beautiful curling hair,
looping it in loose waves over her head. She rouged her cheeks and lips
and powdered her face, hands, and arms. She opened her closet door, and
taking out an attractive dress, put it on, transforming herself into a
startlingly beautiful woman. From a drawer she took a book and sat down
to read, but occasionally she lifted her head and listened intently.
Presently she arose and went through the living room and the kitchen in
the dark, and standing at the door, softly inquired: “Who is there?”
On hearing a low-voiced reply she opened the door and admitted Martin
Moreland, who led the way to her room. She followed, closing and locking
the door behind her, and turned to him with a smiling face, which
gradually changed to one of doubt and uncertainty when she saw that he
was in a state of almost ungovernable anger. His voice was shaking as he
gave her Junior’s version of what had happened during the day and then
she noticed that in his hand he carried a cruel whip. He told her that
he was going upstairs and beat the life half out of Jason. He was going
to teach him for once and all that he could not interfere with the son
of a rich man. He made the matter infinitely worse than it had been.
Then he started toward the door.
Marcia caught his arm.
“But, Martin,” she cried, “how are you going to account to Jason for
your presence here?”
And he retorted: “I don’t have to account to that brat for anything. He
may as well understand that I came to teach him a lesson. He may as well
know that I am master of this house, and of anything else of which I
choose to be master!”
As he started up the stairway Marcia followed him. Then, realizing that
Jason must not see her as she was, she turned back. She stood at the
foot of the stairs, her hands clenched, listening to the sounds that
came down to her. Several times she started up the stairs, but each time
she remembered, and white and shaking, kept from sight.
Finally, when the banker left Jason’s room, she went to her own, closed
her door and locked it on the inside. When he turned the knob she
refused admission, but after repeated hammering and threats she finally
yielded and unlocked the door. He entered, sat down in the best chair,
and lighting a cigar, began to smoke.
He said to her sneeringly: “You can take your time to cool off. That boy
has got to realize once and for all that it is quite impossible for him
to interfere in any way with any of the pleasures or the inclinations of
my son.”
Later she served him with wine and cake and delicious buttered biscuits,
and when he had made himself thoroughly at home, he took his leave.
After he had gone, she again locked herself in her room, tore off the
fine clothing she had worn, and throwing it aside, pasted down her hair,
slipped into her old dress, and, softly climbing the stairs, entered
Jason’s room. He was stretched on the bed in a light sleep, breathing
hard. His face was white and full of suffering. She stood over him,
looking down at him for a long time. Then she straightened the covers
and slipped from the room. She went back to her own room, locked the
door, and threw herself on her knees beside the bed, her arms stretched
out among the finery she had worn, her face buried in the silken covers.
In these homes and in this environment the four children advanced until
they entered the first year of high school.
CHAPTER II
“THE GIFTS OF LIGHT AND SONG”
During the recess period of a brilliant October day, Mahala spent her
time inviting those pupils of her school who were her particular friends
to attend her birthday party. At fourteen in appearance Mahala was what
she had been destined to be from birth. Fourteen years of unceasing
drilling, of constant care, of daily admonition on the part of Elizabeth
Spellman had made habitual with her daughter an exquisite daintiness of
person. The only criticism Jemima Davis had ever been known to make
concerning Mrs. Spellman was that she was “nasty nice.” Mahala
instinctively drew back from contact with anything that might soil her
clothing or her person. While she was thus dainty concerning her
exterior, she was equally cleanly and refined in the workings of her
heart and her brain. Hers was an unusually active brain; her eyes were
flashingly comprehensive. All her life she had been seeing and
understanding a great many things that her father and mother never
suspected that she had either seen or understood. But since her personal
fastidiousness extended to her brain as well as to her body, the result
made a composite that was wholly charming.
Mahala’s keen sense of humour kept her lips slightly curled, a dancing
light in her eyes. She was always whispering to the anæmic shadow at her
elbow: “Oh, Edith, did you see?” “Did you hear?”
Almost always Edith did see and hear, but her interpretations and
conclusions were scarcely ever the same as Mahala’s. The sour discontent
of her really beautiful dark face came almost as a shock in contrast
with Mahala’s person; while mentally the girls were even more unlike.
Mahala always had a remedy, always had hope; Edith believed the worst of
every one; so when she had leisure time she spent it looking for
something worse that she might believe on the slightest pretext.
The result was that every one in the village thought they loved Mahala,
and it was curious that this should have been a universal attitude
because the particularly spiritual quality of the child’s beauty always
had been enhanced by the most tasteful and expensive clothing, so that
no other girl of the town could bear comparison with her. Because she
always had been generous, always considerate, always just, and always
mirthful, she was sure that she was among friends. Every pupil who had
gone through seven years of schooling with her knew that her word was
secure. If she talked of an incident at all, she could be depended upon
to tell the truth. If she criticised an offender, she cut deep, but she
did it with fairness. She never wore offensively her dainty clothing, so
carefully selected for her in the Eastern cities where her father went
to buy goods. She was quite capable of pulling off her coat on the
street and allowing any of her girl friends to carry it home that a
pattern might be cut from it.
The most shocking occurrence the town had to record concerning Mahala
was that one day, in bitter winter weather, she had surrounded herself
on the street with a circle of her girl friends and in their shelter
deftly removed her exquisitely embroidered petticoat for the benefit of
a schoolmate who was visibly shivering with cold. When Mahala, with
watery eyes and a red nose, faced her mother that night and confessed
what she had done, Elizabeth Spellman began by being shocked and ended
by becoming bewildered.
“It was all right,” she said primly, “for you to give Susanna Bowers _a_
petticoat, but you should have gone to the store to Papa and gotten one
suitable for Susanna.”
Mahala looked at her mother intently.
“But, Mama,” she protested, “Susanna was chilling. She needed something
that minute; my petticoat doesn’t care who wears it. It just loves to
keep Susanna warm.”
A slow red suffused Elizabeth Spellman’s face.
“And you didn’t stop to consider,” she said coldly, “that all the hours
of work I put upon that petticoat went there for my very own little
daughter, and not for a girl who will not know either how to appreciate
or how to care for it, and who will have nothing else suitable to wear
with it.”
Mahala’s brightest light swept across her forehead.
“That’s exactly the truth, Mother,” she said emphatically. “I’ll tell
Susanna about the borax and the rain water and how to wash her pretty
new petticoat, and I’ll ask Papa to give me some more clothes for her,
so the petticoat won’t feel so lonesome and ashamed of the things it’s
with.”
When Elizabeth Spellman detailed this conversation to Mahlon that night,
she had considerable difficulty in gaining either his comprehension or
his credence. There are not many men in the world named “Mahlon,” while
it is a curious coincidence that all of them who are, seem very similar.
Every fastidious fibre in Mahlon Spellman’s being rebelled at the
thought of the high grade of pressed flannel bearing the exquisite
handwork that always had enfolded his child, being put on the person of
any Susanna of the outskirts. Such a wonderful town as Ashwater had no
business with outskirts; it had no business with men who were not
successful; it had no business with women who were not thrifty and good
housekeepers. It was possible for every human being to be comfortably
housed, well dressed, and well fed, if they would exercise even a small
degree of the personal efforts of which each one was capable. Mahlon
felt outraged and he said so succinctly. He told his wife in very
distinct terms that she had failed in her manifest duty. She should have
sent Mahala to recover the garment at once.
Mrs. Spellman looked at Mahlon intently. She usually toadied to him
because that was the well-considered attitude that as a bride she
assumed to be the proper one; ordinarily it was effective, but there
were occasions when she told Mahlon the unvarnished truth. This appealed
to her as very nearly, if not quite, an Occasion.
“I did not tell her to go and bring it back,” she said very
deliberately, “because I had grave doubts in my mind as to whether she
would do it. I have never considered it the part of wisdom to begin
anything with our child that I feared I should not be able to finish.
There was something about the look in her eyes, the tones of her voice
that told me that she had done what she thought was right. I did not
feel equal to the task of convincing her that she was wrong.”
Mahlon Spellman habitually increased his height by rising on his
tiptoes; in extremes he increased it further by running his fingers
through his hair to stand it on end. He metaphorically relegated the
whole race of Susannas to limbo by flipping wholly imaginary particles
from his sleeves and wiping imaginary taint from immaculate fingers with
an equally immaculate handkerchief. From this elevation and mental
attitude, Mahlon glared accusingly at his wife. This was rather unusual;
but the thing had occurred with sufficient frequency for Elizabeth to
recognize its portent.
“I am constrained to admit,” she said deliberately, “that there are
times, very rare times, when Mahala’s mentality so resembles yours that
I am forced to confess myself unequal to the strain of controlling her.
At such times I always have made a practice of sending her to you. Your
superior judgment, your poise, and strength, will stand your child in
good stead at such a time as the present.”
Thereupon Elizabeth courtesied low to her self-ordained lord and master
and swept from the room, leaving him a defenseless, a flabbergasted man.
In his soul Mahlon knew that he was no more capable of controlling
Mahala when she was in that mental attitude which her mother sometimes
described as “having her head set,” than was his wife. With hurried
steps he began pacing the room. By the time Mahala entered, he was
walking in nervous, flatfooted indecision; he had lost all height
obtained by any subterfuge. He faced Mahala, and if his wife had been
there to observe the interview, she would have been rejoiced to realize
that Mahala was tiptoeing, while her father was on his soles. All the
lofty attitude he had assumed with Elizabeth, vanished like river mist
before an hour of compelling sunshine. Mr. Spellman was so undone that
he nearly stuttered.
“Wh—what’s this your mother tells me about this disgusting Susanna
business?” he asked as Mahala stood slim and straight before him.
Her lips were curved in their very sweetest smile, but far back in the
depths of her eyes there was a cold gray light that Mahlon Spellman did
not recall ever having seen there before. He realized with a severe
mental shock exactly what his wife had meant when she said that there
were times when she did not force matters with Mahala.
But it was the girl’s lips that were speaking, and the lips were sweetly
saying: “How right you are, Papa! Isn’t it disgusting and absurd, in a
town where there is as much money and as many comfortable people as
there are in this town, that any child should be started to school so
thinly clad that her teeth are chattering and her hands blue and stiff?”
Mahlon tried to recover some least degree of his lost attitude.
“That girl’s father never did an honest day’s work in his life.”
He tried to thunder it; he did succeed in making it impressive.
“That’s exactly the truth,” agreed Mahala instantly. “He never did, he
never will. That’s the reason why every one should make a point of
seeing that Susanna has warm and comfortable clothing until she can get
enough education so that she will be able to teach or do something that
will help out her mother and her little brothers and sisters. I was just
coming to you about it when Mother came to my room to suggest that I
talk it over with you. I want you to tell about Susanna at the next
board meeting of the church. I want you to tell those people plainly how
narrow-minded and how selfish they are and what a disgrace it is to the
whole town to have a member of their church trying to go to high school
so thinly clad that she is stiff and blue—and she is one of the very
best scholars in our class, too. Mind, I have to study good and hard to
keep ahead of her and once or twice, I wouldn’t have had my problems if
she had not held up her slate and let me see how to begin a solution. I
owe her that petticoat all right, Father.”
Mahlon Spellman stood very still. He wanted to say something scathing.
He had intended to be extremely severe about his daughter doing such an
unprecedented thing as to remove her petticoat on the street. He wanted
to tell her that she should be ashamed to accept help from anything so
low down in the social world as a Susanna. But some way, memory
performed a kaleidoscopic jump, so that he saw himself in crucial
moments looking anxiously toward the slate of some of his fellow pupils.
Then it struck Mahlon like a blow that he never, in his life before, had
admitted even to himself that he had done this; but Mahala was facing
him with perfectly frank eyes, acknowledging her obligations.
What he said was not in the very least what he had contemplated saying.
“The next time you feel that you owe any one a petticoat, come and tell
_me_,” he said. “There are some suitable ones of heavy stamped felt in
dark colours that many of the girls of Susanna’s age and size are
wearing. It is scarcely fair to your mother that hours of painstaking
work she has spent upon you, in an effort to express her love for you,
should be discarded by you without a thought of her.”
Mahala’s eager face showed deep concentration.
“If that’s the way you and Mama feel about it, Papa,” she said quietly,
“I’ll pay for one of the felt skirts from my monthly allowance, and I’ll
go to-morrow and ask Susanna to accept it instead of Mother’s beautiful
work. Certainly I didn’t intend to hurt Mother’s feelings or yours.”
Now this was precisely the thing that Mahlon Spellman had determined
that Mahala should do, yet when she, herself, proposed making that trip,
it touched his egotism from an entirely different point of view. He felt
soiled and contaminated, even at the thought of such a thing, when he
really came to picture his daughter, bone of his bone, flesh of his
flesh, as being placed in such a humiliating position.
“You will do nothing of the kind,” he said grandiloquently.
The strain on his tiptoes was crucial, the gesture that ran through his
flattened hair raised it beautifully.
“You must learn to think before you do a thing in this world,” he
admonished Mahala. “I should consider it distinctly humiliating to me,
to have a daughter of mine go and ask to be given back a gift that she
had seen fit to make. Since Susanna has the petticoat, she must keep it.
Simply fix in your consciousness the idea that the next time my daughter
is not to be like the foolish little grasshopper that refused to look
before it leaped, and so found itself in trouble.”
There was a bewildered look in Mahala’s eyes. Her teeth were set rather
hard on her under lip. The breath she drew was deep. She turned from her
father and laid her hand upon the door.
Then she faced him again: “I think,” she said quietly, “that it would
save Susanna’s pride as well as ours if you didn’t take this matter up
with the church board. She’s as old as I am; she probably would feel as
keenly as I should about it. She didn’t want to take the petticoat; I
made her do it. But she really needed it, Father, she truly needed it
awfully. And she needs a great many other things just as badly. Don’t
bring me anything the next time you go to the city, but let me come
after school to-morrow and give me the clothing that will make Susanna
comfortable. Will you, dear?”
When Mahala said, “Will you, dear?” there was not a thing on earth that
Mahlon Spellman would not have undertaken to do for her, because it
would have broken his heart to admit to her that there was anything on
earth that he could not do for her if he chose.
“Certainly,” he said suavely. “Most certainly!”
That night, in the privacy of their bed chamber, Mahlon told Elizabeth
that it was the easiest thing in the world to manage Mahala; when he had
put the matter to her in the proper light, she had immediately _offered_
to go and recover the petticoat, but he had felt that it was beneath
their dignity to allow her to ask to be given back a gift. It might look
as if they were in straitened circumstances, or as if they could not
trust their daughter to do what was right and proper upon any given
occasion. He told his wife, also, that he had arranged with Mahala to
come to him after school the following day and he would secretly provide
Susanna with comfortable clothing so that she might continue with her
school work.
Elizabeth immediately fell upon his neck and kissed him. She told him
that he was the most wonderful, the most generous of men. Mahlon
expanded with her appreciation until he slept that night with a beatific
smile illumining his face. He never felt more thoroughly that he had
justified himself to himself and to Elizabeth than he did in the matter
of Susanna and the Spellman petticoat, while he could trust the clerks
in his store, through a few words he could drop, to let his townsmen
know of his essential rightness and benevolence.
Because of many diverse ramifications in Mahala’s life similar to the
petticoat affair, she always had been made to feel that she had the
devoted love of every boy and girl in each advancing grade of her school
work. Her teachers always depended upon her to tell them the truth
concerning any occasion in the schoolroom otherwise inexplainable.
Mahala’s mother had told her that she might invite her particular
friends for the celebration of her birthday, so Mahala was busy
delivering the invitations. She was also extremely busy facing a very
uncomfortable condition. There was no one in the room who was not her
friend so far as she knew. There was no one to whom she had not been
lovely and gracious. There was no one who did not think her beautiful,
who was not proud to be seen in proximity to her. But Mahala very well
understood that her father and mother would not want to entertain in
their home the Susannas of the town and neither would they wish to
entertain the Jasons. That, she knew, was an utter impossibility, and
yet, in her heart, she distinctly rebelled.
Jason always had been the best scholar in any grade to which he had
advanced but Mahala knew that she dared not ask him to be her guest. She
watched his lean figure as he crossed the playground. He would go to the
well, take a drink of water, stretch up his arms toward heaven as if he
were imploring that the gift of equality with the other children should
be dropped into his hands. He would cast a slow glance of longing at the
boys playing ball and leap-frog, then he would reënter the building, go
to his desk and spend ten minutes on his next lesson, while the other
pupils were playing.
She never had known him to practise an evasion. She never had known him,
no matter how hard pressed, to do an unkind thing or to tell a lie.
Sometimes, when unobserved she looked at him between narrowed lids,
there came a feeling that, as he grew older and his lean frame filled
out and became better clothed and his face took on maturity, he would be
a pleasing figure physically. She dared not invite him to come to her
party. Yet that imp of perversity that had always lived in the back of
Mahala’s head and found dancing ground on the platform of her heart,
possessed her strongly at that minute.
She managed to pass near him, while as she did so, she said in a low
voice: “I am asking my friends to come to my birthday party this week
and I wish that I might invite you.”
Jason stood very still; his eyes were on the ground. He dared not trust
himself to look at the girl beside him. He was only a boy, but Marcia’s
harsh tongue had taught him many things. He realized Mahala’s position
instantly.
“Thank you,” he said in a voice as lifeless as if he were struggling
with a contrary equation. “Of course, I couldn’t come, but it’s good of
you to want me.”
Then he passed her and went up to the schoolroom. Taking out his books,
he studied with a deeper concentration than he ever before had used. He
had a new incentive.
Mahala drew a breath of relief. She had made Jason feel that she had
thought of him, that if she could do as she liked, she would ask him to
her party. Having cleared her conscience by placing the burden upon it
on her parents where she knew it belonged, she turned her attention to
the handsomest face and figure on the playground. She studied Junior
Moreland carefully. Every year his father saw to it that he wore better
and more expensive clothing. Every year made him increasingly handsome
in face and figure; and yet, as Mahala studied him intently, she could
see faint signs of coarseness creeping into his boyish face. The hollows
beneath his eyes were too dark for a schoolboy. He carried himself with
too great surety. His air was that of complete sophistication. What was
there worth knowing that he did not know? Mahala resented the fact that
Junior never approached her without the assumption that every one else
should get out of his way. Day after day, as she watched him, the leader
of every sport and amusement, she recalled how he often evaded the
truth, how he twisted everything to his own advantage, how cruelly
ruthless he was concerning their classmates who were in moderate or poor
circumstances. He always tried to give the impression that she was his
property, that none of the other girls and boys must pass a certain
point in their intercourse with her.
There were times when her bright eyes watched him above the top of her
Ancient History or Physical Geography and then turned to the background,
where, hollow chested, hollow eyed, beaten and defeated, Jason sat
rumpling his hair and plunging into his books. And sometimes, when he
lifted his eyes and she met his glance, he gave her the feeling that he
was a hungry dog that knew he had the strength to capture the bone, but
from bitter experience, also knew that it was not worth while to make
the fight, because superior power would intervene and take it away from
him.
On the day of Mahala’s birthday party, in the midst of the bustle of
cleaning, merely from force of habit, that which was clean, of
decorating that which was already over-decorated, a dray stopped before
the Spellman residence to deliver an expensive piano lamp, the attached
card bearing birthday greetings from Martin Moreland, Jr., to Miss
Mahala Spellman.
When Mahlon Spellman stepped into his parlour that night, the first
thing that attracted his attention was this lamp. He went over and
examined it critically; then he turned a face white with anger toward
Elizabeth, who stood hesitant in the doorway. He was horrified at the
extravagance of such a gift between children.
“Why did you allow this thing to be left here?” he demanded. “Why did
you not return it immediately? You know that it is not suitable that a
gift of such extravagance should be permitted between mere children. It
must go back!”
“Yes, that is what I think,” said Elizabeth.
“Of course, that is what you think,” said Mr. Spellman. “That comes from
being a sensible woman. There is nothing else you could think. I
strenuously object to having Martin Moreland furnish my house for me. A
piano lamp! A piano lamp! Why didn’t _he_ get the piano and let _me_ get
the lamp?”
He leaned toward Elizabeth and thrust out his right hand as if he
expected her to make an answer that would materialize so that he could
pick it up and kick it through the door on the toe of his boot.
“Have you any idea,” he shouted, “what that thing cost?”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth quietly. “I heard Mahala say that she would like a
piano lamp, so I looked at this same one yesterday, but I thought the
price was out of all reason. They were asking thirty-five dollars for
it.”
Mahlon arose to the height of the price. He paced the room, talking and
gesticulating.
“I won’t have it!” he cried. “I won’t countenance it! Why, in order to
keep even, the next time Junior has a birthday, I’ll be expected to help
furnish Martin Moreland’s house. I am not in the furniture business.”
Mahlon arranged his cuffs and took a firm stand on widely spread feet;
rocking thereon, he glared at his wife.
“Of course, dear,” she said soothingly, “it shall be exactly as you say.
The Morelands are always obtrusive and vulgar; but I thought that
perhaps, on account of your business relations with Mr. Moreland, he
might be trying to express his appreciation of you, and your patronage
of his bank, and your influence in helping him with other enterprises.”
Slowly Mahlon’s lower jaw dropped on its moorings. A look of
astonishment crept into his eyes.
“You mean,” he said, “that you think the banker is using this
opportunity to pay _me_ a handsome compliment?”
“Why, it looks that way to me,” said Elizabeth. “It is the only feasible
thing I could think of. There is no reason why the Morelands should
spend such an appalling amount of money on Mahala. There must be some
favour that Mr. Moreland wants of you, or some reason why he is anxious
to keep your good will. You know, dear, that the one thing in all this
world that Martin bitterly envies you is your popularity, the high
regard in which you are held in this community. To make himself
appreciated by his fellow citizens as they appreciate you, would please
him far more than money.”
“Uh-huh,” said Mr. Spellman. “I see your point. I think, as usual, that
you are quite right. I never complimented myself so highly as I did in
the selection of a partner for life. Undoubtedly you have arrived at the
correct solution. We shall be forced to keep the lamp; while the next
time Junior Moreland has a birthday, we shall utilize the opportunity to
show the Morelands something about proper giving.”
“Naturally!” said Elizabeth Spellman. “Naturally, you would want to do
that. Now go and dress yourself in order that you may be ready to help
me receive and entertain the children.”
There was a small spot of deep red glowing on each of Elizabeth
Spellman’s cheek bones. She loved to give parties for Mahala or for
herself and Mahlon, but she was compelled to admit that they were a
strain. With her a party began, weeks before the actual day of
entertainment, in general house cleaning, fresh laundering of curtains,
fine dressing for beds and snowy table linens and napkins. Lavish and
delicious refreshments must be prepared; clothing was a matter of
immediate and intense concern.
For Mahala’s birthday each of them must have a new dress. No hands but
those of Elizabeth were sufficiently dainty and painstaking to make
them, so that weeks of hemming fine ruffles, of whipping on lace, of
setting insertion, of placing bows and looping draperies were necessary.
For this particular birthday Elizabeth had done an unprecedented thing.
She had accidentally clothed her small daughter in a combination purely
French. The gold of the girl’s hair was nearly the same shade as the
tarlatan she had selected for her party dress. She had ruffled and
trimmed it to the crest of the prevailing mode. She had combined with it
little running wreaths of leaves that were exactly the blue of Mahala’s
eyes, yet they turned to silver in oblique light rays. Finally, she had
smashed on to it here and there, exactly as a French modiste would have
done, big, soft bows of black velvet ribbon. A pair of black velvet
shoes with the toes brightly embroidered with blue daisies, brought to
Mahala by her father on his return from a recent trip to New York, had
probably suggested the bows and had been saved for the party, while a
wreath of the blue leaves had been kept to bind down the silky curls
hanging free, so that Mahala, thus attired, was probably as beautiful a
picture as could be made with a child of her age.
The night of her party she stood beside her father and mother, quite as
composed, as much at ease, as they, till the last of her guests had
arrived. She was watching her mother carefully as certain faces appeared
in the doorway. When Mrs. Spellman’s lips narrowed and Mr. Spellman’s
eyebrows arose, Mahala made a point of darting out of line and offering
both hands. She doubled in warmth her welcome for every child that she
knew would receive only half a welcome on the part of her father and
mother. There was always a guilty feeling in her heart when she invited
certain children she knew were not wanted, not welcome in her home. She
realized that the day was going to come speedily when her mother would
say: “You may invite so many guests and not one more.” On that
uncomfortable day she would be forced to make a decision. The decision
she would make would not be pleasing to her father and mother. To-night
she thought fleetingly, merely realizing that there was a day of
conflict coming.
On the arrival of the last guest, the games began. First they played
“Who’s Got the Button?” Then they advanced to “London Bridge” and “Drop
the Handkerchief.” All her guests thought it the proper thing to honour
Mahala, and she had sped around the circle until she was weary. Mahala
was given to precedents. She established one. She dropped the
handkerchief behind Edith Williams. Glad of an excuse to get into the
game, Edith snatched it up and ran. Junior saw and had a presentiment.
Edith raced past him with intentions, but two things frustrated her. In
her excitement her aim was poor and Junior cunningly side-stepped,
dragging Sammy Davis with him. When the children shouted: “Junior, run!”
Junior turned a deliberate head and refused to budge. All could see that
the kerchief was behind Sammy. Sammy, delighted at the favour of the
little rich girl, caught up the handkerchief and sped after Edith, only
to find her in tears of rage and to get a well-aimed slap when he caught
and tried to kiss her. The boys shouted, the girls “Oh-ed”—Mrs. Spellman
raised her brows and cautioned behind an archly shaken finger: “Now!
now! Little ladies! Re-mem-ber!” What all of the children always
remembered was that Edith had chosen Junior and that he had evaded her.
Someway her discomfort consoled the others. She was rich; she was
Mahala’s best friend. She had lost her temper and been rude, and Mrs.
Spellman had chided her. In their hearts most of them felt a little less
unhappy than they had been; a trifle less constrained.
It is very probable that Mahala was the only child at her party who was
completely happy. Every pleasure she ever had enjoyed in her life she
had experienced under the watchful eyes of her father and mother. She
was accustomed to their constant restrictions, their persistent
precautions: “Be careful of your dress,” “Don’t shake out your curls,”
“Don’t damage the furniture,” “Don’t touch the lace curtains.”
Her heart was so full of spontaneous enthusiasm, her body was so
healthy, her brain was such a blessing, that all these millions of
“don’ts” had left no mark upon her. Spontaneously as breathing, she
answered: “Yes, Mama,” “I’ll be careful, Papa,” “Yes, thank you!”—and
went straight ahead with her pleasure.
The other children followed her lead, but they were awkward, their
movements were stilted and perfunctory. They were afraid of the lady of
dainty precision whose quick eyes were following their every movement in
the expectation that they would do some damage. They were afraid of the
wealthy dry-goods merchant, who was so punctilious in his courtesies, so
immaculate in his dress, so self-contained in his personality. To them,
the party did not mean really to throw off restraint and to have a
natural, healthful, childish evening; it meant to get through with
whatever was to be done in such a creditable manner that they would not
be subjected to constantly whispered admonitions of “don’t” and “be
careful.”
With the handkerchief dropped behind Mahala and Junior Moreland speeding
around the circle, the doorbell rang its shrill peal.
Mahlon looked inquiringly at Elizabeth; Elizabeth looked inquiringly at
Mahala. Elizabeth’s hospitality had been strained to the utmost extent.
Half a dozen children she had not expected were present. She had meant
to be lavish, but she was worried in the back of her head for fear the
ice cream and cake and pressed chicken would not hold out.
Mahala smiled reassuringly at her mother.
“It’s some one to see Papa on business,” she said. “Every one I invited
is here.”
Mahlon immediately remembered all the offices that he was accustomed to
perform when he was destined to become, for an instant, the impelling
object in the retina of one of his fellow men. The ceremony began with
his hair, over which he ran his hands; it proceeded to his tie, which he
felt to learn if it had the proper set; and slid down his vest ending
with a little jerk at the points; then each hand busied itself with the
cuff encircling the other wrist; while his eyes travelled rapidly over
his sleeves, down his trouser legs, to the toes of his boots, which
might well have reflected his entire person had there been proper
lighting. Then Mr. Spellman, conceiving that the Morelands might have
called to see how their lamp appeared beside his piano, with Napoleonic
air, advanced to his front door, throwing it wide open. His wife forgot
herself sufficiently to follow the few steps that would give her anxiety
the easement of an unobstructed view. Mahala, quaking in her small heart
for fear she had asked some one more, so that the ring might presage
another unwelcome Susanna, followed frankly.
From his elevation, Mr. Spellman saw the catalpa trees and the
evergreens decorating the front yard on a level with his eyes. It was
with an inarticulate cry of delight that Mahala darted past him to pick
up a little gold cage on a perch of which a bird as yellow as sunshine
burst into song when the light from the doorway streamed on him, giving
the impression of sunrise. Holding the cage outstretched in both hands,
Mahala advanced to her mother. The bird trilled and warbled exquisitely.
The child was entranced.
“Read the card, Mother! See if it is for me,” she cried excitedly.
The card read, “To Mahala on her birthday, from a friend.”
Elizabeth stared at Mahala; Mahlon stared at Mahala, and then at
Elizabeth, and again at Mahala. Mahala wrapped her arms around the cage
and laid her head against it and danced a lively waltz around the room
crooning: “Oh, you lovely little gold bird! You lovely little gold bird!
You are mine! You are mine! Oh, I never had anything half so wonderful!”
She set the cage upon the piano, stretched her arms around it, laid her
face against it, and looked up at her mother, her big, wide-open eyes
demanding love, sympathy, comprehension.
Elizabeth Spellman’s face was a study; but Mahlon’s was a problem. He
opened his lips, but his daughter forestalled him.
“I just know that this lovely surprise is from you, Papa,” she said.
“Nobody ever can think of the wonderful things that you do.”
Then she stopped, because she realized that her father’s face was blank,
even forbidding. The gift was not from him. She turned to her mother,
her lips still parted, and met a duplicate of her father’s expression.
Then her eyes ran around the room in quick question to which there was
not even the hint of an answer. And then, in her bewilderment and with
the swiftness of thought, for one instant her face turned full to the
window beside the piano which opened on the side lawn, while her sharp
eyes thought they saw a fleeting glimpse of a face among the branches of
a tree. Deliberately, she placed a hand on each side of the cage and
again laid her face against the wires as near to the little gold bird as
possible. Then she smiled a smile that would have been very becoming to
any conceivable kind of angel, and her lips began chanting happily: “Oh,
you darling little bird! I love you. You are the most beautiful gift I
ever have had in my whole life.”
Junior Moreland began to sulk from the instant Mahala appeared with the
bird. Every one of her guests had brought her a gift, some of them
expensive and attractive, some of them clumsily made kerchiefs and
pincushions. To all of them she had given warm welcome and appreciation;
but all of them put together had not equalled the magnificence of
Junior’s lamp at which the other girls had looked enviously, and which
the other boys had hated cordially. Now, out of the night, there had
come a bird of gold and Mahala had said that it was the most beautiful
gift she ever had received.
All his life Junior had considered himself first. He was considering
himself now. He felt abused and defrauded. He sneered openly. He said to
Mrs. Spellman: “Are you going to let her keep such a dirty, messy thing
as a bird in this elegant house?”
Mrs. Spellman hesitated. She was repeating “elegant” in her heart. As
words go, she thought it the most wonderful she had ever heard from a
young person. It was the joy of her life to be a perfect wife to Mahlon,
to be a perfect pattern to her neighbours, but every year of her life
made her task more difficult. The most difficult thing of all was the
third task, which tried her more than either of the others—to be a
perfect mother to Mahala. Pride might soar to undue heights where it
concerned her husband or prestige; but the love of her small daughter
cut to the very depths of her heart. Mahala was delighted over the bird.
That was easy to be seen. But Junior Moreland was the son of the rich
banker. He was a handsome lad. He always had been devoted to Mahala, and
while there were things about him of which Mrs. Spellman did not
approve, she had the feeling that under her influence, in combination
with life with Mahala, Junior might develop into a man greatly to be
desired. How very seldom did it happen that such a face and figure as
his were combined with great wealth. Junior was an only child. If the
sinister kind of power that made his father the figure he was in the
little town, extended to the boy, Junior also would have great power—the
power of riches—and how clever he was in the selection of the right
word!
Mrs. Spellman smiled at the lad. He _was_ the son of the rich banker.
“You know,” she said evenly, “I’ve no idea who has sent this little bird
to Mahala. There are several women in the town who raise canaries for
sale. It’s an inexpensive gift. Maybe it comes from some one Mahala has
helped. She is always trying to do kind things to people, as is very
proper that a girl in her position should. Perhaps, by morning, we shall
be able to think who sent the birdie, and then we shall decide what to
do about it.”
CHAPTER III
“AN INQUISITION ACCORDING TO MAHLON”
When the other children began making preparations to go home, Elizabeth
Spellman whispered to Junior to wait. After the last one had
disappeared, she went to the kitchen and returned with a plate piled
high with remaining refreshments, a heaped dish of ice cream and a
generous big piece of cake.
Junior was not particularly grateful. There had been set before him, all
his life, more excellent food than his stomach could hold. The
delicacies that would have been a great treat to any of the other boys,
were no particular treat to Junior; while he was sufficiently his
father’s son to allow the Spellmans to see that he was not deeply
impressed. He picked over the food in a listless manner and ate very
little either of the cream or the cake. In truth, he was sorely
surprised and disappointed over the intrusion of the little gold bird on
an occasion when he had reckoned on carrying off the honours with
greater ease than usual. He was slightly older than Mahala and his brain
was working with undue rapidity. He knew every one in Ashwater whom he
chose to know—where had he seen birds being raised? In those days linnet
and canary culture was extremely common. Almost every one had the tiny
domestic singers in their homes. Brooding about the bird made him cross
and sullen as he always was when he was thwarted.
Watching her mother’s efforts to placate Junior, Mahala did some rapid
thinking on her own part. She decided that if he left the house feeling
better, there would be fewer objections on the part of her parents to
her keeping the bird. She followed Junior to the hall door, then stepped
on the veranda with him, where she stood for an instant in the
moonlight.
The night was October at its most luring period. Natural conditions, not
Junior, were responsible for the fact that she went down the front steps
beside him, swung open the gate herself, then stood back that he might
step through. As she closed it, she paused a moment longer, looking
around her. The lure of the night air, of gaudy foliage wonderful in the
white light, was upon her.
She said to Junior: “Did you ever see a more entrancing night?”
But Junior leaned across the gate, caught her by the shoulders, and
roughly demanded: “Which of the fellows sent that bird to you?”
Mahala’s lithe body straightened under his fingers. She had been
carefully bred all her life; she thoroughly understood that her parents
expected her not to antagonize Junior.
So she said, very simply: “I don’t know. Some friend of Father or
Mother, maybe.”
Junior’s hands gripped tighter. Suddenly he was saying in a hoarse voice
that sounded as if he were going to cry very shortly: “I want you to
understand that you are my girl, and when we finish school, we are going
to be married!”
Mahala attempted to draw back, crying: “No! No, Junior! What
foolishness! We are nothing but children.”
But Junior tightened his grasp, and drawing her toward him, he leaned
over and kissed her.
At that instant Mahlon Spellman appeared in his doorway. He was in time
to glimpse a flying missile that came hurtling through the air, striking
Junior a hard blow on the side of the head, knocking him down. He heard
Mahala’s shrill scream and saw her throw open the gate to kneel beside
the boy. He paused long enough to call his wife, then rushed to help
Junior to his feet.
The boy was half dazed. His head was cut and bleeding. As he recovered
from the shock of the blow, he grew wild with rage and excitement.
Mahala hurried to the kitchen to summon Jemima Davis and for a few
minutes all of them were rushing through the house for water, bandages,
camphor, and first aids. Mahala, standing beside the couch upon which he
was lying, watched her mother’s deft fingers exploring his temple. A
rush of colour stained her white face when the verdict came: “It is
nothing but a very bad bruise.”
Instantly her head lifted and tilted in one of the bird-like movements
familiar with her from childhood. Her mother was fully occupied; her
father was chafing Junior’s hands, trying to quiet him. Jemima was
holding the basin in which Mrs. Spellman was dipping cloths to staunch
the blood and cleanse the wound. To all of them in general Mahala
announced: “I will bring some dry towels,” as she slipped from the room.
She ran to the kitchen where she made a quick survey of everything. Then
she caught up a box standing on a table and hastily, with flying
fingers, she packed into it biscuit, slices of pressed chicken, pieces
of cake—everything she could snatch from the remains of the lunch that
had been served her guests. Then she darted from the back door, down the
steps, and made her way among the shrubbery screening the side parlour
window.
“Jason!” she breathed softly. “Jason!”
At once the bushes parted and Jason stood by her side. She thrust the
box into his hands.
Her face was very near to his in order that he might hear her breathless
whisper: “Can they ever find out where that bird came from?”
Jason’s voice was dry and breathless, too, as he answered: “They never
can. It didn’t come from this town.”
“Run!” urged Mahala. “The minute Junior feels better Father will be
searching the shrubbery and the neighbourhood. Run!”
Then she was gone.
Jason stood still, holding the box. His heart was pounding until he had
to grip tight to keep from dropping his gift. He could still feel her
breath on his cheek. He could hear the shaken voice. In his nostrils was
the odour of her nearness, of food that she had thrust into his hands.
All this was a miracle straight from heaven, but there was a greater
far—an overwhelmingly greater. She had not said one word of
condemnation; she had neither chided nor reproached him.
Jason raised his head and tested his shoulders. Gripping the box
carefully, he went down the Spellman back walk, through the gate, and
then he entered a gate opposite, and skirting a house, came out on the
adjoining side of the block. From there on, with no particular haste, he
made his way home.
It would be closer truth to state that his feet made their way home; his
brain knew very little about where he was going or why. He had given
Mahala a gift. He had seen it in her arms. He had heard her voice crying
out before every one that she loved it. He had punished Junior
Moreland’s rudeness and roughness. She had known that he had done it,
and she had not even mentioned the fact that she knew.
When he reached home, Jason sat on the back steps in the beneficence of
the October moon, and with the box on his knees, stared up at the sky.
He was trying, with all his might, to understand what had happened, and
how it had happened, and why. There had been no time to think. From the
branches of a maple tree he had watched the progress of Mahala’s party,
even as he had watched hundreds of other parties from trees and bushes,
all his lonely, neglected childhood. He had seen Mahala’s trip to the
gate with Junior. He had heard what they said; had seen Junior’s rude
act. He had had no time to think; he had followed an animal impulse. Of
all the town Mahala was the one creature in woman’s form who had been
truly kind to him, who had tried to make him feel that he was not an
outcast, who had put into his heart the thought, that if he would
culture himself and do what was right, he might have an equal chance
with other men when he grew up. When she was offended and had cried out,
Jason had bridged space with a piece of brick wrenched from the wall of
a flower bed beside which he had landed as he slid from the tree. When
he saw Junior fall, he had been paralysed. He had not known but that he
must go in the house and admit that he had killed him, until Mahala
stood near offering him food, urging his flight to safety.
Jason studied the moon critically. He had never before realized that it
was so big, that it seemed so close, that with his unassisted eyes he
could trace the conformations upon it. Then he told the moon his secret.
“When she has time to study this over, she will think I am a coward to
have thrown the brick. I should have overtaken him and beaten him with
my fists.”
Sick with shame and humiliation, Jason pondered deeply on the subject
and made his high resolve. Hereafter, he would not be afraid. Hereafter,
he would not be ashamed. He would do the level best that was in his
power and some day, in some way, there would be a turning. Things would
come right for him.
Resolves are wonderful. They brace mentality and the physical being as
well. The odour of tempting food persisted, and still watching the moon,
listening to the sounds of night, surrounded by the silver silence
lightly flecked by the softly dropping gold and red leaves, Jason had
his first experience with really delicious food, delicately prepared.
When he had finished the last crumb, he carried the box to the small,
ramshackle woodhouse beside the back walk and dropped it behind a pile
of split wood. Then he softly opened the back door and started to climb
the stairs. Marcia’s voice stopped him.
“Jason,” she called through the darkness, “what made you so late?”
Jason stood still an instant, then he answered her: “I helped Peter
Potter in the grocery for a while. I’ve laid the money I earned on the
kitchen table for you.” He hesitated an instant longer before he added:
“And then, for a little while, I watched a party through a window.”
He stood still, waiting, but as there was no comment, he climbed the
stairs and sat down on the side of his old bed. Through the open window
he began another review of what had happened, thinking things out in
clearer detail, reasoning, studying, planning, and in his heart—hoping.
He tried to picture what was going on in the Spellman home at that
minute. He had a vision of Junior, cleansed and bandaged, making his way
home in the white heat of anger.
But his vision was not nearly adequate. Junior was so dizzy that he
could not stand, even when he tried bravely. Preceded by Jemima carrying
a lantern, Mahlon Spellman entered his barn and harnessed his horse. If
Mahlon had been asked to describe his feelings, he would have announced
that he was outraged. He hated blood; he had hated it all his life. It
was one of the things that he had given the widest berth possible.
To-night he had been forced to come into actual contact with it. He
hated mystery as badly as he hated blood, and who had sent that
wonderful little bird that sang its way across his threshold and won his
daughter’s affections so easily, was a mystery. Really, it probably had
been the cause of the whole trouble, and certainly it was sufficient
trouble that a man of his position, of his dignity, should be forced at
ten o’clock at night, an ungodly hour, to enter his stable to harness a
horse. He had not dared take the time to change his clothing, and if
there was anything on earth Mahlon hated worse than any other thing that
could happen to clothing, it was stepping into a stable in the shoes and
suit that he wore upon the streets. But he was afraid to wait to make
the change for fear that Junior would realize what he was doing, while
he was almost sick with fear that the boy might be seriously hurt. Even
if Elizabeth could feel no yielding bones, no ragged seam, that was no
guarantee that there might not be ruptured blood vessels or a clot
forming inside the skull.
With shaking fingers Mahlon got the abominable harness upon the
abomination of a horse and led it to the front door; and there, helped
in by Jemima and Mrs. Spellman, Junior leaned against the carriage seat,
which there was every probability he would stain and disfigure, and was
driven home.
With shaking fingers Mahlon tied the horse at the Moreland hitching
post. With wavering legs he travelled the length of the walk and rang
the doorbell. He could see through the lighted windows that the
Morelands had not yet retired. He wondered why they were up so late when
they were not having a party; and he wondered what he was going to say,
and he wondered how he was going to say it. He had no idea what Junior
would tell his parents. He had a very clear idea that he wanted them
told nothing that would be detrimental to his standing with them. Too
frequently he needed the accommodations of the banker when he bought
heavy consignments of dry goods in the East; often he needed ready money
when he speculated on bits of delinquent land or town properties that he
thought a bargain.
Martin Moreland opened his front door. He and Mahlon Spellman had been
boys together in the same village. They knew each other thoroughly, but
they were not particularly well acquainted. Mahlon Spellman had been a
boy as fastidious as the man he became later, while Martin Moreland had
been the same kind of boy that developed the man he now was. There
always had been sufficient reason why neither of them swam in the same
bend of the river or climbed the same trees to gather nuts. Mahlon had
done precious little of either.
Each man in his own way thought himself the great man of Ashwater. Each
in his own way would have been better pleased to have witnessed the
downfall of the other than anything else that could have happened on
earth. For this reason, they were always particularly courteous to each
other, always giving the impression in public that they were friends.
Seeing Mr. Spellman standing, white and shaken at his door, produced a
throb of primitive joy in the heart of Martin Moreland. Perhaps he
needed money. Possibly this time he could be hopelessly involved. He
thrust forth his hand and cried in his most genial voice: “Why, Mahlon,
what brings you out at this time of night? I had thought respectable
people like you would have been in bed!”
Mahlon opened his lips in the hope, that as a result of his exemplary
life, something exemplary would issue therefrom of its own accord,
because he had no idea what to say. There was nothing sharper in
Ashwater County than the eyes of Martin Moreland; by this time they had
looked past Mahlon, down the length of the walk, and visualized the
conveyance at the gate and the bandaged head it contained.
“You don’t mean to tell me,” he cried roughly, “that you have brought
Junior home with a broken head! I didn’t know you were having a prize
fight. I thought I was sending the boy to a civilized entertainment!”
Mrs. Moreland could not have been very far in the offing. At Junior’s
name she hurried down the hall and caught Mahlon’s arm.
“Is Junior hurt?” she demanded.
Mahlon’s soul was in rebellion. He never had thrown a brick in all his
immaculate life. Why any one who had known him all his life should
assume that he would, or that he might be held responsible for bricks
thrown by any one else, was beyond his comprehension. It was such pure
insanity that he lost all respect for any one who could harbour such a
delusion. It gave him the proper mental ballast and spinal
reinforcement. He straightened himself, removed his hat, and stroked his
sleeve. In his most correct and elaborate manner he answered very
quietly, and congratulated himself even as he heard the sound of his own
voice that it was clear and even, without a tremor. He wondered how this
could happen when his heart was pounding until he had instinctively
covered it with his hat.
“I regret to inform you that some roustabout in the street threw a piece
of brick as Junior was leaving my gate this evening. He is slightly cut
on the temple, but nothing of any moment. Barring a sore head, he will
be as usual in the morning, I am quite sure.”
“But why should any one throw a brick at Junior?” demanded Mrs.
Moreland, thrusting a strong arm to sweep Mahlon back in order to clear
a passage for her trip across the veranda and down the walk in the
direction of her offspring.
By that time, Junior, encircled by his father’s arm, reached the steps.
The ride in the cool evening air had refreshed him. Circulation was
somewhat reëstablished in his bruised head. His senses were beginning to
clear. The one thing he recognized was that any indignity shown Mr.
Spellman would be instantly carried home and detailed to Mahala, and
concerning Mahala his conscience was not clear. If he had dared, Mahlon
Spellman would have leaned on Junior and wept tears of relief and joy,
because Junior’s first words were the sweetest of music upon his anxious
ears.
“Now, look here, you two old fuss-grannies,” the boy said half
laughingly, “don’t make monkeys of yourselves, mollycoddling me.
Somebody threw something at something and hit something, and I’m the
something they happened to hit, and it happened in the street at the
Spellman gate where Mahala and I were talking for a minute. Mr. Spellman
doesn’t know a thing more about it than you do, or I do. It was mighty
nice of Mrs. Spellman to bandage me up and of Mr. Spellman to bring me
home. What you should do is to thank him politely for his kindness and
will he come in and have a bracer from your best brand of port? I would
be thankful for a little help to get up the stairway and to bed, because
I really was hit a pretty solid jolt.”
Mahlon Spellman at that minute would have been happy to remove Junior’s
shoes—what was that about latchets?—even to have cleaned them if
cleaning were necessary. He promptly laid hold of Junior’s arm on the
side nearest him and propelled him forward. What a wonderful boy he was!
With only a few words to settle everything so quickly, so decently! The
one place in which Providence had dealt unduly with Mahlon had been in
denying him the consolation of a son. He felt at that moment that if he
had been the father of a boy who could handle a difficult situation as
easily as Junior had handled the present one, his delight would
reasonably have known no bounds. Gladly he assisted in helping Junior up
the stairs, in stretching him on the bed. Then the men left him to his
mother and went downstairs to try the wine.
Port did one thing to Mahlon Spellman. It did quite another to Martin
Moreland. It made Mahlon happy and discursive; it put wings on his
mentality and set him sailing. It made Martin Moreland keen and
analytical. It nailed him to one point and set him delving concerning
its various ramifications. One good whiff of his best brand brought him
straight back to the affair in hand. Why should his son and heir, the
light of his eyes, and the pride of his heart, be hit upon his precious
head with a brick? Who threw the brick? At what were they aiming when
they threw it? If Mahala had been with Junior when the brick made its
impact on his head, why had she not seen who did the throwing? He was
not a lawyer, but he had met constant legal dealings in handling the
diverse branches of his peculiar brand of banking business. He was very
well informed concerning legal proceedings. Realizing this, Mahlon got
himself from the Moreland home as speedily as possible, although the
port was fine. Arriving once more at his own hay mow and feed trough, he
called Jemima to hold the horse until he removed his shoes and best
clothing. Jemima offered to care for the horse herself, and despite the
fact that she had undergone many days of tiresome preparation for the
party, Mahlon was the kind of man who would allow any one to do any
personal service that was proffered on his behalf. So Mahlon entered his
doorway to find Mahala had gone to bed, carrying the little gold bird to
her room with her, while his wife was walking the floor in a torment of
doubt and uncertainty.
She simply couldn’t understand; she said so repeatedly and emphatically.
She said so until Mahlon’s sensitive nature could endure no more. He
mounted the stairs and without preliminaries, opened the
fourteen-year-old door of his daughter’s room. He found that young lady
sitting dressed as she had been for the party, beside a small table with
a hand on either side of the attractive cage containing the little bird.
Mahlon sat down and faced the situation squarely.
“Mahala, dear,” he said gently, “Mama and I are very much perturbed—very
much, indeed! In the first place, neither of us approves of the
expensive gift the Morelands saw fit to send for this supposedly happy
occasion.”
“Nor do I,” said Mahala promptly. “Send it back. I don’t want it. I can
see very nicely from the chandelier.”
“I wish,” said Mahlon, a slight petulance tincturing his voice, “that
you would learn not to break in on me. Have you lived with me fourteen
years and not yet learned how I detest being broken in on? The gift
before you is quite as inappropriate and far from inexpensive.”
Mahlon saw the wave of stillness that swept over Mahala. He sensed the
fact that every nerve and muscle in her was tightening.
“I cannot see that, Papa,” she said very deliberately. “Canaries are not
expensive. Why isn’t a singing bird a delightful gift to give any one,
especially a girl who loves music and colour as I do?”
Mahlon decided to dispense with subtleties and preliminaries. He brushed
them aside. He leaned forward.
“Mahala,” he said, in the deepest bass that he could instill into his
tones and his most authoritative manner, “where did that bird come
from?”
Mahala blessed her stars that the question had not been: “Who gave you
that bird?”
As it was, her alibi was perfect. She could look her father straightly
in the eye and answer in her best adaptation of his tones and manner: “I
have not the least idea. There are several women in town who raise birds
for sale. If you think it is not beneath your dignity, you might make it
your business to ask each of them to-morrow. Possibly they would tell
you to whom they sold a bird to-day.”
That was precisely what Mahlon had intended doing, or having his wife
do, but that clever provision “beneath your dignity” cut him to the
core, even as his daughter intended that it should. She knew when she
injected that neat little phrase that she had forever stopped her father
and her mother from opening their mouths concerning the origin of the
bird, because with each of them their dignity was more important than
their souls—and more tangible in their own conception.
To Mahlon it was a body blow. He ran his perturbed fingers through his
perplexed hair and stared at the innocent young face before him. Had he
been any other man, he would have said that he would “be damned;” being
himself, and a truthful man, he was absolutely confident that he should
not be damned, while it certainly was “beneath his dignity” to lie on
any subject. So he compromised by using milder methods.
“It passes my comprehension,” he said, and his bewilderment became
tangible, shrouded him like a blanket.
Mahala instantly agreed with him.
“Yes, so it does mine,” she said. “Mother is very wise, perhaps she can
think it out, or I may get some hint at school to-morrow. But, anyway,
after all, Papa, is one small brass cage and one teeny yellow canary a
matter of such very great moment? I don’t know what cages cost, but
seems to me I’ve heard some one say that you could buy a nice singer for
three dollars. I’ve even heard of them as cheap as two. Why is it such a
terrible thing to be given a little bit of a gold bird with a miracle in
its throat? Please go to bed, Papa, and don’t bother about it.”
Mahala arose and put her arms across her father’s shoulder, and her
father drew her down in his lap and held her very close.
In his most warmly sympathetic tones of adjuration he said: “My child,
this is only the beginning of the things Papa is forced to say to you
to-night. I never have known you to lie to me. Your face is impressively
candid, I must admit. I must accept your word that you know nothing
concerning the giver of this bird; but I have a very strong idea that
you do know something concerning Junior’s injury which might have been,
and yet may be, a thing extremely serious for all of us. There is such a
thing as concussion of the brain developing hours after a blow on the
head, you know.”
“I hardly think, Papa,” said Mahala, carefully settling Mahlon’s tie in
his own best manner, “that a blow on the _temple_ is going to produce
concussion. It’s usually the back of the head, isn’t it, when there are
bad results?”
Mahlon drew a breath of exasperation. He caught Mahala’s hands from his
hair and his tie and shoving her to the extreme limit of his knees,
forced her eyes to meet his or deliberately avoid them.
“Now, look here, young woman, let’s get down to brass tacks,” he said
authoritatively. “Just what did Junior Moreland say or do to you at the
gate?”
With perfect equanimity Mahala met the eyes of her stern parent, and
realized that the time had arrived when she was past subterfuge, that
she was facing a stern parent. She might as well get it over with
because she really was both tired and sleepy, while she greatly desired
a space of uninterrupted quiet in which she might think.
“He said that I was his ‘girl,’ and that when we finished school I was
going to marry him. He was provoked about the bird. That’s what made him
say it.”
“Has he ever said things like that to you before?” demanded Mahlon.
“He’s been saying that I was his girl ever since I can remember,” said
Mahala; “but I’m not.”
“Oh, aren’t you?” asked Mahlon, and suddenly, to his daughter’s intense
astonishment, he was playful, he was arch, there was a smile on his
lips, a light in his eyes; and correspondingly, there was no smile on
her lips and no trace of light in her eyes.
“Of course not, foolish!” she said immediately. “I am your girl, and
Mother’s girl. How could I possibly be the girl of any boy in this
town?”
“Um-m-m-m,” said Mahlon. “You will find, young lady, that you will be
glad enough to be the girl of one of the boys of this town one of these
days, when you have finished your education and the time comes to go to
a home of your own. And I don’t know who there is that you know, or that
you would be likely to know, that is so handsome or so admirably
situated as Junior. Let me tell you, he did a mighty fine thing
to-night, a manly thing, a praiseworthy thing.”
“Tell me,” said Mahala, delighted to have averted her father’s attention
from the bird and herself.
And so, Mahlon told her how very praiseworthy had been Junior’s conduct
in what she was constrained to admit had been a most embarrassing and
difficult situation for her father.
“All right,” said Mahala, “that was fine of him. I do like him slightly
better than I did before you told me that.”
“And now then, we will proceed,” said her father.
“What answer did you make when Junior said that you were his girl?”
“I told him I was not,” said Mahala promptly.
“And then what did Junior do?”
“He pulled me across the gate and tried to kiss me.”
“Ah!” said Mahlon Spellman. “Now we are getting at the meat of the
matter. He tried to kiss you? And what did you do?”
“Pushed him away and wiped my face—what any one would do,” said Mahala.
“And then,” questioned Mahlon, “the brick?”
“Yes,” admitted Mahala, “the brick.”
“Now it happens,” said Mahlon, “that I picked up that piece of brick. Do
you know where it came from?”
“I do not,” said Mahala.
“Well, I do,” said Mahlon. “It came from the border of one of your
mother’s flower beds, just outside the parlour window. It was thrown
from that direction. Some one who had not been invited to the party was
watching it through the parlour window. Some one who doesn’t like Junior
Moreland to think that you are his girl, threw the brick. Now, Mahala,
women, even little girls of fourteen, are not sufficiently sophisticated
to be in the first year of high school and at the same time so ignorant
that they do not know which boy of their acquaintance is enough
interested in them to risk taking the life of another boy who is guilty
of no very great indiscretion.”
“That all depends on the boy,” said Mahala. “If he is the son of the
rich banker, it’s ‘no great indiscretion;’ if it had been the son of—say
the washerwoman, for example, right now you’d be out trying to kill
him.”
“And I very probably should succeed in so far as I cared to go in such a
premise,” said Mahlon promptly.
“That’s exactly what I thought,” said Mahala.
Slipping from his knee and walking to her dresser, she began very
carefully unpinning the little wreath of silver-blue leaves that bound
her hair.
“I am waiting,” said Mahlon with all the dignity of which he was
capable—and he was capable of a high degree of really impressive
dignity. No one can practise anything hourly for fifty years and not
attain a high degree of excellence.
Mahala turned to her father, both hands still occupied with the wreath.
“Papa,” she said very quietly, “you just got through saying that I never
told you a lie. Do you think it would be any great achievement on your
part if you should force me to tell you one right now?”
“I am not asking for a lie!” thundered Mahlon. “I demand that you tell
me the truth!”
“All right,” said Mahala, “I will. As you recall, when you stepped to
the door my back was turned. You had a better chance to see any one who
might have been in the shrubbery than I had. You have not the faintest
notion who made the attack on Junior. Do you think it would be fair for
me to answer your demand for the truth with merely a surmise on my part?
I didn’t see who threw that piece of brick, so I positively refuse to
make any surmise!”
Mahala turned again to the mirror and loosened one end of the silver
wreath with something very closely resembling a jerk; while Mahlon,
studying her back and her shoulders and the set of her yellow head, and
catching a flash of the blazing eyes that the mirror reflected, suddenly
remembered the advice that had been given him by his wife concerning the
petticoat: “Don’t begin anything with Mahala that you can’t finish.”
He realized that he had undertaken something that he was not man enough
to finish. Maybe there was a man in the world who could have laid rough
hands upon Mahala and choked and beaten from her the information he
wanted. Because of Mahlon’s inherent refinement he was not the man who,
by any possibility, could do this. As gracefully as he ever passed down
the church aisle on Sabbath morning with the contribution box, Mahlon
arose, and walking over to the mirror, he put his arm around the small
emanation of his own self-esteem.
“Very well, Mahala,” he said, “as always, Papa accepts your word. If you
didn’t see who made this unjustifiable attack on Junior, of course, you
cannot tell me who did it. I shall make it my business to find out for
myself in some other way.”
“Thank you, Papa, that will be fine,” said Mahala, freeing the other end
of the wreath. She opened her lips and looked at her father and then she
closed them. What she had wanted to say was: “If there is a boy in this
world who has the courage to throw a brick when Junior Moreland tries to
kiss me, I am very much obliged to him!” But what she desired above
everything else at that minute was to stop the discussion, to be left
alone. Faintly in the distance, she now visioned a period, and so she
stood carefully straightening the wreath, wordless and waiting.
Realizing something of this, Mahlon took her in his arms and kissed her
tenderly. He told her that he hoped she always would be a good girl, and
if, at any time, anything worried her or she was in any way annoyed, she
must come straight to Papa, who only wanted what was for her good and
that she should grow up into such an exemplary and beautiful woman as
her mother was.
The period came at last, so beautifully rounded and of such touching
sentiment that Mahala emphasized it by putting her arms around her
father’s neck, kissing him and thanking him, and giving him a slight
propulsion in the direction of the door, through which he got himself
without further speech. At last Mahala was left alone to the night and
the bird.
Her first thought was to wonder if there could be anything really
serious resulting from the blow which Junior had so richly deserved. She
decided that on account of Junior’s youth and strength, he would
speedily be all right. That burden eased from her mind, she went back to
the window, and with her arms around the cage again, leaned her face
against the wires and looked into the night of wonder and tried to think
deep and straight.
This was difficult for it was a night of enchantment to the girl. The
clouds floated across the moon and obscured it, then drifted away and
left the night silvered in the high lights, deeply black in the shadows.
Her heart ached over the lean face she had glimpsed through the window.
Why should the best boy and the best scholar in her class be an outcast
through no fault of his? Hers had been a lovely party from her mother’s
viewpoint—weeks of preparation, pretty clothes, gifts, and adulation. Of
course, the brick incident, annoying, but nothing of any moment—a
beautiful party——
Mahala choked back an aching sob. She softly slipped her hand into the
cage, picked the canary from his perch, and kissed his bright head
before she went to bed in the early gray of morning. And even then, she
was too restless, filled with pity, to sleep. She told herself
repeatedly that she should have been anxious about Junior; but all the
trouble in her heart arose from fear as to what might be happening to
Jason.
CHAPTER IV
“STRENGTH FROM WEAKNESS”
Under the stimulus of his glass of port, Martin Moreland was wondering
about his son—his idolized son. He climbed the stairway and stood at the
foot of Junior’s bed until the lad’s mother had finished fussing over
him. Then he said to her roughly: “Now you go on to bed. Junior and I
want a few minutes to talk this thing out.”
When the door had closed after his wife, Martin Moreland drew a chair to
the side of the bed, and sitting down, said with visible effort to be
calm: “Exactly how badly are you hurt, Junior?”
Junior answered truthfully: “Like the devil so far as pain goes. I
reckon I’ll be all right to-morrow, but I don’t _know_ whether I will or
not.”
“Had I better get Doctor Grayson?” asked Mr. Moreland.
“I don’t see what he could do that hasn’t been done,” said Junior. “You
know how nice Mrs. Spellman is. She washed and washed; she put on
camphor that just about raised the hair on my head; she bound me
carefully with clean cloths. What more could old Grayson do? You better
let me go to sleep now and see how I feel in the morning.”
“All right,” said Martin Moreland.
His tones were so very grim that Junior glanced at him apprehensively;
he realized that matters were very far from “all right” with his father.
He could see him gripping his shaking hands one over each knee in order
to hold himself steady.
Then came what he had to say: “As a rule, Junior, I am rather easy with
you because you are my son and I want you to get some fun out of life
before you begin the work and worry that will come when you are a man;
but I am not feeling particularly easy at this minute because I happen
to realize that a blow aimed at you is really intended for me. It should
be my head that’s bleeding right now instead of yours. Out with it! Who
threw that brick?”
Junior lay very still. He looked straight ahead of him for an instant
and then he studied his father craftily.
“It came from the direction of a patch of thick shrubbery beside the
house,” he said. “I could not possibly see who threw it.”
“Nevertheless, you know who there would be that would throw it,” said
Martin Moreland, his voice rough with emotion.
“As it happens, since you feel it really was aimed at you, I don’t
know,” said Junior. “But I intend to make it my business to find out and
when I do, I’ll tell you. This minute I am going to sleep if I can.”
Junior turned his back and lay still. So his father blew out the light
and went down the stairs. In the hall he met his wife.
“I have just remembered that I forgot to sign some papers that must go
out in the morning mail,” he said. “I am going down to the bank and
attend to them. Go to bed and go to sleep. The boy’s all right. I’ll
take another look at him when I come back. If I find he’s feverish, I’ll
go after Grayson. If he’s all right, we’ll wait till morning.”
Then he took his hat and left the house.
He followed the alley beside his residence to where it met a side street
and here he took up a familiar route through unlighted ways and deep
shadows to the outskirts of the town. His feet led him on a familiar
path to a familiar door, and when he tapped upon it, immediately it
swung open. He followed Marcia to her room, and when she turned toward
him with a smile, she was dumbfounded to see that he was in the most
ungovernable rage that ever had possessed him in her presence.
“Martin!” she cried, starting toward him, “Martin! What has happened?”
Martin Moreland opened his lips to speak, but he was so disconcerted
that he could only utter a hissing, stammering sound. Marcia hurried to
a cabinet and brought him a glass of wine. With shaking hands he took
the glass but his body remained rigid against her efforts to guide him
to a chair. Marcia stood before him in white-lipped wonder.
“Martin, what have I done?” she entreated.
Steadied by the wine, Martin Moreland found his voice.
“Done!” he panted. “What have you done? You’ve raised that hell-hound of
a Jason in such a way that to-night makes the second time that he has
attacked my son! _My son!_”
Martin Moreland’s clenched muscles shivered the fragile wine glass until
when he opened his hand, the blood was dripping from it.
“Oh, Martin!” cried Marcia, “I did my best with the boy! Before God, I
did! I never mentioned Junior’s name to him. I almost never speak to him
at all, only about the work. The thing I did was to try to get him to
study hard. He is a good boy, and I thought that was his only chance.”
“‘A good boy!’” raved Martin Moreland. “‘A good boy!’ He’s an insidious
imp of the devil! To-night he tried to kill Junior, and it may be that
by morning my boy will develop concussion of the brain. _Concussion of
the brain!_” He shouted each word at the terrified Marcia, wildly
gesticulating toward her with his dripping hand. “I thought that first
lesson I gave him would be enough for him. To-night I’ll not leave him
till he’s in the same shape my boy is.”
He turned and started toward the door. Marcia threw herself before him.
“Wait, Martin! Wait!” she begged. “Don’t go to him feeling that way, you
might kill him!”
He thrust her roughly aside and the bleeding hand left its impress on
the breast of a white dress that she was wearing for his allurement.
“I’ll take devilish good care that I don’t kill him,” he said, “because
I cannot afford the scandal. Maybe you think I don’t know every hound of
the pack that would be at my throat if they had the slightest
encouragement. Maybe you think I don’t know the man who would lead in
running me down, if I gave him the least hint as to where he could find
an opening.”
He turned and started toward the stairway.
Jason had dropped on his pillow just as he was, and had fallen asleep,
his brain busy with the events of the evening. He was deep in the midst
of a wonderful dream. He had seen himself with flesh on his bones, hope
in his eyes, and pride in his heart. He made a surprising vision. He was
wearing clothing as beautiful as the suits that always had been worn by
Junior Moreland. He had seen himself, with the step of independence,
standing before the door of Mahlon Spellman. He had used the knocker and
had stepped inside. The great merchant had shaken hands with him and
with his most urbane gesture had indicated that he was to walk into the
parlour. He had boldly walked in, and in the presence of Mrs. Spellman
and his schoolmates, he had offered Mahala the bird. She had been in
such transports of joy as he had seen with his actual eyes that evening.
She had opened the cage door and the gold bird had left its perch and
flown to her finger; as she held it up, suddenly frightened at the faces
and the lights, it had darted swiftly above their heads and from the
open doorway.
Her cries of distress awakened him. His feet came to the floor and he
swung his body upright. Then he heard. He arose and took three steps to
the head of the stairs. He was unconscious that he had reached out and
picked up a small wooden stool that stood beside his bed to hold a
candle or water. He looked down the stairway. At its foot stood, what,
to the boy, seemed to be a monster fashioned from unyielding steel into
the shape of an inexorable ogre.
The distortion of Martin Moreland’s face seen from the angle at which
the boy was standing, was hideous. His mouthing threats were terrifying.
His uplifted hand was dripping blood. Something tightened in the breast
of the boy and arose in his throat, creeping back to his brain. Even as
he gazed, there mingled with the terror he knew a slow wonder, for he
was on a line with the locked door—that door inside which he had never
had a glimpse. It opened into a room full of light; he saw beautiful
furniture, dainty things, and silken hangings. Beside Martin Moreland,
trying to block his way, clinging to him, there was a woman, a stranger
woman, a woman that the boy never before had seen. She was wearing an
exquisite wrapper of snowy white, foaming with laces, falling to her
feet and heaping there as if she stood in a drift of snow.
At this apparition, Jason stared in dull wonder. Through the paralysis
of terror in his brain there filtered the thought that Marcia could be
made to look like that when the day came that he could give her
beautiful clothing and such a room. A white ray of moonlight from the
open window beside him fell on the boy and lighted the stairway. He saw
the banker’s awful hand crash against the breast of the woman. He heard
her cry of pain and pleading. He heard the thick, shaking voice shout:
“Save your damned mouthing! The chances are that I _will_ kill him
before I get through with him this time!”
The woman, in her feathery laces, was thrown aside; Martin Moreland
started up the stairway two steps at a time. When he was nearly two
thirds of the way up, Jason moved, the wooden stool curved a circle
around his head; then it crashed down with the combined strength of his
two arms of desperation.
Martin Moreland uttered a guttural, rasping grunt. He clutched at the
smooth sides of the walls but there was no supporting rail. Slowly his
body curved backward and went crashing down, and into the arms that were
stretched out, he fell, bearing the woman to the floor with him. Staring
dully, Jason saw her struggle up; saw her stretch the form of the banker
at the foot of the stairs; saw a hand reach across him to close the
door.
Jason turned, every line of his terrified face etched clear in the
moonlight. He went straight to the window and climbing through it, slid
down the slanting roof of the lean-to, and dropping to the ground,
turned his face toward the adjoining pasture and the woods back of it,
and with all the strength he could summon, ran for cover, for the
protection of the darkness that the big trees afforded.
Kneeling on the floor beside the banker, Marcia ran her hand across his
temple and was horrified to find that it was covered with a sticky, warm
red. She staggered to her feet, and hurrying to the kitchen, she brought
back a basin of water. But before she used it she again put brandy to
Moreland’s lips. For a few minutes she worked over him frantically. Then
she arose, and stepping across his body, she called up the stairway:
“I’m afraid you’ve killed him. Run, Jason, run! Run to the end of the
earth and never come back!”
She listened, but there was no sound and no answer. She glanced
backward, and then with flying feet, she climbed the stairs until her
head was level with the floor of the garret, and in the pale light she
searched the empty room and the vacant bed. Then she hurried back and
renewed her ministrations.
It was a long time before Martin Moreland opened his eyes. Another long
time elapsed before he allowed her to assist him to her room, where he
dropped upon the bed and lay struggling to attain self-control.
“Can you feel if my skull is cracked?” he asked Marcia.
“I was afraid to try,” she answered. “I don’t think that it is.”
“Feel!” he said. “Push against the scalp hard. See if it gives any, if
you can detect a seam.”
With sick eyes and nauseated lips, Marcia knelt beside Martin Moreland
and felt his temple, ran her fingers through the thick, light hair
covering his head.
“I am quite sure it is only a surface cut,” she said.
Strengthened by the brandy and recovering slightly from the shock,
Martin Moreland stopped raving. In slow, deliberate pauses of finality
he laid down the law: “I will not risk coming in contact with that hound
pup again,” he said. “After this he’ll shift for himself. After this you
are going to live where such a scene cannot be repeated. You can get
ready what you want to take with you. You are going to leave this house
inside of an hour, if my legs will carry me down town.”
Despite her entreaties, he arose and staggered from the house. It was
not an hour later until a dray stood before the door. The beautiful room
was dismantled, and into the night, with her personal belongings heaped
around her, Marcia was driven from the only home she had.
CHAPTER V
“THE VERDICT GOES AGAINST JEZEBEL”
Jason, fleeing through the darkness of a thicket at the approach to the
forest, was running in headlong terror. He was ripped by thorns, rasped
by blackberry vines. He was in no condition to think. He was escaping an
enormous, blood-dripping hand clutching at his back in a threat against
his life. Staring ahead of him, he ran wildly; he did not realize where
his flying feet were taking him until he fell into a mass of warm,
living things. A shriek of terror broke from his lips. Then the odour of
cattle, the heavy breathing, and the slow arisings around him told him,
even in his frenzy of fear, that he was among harmless creatures. He
looked back to see the meadow lying white behind him. He could be seen
plainly across it, so again he ran with all his might for the shelter of
the forest. Into the darkness of its outstretched arms he plunged for
refuge. He could not see where he was going. Repeatedly he ran against
trees until he was bruised, half stunned, and finally, when his strength
was almost exhausted, he fell across a big log and allowed his body to
slide to earth regardless of what might happen to him. Throwing up his
arms, he pillowed his head upon them while a dry sob tore from his lips.
He was only a boy. He was not quite sixteen. There was no one who loved
him, and there was no one who cared if the banker did kill him. There
was no help from heaven above or the earth upon which he lay. In his
confused state, it appealed to him that very likely he had killed the
rich and powerful banker. What would be done to him if he had, he could
not imagine, but he knew that it would be done swiftly, it would be done
cruelly. Twice he had heard the threat to kill him. The first sob bred
others. His face dropped against the cold, damp mosses of the log and he
cried until he was exhausted. Then his breath came more evenly; his eyes
slowly closed, and presently, with the quick reactions of youth, he was
resting.
He had only slept a few minutes when there came in contact with his face
a nauseating odour and the touch of a furred creature from which he drew
back with a terrified scream. In the darkness he could see a pair of
big, gleaming green eyes. He could not know that it was only a coon
carrying a chicken taken from his own hen house. He could not know that
the mouthful of chicken prevented the coon from recognizing the man
odour until it had stepped upon him.
Jason sprang to his feet and went plunging through the forest again. His
next period of exhaustion found him at a thicket of spice brush and he
sank down beside it and lay panting for breath. It was only a short
respite until a great, horned owl, screaming with the panther scream of
its species when food hunting, plunged into the bushes, its wings wide
spread, to scare out small, sheltered birds. This owl cry was as
blood-curdling as that of any animal. Jason was so terrified that once
more he went lunging forward until he fell in utter exhaustion and lay
unconscious.
That morning Junior Moreland and his father faced each other across the
breakfast table each having a bandaged head. In his heart, each of them
was furious over his condition. Junior expressed the opinion to his
mother that some one had hit him accidentally when throwing at a
prowling cat or a loose animal. Mr. Moreland explained that he had been
compelled to work late at the bank. As he was locking the door on
leaving, some one had struck him a terrible blow on the head—struck him
so forcefully that he had fallen as if he were dead, which evidently
frightened the burglar so that he ran away without taking his watch and
the big diamond ring that he always wore on his left hand.
These explanations were offered for the satisfaction of Mrs. Moreland.
She sat in a sort of stupefaction, looking from her husband to her son,
her mind filled with slow wonder, with persistent questionings, with
sickening forebodings. She kept asking for details, when in her heart
she knew they were lying to her. She so fervently desired to accept
their word that she asked for particulars in the hope that one or the
other might afford her a small degree of heart-ease by telling her
something so convincing that she could believe it and not feel like a
fool in so doing.
As Mr. Moreland left the breakfast table, he said to Junior: “Come up to
the bathroom a minute. I want to be sure your head is all right before
you risk going to school.”
Once inside the most elaborate of the three bathrooms of Ashwater,
Moreland Senior closed the door and faced Moreland Junior.
“Now, out with it, young man,” he said.
Moreland Junior looked at his father speculatively.
“I told you the truth last night, Dad,” he said. “I didn’t see who did
it, but, of course, it was Jason. There isn’t any one else who would
have dared. He’s had it in for me since that time he spoiled my suit,
and you had him licked for it.”
A slow grin broke over Junior’s face. He looked at his father with an
impudent leer. His eyes focussed on the surgical bandages decorating the
Senior Moreland’s head, and then slowly and deliberately, he said: “He’s
a darn good shot, ain’t he?”
Taken unexpectedly and in a tender spot, Moreland Senior caught his
breath sharply as he studied his son.
“Of course, that burglar stuff is all right to feed Mother,” said
Junior. “A woman will swallow anything, and Mother’s a regular boa
constrictor, if you tell it to her real impressively. But you needn’t
dish out that burglar dope to me. You didn’t have luck to brag of
manhandling Jason for busting my head, did you, Dad?”
Moreland Senior lifted his right hand, also in surgical bandages, and
then with the tips of the injured member, he slowly felt across his
damaged head. He leaned forward to look at his reflection in the mirror.
“For God’s sake, don’t come to the bank to-day,” he said. “It’s going to
look damned funny to the people of this town to see both of us in
bandages. Keep your mouth shut and leave this to me. I’ll see to it that
you don’t come in contact with that scorpion in school again. He don’t
know it, but he’s through going to a school that I run.”
Moreland Senior lifted the hurt hand toward the blue of the bathroom
ceiling and eased his soul of mighty oaths. He swore that he would yet
punish Jason to within an inch of his life; that he never should enter
the high school again; and that whatever he attempted in life should be
a failure.
Junior reinforced his wavering legs by taking a seat on the broad wooden
rim surrounding the tin bath tub, while he looked at his father
speculatively.
“Dad,” he asked slowly, “why the hell have you got it in so strong for
Jason Peters? He can’t help it because his mother is a washerwoman and
he can’t produce anything in the shape of a father. Every one’s got to
admit he has the best brains of any boy in my class. I hate the
pasty-faced, mewling thing, but I’m forced to tell you that there’s
something in him when he can stand at the head of his classes, and when
he can get away with you and me both the same night.”
Then Junior squared his shoulders, threw up his handsome bandaged head,
and laughed until he started a pain that stopped the laughter. The
Senior Moreland hurriedly left the bathroom, closing the door behind him
with undue emphasis.
Among the thick branches of the Ashwater forest there were a few small
openings. A brilliant morning ray of October sunshine found one of these
and shot its level beam straight into the pallid face of a sleeping boy
curled on the damp, frosty ground. Stiff with cold in his physical
frame, stiff with terror yet in his heart, Jason opened his eyes, deeply
set in an attractive framework, a forehead of intelligence above, the
remainder lean and intellectual. At first he was so numbed that it was
difficult to realize where he was or how he had got there. Then slowly
he arose and made his way to the sunlight of the meadow; there he sat on
the stump of a felled tree and began an effort to command a continuous
procession of thought. He began as far back as he could remember, and
year by year, he came down the progression of his days. He tried to
figure out why the woman with whom he had lived had not been to him as
other mothers were to their sons. She had worked hard, they had been
poor; but many women in the village had worked harder, had larger
families and been less capable of taking care of them. He had seen all
of them evince for their children some degree of solicitude and of love.
He could recall neither of these things ever having been proffered him.
He tried to figure out why the fact that Martin Moreland owned the house
in which they lived, should give him the right repeatedly to enter it
late at night and attack him physically. Of course, Junior had lied to
his father. He lied to every one when a lie suited his purpose better
than the truth. He lied habitually to his mother, to his playmates, to
his teachers; but even so, Jason could not understand why his teachers
were not left to deal with him, as they were with other boys in case of
wrong doing. By and by, he remembered the long walk he had made to
Bluffport for the canary which he had bought with some of the money he
had saved for his own use, earned by doing extra work on Saturdays and
of nights and mornings and during summer vacations in the grocery of
Peter Potter. He had understood why Mahala could not invite him to her
party, and he understood as surely that she would have done it if she
could; and that made everything concerning her all right with Jason. To
his mind, the will to do was in no way related to the power of
execution. Because Mahala wanted to invite him, he had thought deeply,
and the loveliest thing he could think of in connection with her was a
bird, as gold as her hair, that spent its life in spontaneous song,—the
tiny, domestic creature that loved the bars of the only home its kind
had known for generations and would have been terrified and lost outside
them. He had been compelled to walk far and fast, to beg rides when he
could, in order to cover the distance, and get Peter Potter’s hand to
frame the note for him that he tied upon the cage, in time for the
party. He had left the bird at her door; he had seen Mahala love it. He
had felt her hand on his arm, her gift thrust into his fingers; he had
heard her voice urging him to protect himself; but not one word had she
said to chide him for the impulse that had caused him to tear the piece
of brick from the border of Mrs. Spellman’s flower bed and send it
smashing against the head of the boy who had dared to touch her roughly,
to lay the hateful red of his full-lipped mouth on her delicate face.
The sunlight slowly warmed Jason and comforted him. He began to feel the
gnawing of hunger. He remembered with a shock that almost toppled him
off the stump, that all the honours of the previous evening had been
his. He had watched the party from the vantage of a maple tree outside
the parlour window, and it had been a long time before he had gained the
courage to set his gift before the door, ring the bell, and rush back to
his viewpoint. Now he recalled the fact, that while Junior’s gift had
been shown to the other children and examined and exclaimed upon, it was
his gift that Mahala had taken into her arms. He did not even have to
shut his eyes to see her face strained against the wires of the cage. He
could hear her voice crying: “Oh, you dear little bird, I love you!” in
Billings’ cattle pasture quite as plainly as he had heard it the
previous night.
Jason drew a deep breath and stood up and tested his strength. So far as
Junior was concerned, he would undertake to handle him in the future,
not from ambush, not with the help of a piece of brick. He would engage,
by the strength of his arms and the tumult in his heart, to meet Junior
as man met man upon any occasion.
Then he advanced a degree further in his progression, only to face the
power of the banker. How was it that a beautiful woman in fine clothing
appeared in his humble home; that she called the banker “Martin”; that
she dared lay her hands upon him; that she tried to stop him from coming
up the stairs mouthing his threats to kill; that she endured the blow
from his blood-dripping hand? Who could the woman of foaming laces and
arresting beauty have been save Marcia Peters? In his heart Jason always
had called the woman with whom he lived “Marcia Peters.” She never had
taught him to call her “mother.” He never had attempted the familiarity
even when a small child. She had said to him: “Marcia will give you a
glass of milk.” He had said to her: “Marcia, please give me a piece of
bread.” How was it that in his life with her she was plain and homely,
bending over a washtub, quietly mending laces and embroideries, while
behind a locked door there was a room full of light, of delicate colour,
of fashionable clothing, a room from which emanated flower perfumes and
the tang of wine, a room with which the banker must have been familiar
since he stepped from it laying down the law of outrage?
Jason’s shoulders were square and his face was toward home now. But some
way, as he took the first step in that direction, in his heart he felt
that he was slightly taller, stronger, different from the boy he had
been the night before. He might get no satisfactory answer, but there
were questions he intended to ask. He had no idea what he would find at
the other side of the meadow. Would Martin Moreland be lying dead at the
foot of the stairs? Would Marcia have dragged him into the locked room?
Would she tell him to go and dig a deep place in the forest? Would they
carry Martin Moreland out the coming night and lay him in it, and must
they walk the remainder of their lives with a horrible secret stiffening
their mouths and taunting their brains?
As he mulled these problems over and over in his mind he reached his
back door. He realized that something portentous had happened. There
were many heavy footprints, deeply cut wagon tracks; the cow was not
calling from the shed; his white chickens that he had earned through the
medium of Peter Potter, were not walking in their yard calling for their
breakfast. He laid his hand upon the kitchen door, and tried to open it,
only to find that it was locked. Then he went to the front door which
was locked, while across it there was nailed a board upon which was
printed in big, black letters: “This property for sale.” Through the
window he could look into the house and see that it was empty. Then he
knew that the woman he had always thought of as his mother had abandoned
him. Marcia must have been the woman that he had seen the night before.
He sat on the top step and began to remember again. He remembered many
things—little things. The rubber gloves she wore when she was washing.
She had said that they were to protect her fingers so that she could
handle laces and fine mending. He remembered the jealously locked door
and the glimpse he had had inside it the previous night. How could she
have emptied the house and disappeared in that length of time without
the aid of a powerful influence? He had seen the powerful influence in
the grim figure with the uplifted hand. He had seen her dare to touch
the banker. He had heard her call him “Martin,” he had seen the mark of
his bloody hand on her white breast. She had been roughly flung aside as
if she were a creature worthy of no consideration.
Suddenly Jason found that his face was buried in his rough, lean hands,
while his body was torn once more with deep, dry sobs that rasped his
being until the soles of his feet twitched on the board walk. When he
had cried until he was exhausted, he slowly arose, and going around the
house, he pumped some water and bathed his face and hands, drying them
with a forgotten towel hanging on the back porch. He combed his hair
with his fingers and straightened his clothing as best he could. He
turned his face in the direction of the only friend he had in the world
to whom he could go.
On the way, he made a detour and passed the bank on the opposite side of
the street. Then he lingered until he saw Martin Moreland cross from the
wicket of the paying teller to the private office of the President.
Jason knew him by his height, his form, his bandaged head. The face of
the boy took on the look of a man as he went on his way.
There was a lull in the business of the morning when Jason walked into
the grocery of Peter Potter. Peter was precisely what his name
implied—British, English of birth, as all Potters have a right to be,
stable of character as all Peters have a right to be; the rock that a
discerning mother had discovered in his small face before she had
decorated him with the Peter appellation. Unquestionably, Peter had not
been as progressive as he might have been. He had been faithful in the
grocery business, but he had lacked talent. There were a thousand things
that he should have been doing in the morning lull; instead he was
smoking a pipe and contentedly stroking a cat. His florid face was very
round, his bright eyes were twinkly blue. A hint of shrewdness and
penuriousness lay in the lines around them; more than a hint of
stubbornness lay in the breadth of his chin. Conservatism was written
all over his baggy breeches and his gingham shirt, but no one would have
dared to look at Peter Potter and say that he was not immaculately clean
in person, honest in disposition, while the discerning might have
surmised that he was misinformed as to the size of his palpitator. Peter
prided himself upon being close.
Jason felt sufficiently well acquainted with Peter to venture a
familiarity. Now Jason was not given to familiarities, but he had spent
a searing night in the woods, he had spent the morning in Billings’
pasture and at his deserted home. He had reached a decision, and that
decision was that he was utterly alone in the world, that he had his own
way to make, and that he must begin by using his wits. And so, in
desperation, he thrust his past behind him, and spiritually as naked as
at the hour of his birth and equally as forsaken, he stood before Peter
Potter. In a voice that sounded peculiar to himself and that caught
Peter in an unaccustomed way, Jason said quietly: “Peter, I have decided
that the time has come when you need a partner in your business.”
Peter Potter lifted the cat by each of its fore legs and setting one of
its hind feet upon either of his knees, carefully surveyed its white
belly and the exquisitely lined tortoise shell of its back, and replied:
“Who says I haven’t had a partner for lo, these many years? Hasn’t
Jezebel performed signal service when she’s kept this place free of rats
and mice?”
“She surely has,” answered Jason, “but your store isn’t going to regain
its position as the leading grocery of Ashwater merely by being free of
rats and mice—keeping a cat in their stead. Many people don’t like cats
in groceries.”
Peter considered this as he carefully set the cat upon the floor and
with a shove of his foot told her to busy herself about her predestined
occupation. Then he lifted his eyes to Jason and was rather surprised to
notice how the boy had grown since the last time he had looked at him
carefully. Maybe his height was due to the fact that Jason was standing.
Peter got upon his feet in order to bring his bulk more nearly on a
level with Jason, and when he reached a level with the boy, he noticed
that height was not the only attainment since he had last looked at him
searchingly. His face had so many things in it that Peter blinked and
turned his eyes from it. It was almost as if he had looked into a holy
of holies where the eyes of a human being had no right to intrude. He
wondered what could have happened to the boy in twelve hours that had
turned him into a man.
There was something so heart-stirring in Jason’s face that Peter
Potter’s voice was husky as he asked: “Why do you think I need a
partner?”
Jason replied: “You need a driver who won’t race your delivery horse
when he’s out of your sight. You need a clerk who will weigh your goods
carefully, charge what he should, and use sense about giving credit. You
need a partner who will put all the money he is paid into your cash
drawer, and who won’t spend his spare time fishing from your raisin jar
and your cracker barrel.”
Peter Potter moistened his lips with an interested tongue and ventured a
study of Jason’s face.
“Meaning you?” he inquired tersely.
Jason took off his hat and tried to see how tall he could look. He
bravely answered: “Yes, Peter, meaning me. I could do a lot of things
that would be a big help to you, if you would give me a free hand here
until I could show you what I could do.”
Peter reflected. “I don’t see how you’re going to do so very much in
what time you have mornings and evenings; really to perform a miracle
you’d need more of the week than Saturday.”
“You are right,” said Jason. “All the time there is, I can give to you.
I’m not going to school any more.”
Peter shook his head.
“No, Jason,” he said finally, “that won’t do. Eddication is a blasted
good thing for any boy or girl to have I’ve taken a good deal of pride
in you, bein’ top notch of your classes. I’ve figured that I’d buy you a
purty nice present the night you gradiate with the honours of your
class.”
Then Jason looked Peter through and through. A big warm surge of comfort
suffused his wiry body. How wonderful! Peter Potter was proud of him! He
had been planning secretly to buy him a gift. Jason forgot about how
tall he was trying to look.
“Peter,” he said, “I’m in trouble this morning. If you keep your eyes on
Hill Street, you’ll notice that both the banker and his precious son are
wearing bandaged heads. And, between us, I am proud to admit that the
bandages are worn in deference to the accuracy of my aim: in the case of
the son, with a piece of brick, in that of the father, with a heavy
stool. There wouldn’t be the slightest use in my going to school this
morning, Peter. I’d be expelled before noon. I am staving off that
action by staying away. There isn’t room in the same class any longer
for the son of the Ashwater banker and the son of the Ashwater
washerwoman.”
Peter Potter lifted a plump hand and drew it across the lips of his
wide-open mouth, and then his jaws came together with a snap and from
between his teeth he said slowly: “So _that’s_ the lay of the land?”
Jason nodded.
“Yes, Peter,” he said, “‘that’s the lay of the land.’ You’re the only
friend I’ve got on earth. Will you let me come into your grocery and see
if I can clean it up and get back some of your business, and help you as
a boy ought to help his father? And will you let me have room among the
barrels at the back, or upstairs, where I can set a trundle-bed?”
Peter studied Jason and reflected. Then he delivered himself of his
conclusion in the speech of fifty years of association.
“It’s a blasted shame,” he said. “It hadn’t oughter be. This town
oughter riz up an’ stand beside you and see that you get your schoolin’.
But I guess the truth is that Martin Moreland has got so many men in his
clutches that they don’t hardly know their souls are their own. I could
have been in better shape myself, if I’d ’a’ borrowed from him when I
needed money darn bad, but I’d said I wouldn’t do it, and I didn’t do
it, and so I let my stock run down and I lost trade. But I figure that
I’m one of about half a dozen men in town that he ain’t got his shackles
on. It appeals to me that the rest of ’em comes mighty close to being
critters that will jump through most any kind of a hoop that he holds
before ’em when he cracks his whip. If you got your mind fully made up
to this, you bet your sweet life you can have a bed in the upstairs.
We’ll push the barrels back and straighten the boxes and run a partition
across and fix you a nice place. Be a protection to the store to have
you there. What was you figurin’ on about terms?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Jason. “You give me enough food, enough milk and
butter and dried beef and eggs and green stuff, to just barely keep my
stomach from cramping and pinching all the time, and let me work a
month. Then you figure yourself what I’ve been worth to you. And if you
will, help me to buy the bed. The truth is, I spent every cent I had
yesterday.”
“All right,” said Peter Potter. “Things are always pretty dead about
now. Let’s go right up and push back the clutter. Then I’ll go over to
Jefferson’s furniture store and fix you up a bed.”
So together they climbed the creaking stairs and piled back barrels and
boxes until they cleared space in the front part of the storeroom above
the grocery upon which to stand a small bed for Jason.
While Jason washed windows, swept the floors, and began to dust the
boxes and bottles upon the shelves, Peter Potter went to the furniture
store, and out of the bigness of his heart, instead of a trundle-bed he
bought a neat oak bed with real springs, a mattress, and a pillow. He
felt almost militant as he marched into Mahlon Spellman’s dry-goods
store to buy a pair of pillow cases, two pairs of sheets, a heavy
blanket and a comfort. That night Jason looked at the stained, cobwebby
ceiling above him, the battered walls surrounding him, and mentally
visioned the partition promised to shut him off from the remainder of
the storeroom.
When they were ready to lock up for the night, Peter Potter bolted the
doors on the inside, went back to his personal chair near the big iron
stove, and sitting down with the tortoise-shell cat in his lap, motioned
Jason toward another chair.
“Now,” he said, “go ahead. Tell me all about this. I ain’t intending to
go home tale bearin’ to Mirandy; I just want to have the satisfaction of
knowin’ in my own soul where I stand regardin’ the Morelands.”
So Jason began with the time of the tormenting of Rebecca and detailed
occurrences up to the previous night. Peter sat quietly stroking
Jezebel. Sometimes through narrowed lids, he watched the boy; sometimes
his attention seemed wholly taken up with the cat. But when Jason had
finished the last word he had to say, not forgetting the first look
inside the locked door, Peter Potter sat still and meditated. Then
surreptitiously he scrutinized Jason. He studied in detail the set and
colour of the hair on his head, the look from his eyes, the shape of his
features, the build of his body, his hands as they hung idly before him.
Then he dipped back into what he called the “ancient history” of
Ashwater, and thought over reports and rumours that had been current in
the town a good many years before.
When Jason had finished, Peter arose without any comment upon what he
had been told. He set the cat carefully on the floor and lightly shoved
her from him with his foot.
“Jezebel,” he said, “you’ve been a queen of a cat and a fine mouser, but
your reign is over. There are them as object to cats promenading on the
counters and sleepin’ in the cracker barrel. Go chase yourself! Vamoose!
Try Thornton’s drug store. More of the stuff there is bottled. Farewell,
forever!”
Peter recovered the cat, and standing with her in his arms, he said to
Jason: “I think that you’ve done about the only thing left for you. I
believe after this you can’t go back to school. I’ll get the carpenter
to put in that partition as quick as he can, and if you’d like the walls
fresh, we’ll cover ’em with a cheap paper, and you may get some blinds
to put on the windows. You may go to Thornton’s drug store and get you a
hand lamp if so be you want to keep up your studies. You may get a
little table to match your bed at Jefferson’s, and a chair, and then I
feel you’ll be better fixed than you’ve ever been before.”
He locked the store for the night and carried Jezebel across the street,
where he formally presented her to the druggist.
The next morning Mahala entered Peter Potter’s grocery with an order to
give to Peter, but when she saw Jason behind the counter, she went to
him with it instead. As she handed the slip to him she said: “You’ll
have to hurry, Jason, or you’ll be late to school. I missed you
yesterday.”
Jason slowly shook his head. To have saved his life he could not have
kept a couple of big tears from squeezing from his eyes and rolling down
his white cheeks. He turned his back and swallowed hard. He fought with
all his might to wink away the tears. Mahala looked at him in
consternation. She could plainly see that he had suffered terribly since
she last had seen him. All the rising tide of fair play, of compassion
in her heart, surged up to her lips and she began to quiver.
“Oh, Jason!” she cried. “What happened to you? What did they do to you?”
Then Jason turned to her.
“Nothing,” he said. “They didn’t get me, but it’s no use for me to go
back to school. I’d be expelled before noon, you know I would.”
Mahala stood still, thinking. She lifted her clear, steady eyes to the
equally clear, steady eyes of the boy before her. “I’m afraid you would,
Jason,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t have hit him.”
Jason considered that a minute and then he said conclusively: “Yes, I
should have hit him. What I did that was wrong was to throw something
and hide among the bushes. If I had been a man I’d have beaten him as he
deserved with my fists on the street. It was not because I was afraid of
him; it was because I dared not be seen where I was. You understand,
don’t you?”
Mahala stood so still that it scarcely seemed as if she were breathing.
“Yes,” she said in a hushed voice, “I understand.”
At those words of comfort the look on Jason’s face changed to one of
tormented heart hunger. He said abruptly: “I can’t tell you all that
happened. Junior’s father came to our house threatening to kill me. If
you pass the bank to-day, you may notice that the Senior Moreland has
had an accident. That other time he came to our house, up to my room,
and beat me almost to death. This time I flung a stool at him half way
up the stairs and jumped from the window. Whatever is the matter with
him is what I did to him. But I got my punishment fast enough. I thought
I’d be hanged for killing him. I stayed all night in the woods and it
was cold and awful. I went back to find Marcia gone and the house empty,
but I’ve got a chance to work here for Peter.”
Then Jason stopped and shut his mouth and held it stiff and tense, and
by sheer will power, he kept back the impending tears. A slow red had
crept into his cheeks and there was colour in his lips. Mahala was hurt
intensely. Without a thought for anything, she crowded close to Jason.
She laid her hands on his sleeve.
Across the grocery Peter Potter had been watching them intently. The
street was full of people. Two women were heading toward his door. He
walked back and placed his body between Mahala and Jason and the line of
the door. He laid one arm across Jason’s shoulder and then he said to
Mahala casually: “Now you had better step along to school, little lady.
Jason’s a good boy. I’m goin’ to fix him a room above the grocery where
he can study his books and keep up with his lessons at night. I’d be
deeply obliged, and so would he, if you could manage to run in once a
week and tell him how far his class has gone with the lessons.”
Instantly Mahala stepped back. She would not venture another look at
Jason, but she met the eyes of Peter frankly, while in her most gracious
manner she held out her hand.
“Thank you very much, Peter,” she said, “I think it’s splendid of you to
help Jason, because you and I know that when he is the smartest boy in
the class, he shouldn’t be forced to quit school.”
She turned and started from the grocery. Half way down the aisle, and
directly facing the women who were entering, she wheeled, with a
graceful gesture of remembrance.
“Peter,” she called in her clear voice, “Mother says that she hasn’t had
a bite of such delicious ham between her teeth in two or three years as
those last ones you got from the country. She wants you to save another
one for us.”
Then she smiled on both the advancing women. “Good morning, Mrs. Sims.
Good morning, Mrs. Jordan,” she said in her very best manner. “I was
telling Peter to save another one of his delicious hams for us. You
really should try them.”
Then Mahala went on her way to school, and she failed in her lessons all
day because her mind was not on her work. She longed to ask her mother
several important questions, but dared not on account of the bird and
Junior’s injury. She was afraid to ask the questions to which she wanted
answers of Mrs. Williams, for fear she would mention to Mahala’s mother
what she had been asked. She dared not tell that Jason had been forced
from school, lest he be connected in the minds of her parents with
Junior. For many days she carried a head full of disquieting thought, a
heart of aching protest.
Mrs. Sims bought one ham, Mrs. Jordan bought two. After they had gone,
Peter Potter planted himself in front of Jason and shook his head sadly.
Then he said: “Now look here, my lad, don’t you get any silly notions
into your noddle. You’ve got to understand that the richest and the
prettiest girl in this town ain’t in any way connected with you. She’s
sorry for you, same as I am, because she knows you ain’t gettin’ a
square deal.”
Jason answered quietly: “I know, Peter. You needn’t worry.”
He went into the back room and sat down on a pickle keg, and with a
brush and a can of black paint, on a smooth piece of pine before him, he
began to paint. After he had worked for half an hour, Peter Potter
tiptoed up behind him and looked over his shoulder. He read upon one
piece of pine: “I dare you to look at this and not want to eat it!” and
on the other: “We have turned over a new leaf. Have you?” Peter slipped
away and indulged in the unusual occupation of deep and concentrated
thought. His eyes were following Jason while he cleaned out one of the
show windows, set the new sign of challenge in it, and surrounded it
with bread, cake, cookies, and every delicious food in the grocery that
he could display in the open. Through the other freshly washed window,
the passer-by might read the leaf sign and see an assortment of cheese
and pickles, and half of a ham that looked as pink as a piece of coral
framed in a broad white ring of sweet, sugar-cured fat. A freshly dusted
coffee canister stood near it. A big box of lima beans flanked it on one
side and the brown and gold of smoked herring was on the other; along
the back, an open keg of whitefish and another of mackerel, with samples
of their contents attractively displayed.
Peter Potter stepped outside to reconnoitre. As he went, he noticed that
the grime of years had been removed from his doors, which revealed the
fact that they seriously needed a coat of paint. He looked through the
windows with the fresh signs surrounded by such food as he did not know
that he possessed, because he never had seen it so displayed. He stood
there in the morning sunlight intently studying each of the windows.
Presently, he realized that he was not alone. Two women with their
market baskets on their arms had been attracted by the new display. He
heard one of them say to the other: “Why, do you know, we ain’t had
mackerel in a long time, and there’s nothing I like better.”
“And doesn’t that ham look good?” said the other. “What about some of
them limy beans with cream and butter on them? Let’s go in.”
Peter stepped forward and opened his door.
“Ladies,” he said in his politest manner, “I’ve turned over that new
leaf for sure and certain. I’m going to show this town what really good
eating is. Walk right in and see for yourselves whether what I’m tellin’
you isn’t the truth.”
Then a shadow fell across Peter Potter’s shoulder. He looked up, quite a
distance up, to find himself in what to most of the village of Ashwater
was the portentous presence of the village banker—of less portent to
Peter Potter than to many others, because while Peter had fallen into
second place through lack of initiative, he was not in debt. He did have
a balance in his favour, but for reasons of his own, his balance was not
in the bank of Martin Moreland. Peter followed Martin Moreland through
the door. He had difficulty in keeping the lines of his rotund face in
order. His soul was bathed in a secret flood of pleasure. He could not
remember having been so pleased in years and years as he was now pleased
to see for himself the substantial surgical bandage swathing the
headpiece of the suave banker, and in noticing that his right hand was
thrust into the front of the double-breasted coat that he wore to
reinforce the impression of authority and circumstance that he desired
to convey to his fellow men.
And Peter knew, also, that it was time to set his feet very firmly upon
his own floor and to unchain that bulldog credited to the possession of
every Briton by birth, whether he be in his native land or the land of
his adoption. Luckily, Peter had his fair share of canine inclinations
in fine working order because of some years of disuse. He knew perfectly
well that Martin Moreland was not interested in his new signs and his
attractive display of food. He knew that he had entered his place of
business in order to search his aisles with keen eyes and see for
himself if Jason were working there. Peter’s eyes were sharply watching
Martin Moreland’s face as Jason came down inside the counter on his way
to the scales bearing a couple of dripping mackerel upon a sheet of
wrapping paper. Peter’s heart turned over in his body and then stood
still when Jason, looking up from the scale of weights, encountered the
glaring eyes of the banker fixed upon him, and said smoothly and evenly:
“Good morning, Mr. Moreland. I’ll take your order as soon as I finish
with these ladies.”
Now Peter knew that Martin Moreland was not accustomed to waiting till
ladies had been served, especially if the “ladies” carried market
baskets on their arms and wore white aprons and cheap shawls across
their shoulders. To use Peter’s own description of the situation to his
wife that night, he “was havin’ a bully time.—Had to turn away for a
minute to keep from snortin’ right in Moreland’s face.”
The banker followed Peter down the aisle and jostled him roughly with
his elbow as he said to him: “Now you look here, Peter Potter. Answer me
this. Who’s running this town?”
A very devil of perversity possessed Peter, for he answered: “Well, if
you really think you are, your head looks like you’re makin’ a bally
mess of it.”
It had been evident to the employees of the bank that the attempted
hold-up that Martin Moreland reported had upset his temper to quite as
great extent as it had disfigured his head and his influential right
hand. There was nothing soothing to the ragged Moreland nerves in
Peter’s retort.
“I came in here,” said Martin Moreland, “to give you just fifteen
minutes to get that scum of the brothel out of your store.”
Peter Potter cocked his head on one side and looked at Martin Moreland.
“Martin,” he drawled slowly, “ain’t you makin’ a fine, large mistake?
Didn’t you forget to study your books before you came rampagin’ into my
place of business? As I recollect, I don’t owe you a red cent. You ain’t
even one of my reg’lar and influential customers. They’s only one bill
on my books that I’m carryin’ in your name and tain’t anything I’m proud
of. I could spare it without a mite of trouble. Before you undertake to
run my business, go back and stick your nose well down in your own. I
ain’t goin’ to turn Jason out, and if you undertake to bother him, I got
this same private account, that I’m going to increase against you a
little in about a minute, that’d look peculiar to the deacons of your
church and to all and sundry. If it’s the same to you, I wish you’d step
out the way of my reg’lar customers!”
Peter Potter swung his front door wide and held it open.
In rage too deep for speech, Martin Moreland turned and started from the
grocery, but he was forced to stand aside, for at that minute, Rebecca
Sampson, with a smile of youthful innocence on her face, bearing her
white flag over her shoulder, filled the doorway.
She looked straight at Peter Potter, and as an evidence of a custom
between them, she held out her white flag and Peter Potter bowed his
bald, pink head and stepped under it with the kindliest kind of a “Good
morning!” The change in his voice and in his manner broke the nerve of
Martin Moreland, already at the breaking point. The oath he uttered was
shocking. Startled, Rebecca pushed back her bonnet and looked up at him.
A flash of loathing, of anger, crossed her face. She caught the white
symbol to her breast and edged to the farthest possible distance from
him permitted by the width of the store. She made her way back to where
she was accustomed to being served, muttering imprecations upon the head
of Martin Moreland that were quite equal to Martin’s best in strong
provocation.
In the high tide of anger, he took one step toward her. The resistant
force with which he came in arresting contact was nothing less than the
sturdy frame of Peter Potter in defensive attitude. Peter looked up at
Martin Moreland with fire in his eyes and a sneer on his lips.
“Get it through your pate,” he said tersely. “I’m one man out of a few
in this town that’s not a mite afraid of you. If we come to a show down,
I’ve got something to show that would interest the rest of the town, I
vow! I’ve asked you once to leave my store; now I wish you’d do it!”
Martin Moreland rushed through the door and turned in the direction of
the bank, where he collided with Jimmy Price. Jimmy, on his way to work,
had been interested by the extremely arresting pictures presented by the
windows of Peter Potter’s grocery that morning. Jimmy had started to
work with the feeling that he was comfortably fed, and had discovered,
as he viewed the display windows, that he was hungry. He found his mouth
watering for half a dozen different things. With his feet planted widely
apart and either hand at his waist band, he was giving himself over to
the gustatory delight of imagining which feature of the window display
he would most rather have served him piping hot in his wife’s best brand
of cookery. With eyes of longing he was studying the pink ham, the
blue-and-silver mackerel. He had almost decided that the mackerel,
boiled free of salt, slightly browned in butter, with a baked potato and
a cup of coffee, would be wholly satisfying, when he innocently resolved
himself into the immovable force coming in contact with a movable body.
Jimmy stood the impact amazingly well. Martin Moreland glanced off him
and reeled to one side. Jimmy was rather substantial; in that instant
his person converted itself into a materialization of the last straw for
Martin Moreland. Here was a creature, shaped like a man, wholly at his
mercy. The banker doubled his disabled hand into a fist, with which he
launched a crashing blow in the direction of the most substantial part
of Jimmy’s anatomy. Jimmy had recovered from the mackerel sufficiently
to realize that it was the mighty banker who had collided with him,
while the blow had careened him to one side. Through daily manipulations
of hoe, rake, and sickle, Jimmy had become almost a boneless creature.
He evaded the menace as lightly as he sank to work with sheep shears or
trowel, so that the fist of opulence shot over him and struck the window
casing instead with sufficient force to break open the slightly set
wounds, wrenching from the lips of its owner a hyena-like howl of
shredded anguish.
For one moment Martin Moreland was too badly hurt to think of his
position or his dignity—matters of his most constant concern. He was
almost reeling with nausea and spleen. He felt for his hat to see that
it was set as straight as possible above his bandages, and arranged his
coat. He thrust the hand, through which wiry slivers of pain were
shooting, into his bosom. He started toward the bank in what he hoped
was his most dignified manner.
Jimmy, completing the dive he had made to escape the arm of malevolence,
came to an upright position at the middle of the step leading to the
grocery. He did not in the least understand why, in the “land of the
free and the home of the brave,” he might not be permitted to stand on
the sidewalk and contemplate the deliciousness on display in Peter
Potter’s window if he chose. He did not understand why the august banker
should not have been paying sufficient attention to where he was going
not to collide with inoffensive human beings wholly within their rights.
He did not even try to understand why Martin Moreland had launched a
blow at him with a heavily bandaged hand, but it had caused hatred to
flare in his heart. He resolved, that if he ever got a chance, he would
show Martin Moreland that he was just as good as any old banker. He
wondered about the heavily bandaged head. As he looked after the
retreating figure, Jimmy became aware, as he always was aware of any
slight chance to be in the limelight, that a number of people on the
street and at the doors and windows of the different stores, were
watching the proceeding with intense interest. Immediately, Jimmy
straightened his figure, felt for his hat, set his coat, and thrusting
one hand into the front of it, strutted down the street in such exact
imitation of the stride of the banker that a roar went up the length of
the block; the louder people laughed the more exaggeratedly Jimmy kept
up his imitation.
Martin Moreland was conscious of being the butt of that shout of
laughter. He was certain that the creature he referred to as the “town
monkey” was performing some absurd antic behind his back which was
making him the one thing he loathed being above any other—a laughing
stock. His inherent pride was too strong to allow him even to glance
behind him. He would infringe on his dignity if he permitted himself to
pay the slightest attention to what he mentally denominated “the
rabble.” Exactly why the Senior Moreland should have felt in his heart
that the “boys grown tall” among whom he had been born and had lived all
his life, were “rabble” would be very difficult to explain. He was
perspiring freely with pain, with nervousness, while his heart was
almost suffocating him with anger as he mounted the steps and made his
way between the huge bronze dogs guarding the portal of the Ashwater
First National Bank, Martin Moreland, President.
CHAPTER VI
“THE GOLDEN EGG”
By what she could see in the October moonlight of the open spaces,
Marcia Peters, pounding over the highway, surrounded by her belongings,
imagined that she was on the way to the second largest town of the
county, Bluffport, a dozen or so miles from Ashwater. She recognized the
village when she was driven into it. She saw that she was passing the
business part of the town and the better residences, and at last, as in
Ashwater, she found herself on the extreme outskirts.
The dray stopped before a small house. The drayman unlocked the door,
carried in, and with small ceremony, dumped her clothing and furnishings
on the floor. Then he climbed on his wagon and drove away without having
spoken a word.
Marcia closed the door behind him, and from force of habit, turned the
key. She had been riding through the night until her eyes were
accustomed to the darkness. She had no provision for light, but through
the uncurtained windows she could see enough to distinguish the mattress
of her bed. As she was desperately tired, she pulled it to a bare spot
upon the floor, hunted a pillow, and lying down in her clothing, covered
her shoulders with her coat, and mental strain culminated in the blessed
surcease of tears.
Marcia whimpered to the darkness: “What had I to do with it? What is
fair or just about treating me like this?”
And again: “Where in the world can Jason have gone? I didn’t think he’d
have the spunk. He might have killed him.”
And later: “After the wreck of my life, after all the lies he’s told
me—to be cast off among strangers like this—I might have known!”
Then a last sobbing breath: “I did know. It’s been coming for a long
time. This is only a poor excuse—I did know!”
She was awakened in the morning by a burning ray of sunlight falling on
her face. At first she was too dazed to realize where she was or how she
came to be there. Slowly she arose and went to a window. She saw that
she was on a pretty street of a village, the outskirts of which gave
promise of being more attractive than had been her corresponding
location in Ashwater. Turning slowly, she went through the small house.
There were only three rooms, but they were much more attractive than the
rooms in which she had been living. Mechanically she began picking up
the expensive furnishings of her private room that had been hurriedly
bundled together and dumped roughly anywhere there was space to drop
them. In working at this business a few minutes, she collected her
thoughts and remembered that she had been through tense excitement and
nerve strain. She was dreadfully hungry. Through no fault of her own
that she could recall, she had been picked up in one place and set down
in another as if she were a piece of furniture instead of a woman
endowed with some degree of intelligence. She had not been asked whether
she would go, or, if she must move, where she wanted to locate. She had
not been given time to exercise any care with the really beautiful
things which had furnished her personal room. She had only a small sum
in her purse. There was no one in Bluffport with whom she was
acquainted. For over fifteen years she had cared for Jason. She had
become accustomed to him. One of the very greatest fights of her
difficult life had been to keep herself from becoming fond of him. The
threat that he would be taken from her any day had been constant. Dimly
she had realized for a long time that this hour was coming; and now it
had arrived. For a mistake of her youth, for the giving of her heart
when only her body had been coveted, she had paid the price of menial
position, of isolation, of spiritual degradation. She realized that
speedily she must face the town asking work with which to keep up her
long-time pretense of being self-supporting.
Her stomach reminded her that she must have food, or very speedily,
torturing headache would ensue. Marcia sat down on the mattress, took
her head between her hands, and for the first time in eighteen years
thought about herself instead of Martin Moreland. Suddenly there came to
her the sickening realization that she was no longer young. Looking her
mental problem in the face, she admitted that she was thirty-six. As
youth was reckoned in her day, a woman was considered reasonably aged at
forty. No doubt this was Martin Moreland’s first step in letting her
know that her reign was over. In retrospect, what a sorry reign it had
been!—veiled suspicion, mental humiliation, isolating employment,
heart-hunger for freedom to lift up her head and walk abroad with pride.
She felt reasonably certain that the problem facing her now was not one
of further concealment, but the necessity of being equal to taking over
the entire care of herself and making provision for hopeless old age.
Under the urge of hunger, she arose, found her hat, straightened her
clothing as best she could, and hunted her mirror. Setting it up, she
studied herself, not the self that Jason had known for nearly sixteen
years, but the secret self which was her real self—Marcia Peters without
the disfiguration of unbecomingly dressed hair and concealing clothing.
Every fibre of womanhood in her being rebelled against a return to the
disguise in which she had faced Jason and Ashwater all her life with
Martin Moreland. In starting a new life, in strange environment, whether
as formerly or alone, why should she not appear before the people as she
was? Why should she not seek occupation less humiliating than that of
washing the dirty clothes of another village? Staring into the mirror
and thinking, Marcia began pulling out drawers from her dresser, and
when she emerged from the house presently and locked its door behind
her, she was not a figure that Jason would have recognized before his
night of illumination.
She followed the street to the heart of the village, and entering a
restaurant, secured her breakfast. Then she decided, under the spiritual
reinforcement that developed from nourishing food, that she would at
least step into a few of the stores in Bluffport and look around her.
Possibly she could summon courage to ask if any of them were in need of
help. There, too, was her needle. She knew herself to be expert with
that. With small practice in fitting, she could make dresses for other
women as beautifully as she made them for herself. Why not a room over
some of these down-town stores, a modest sign announcing herself as a
dressmaker? Some attractive, progressive occupation, the stimulus of
ever so small a degree of human association, some relation—no matter how
remote—to the lives of other people. Never before had she allowed a
cloud of doubt and protest to gather to a storm head. Now the
culmination came quickly in a tempest that shook her being. She knew
that she was facing men, walking straightly; she felt as if she were at
the mercy of a tornado, half-blinded, feeling her way before her with
protesting, outstretched hands. For the first time in her thwarted,
unnatural life she needed friends so badly, that she felt the despair
and the hunger of that need, and while she walked mechanically, as the
storm in her heart grew in intensity, she realized that even more than
she needed friends, she needed God. That need made her think of Rebecca,
scorching under summer suns, struggling through winter snows, on her
self-imposed task of urging her world to pass under an emblem of
purity—poor Rebecca, demented, isolated, searching, ever searching, for
what? Preaching—scourged by the whips of adversity into thrusting her
timid self before the gaze of her world, preaching purity—why? Who sent
her on those missions? Marcia said to herself: “At least, it is a mercy
that her brain is dulled. Maybe she does not suffer mentally.”
As she went slowly along the street, after a time she found herself
interestedly studying the windows she passed. Her feet stopped in front
of a small wooden building centrally located. In either window of it,
flanking the entrance door, there were examples of exceedingly
attractive fall millinery miserably displayed. Marcia gripped her purse
tighter.
“A veil. I’ll say I need a veil,” she told herself.
Then she opened the door and stepped inside. Her quick eyes searched the
length of the store on either hand. As she looked her fingers itched to
use a dust cloth, to pick up the really beautiful hats and display them
to advantage, to rearrange the ribbon counter so that clashing colours
would not set her teeth in protest.
She glanced around her, and seeing no one, she slowly walked to the back
of the store. Everywhere it was stamped with what Marcia in her soul
denominated “skimpiness.” Even the hats that had been conceived in
beauty, fell short of culmination because of cheap material, too frugal
use of trimming. Pausing near the door that opened into the back room,
Marcia looked ahead, and there she saw the form of a small woman,
sitting beside a table piled with a disorderly array of wire forms and
linings, ribbon and velvet, and glaring autumnal flowers. Her arms were
crossed upon the table, her head buried in them, her shoulders shaking
with sobs. For one long minute Marcia surveyed the bowed head; then she
slowly turned her back and started down the aisle.
“Hm-m-m-m,” she said softly. “Two of us. I wonder what’s the matter with
her?”
She made her way to the front door and opened it; then she closed it
with sufficient force to be heard the length of the building, and with
firm steps she went toward the back room again. Half the length of the
aisle, she leaned on a display case, drumming with her fingers. Without
turning her head, from the corner of her eye, she saw the woman in the
back room rise and dab frantically at her face with her handkerchief.
Presently, she came toward Marcia and asked in a voice she was making
visible effort to control: “Was there something?”
Marcia looked at her intently. “Drab” was the adjective that sprang to
her mind. Hair lacking the lustre of life, skin needing manipulation and
the concealments of pink powder, deep facial lines of anxiety, eyes red
with futile tears, a disappointed flat chest, rounded shoulders; a woman
bilious from improper food and lack of exercise. Marcia smiled
brilliantly. The smile was child of the thought that had just occurred
to her. Washing might be a disqualifying occupation socially, but the
bent back, the rise and fall over the board, the muscular wringing, the
stretch to the line in hanging out and taking in, the steaming open of
the pores of the face and neck, the exercise on foot, the swing of the
iron—washing had no social standing, but daily exercise the round of the
year at its exactions never bred a Nancy Bodkin. Marcia could have wrung
Nancy like a wet sheet and hung her in the fresh air and sunshine to her
great benefit. Suddenly, she was thankful for the steaming and exercise
of every muscle of her body that had made and kept her a creature of
fresh face and perfect health.
“Yes,” she said deliberately to Nancy, “there are a number of things. I
wanted to see if I could find a veil. I’m a stranger in town. I came
this morning. I intend staying here. I noticed what a good central
location you’ve got and I wondered whether you’d like to rent me half of
your space and let me do dressmaking—or, maybe, you’d like a partner in
the millinery business?”
The woman behind the counter stared at Marcia with widely opened eyes
while her lower lip drooped.
“You—you’re a milliner?” she asked.
“No,” said Marcia, “I’m not a milliner. I never made a hat in my life.
But I can make stylish dresses. I do know how to keep a room clean, how
to display goods in an attractive manner.”
“Do you know anything,” asked the woman, her hands gripping the inner
edge of the showcase, “about keeping even—bills, and money, and things
like that?”
For the first time, in she could not remember when, Marcia laughed
aloud. Laughter was an unaccustomed sound on her lips. When she heard
the tones of it, she was so shocked that she stopped abruptly as if she
had committed an indiscretion.
“Yes,” she said, “I do know enough about business to run a place like
this without the least difficulty. To tell the truth, I’ve had a lot of
schooling on how business should be done to be successful. What have you
been doing? Letting your customers take away your goods without paying
for them, and now the bills are due, and you’ve no money to meet them?”
The woman nodded.
“Hm-m-m,” said Marcia. “Well, I could go out and collect all that I
could pry out of people. I could clean up this place. Maybe I could
convince your banker that he’d be safe in letting you have what you’d
need to tide you over till we could get things started on a new and safe
basis. Would you like to have me come in with you and try to help you
into really prosperous business?”
Suddenly the little woman across the counter, clasping a pair of
needle-roughened, shaking hands against her defrauded chest, looked with
the beseeching eyes of a starving creature at the face of the woman
opposite her.
“Oh, would you? Oh, would you, please?” she begged.
Marcia was taken unaware. She did not know that there was a soft place
remaining in her heart capable of the response she felt herself making
to that artless appeal.
“I certainly would,” she answered. “I’d be mighty glad for the chance. I
don’t know a thing in the world about you. You don’t know a thing in the
world about me. Shall we agree to take each other on trust, to ask no
questions, but start from now together and see what we can make out of
life?”
“I’d be tickled to death!” said the little woman, recklessly toppling
preconceptions and precautions of a lifetime.
“Is there room for me here?” inquired Marcia.
“Come and see what you think. And my name is Miss Nancy Bodkin,” said
the milliner, leading the way to the back room.
“Very well, Miss Nancy,” said Marcia. “My name is Miss Marcia Peters.
Let’s explore your living arrangements.”
Then she followed into the work room and found that there opened from it
a bedroom sufficiently large for two people, and back of it was the
combined dining room and kitchen in which Miss Nancy Bodkin had been
existing for many years. Looking about her, the fingers of the capable
Marcia tingled for order, cleanliness, fresh wall paper and paint, but
she sensibly reasoned that these things could come later.
“You know the ropes here,” she said. “Find me a drayman. I’ll go and
bring my things and we’ll begin business right away.”
That was how it happened that an hour later Marcia was back in the house
in the suburbs with a stout drayman standing at her elbow. There was no
possible way in which the drayman could know that Marcia was saying in
her soul as she handed him an article, “Soapsuds,” or that she was
saying as she discarded a certain piece of furniture or attractive
clothing, “Scarlet.” All he realized was that the woman was making a
division of the goods before them, and that the greater number and the
better part of the things he saw, she was leaving.
When Marcia had satisfied herself, she found a sheet of paper and a
pencil and she wrote: “I have bowed my head and passed under the White
Flag. I have taken nothing that was purchased with your money, since you
are far poorer than I.” There was no beginning to the note and no
signature.
When the drayman had carried the last load from the house, Marcia locked
the doors on the inside. She propped the note in a conspicuous place on
one of the pieces of furniture she was leaving and laid the key beside
it. Then going to the kitchen, she raised a window and climbing from it,
closed it behind her and followed down the street to the millinery shop.
There was such a fluttering in the breast of Nancy Bodkin that she could
scarcely breathe. She was scared to death over what she had done. Why
should a woman as attractive as this one, and having as fine clothing,
want to live with her and to share her business? She felt that she had
been wildly impractical. She should have consulted her minister and her
banker and several of her best customers. She should have learned who
the woman was and where she came from. And just when she was in a panic
of uncertainty and nervous doubts, Marcia returned and lifted the hat
from her head. She ran her fingers through her red-gold hair and drew a
deep breath.
“Now, then, in about two shakes we’ll get right down to the business of
straightening you out,” she said.
Nancy, a lean doubter, the victim of frustrated nature and business
unsuccess, heard in golden wonder. Such assurance! So heartening! After
all, whose business was this save her own? Why should she start any one
to gabbling? Why not dignify herself and her affairs by reticence?
Possibly the good God had seen fit to answer in this way the
salt-tinctured appeal she had been clammily venturing in frank disbelief
that He really would hear or answer when Marcia appeared. What if He
were greater than she had thought? What if He had heard and cared? Such
strength! Such energy! So capable! Some one to share the long, lonely
hours—— Ask questions that might prove disastrous and spoil things when
they were none of her real business? She guessed not! What was that
about taking the gifts the gods provided? Who cared a whoop concerning
the past of the gosling that had developed into the goose that laid the
historical egg? It was the egg that really mattered—the egg!
Miss Nancy vibrated; she positively fluttered. Thinking of eggs made her
want to cackle, but since it was the golden egg of a goose she
craved—how did a goose voice rejoicings on such a momentous achievement?
If she quacked, Miss Nancy was quite willing to quack. What she lacked
was knowledge, not incentive.
All the time the drayman was carrying in furniture and bundles. Marcia
opened a dresser drawer and took therefrom a dress, an apron of clean
calico, and a pair of easy shoes. Standing in the back room, she
stripped off the clothing she was wearing and put these on instead.
Nancy was struggling to keep from asking Marcia where she came from, why
she had brought furniture before she knew for certain that she would
find work, but the lure of the Egg was upon her. She looked at the arms
and shoulders and the curves of Marcia’s bust with eyes of frank envy.
“My goodness, you are the prettiest thing!” she said. “And your clothes
are so tasty.”
Marcia smiled quietly, thinking of certain garments she had discarded.
“Now, the first thing to do is to arrange this bedroom and kitchen the
best we can to accommodate my things,” she said, “then we’ll begin at
the front and go straight through. When I’ve gotten everything clean,
and in order, then you can tell me about who owes you and where they
live and I’ll see what I can collect. And then, we’ll try to arrange the
show windows more attractively, and since I can’t make hats, maybe I’d
better try them on and sell them, while you go on making them. You
really do make beautiful hats, but be as speedy as you can, because I
feel it in my bones that I am going to sell lots of them.”
Then, with strong arms and assumed assurance, coupled with inborn
abhorrence of dirt and disorder, Marcia Peters advanced to the rescue of
the Bodkin Millinery.
The first visible sign of any change in that establishment came to the
town of Bluffport when a good-looking woman emerged from the door with a
bucket of foaming suds, a rag in her hand and a towel over her shoulder,
and by standing on an empty packing case for necessary height, she
polished the glass fronts and the glass of the door to iridescent sheen.
After that it was evident from the outside that the activities of the
newcomer included the vigorous use of a rag-covered broom on the ceiling
and the side walls, the inner glass of the door and windows following.
And then the shelves and the cases came in for their share of cleaning.
The next day the front windows were filled with an appealing array of
fall and winter hats judiciously and advantageously displayed. Between
the stands that held the hats there wound lengths of ribbon of alluring
colour and texture, while here and there were masses of colour from
roses of velvet, the glitter of beads and bright leaves.
Straight back through the building went Marcia, every hour growing more
interested, every hour given to intense thought as to what could be
done, how it could best be done, and what the utmost financial return
that could be extracted from it might be. One hard day’s work consisted
in emptying the bedroom, thoroughly cleaning it and rearranging it with
such of Marcia’s possessions as she had purchased herself. A small table
that held a lamp was installed in the centre of the room, comfortable
chairs placed on either side of it. The beds were attractively made and
covered. Then the kitchen received attention.
The next Bluffport saw of the new venture was Marcia again mounted on
her packing case with a bucket of white paint and a brush, energetically
applying it to the window casings and the door. Pleased with results,
Marcia recklessly painted as high as she could reach and then realized
that the remainder of the false front, which reached two-story height
with no backing in the dubious assumption that the building appealed to
the eye of the beholder as what it was not, was out of her province. She
had funds to hire a painter to complete the job, so she used them,
although Nancy protested that she would pay half.
By that time, the change in appearance of the Bodkin Millinery was so
great that parties interested in fall millinery and innovations, were
beginning to come in. In the most attractive dress she possessed
suitable for such use, with her really pretty hair drawn back loosely
and coiled becomingly on her head, Marcia proved herself equal to the
tongue of each newcomer. She had the advantage of not being taken
unawares. She knew how the wolves of society harried the sheep of
adventure; she had no intention of becoming their prey. Who she was,
where she had come from, why she was there, she evaded, as slickly as
the dews of night roll from the cabbage leaf of dawn. The qualities of
satin and velvet, the colouring of ribbons and flowers, she found
engrossing subjects. She had a way of picking up a wreath of artificial
flowers and twisting the leaves into the most attractive shapes. Before
she offered any hat for sale, she set it upon her own head and walked up
and down behind the counter, turning and twisting to show the customer
how it looked upon the head of a woman. When the customer had tried it
upon her own head, if it did not fit or was not becoming, Marcia said so
frankly. In these cases she ended by telling the purchaser that the
shape of her head and her face were so individual that the only thing to
do was to build a hat to suit her. She was capable of picking up a piece
of buckram and with the shears deftly cutting therefrom a pattern for a
hat, that with a little twist here and there, and trimming, would evolve
into a shape that comfortably fitted and greatly enhanced the facial
lines for which it was intended. Often she suggested a change in hair
dressing, at times made a friend for life by deftly making the
improvement herself.
It took Marcia six weeks to make Bodkin’s Millinery the most attractive
hat store in the flourishing town of Bluffport. With the first money
that the firm could spare, the entire front of the building got a second
coat of paint and the interior both paint and paper. The one thing that
surprised Nancy Bodkin and caused the townspeople a minute of wonder,
was the fact that when the freshly painted sign went up, it was an exact
duplicate of the old one. Said Nancy: “Now that sign must have your name
on it, too, and from the start we must share equally in the profits.
It’s a sure thing that all the work you are doing and the wonderful way
you can sell things, is worth as much to me as the use of the building
is to you.”
But Marcia said authoritatively that she thought the best thing to do
was merely to go on using the old sign, with which people were familiar.
She had noticed that human nature was so perverse and contrary that it
did not take kindly to changes. She thought the sign had much better be
left merely “Bodkin Millinery.”
Marcia had her surprise, equally as great, from an entirely different
source. It had two ramifications. For days, at each opening of the door,
her eyes had turned toward it, while fear gripped her heart, but as time
went on and she neither saw nor heard from Martin Moreland, she
concluded that she had been right in her surmise. He was as sick of his
part of their bad bargain as she had become of hers; he was probably as
glad to give freedom to her as she had been to accept it.
The other thing which amazed Marcia unspeakably was the fact that she
was deriving intense enjoyment from the life she was living. There had
been no sufficient reason why she should not go occasionally to the
church services that Nancy attended. It seemed ungracious to refuse. It
was good business to go. Adroitly Nancy adduced reasons as to why it
would be better economy to run into a mite society or a church supper
for a meal than to take of their time to prepare their own food, while
they were benefiting the church and charity organizations as well. On
these occasions she made a point of introducing Marcia to every man and
woman with whom she was acquainted—and her years of business in the
village had made her acquainted with every soul who homed there and
hundreds from the country as well. Presently, Marcia found herself
stopping for a minute at the bank to say a word about the weather or
political conditions; occasionally business men dropped in to solicit a
subscription to some enterprise the town had undertaken. In a short
time, Marcia was feeling thoroughly at home. She was really enjoying the
life she was living. She was interested in the people she was meeting;
she was truly concerned about what they were doing. In her heart she
knew that she was delighted to return to church as she had gone in her
girlhood. One point she made definite in her mind and kept scrupulously.
She never opened her lips to ask a question or to take the slightest
interest in anything that might have been related to the life of Nancy
Bodkin previous to their arrangement of their partnership. Naturally,
she set the same seal upon Nancy’s lips that she wore upon her own.
Nancy, frail in body and in parts of her brain, was surprisingly strong
in others. In the back of her head she knew that when a woman of
Marcia’s appearance and ability walked into such a shop as she had been
keeping, and regenerated it and straightened the business into a hopeful
concern in a few weeks’ time, she was not an ordinary woman; she had
reasons of her own for being where she was and doing what she did. But
the results were so gratifying to Nancy Bodkin that she shut her lips
tight and drove her capable needle through flower stems, folded velvet,
and buckram with precision and force. She said to her heart: “I don’t
care where she came from. I don’t care who she is. I don’t care what any
one thinks about her. She’s awful pretty. She’s smart as a whip. She’s
clean as a ribbon, and what’s it of my business, or any one else’s
except her own, as to why she’s here? I am good and thankful to have
her, and there had better not any one poke around and hurt her feelings
or they’ll get a piece of my mind. The present and the Golden Egg are
good enough for me.”
That night Marcia capped the climax that she had reached in Nancy
Bodkin’s heart by a masterly stroke. In the privacy of their mutual
room, after the store was closed for the day, she washed Nancy’s hair,
dried and brushed it to silkiness. The following morning she curled it
and laid it in becoming waves and braids upon her well-shaped head. She
applied some of the powder that she used upon her own nose to the nose
of Nancy Bodkin, and performed a sleight-of-hand miracle upon her lips
and cheeks. When Nancy looked into her mirror, she did not know herself.
She did not ever want to know herself again as she had been. She was so
perfectly delighted with what she saw within her grasp by a few months
of work, that she had no words in which to express her feeling. The next
thing she knew, Marcia came into the store with a piece of goods that
she cut up, and in spare time, fashioned into a most attractive dress
for Nancy.
That did settle the matter. Marcia might talk if she wanted to talk; she
might keep her mouth shut if she so desired. It was patent that she was
perfectly capable, honest, and attractive in appearance. Very shortly
Nancy Bodkin worshipped her as she never had worshipped any human being
in all her life. These feelings broadened and deepened because she
realized, whenever she walked abroad attractively clothed and with all
of her best points pronouncedly intensified, that people showed her a
deference and a kindliness that she never before had experienced. In a
bewildered way, Nancy slowly figured out the situation. If she had spent
a small share of the time on herself that she had been accustomed to
spending on hats for her townspeople, a larger share of their respect
would have been bestowed upon her. It was a new viewpoint for Nancy. She
had been thinking that she might earn the highest esteem by spending
herself upon her profession to the exclusion of everything else, and now
she was forced to learn, by overwhelming evidence, that the degree of
respect she received from the village was going to depend very largely
upon the height of the degree to which she respected herself.
CHAPTER VII
“FIELD MICE AMONG THE WHEAT”
It is a truism that time is fleeting, while never does it flee on such
rapid feet as during school days. When Mahala became convinced that it
might be best for Jason’s self-respect and for his chances in life not
to attempt further attendance in a school subjected to the cruelties of
Martin Moreland, she undertook, in her own way, to superintend his
education.
While in her classes, Jason easily had stood foremost; it had not been
in her power to surpass the grade of the work that he did. In his
absence, she found it possible to attain higher marks than Susanna or
the most ambitious of the boys. The thing that Mahala never realized
was, that whether her work was the best in her class or not, so long as
her father was on the board it was so graded by a line of teachers who
were accustomed to seeing her in the lead in every other activity among
the children of her own age in Ashwater.
What Mahala did for Jason was simple enough, possibly not vital to him.
With a firm determination, candles, and kerosene, he might have equalled
what the other pupils were accomplishing in school, working in the room
over the grocery at night. Faithful to his promise, Peter walled off a
room of generous dimensions for Jason, papered its walls and ceiling
freshly, while the boy himself put a coat of new paint on the woodwork.
After the first month of experiment, and steadily following down the
years, Peter Potter paid him monthly a fair share of the proceeds of the
business which prospered remarkably with Jason’s assistance. Peter never
objected when he found one of Jason’s school books lying on his account
desk or Jason deep in the book when he had the store cleaned and
arranged to such a state that he felt he might use a few minutes for
himself. Both knew that Jason’s spare time was secured through
deliberate planning of his work. Peter never knew at what hour Jason
arose, but he did know that each morning when he stood in front of his
store, he would find a fresh and attractive display of provisions and a
new and luring sign containing some quirk or jest that caught people’s
attention and turned their footsteps into his door.
Among this daily increasing fleet of footsteps attracted by the window
displays, the catchy signs, and the quick and efficient services of
Jason aided by a rejuvenated Peter, who had taken a reef in his trousers
and consented to wear a washable coat, there came once a week the
daughter of opulence. Usually she arrived with a slip in her hand,
ostensibly to order groceries for her mother. At times she walked in
frankly. It was at Peter’s suggestion that her endeavours for Jason were
made under cover of a screened space where the desk bearing Peter’s
ledgers and account books was ranged. Its bill-papered grating gave them
privacy while Mahala each week marked in Jason’s books the extent to
which the lessons in his class had progressed. Then she remained a few
minutes to give him a hint as to how a difficult equation worked out in
algebra; to help him over a knotty place in physical geography or
astronomy, where the class had used authorities other than their school
books and had kept notes. These she loaned him, and she took pains as
she set them down in school to use great precision and fully elaborate
points she well understood, that they might be clear to Jason.
Exactly why she took the trouble to do this, Mahala did not concern
herself. She did it persistently, in the full knowledge that neither her
father nor her mother would have approved, had they known. Mostly Mahala
was willing to work diligently to earn the approval of her parents; but
there were times when Elizabeth and Mahlon Spellman were enigmas to
their daughter. She heard her father talk daily about brotherly love and
charity and saw him truly love no man, saw him give only in public and
when the gift would be talked about and redound to his credit for the
length of the county. She heard her mother delicately voice the
sentiment: “Love thy neighbour as thyself,” when the girl could not help
knowing that in reality her mother would be deeply shocked at the
thought of such a thing as loving her neighbour. The truth was that she
had no use for her neighbours either on the right hand, or the left, or
fore or aft. Her chosen friends in the village were progressive people
of financial circumstance and social position. The admirable precepts
laid down by Mahlon and Elizabeth had been familiar to Mahala from her
cradle. She had believed in her youth that her father and mother were
always right, always consistent, always kind; she accepted their
doctrines as her own law of life. But with Mahala “love thy neighbour”
and “all things whatsoever” were not mechanical mouthings to make a good
impression. They were orders which she, as a small soldier of the Cross,
undertook to obey.
So, as the years went by, in daily contact with her parents, Mahala
learned to watch them, to study them, and finally, God help them!—to
judge them. By and by, there were times when her eyes narrowed in
concentration; at rare times her lips opened in protest that she
speedily learned was utterly futile. She soon found out that they had
laid out their course and were following it in a manner which they
deemed consistent. She was not permitted to speak if her father raised
his hand. That sign for silence she never had dared disobey. She learned
also that she might better save her breath than to use it in speech when
Elizabeth’s lips set in a thin, narrow line and her eyes hardened to
steel-gray. Because she knew that the uplifted hand and the tight lips
would be inevitable should her father and mother learn that she was
helping Jason with his lessons, she took good care that they did not
find it out. She openly rejoiced to them over the changed conditions in
Peter Potter’s business. She carried home mouth-watering descriptions of
the food displayed in his windows. Sometimes she repeated the wording of
a placard that amused her. Once, in laughingly recounting at the supper
table how in Peter Potter’s window there stood a huge, golden cream
cheese surmounted by a neat sign which read,
Good people, this cheese,
Begs that you sample it, please,
she said that people were standing on the street laughing about it when
it really was so simple that there was nothing to laugh over.
“That’s exactly the point,” said Mahlon. “It is so everlastingly simple
that it becomes clever. It puts the burden of the request on the cheese
and then leaves the cheese to prove itself. I’ll wager it’s a good one.
Did you get a slice?”
Then Elizabeth lifted up her voice and remarked: “‘Clever’ is a word I
never would have thought of applying to Peter Potter.”
Mahlon responded: “And I wouldn’t have thought of attributing those
lines to Peter Potter. You can rest assured that they emanated from the
brain of that long-headed young Peters, who seems to be getting on
better in the world since his mother deserted him than he ever did
before.”
“It’s a pity,” said Mrs. Spellman, “that he thought best to quit
school.”
Mahala was like a bird with an eye on each side of the head. With one
she was watching her father, with the other her mother. When no comment
came to her mother’s last statement, her sense of justice forced speech.
“It’s more than a pity,” she said earnestly. “It’s burning shame. Jason
always had the highest grades in the class. He was a good boy, but
because he couldn’t be well dressed and have money to spend, because he
was forced to carry our and other people’s washings, he was picked on
and his life made miserable. For some reason that I don’t understand,
Junior Moreland, backed by his father, always abused him shamefully.”
She stopped suddenly, realizing that the next question would be: “Why?”
She felt that she did not understand the secret workings of the “why”
and did not dare repeat such parts of it as she had witnessed.
When the “Why?” came, as Mahala had feared it would, she answered
quietly: “I _suppose_ it’s because Martin Moreland and Junior have no
sympathy with unsuccess. It offends their eyes, and stinks in their
noses. They strike at it as instinctively as they’d strike at a
snake—even if the snake happened to be performing the commendable
service of cleaning field mice from the wheat.”
Then Elizabeth Spellman laid down her fork.
“Good gracious, Mahala!” she cried. “S-st!—I forbid you ever to use such
a dreadful word again! Where did you absorb such disgusting ideas?
Snakes and mice in the wheat! I sha’n’t be able to eat another bite of
bread this meal! In fact, my supper is spoiled now.”
Then Mahala laid down her fork, dropped her hands in her lap, and judged
her mother with such judgment as she never before had rendered against
her.
The next time she delivered an order at Peter Potter’s grocery, she went
deliberately and without the slightest regard as to who might be in the
store at the time, and standing before Jason at the desk bearing the big
ledgers, she spent an extra fifteen minutes telling him in detail things
that had come up in the classes that she thought would interest and help
him. There was a tinge of red on her cheeks and a sliver of light in her
eyes when she told him concerning non-venomous snakes and field mice
among the wheat and cautioned him not to strike until he knew the
identity of a species.
Jason looked at her with adoration in his heart, commendation in his
brain. She was the daintiest thing. She was the prettiest thing. She was
the fairest thing in her judgments.
He said to her laughingly: “You know, there aren’t a large collection of
snakes running up and down these aisles, and the ones I do come in
contact with I am not supposed to hit, no matter how venomous I know
they are.”
Mahala smiled because she realized that Jason was making an effort to be
amusing. This happened so very seldom that she felt he should have a
reward when he tried. Usually, Jason’s face was extremely grave. Few
days passed in which, in some way, he was not forced to feel the secret
power working against him. He did not tell Mahala that twice since he
had been with Peter Potter the store had been broken into at night by
some one who was interested in finding Peter’s old account books, since
the intruder took neither groceries nor robbed the cash drawer. The
ledgers were safe because Jason had urged Peter to take them to his
Bluffport bank where they would be secure. He did not tell her how
frequently, at the post office, the express office, at the freight
office, among the business men of the town, he received a rebuff the
origin of which he understood. He avoided meeting either Mr. Moreland or
Junior when it was possible. When it was not, he went straight on his
way. Many times it had been demonstrated to him that he was working in
the one store in Ashwater in which the power of the Morelands was not
strong enough to throw him out. Had he been anywhere else, he would have
lost his work, his earnings, and his room, speedily. The thing that
filled Jason with surprise was the fact that while Mr. Moreland and
Junior wanted him to be poor, without friends, without education, the
father, at least, did not want him to leave the town; else he would have
awaited his return and sent him away with Marcia when she made her
mysterious disappearance.
During the four years of the high-school course, there was no week in
which Mahala failed to enter Peter Potter’s grocery under some pretext,
if she could invent a pretext; if she could not, specifically for the
purpose of keeping Jason posted as to what was going on in school. In
this matter she reserved the right to use her own judgment because in
her judgment, Jason was not fairly treated, and the impulse to be fair
to every one was big in her heart. In her opinion, the town was full of
things that were unjust and unfair. People were forever standing up in
churches and in public places prating about the poor and the
downtrodden, but there was no single person, not even the ministers,
doing the things that Jesus Christ had said should be done in order to
make all men brothers. Her life was filled with preaching concerning the
spirit of the law. She knew of no one who was following the letter—not
even herself—as she felt she should. In self-analysis, her scorn
included herself.
Sometimes in talking of these things she had made bold to say that
Rebecca, carrying her white symbol and urging all the people she met to
cleanse their hearts, was the only consistent disciple of Christ in
Ashwater. She was forced to say that laughingly, as a daring piece of
impudence. It would have been too shocking for the nerves of Mahlon,
Elizabeth, or any of their friends, had the girl allowed them to surmise
that she truly felt that Rebecca, mentally innocent, physically clean,
with the fibre of persistence so strong in her nature that, year after
year, she undeviatingly followed her hard course, was the only
Christ-like one among them. To Mahala, given from childhood to periods
of reflection, to consecutive thought, Rebecca came closer to being
truly an envoy of Jesus Christ than any minister or deacon or church
member she knew. Yet she had been so trained since childhood by her
father and mother that she found it impossible to defy them openly. Even
at times when her lips parted and the words formed, she had not quite
the moral courage to say what she thought and felt. The one thing that
she did realize concerning them was that they really had persuaded
themselves that they were sincere; they felt they were right. Their love
for her was unquestionable. She could not cry at them: “You drug
yourselves with narcotics that you brew for the purpose. You lie to
yourselves almost every time you open your lips.” In her heart she was
hoping that a day would come speedily when she should be independent,
when she might begin to try, by ways however devious, to show every one
what she truly thought and felt.
During the high-school years she had never once lost her ascendancy
among her classmates. She had been so consistently straightforward, so
frank in her likes and dislikes, so clever when a controversy arose,
that she had maintained the position in which her parents had
intentionally placed her through giving her the best of everything and
making her conspicuous from the hour in which a tiny ostrich feather had
been attached to her quilted hood and she had ridden in state in the
first baby carriage the town had ever seen—an arresting affair, ribbed
top covered with black oilcloth sheltering the bed which was mounted on
two large wheels having wooden spokes and hubs and a tiny third on the
front to make it stand alone. The upcurving tongue ended in a cross
piece by which Elizabeth, strong-armed with the strength of a prideful
heart, dragged this contraption, shining with black paint, gay with gold
lines and red and blue morning-glories, after her over the flag-stone
and board walks of Ashwater. This was no easy work for a woman of
Elizabeth’s natural proportions, but come what might personally,
Elizabeth made the daily and hourly task of her life that of seeing that
her child came first, and had the best.
Mrs. Spellman’s deft fingers had been busy in their spare time for two
years at elaborate embroidery preparing against Mahala’s day of
graduation and her following advent to the best girls’ school of the
land. For the same length of time, she and Mahala had discussed a
subject for the valedictory which naturally should fall to Mahala. Her
mother had been unable to select anything from the store sufficiently
dainty and suitable for a graduation dress. Mahlon had been commissioned
to bring something especially fine from the city for this purpose. The
best sewing woman the village afforded had been in the house working on
the foundations of this dress. When it reached a certain point, Mrs.
Spellman expected to finish it herself, ably assisted by Mahala whose
fingers had become so deft in time set apart each day for their especial
training, that, as a needlewoman, she was expert in the extreme.
Even while absorbed with this delightful work, both of them could not
help noticing that Mahlon was unduly nervous and excitable; that slight
things irritated him; while they confided to each other that they were
surprised over the fact that Papa was getting almost stingy. He was not
generous as he used to be. He was constantly cautioning them against
undue expense. Mother and daughter were considerably worried about a new
dry-goods emporium that had located in the town almost immediately
opposite Mr. Spellman’s place of business. The Emporium was a brick
building, aggressive with marble and paint; the stock of goods fresh and
elaborate. Vaguely Mahlon Spellman’s womenfolk began to feel that his
business might possibly be undermined by these new competitors, who had
no scruples of an old-fashioned kind in their dealings with the public.
They represented modern methods. Gradually it became Mahlon’s part to
stand in his store and sadly watch many of his best customers going in
and out of the opposite doors, and he had been more and more frequently
compelled to seek Martin Moreland for larger loans to meet the payment
on heavy orders of goods that he was not selling because the cheaper
stock handled by his competitors looked equally as attractive, but could
be sold for less money.
In the guest room, the graduation dress stood on a form on a sheet
tacked on the floor, carefully covered with draperies to keep it fresh,
awaiting the finishing touches that Mahala insisted upon adding herself.
Standing before it one evening, contemplating the folds of its billowing
skirt, the festoons and ruffles of lace, Mahala smiled with pride and
delight. It was to be such a dress as Ashwater never before had seen.
The only cloud that was on Mahala’s sky twisted into the form and took
the name of Edith Williams. Edith had more money at her disposal than
Mahala. Her clothes were more expensive. The reasons why her appearance
was never so pleasing as Mahala’s were numerous. She remained out of
school for long periods of time, partly because she really did not feel
well, mostly because she was sour and dissatisfied and did not try to
overcome any indisposition she felt by giving it the slightest aid of
her mentality. The aunt who pampered and petted her kept the village
doctors constantly dosing her with pills and tonics, and allowed her to
do precisely as she pleased on all occasions. She went upon the theory
that if she bought Edith the most expensive clothing, she was the
best-dressed child. She followed this theory for years despite the fact
that her friend, Elizabeth Spellman, was constantly proving to her that
the best-dressed girl was the one whose clothing was in the best taste
and most becoming to her.
Edith and her aunt loved heavy velvets, satins, and cloth of rich, dark
colours. And these, piled upon Edith’s anæmic little figure, served
rather to disguise than to emphasize any glimmering of beauty that might
have made its manifestation.
As she stood before her graduation dress, Mahala, with her alert brain
and keen habit of thinking things out, figured that very likely the
dress which Edith would not allow her to see and about which she refused
to talk, would be white, since white had been decided upon for all the
class, to Edith’s intense disgust. She knew that white was not becoming
to her dark face and hair. Mahala, in figuring on how to hold her
long-time supremacy on the night of her graduation, depended upon Edith
and her aunt to select heavy velvet or satin, and to have it made in a
manner that would be suitable for a prosperous grandmother. She softly
touched the veil-like fineness of the misty white in which she planned
to envelop herself when she stood forth to deliver the valedictory.
Mahala was perfectly confident that she had figured out the situation as
it would develop. When she and the girl who always had been supposed to
be her best friend, faced each other on their great night, Mahala
believed that she would appear mist enshrouded. She was fairly confident
that Edith would be looking dark and sour, too heavily and richly
dressed in expensive materials and the height of poor taste.
A shadow fell across her work and she turned to find her father watching
her. With an impulsive gesture, she stuck her needle into the breast of
the form and ran to him, throwing her arms around his neck, rumpling his
hair, and drawing him into the room. She began lifting the skirt and
turning the form on its pedestal that he might see her handiwork, how
charming the gown she was evolving. He stood quietly beside her,
assenting to her eager exclamations, worshipping her pretty
demonstration of her pride in her art and her good taste.
“It’s very lovely, little daughter, very lovely,” he said, “but aren’t
you almost through with putting expense on it?”
Mahala faced him abruptly.
“Papa,” she said, “is business going badly with you? Are those
cheap-johnnies that have started up across the street taking your
customers away from you? Are you only worried, or is there truly a
reason why we should begin to economize?”
Mahlon Spellman suddenly turned from a thing of flesh and blood to a
thing of steel and iron. He opened his lips. This was his chance to gain
sympathy and love, even help—and to save his life, he could not speak.
He had been the be-all and the do-all for Mahala throughout her life. It
had been his crowning pride and his pleasure to give her practically
everything she had ever wanted. To tell her that he was in financial
straits, that her freedom might be curtailed, that her extravagances
might be impossible, that he was in danger of failing just when her hour
and her greatest need for the lovely things of life were upon her, was a
thing that he found himself incapable of doing. As he stood in silence,
he felt her warm, young body pressing up against his.
“You know, dearest dear,” she said quite simply, “that if you’re in hot
water, I’ll help you. I won’t go to college. I’ll stay at home and take
care of you and Mother and myself, too.”
Mahlon was perfectly delighted with this exhibition of love and
sacrifice on Mahala’s part. Instead of telling her the truth, he told
her a good many deliberate lies, and when the glow of rejoicing over her
words had died down somewhat, he realized that he had been a fool for
not availing himself of the opportunity that she had offered him, and he
sank back to intense dejection, which the girl dimly realized as he left
the room.
That night she said to her mother: “Mama, do you realize that the front
of our store is the only thing on Hill Street that hasn’t changed during
the past four years?”
“What do you mean?” asked Elizabeth Spellman, asperity in the tones of
her voice, on the lines of her face.
“I mean,” said Mahala, “that one of these new inset fronts with show
windows that you look in as you walk back to the doors and a fresh coat
of paint, and new sign lettering, would help a whole lot to make the
front of our store look more like that new one across the street.”
“You haven’t thought of anything new or original,” said Elizabeth. “Your
father and I have realized this and we have talked it over several
times. The high-class goods that he buys have got to be sold for a price
that will make him a reasonable profit. He cannot lower rates like those
cheap cut-throats that started up opposite him. He doesn’t think that he
can afford the changes he would like to make, much as you would like to
see him make them.”
“I don’t know,” said Mahala, “but that it would be a good thing to
sacrifice something else and make those changes. You know how down and
out Peter Potter was when Jason Peters quit school and went in with him
and made things hum. He began with fresh paint and ended with a fine new
store. Since they put up that new corner building, just look how
everything has gone with them. I think they are doing twice the business
of any other grocery in town right now, and I think it’s Jason Peters’s
brain that’s at the back of most of it. Every one has come to look for
the signs that are posted fresh in their windows nearly every morning.
This morning one window was full of food that no one could see without a
watering mouth, and the other window was full of the most attractive
lamps and a display of every kind of soap you ever imagined, with a big
sign reading: ‘Let us feed you, soap you, light you, and love you.’ You
needn’t tell me Peter Potter did that.”
“It would be a good deal better,” said Mrs. Spellman, “if Peter Potter
would put some check on that youngster. He’s too cheeky. Imagine him
sticking up a sign announcing that he’ll ‘love’ us!”
Mahala giggled: “It isn’t supposed to be Jason who’s saying that. It’s
supposed to be Peter Potter’s business. Isn’t it conceivable that Peter
might be trying to express his love for his fellow men by giving them
clean, wholesome food and the conveniences of life at a reasonable
price?”
“Oh, yes, it’s conceivable,” granted Elizabeth, “but it’s unthinkable.”
Mahala laughed outright.
“Mother,” she said, “you are becoming absolutely profound.”
“Well, what I am trying to point out,” said Elizabeth, “is the fact that
Peter Potter in his dirty grocery, with his run-down stock, and in his
baggy breeches and his collarless gingham shirt, didn’t put his business
where it is right now. Look at that delivery wagon—red as a beet, with
gold and black lines on it and a canvas top, and a horse like a circus
parade! And look at Peter Potter in a wash coat and a new building, and
the most attractive show windows this town has ever seen!”
“I’ve been looking at him,” said Mahala. “He’s been on the upgrade for
four years, and I think that it’s the result of Jason and the
cleanliness his washerwoman mother instilled in him, and his willingness
to work, combined with Peter’s horse sense in giving him freedom to try
new things. I think that if the same kind of cyclone should blow through
Papa’s store, it would be a good thing. I wish to goodness Jason was in
Father’s store and would freshen things up for us as he has for Potter’s
Grocery.”
“Oh, my soul!” cried Elizabeth Spellman, aghast, “you don’t truly mean
that you wish that?”
“But that is precisely what I do mean that I wish,” insisted Mahala. “I
wish anything that would keep Papa from looking so worried and being so
peevish as he is lately. And as for having Jason in his business, I
can’t see how Papa could be hurt, while Peter’s new grocery proves what
help did for him. Have you seen Jason lately?”
“No,” said Mrs. Spellman, “I haven’t seen him, and I shouldn’t look at
him if I did.”
“It might be your loss at that,” said Mahala deliberately. “In four
years he’s grown very tall and not having to be on the run constantly to
deliver heavy baskets and be on time to school, he’s gotten more meat on
his bones and his face has filled out, and a sort of gloss has come on
his hair. Because Peter has had the manhood to befriend him, he speaks
and moves with a confidence he didn’t have when every one was treating
him a good deal like a strange dog that might develop hydrophobia.”
“My soul and body!” said Elizabeth in tense exasperation. “Mahala, you
do think of the most shocking things! Why in the world should you
mention strange dogs and that loathsome disease in my presence?”
Mahala looked at her mother reflectively.
“Why, indeed?” she said earnestly. “Forgive me, Mother!” And then she
turned and went from the room.
Elizabeth Spellman was pleased. She thought her daughter had apologized
for her lack of delicacy.
CHAPTER VIII
“A SECRET AMONG THE STARS”
While the general appearance of improvement and progress was becoming
distinctly visible and encouragingly permanent on the leading business
street of Ashwater, precisely the same thing was happening in its
nearest neighbouring village, Bluffport. The old board side walks had
given way to flagging. The muddy streets had become paved with
cobblestone. The new brick bank and the hardware store and two dry-goods
stores radiated affluence. A fine, big high school stood near the centre
of the town and the spires of three churches lifted their white fingers
toward the sky as if to write thereon in letters large and plain: “This
is not a Godless community.”
Perhaps nothing new in all the village so became it as the proud brick
structure that arose on the corner where Smithley’s junk shop had
sprawled its disfiguring presence to the mortification of the city that
was beginning to lift its head and to take pride in demolishing fences
and spreading abroad smooth lawns brocaded with beds of gaudy flowers.
And this new building which had risen like magic on one of Bluffport’s
most prominent corners gave over its second story to Doctor Garvin, who
really cured a large assortment of Bluffport’s ills, and Squire
Boardman, who really settled a large proportion of Bluffport’s troubles.
Their offices were across the dividing hall from each other. They were a
pair of honest and respectable men, each of whom was trying, in his own
way, to do his share for the improvement of Bluffport and to acquit his
soul in a graceful manner of the obligation to love his neighbour as
himself. Neither the doctor nor the lawyer felt that he was loving his
neighbours in the degree in which he loved himself, but they did feel
that they were making a sweeping gesture in that direction, which was
infinitely better than apathy. Also, they regularly paid a reasonable
rent, which contributed to the prosperity of the owners of the building.
The lower story was occupied by, and the entire building belonged to,
Nancy Bodkin and Marcia Peters, and was so entered in the records of the
office of the county clerk. The corner location gave them advantageous
front-display windows and a large amount of side space. These windows
proved that, to an exclusive and attractive line of millinery, there had
been added fashionable neckwear for the ladies; scarfs of silk;
breakfast shawls of Scotch plaid and flowered merino; fancy hosiery;
pincushions and toilet articles, and a seemly collection of decorated
china.
The window displays were attractively managed. Inside the millinery was
kept in drawers and curtained cases. Several big mirrors and a number of
chairs constituted the greater part of the furnishings. Any one stepping
into this room had almost an impression of entering a well-ordered home.
The back part of the building was taken up with Nancy’s work room; the
living arrangements, which had increased to a separate room for each of
the friends, a most attractive sitting room, a small dining room, and a
tiny kitchen. For four years these two women had lived and worked
together. They had engaged in small financial enterprises and taken part
in the civic life of the town. They could be depended upon to
superintend attractive and unusual decorations when the principal street
needed to become festive upon some great occasion. They could be
depended upon to do their fair share for the churches, for the schools,
for the Grand Army, for their political party. Under the guiding hand of
Marcia, Nancy had bloomed like the proverbial rose lifted from the hard
clay soil of lingering existence and set where its roots could run in
congenial earth, watered with affection, nourished in the sunshine of
love. The change in Nancy had been so convincing that Bluffport only
dimly remembered a time when she had been an anæmic, discouraged,
overworked little woman. At the present minute, she was not overworked.
She had her work so beautifully in hand that she could accomplish it and
find time for rest and reasonable recreation. She had nourishing food,
skilfully prepared, and these things wrought a great physical change.
She was enjoying the companionship of a woman who was alert and eager,
who felt that life owed her much and who was bent upon collecting the
debt to the last degree, if it were a possible thing. When Marcia had
finished exercising all the arts of the toilet she knew upon Nancy
Bodkin, Nancy gradually developed into an extremely attractive woman.
She evolved a healthy laugh and a contagious interest in the flowing of
life around her.
As for Marcia herself, she was in truth blooming. Such a huge weight
rolled from her shoulders when she began life in the daily living of
which there was nothing secret, nothing questionable, nothing of which
to be ashamed. She might look her world in the face and go on with her
work in a healthful and prideful manner. Always an attractive woman,
under the stimulus of self-assertion and prosperity she had become
beautiful. Natural grace had developed until she had become gracious.
These two women were together every day and within speaking distance
every night. They were making of life the level best thing that was
possible for either of them through their united efforts. Nancy was born
a designer. Marcia had been born with executive ability. The combination
produced as a result the attractive store, exhaling prosperity, and a
pair of women of whom Bluffport was distinctly proud. The whole town was
proud of the Bodkin and Peters share of improvement on the business
street, proud of the two good-looking, well-dressed women who managed
their affairs so capably that they were able to meet their business
obligations and were rapidly repaying the encumbrances they had
shouldered in the erection of the building.
In this close contact, and in what the town supposed to be intimacy,
these two women, rapidly approaching middle age, lived and worked
together. The town would have been dumbfounded had it known that Nancy
Bodkin never had asked her new partner one word concerning her life
previous to her advent into the partnership. Conversely, Marcia had
respected the little milliner. They had simply begun life with the hour
of their meeting and gone forward to the best of their combined ability.
Neither of them had seemed inclined to be communicative concerning
herself, and each of them had too much inherent refinement to engage in
a business that a popular poet of their day graphically described as the
“picking open of old sores.” If either of them had an old sore, she was
depending wholeheartedly upon the other to help her in concealing it. In
breaking away from the years of her life with Martin Moreland, Marcia
had followed an impulse. In her heart she had always known that this
thing would happen some day. She had steeled herself from the very
beginning against Jason. She did not want to love him; she did not want
him to love her. When the day of separation came, as she always had felt
that it would, she figured upon reducing the pain of it to the minimum.
Exactly what she felt concerning the boy was a secret locked in her
heart. Freed of his presence and his influence, she found that the
greatest feeling possessing her concerning Martin Moreland was a feeling
of fear. Twice she had witnessed his brutality toward Jason when to her
it was without sufficient reason. She realized that any day the same
storm of wrath might break upon her head for as small cause.
When the sudden resolve had come to her, after the injustice of being
picked up bodily and forcibly without her consent or approval and set
down among strangers in a strange town, there had developed suddenly in
her heart a storm of rebellion that had ended in her seeking refuge and
independence with Nancy Bodkin. She had no idea what Martin Moreland
would do when he went to the house to which he had sent her, with the
expectation in his heart that he would find at least one room of it to
his liking and warm with the reception to which he was accustomed. She
had thought that he would come to the store, and in the daze of the
early weeks of her transplantation, she had lifted a set face and a
combative eye every time a hand was laid upon the latch.
One day she had seen Martin Moreland upon the opposite side of the
street, and sick at heart, she had fled to her room and thrown herself
upon her bed, complaining of a headache. For several hours she lay there
in torment, expecting each minute that the door would open and Nancy
Bodkin would level the finger of scorn at her, that the clear light of
her gray eyes would pierce her covering and see burning upon her breast
the loathsome scarlet brand. But night had come and Nancy Bodkin had
brought her a cup of tea, had brushed her hair and unlaced her shoes.
In the days that followed, Marcia found herself still watching the
street and the front door, but each day of her emancipation so fortified
her that she began to develop a confidence and an assurance. She did not
know Martin Moreland as well as she thought she did, when in the third
year, she had definitely made up her mind that he would not come. She
did not realize that he was the kind of a man who figured in his heart
that every step higher she climbed in the community that was so
graciously receiving her, would make harder the fall when the day came
upon which he decided to turn the tongue of gossip and slander against
her. Whenever he was passing through Bluffport on business, he made a
point of stopping on the opposite side of the street and taking a
detailed survey of the millinery store. He watched from the small
beginnings of soaped glass and painted casings, through the four years
to the new brick building with its attractive windows. The first time he
passed the new building, obtrusive in its newness, glowing with the
dainty colours of its excuse for being, the smile on his face was a
fearful thing to see. It was a thing shaded by such a degree of
malevolence that his consciousness realized that no one must see it. It
would be an outward manifestation of such an inward state as would shock
a casual observer. Even as that smile gathered and broke, with the same
instinct which prompted it, Martin Moreland clapped the palm of his
deeply scarred right hand over his face and an instant later applied a
handkerchief. As the smile died away, in its stead there came a look
that was very like the expression on the face of a hungry panther ready
to leap with certainty upon an unsuspecting victim.
Martin Moreland knew that, early in their separation, Marcia would
expect him and be on the defensive. He figured that by waiting until the
passage of time had given her assurance, his descent would be all the
more crushing and spectacular.
So it happened that Marcia occasionally saw him passing upon the street
and grew firm in her confidence that she was to go free. With the
passing of the years, she succeeded in a large measure in forgetting her
ugly past and allaying tremors for the future. It appealed to her that
Martin Moreland could do nothing to hurt or humiliate her without
humiliating himself; and that, she figured, he would not do. She became
all the more certain of this because occasionally she saw Junior on the
streets of Bluffport, and from the security of the store, she watched
him as he walked the streets or stood talking with other men.
To the observer, Junior was an extremely handsome man. He had his
father’s height, his mother’s dark hair and eyes. There was a dull flush
of red in his cheeks and on his lips. He could not have helped knowing
that he was a handsome and an attractive figure. He could scarcely have
helped being unmoral through his father’s training from his early
childhood. Always he had been supplied with a liberal amount of money to
use as he chose in the gambling rooms of Ashwater with the other men and
boys. Occasionally he lost, but frequently he came into the bank with
surprisingly large sums of money which he gave to his father to deposit
on his account. A few times, lounging in the bank, even during his
school days, he had listened to discussions between his father and other
men concerning matters of business and he had made suggestions so
ingenious, so simple in their outward manifestations, so astute, so deep
in their inward import, that the Senior Moreland had been in transports.
He always had been proud of his son. When to his fine figure and
handsome face he added indications of shrewd business ability, he
fulfilled his father’s highest dream for him.
Whenever occurrences of this kind took place, Moreland Senior
immediately supplied Moreland Junior with an unusually liberal allowance
with which to cut a wide swath in the social life of the town. During
the junior and senior years of high school, Junior made a practice of
arming himself with large boxes of sweets and huge bouquets of expensive
flowers and going to call upon Mahala.
Mahala always greeted him cordially, always accepted what he brought
casually as a matter of course, but never with any particular show of
pleasure. Having been accustomed to the admiring glances of women and
the exaggeratedly lavish praise of an element of the town greedy for his
father’s money, Junior could not believe that this attitude on the part
of Mahala was genuine. She must think him as handsome as his mirror
proved to him that he was. She must see that he was tall and straight
and shapely. Knowing the value of dry goods as she did, she could not
fail to know that always he was expensively clothed in the very latest
fashions sent out from the large cities of the East.
A few days before Commencement, armed with a particularly ornate box of
candy and a bunch of long-stemmed roses by way of an ice box from
Chicago, he made an evening call upon Mahala. The box of candy she set
upon the piano, unopened. The roses she arranged in a large vase. She
commented on their wonderful shape and velvet petals, the splendid stems
and leaves faintly touched with the bloom of rankly growing things. She
said that they were so perfect that it almost seemed that they were not
real roses that would yellow and wither in a few days.
They talked of the coming Commencement and Junior jestingly asked Mahala
if she were going to allow Edith Williams to be more handsomely gowned
than she. Mahala was amused that he should think of such a thing. She
looked at him with eyes so frank that to the boy they seemed almost
friendly. She laughed the contagious laugh of happy youth.
“Now, Junior, you know without asking,” she said, “that if anything like
that happens, it won’t be in the least little bit my fault. It will be
because I haven’t sized up the situation properly.”
“And how,” asked Junior, “have you sized up the situation?”
“I’ve depended,” said Mahala, “upon Edith running true to form. In a
given circumstance, she always has done a given thing. I can’t imagine
her changing. If she has, there’s nothing to do but accept it
gracefully.”
Junior laughed.
“For a level head commend me to you, young woman,” he said. “Now, here
is a state secret. My mother and Mrs. Williams are great friends,
and”—Junior lowered his voice and spoke through a trumpet made of his
hollowed hands, giving himself an excuse to draw very near to Mahala—“my
mother has seen the gown and she says it’s a perfect humdinger.”
Mahala’s laugh was young and spontaneous and thoroughly genuine.
“Naturally,” she said, “it would be. I figured on that.”
“And I fancy you figured,” said Junior, “on a dress that in some way
will go just a little bit ahead of Edith’s.”
“‘Naturally,’” mimicked Mahala, “being Edith’s best friend and closest
companion, I have figured on a dress that I hope and confidently believe
will be the prettiest thing on the stage, Commencement night.”
“And I haven’t a doubt,” said Junior, “but you’ve figured as correctly
as you ever did in algebra or geometry. But just suppose for once in
your fair young life that you’ve figured wrong.”
“Well, now, just suppose,” said Mahala. “Of course you have figured on
being better dressed by far than any of the other boys. And at the last
minute, if John Reynolds or Frederick Hilton should turn up with a
later-cut and finer goods than you were wearing, what do you think you
could do about it?”
“But the cases are not analogous,” said Junior. “In the back of my head
I am pretty well convinced that the clothing that Edith Williams always
has worn has cost more money than has been spent on you. That has not
been the case with any boy of Ashwater. Father always has seen to it
that I had the best. Where you have consistently gotten away with Edith
has been through being so much handsomer, through being lovely to every
one, and through the exercise of a degree of taste and ingenuity on the
part of your mother and yourself, that no other women of this
flourishing burg can equal. I haven’t a doubt but you’ll be the
loveliest thing in the building the night of Commencement, but I just
thought I’d come around and give you a hint of what you’re up against.”
“Now that’s nice of you,” laughed Mahala, “but you haven’t told me a
thing that I didn’t know and for which I was not prepared. Probably your
mother didn’t say, but I’d be willing to wager that Edith’s gown will be
either of velvet or heavy satin, and a crowded room in Ashwater grows
distressingly warm in June.”
Junior threw back his head and laughed heartily.
“Bully for you!” he said admiringly. “I’ll back you for a winner in any
undertaking in which you want to engage. It would be downright mean of
me to go any further with what Mother told me after she had seen Edith’s
dress, but I’ll say you are a winner in drawing nice deductions.”
And then Junior realized that he had not had such an enjoyable and
friendly talk with Mahala, that she had not been so cordial with him, in
he could not remember when. So he ventured further.
“What can we plan for this summer that will be a lot of fun?” he said.
“We ought to celebrate this getting through with school by picnics and
parties and excursions. It’s our time to have fun, and who’s to object
to our going ahead and having it?”
“Aren’t you going to college, Junior?” asked Mahala.
“Going to college?” repeated Junior scornfully. “Why would I go to
college? Which college does my father hold in the hollow of his hand?
Where could he pull the strings and make the professors dance like a
pack of marionettes?”
Mahala stared at him wide eyed, and at the same time she was amazed to
find herself commending his candour.
“Well, you certainly have nerve,” she said. “Of course everybody knows
the influence your father always has had with the School Board, and from
the time we’ve been little children we’ve had demonstrated to us what
your combined efforts could do, but I didn’t think you’d sit up and
boast about it—openly admit it!”
“Why not?” said Junior. “What’s calculus and radicals and Greek and
Latin got to do with figuring on exactly how big a mortgage it would be
safe to place on Timothy Hollenstein’s farm? I’ve gone through the
motions of this school thing. I’ve got the scum of it. Did you ever see
me make a mistake in addition? I’m not interested in subtraction, and
I’m not very particular about division, but have you ever noticed that
I’m greased lightning on multiplication?”
And again Mahala laughed when she knew in her heart that she should do
nothing of the kind. Coupled with Junior’s physical attractions there
was this daring, this carelessness of what any one might say or think,
this disarming honesty concerning transactions that had been the width
of the world from honesty or fairness.
“All right,” she said, “don’t go to college. You’d get nothing out of it
but the fun of spoiling other boys who were really trying to make men of
themselves. But I’m going. I think I shall go to Vassar, and as for
picnics and parties, I must put in the greater share of my time this
summer in making my own clothes. I figure that the new store has cut
into Father pretty deeply and I think I ought to help all I can by doing
my sewing.”
Then Junior, reinforced by the most agreeable evening he had ever spent
with Mahala, reached over and covered one of her hands with his. He
grasped it lightly, giving it a little shake as he said to her: “I have
to inform you, young lady, that it’s written in the stars that you’re
not going to college.”
Obliquely Junior watched the girl, and he was wondering what she would
think if he told her reasons that he could have told her, as to why she
would not go to college.
Mahala withdrew her hand under the pretext of rearranging her hair, and
laughingly remarked: “That’s very unkind of the stars to write things
first to you concerning me. But, while we’re on the subject, in the
epistle did the stars tell you what it is that I’m going to do?”
“Certainly,” said Junior. “I hope you noticed that I always came the
nearest to making a decent grade in astronomy. I have to inform you that
the swan went swimming down the Milky Way and he told a star lily
floating there that you were going to preside over the finest house in
Ashwater, furnished far more exquisitely than this place, that there was
going to be a devoted lover at your feet and your door plate is going to
read, ‘Martin Moreland, Junior’.”
For one minute Mahala stared at Junior with questioning eyes. Then she
decided that to laugh was the thing, so she laughed as heartily as she
possibly could. She laughed so heartily that it became an exaggeration
and then she shook her head and said: “Put no belief in astronomical
communications. They’re too far-fetched. I think Vassar will suit me
best and in about a week after Commencement I’m going to begin a trunk
full of the nicest school clothing that has gone East in many a long
day. And that reminds me that I’ve quite a bit of sewing to finish
before Commencement, and I must be at it. So take yourself away, but for
pity’s sake, don’t tell Edith that her aunt showed her dress. It’s
against the law and she’d be furious.”
“She’d be so furious,” interrupted Junior, “that she’d turn a darker
green than the Lord made her.”
“If you want to keep up your credit for a customary degree of
observation,” said Mahala, “you’ll have to admit that Edith is rapidly
shedding her greenness, that she is rounding out. She still insists that
she’s half an invalid, but if she’d take some exercise and forget
herself as I try and try to make her, she’d soon be the prettiest girl
you ever saw.”
Which proves that Mahala was strictly feminine, not that Junior was not
eager and willing to pick up the challenge.
“Yes, like hob she would!” he said instantly. “That sour green kicker
would come within a long shot of being the prettiest girl that I ever
saw while you’re in Ashwater!”
“Well, I’m not going to be in Ashwater long,” said Mahala, “and then you
can watch Edith and see how fast she grows handsome. You can go and take
a look for yourself right now, if you want to, because I really must get
to work.”
Junior arose and because he was accustomed always to think of himself
and his own considerations, he forgot to veil the glance that he cast
toward the big vase of rare flowers and the big box of unopened candy. A
cursory glance, but Mahala caught it and she knew that he left with the
idea that he had thrown away his money, and the merriest smile of the
evening curved her lips behind his back, because that was precisely what
she wanted him to think, and she hoped in her heart that he would follow
down the street and spend the remainder of the evening with Edith
Williams. Since they had been little girls, in the days of charm strings
and rolling hoops, Mahala had known that the one boy whom Edith Williams
preferred above all the other boys of the village was Junior Moreland.
She could not recall that she ever in her life had seen Junior extend to
Edith even decent courtesies. He made a point of being rough with her
and saying annoying, irritating things to her, of flatly repulsing even
the most timid advances that she might make in school or upon social
occasions for his preferment. And Mahala pondered as she climbed the
stairs with a bit of lettuce in her hand for the little gold bird, just
how it happened that Edith should care so much for Junior Moreland and
Junior Moreland should take malicious pleasure in hurting her feelings.
At the window of her room, she glanced down the street. If Junior turned
the corner, there was a possibility that he might delight Edith by
spending an hour with her. But Junior went straight on to Hill Street.
He made his way for quite a distance along it, and then turned into a
showy restaurant on a side street.
At his entrance two or three flashily dressed serving girls gathered
around him. He led the way to a booth in the corner. Here he swung one
of them to a table, took another on his lap, and kissing a third, he
ordered her to go and get everything good to eat that the shop contained
for a feast. Smilingly the owner of the restaurant encouraged the party.
If Junior was pleased, his bill would be larger, and this was a thing
that happened frequently.
When the food was brought, Junior unhesitatingly helped himself to the
parts for which he cared, leaving the remainder for the girls to divide
among themselves. He was familiar with them as a boy might be with his
sisters, but he was not vulgar. He treated them lavishly, taking only a
little of his first choice for himself.
When his bill was brought to him, he went over the figures carefully,
and then he forced the manager to make several changes. He proved
conclusively that while he was willing to spend money as he chose, he
was possessed of a close streak, and did not intend to waste it.
His appetite appeased, he kissed all of the girls, assured them that he
would be around again shortly, asked them how they would like to go to
Bluffport for a ride some night in the near future, and going out, he
rounded a corner, slipped up an alley, climbed a back stairway, and in
answer to a certain number of measured rappings on a darkened door, was
admitted to a room where a number of prominent men and boys of the
village were playing games for money.
Junior sat down carelessly, and leaning back, watched the games casually
until he decided that he would play poker. By midnight he had swept up
most of the stakes, and when the other men insisted that he should give
them a chance to retrieve their money, he laughingly explained: “I’ve
got to get home early to-night. To-morrow’s a final examination.”
“What difference does that make to you?” exclaimed Anthony Jones, a
schoolmate of Junior’s. “You know perfectly well you can’t pass in two
or three branches unless you cheat.”
Junior stood under a swinging lamp, lighting a cigar. He glanced at the
boy, a smile on his handsome face.
“My father has given old Dobson his job for the past four years,” he
said, “and so far as I know, Dob wants it for four more. Why should I
have to do anything but go through the motions? I ought to get something
out of it, oughtn’t I?”
“You ought to have to dig in and work for your grades like the rest of
us do!” retorted Anthony.
Junior expertly ringed his first puff of smoke toward the ceiling.
“Oh, I’ll work all right when the time comes. I do a whole lot of
thinking and scheming and planning right now that nobody knows anything
about. I’ll work, all right. But the trouble with you will be that you
won’t know when I’m working and when I’m not, because when I work it
does not always show on the surface.”
“Well, there’s one thing certain,” said Anthony, “you’ll work the
Superintendent for a diploma; you’ll work your father for all the money
you want.”
Junior stuck his hands in his well-filled pockets and sauntered to the
door. Just as he passed through it, he leaned back so that the full
light fell upon his face and figure, and he laughingly inquired: “How
about working you fellows once in a while?”
CHAPTER IX
“SOMETIMES YOUR SOUL SHOWS”
It was mid-June before the night of Commencement arrived. The Methodist
Church, being the largest suitable edifice of the town, was used for the
imposing occasion. The lower grades of the high school and friends of
the graduates, as well as the alumni of preceding years, had all
combined in decorating the building for the Commencement exercises. The
big swinging chandeliers hanging from the ceiling were wreathed in
greenery accentuated with flowers. The edge of the pulpit platform was
outlined with gaily blooming plants. The space intervening between that
and the altar railing was filled with showy plants in tubs and buckets,
one end finishing with a white oleander in a mass of snowy bloom, the
other exactly like it except that the flowers were peach-blow pink. The
pulpit had been removed. Back of the chairs for the graduating class
there was a second row for the principal, the teachers of the schools,
the School Board, and several ministers, and lining the wall, a small
forest of gay leaves and bright flowers. Every window was filled with
the lovely roses of June, with flowering almond, japonica, iris, and gay
streamers of striped grass.
It was the custom to hold the graduating exercises in the church, then
to repair to Newberry’s Hotel for a supper which was the last word in
culinary effort on the part of the owners, helped out by table
decorations provided by the alumni and the lower classes of the high
school. The long tables for the graduates and their parents, for the
singers and speakers, were lovely. They were laid with linen that was
truly snowy, with silver provided by several of the wealthiest families
of the town, with china that came from the same cabinets as the silver;
and these tables were made beautiful beyond words with great bowls of
yellow, white, and purple wild violets, starry campion, anemones,
maidenhair fern, and every exquisite wilding that knew June in the
Central States.
After the banquet, the class and its guests took up the line of march
across the street and in the upstairs of the big building known as
Franklin’s Opera House, they danced until morning. Commencement was the
one great social affair known to Ashwater. Nothing else in the history
of the town called forth such an audience. It was the one occasion upon
which the church people forgot that the lure of the dance would imperil
the souls of their young. They went and drank lemonade and fanned
themselves as they sat in double rows of chairs lining the walls, many
of them joining the dance to the mellow notes of a harp brought all the
way from Indianapolis.
Never was a gathering more cosmopolitan. The invited guests were
relatives and friends of the graduates. So it happened that the august
person of Martin Moreland, the banker, might come in very close contact
with that of Jimmy Price, general handy-man, in such case as to-night
when one of Jimmy’s lean daughters was a graduate. For once in his life
Jimmy might don his wedding suit, accompanied by any remnants of dignity
that forty years of playing the clown had left in his mental cosmos, and
making an effort to be grave and correct, he might have this one peep at
what the truly great of his town did when they entertained themselves.
June in the Central States is a hot month; mid-June the crucial time.
The thermometer is likely, at that period, to hover persistently at
anywhere from ninety-five to a hundred and ten. The dew of night closely
following such a degree of heat was sure to breed a moist stickiness
that washed the pink powder from the noses of the august, and in slow
streams of discouragement, saw to it that artificially waved hair
degenerated into little winding rivers of despair. It was very likely to
emphasize mothy complexions and deeply cut wrinkles by washing into
their cruel lines white or vivid pink powder, leaving high promontories
lacking decoration in ghastly contrast. To appear cool and fresh and
charming upon such a night, was the height of triumph. It was the thing
that few people even remotely hoped to do. The men frankly mopped their
streaming faces and the backs of their necks. They tried to look
cheerful if they found that their high linen collars were even half way
upstanding; mostly these were protected by a tucked-in handkerchief
until the doors were reached. They were often seen wiping their hands
and their wrists with these same moist handkerchiefs, and the ladies, in
their billowing skirts containing yards upon yards of heavy goods, in
their tightly fitting sleeves and waists, religiously wearing headgear,
which they would have thought it absolutely indecent to remove, dabbled
frantically at their complexions, the corners of their mouths sagged in
despair as they felt the hair slowly drooping over their foreheads,
while they fanned frantically in an effort to keep sufficiently cool to
save their silk dresses.
It was the custom for the omnibus from Newberry’s Hotel to drive to the
residences gathering up the graduates and depositing them at the side
door leading into the prayer-meeting room of the church, slightly before
the time the organist began to play the entrance march.
Usually the four walls of the church heard nothing gayer than “Onward
Christian Soldiers” or “Marching to Zion,” but it was conceded to the
youth of the city that on Commencement night the organist might tackle
what was spoken of, in rather awed tones, as “sheet music.” It was
customary to hire, for these occasions, a graduate from the Fort Wayne
Conservatory to sing several solos. This marked a high light in the
exercises. These graduates from a musical school might do the daring
thing of coming clothed in billowing silks of peach-blow pink. In one
instance, the crowd had lost its breath over such a dress glaringly
trimmed in blood-red. This, in conjunction with a bared breast and arms,
a becurled head as yellow as the cowslips down by the Ashwater river,
had been almost too much for the morality of the audience. The young
lady had saved the situation by a sobbingly pathetic rendition of “When
the Flowing Tide Comes In.” When she had her audience audibly weeping
over the “ships that came in clouds like flocks of evil birds,” and then
led them on to the salt-saturated ending of “remembering Donald’s
words,” the weeping crowd so thoroughly enjoyed the performance that
they forgave what they considered the extreme bad taste of the
blood-decorated pink dress.
In gathering the graduates, it might have been instinct on the part of
the driver, and it might have been suggestion on the part of authority,
at any rate, it was customary to bring in the poor and the unimportant
and give them this one ride of their lives in state, usually down Hill
Street, past the bank, the main business buildings, and the Court House,
ending at the side steps of the Methodist Church. After all the poor and
the unimportant had been collected, then by degrees came the socially
and financially prominent, it being generally conceded that the boy or
girl having the salutatory came next to last, while the valedictorian
held the place of honour.
In to-night’s exercises every former custom had been religiously kept
and religiously exaggerated to the last possible degree. In the annals
of the town, such a distinguished class never before had been graduated.
This class embodied the son of the banker, the handsome, carefree boy
concerning whom every one prophesied evil, whose escapades were laughed
at and glossed over as they would have been in the case of no other boy
in the community. Men who should have known better, rather evinced pride
when Junior Moreland stopped to say a few words to them. It was the
common talk of the town that the Senior Moreland lay awake nights
thinking up ways to indulge, to pamper, his only son. The influence of
Junior’s good looks and his brazen assurance was so pronounced that the
whole town combined in helping to spoil him. Where he should have had a
reprimand, where any other boy would have had it, Junior usually evoked
a laugh. So he had grown to feel that he was a law unto himself; that he
might do things which the other boys might not; that he was a natural
leader upon any occasion on which he chose to lead.
This night’s class embraced Edith Williams, grown thus far to womanhood
with most of the ills and the discontent of her childhood clinging to
her. It was very probable that Edith’s first conscious thought was that
she had been defrauded. Why didn’t God make her with a strong, beautiful
body? Why didn’t He give her voice the power of song, her fingers
facility for the harp or the piano that she could buy if she chose? Why
did He take both her parents and leave her to live with an uncle whom
she never could endure, and with an aunt, sycophant to such a degree,
that the child shrewdly suspected, from a very early age, that the
otherwise estimable lady was hoping that she would die and leave “all
that money” to her only heir, who happened to be the husband of the lady
in question. Edith had heard about “all that money” ever since she had
been born. She had come to understand that it could buy her the most
expensive clothing worn in the town. It could buy her entrance into any
gaiety taking place in any home. It could buy the most expensive house
in Ashwater and any furnishings her taste might dictate. It could, in
fact, buy everything to which she had been accustomed all her life, but
it could not buy her the two things which she craved almost above life
itself—beauty and happiness. No one could convince her that at least a
moderate degree of beauty lay within her own power. She had only
contempt for a woman like Elizabeth Spellman, who tried to tell her that
keeping irregular hours, practically living on cake and candy, that the
wearing of stays which reduced her slender proportions to pipe-stem
slenderness, were responsible for the things in life against which Edith
most strongly rebelled. In vain Mrs. Spellman tried to point out that
regular sleep, regular bathing, a diet consisting largely of fruits and
vegetables, freedom of the body, and regular exercise, were responsible
for Mahala’s bright eyes, her rounded figure, her hard, smooth flesh.
These things Edith coveted to an unholy degree, but not sufficiently to
change one wrong habit or to shake off her natural indolence in order to
attain them. Edith’s happiest moment was, in all probability, the one in
which, dressed in the extreme of the prevailing fashion, she lay upon a
sofa with a box of rich candy and wickedly read a French novel that she
was not supposed to have and that no one ever knew precisely where she
secured.
Commencement time marked a thrilling epoch in Edith’s life. A few days
after the great event, she would attain the age at which her dying
father had specified that she should come into full and uncontrolled
possession of his large fortune. As the time approached, Edith spent
hours dreaming of trips to New York and Chicago, of the beautiful
clothing that she would purchase, and how these advantages would
certainly add to her attractiveness to such a degree that finally she
would succeed in completely overshadowing Mahala. She was so certain
that this would be the case, that she had decided to make the first step
the night of graduation. She had horrified both her uncle and her aunt
by the extravagance of her outfit. She had persisted in making her own
selections.
Commencement night found her in a nervous state bordering on a sick
headache. She had been absent from school a great deal. She never had
known what her lessons were about when they concerned mathematics,
astronomy, or any difficult branch requiring real concentration and
study. Her brain was almost wholly untrained; it kept flying off at
queer tangents. With the help of her uncle and her aunt she had
succeeded in getting together a creditable essay which she was supposed
to read from memory. She had gotten through it on several occasions with
slight promptings, but in the final class rehearsal, she had broken down
completely and been forced to take refuge in the written pages held by
the professor. After that, she had really studied, but it had been too
late. She never had made public appearances as had many of the members
of her class because she hated the mental work required to commit poems
or orations to memory. She was too indolent really to work at anything
because she never had been taught that in work alone lies the greatest
panacea for discontent the world ever has known.
It was a general supposition in Ashwater that Commencement night should
be the happiest period of a girl’s life. To many of them it was a happy
period. There was joy of a substantial kind in the honest breast of
little Susanna, who had been helped in a surreptitious way with her
lessons and her clothing all through her school course by Mahala, and
who, in turn, had worshipped Mahala dumbly and had returned all the help
she could give upon knotty problems when her brain had begun to develop
to a commanding degree. Many of the boys and girls who were to graduate
that night had worked hard and conscientiously. They were proud of the
new clothes they were wearing; eager to begin the life they had planned
for themselves.
This class included the daughter of the dry-goods merchant. No one was
happier than Mahala. She had worked hard all her school life. She had
been perfectly willing to receive the same help from others that she was
accustomed to give when she was more fortunate in mastering a difficult
problem or a perplexing proposition in any of her studies. Her facility
in music and the superficial part of her education, her quickness in
picking up hints and indirections, the clever way in which she made her
recitations, made her vastly popular with all of her teachers to whom
she always showed a polite deference never equalled by any of the other
pupils.
The valedictory was hers because she had earned it, and for several
other reasons. Her mother had kept her eye upon that especial honour for
her only child from the day of her birth. She had not arisen from the
sheets of accouchement without having decided upon a great many things
concerning the career of her little daughter, and one of the essential
things had been the valedictory upon the night of her graduation. She
and Mahala engaged in a number of long talks concerning this momentous
occasion, and in the seclusion of their room, she and Mahlon discussed
these things interminably. They were both agreed that Mahala must have
the valedictory, quite agreed that she must honestly earn it. This the
girl felt she had done. They were agreed that she must be exquisitely
clothed. This was their part. They were unanimous as to a compelling
subject; also she must handle it in an interesting manner; she must
deliver her valedictory without a flaw in composition, delivery, or
deportment.
Long before the remainder of the class had even thought of subjects, in
the secret conclaves of her family, Mahala’s subject had been decided
upon, outlined, and developed. Many things she had wanted to say had
been ruled out for reasons paramount in the minds of Elizabeth and
Mahlon. Once or twice a week, she had been put through her paces either
by her father or her mother, occasionally before both. The thing had
become so habitual with Mahala that she recited her valedictory every
night before she went to sleep and snatches of it were in her mind many
times during the day. In all this intensive study, she had dwelt upon
pronunciations, upon phrasing, and inflection until she really had an
extremely praiseworthy offering at the tip of her tongue, one which
either Elizabeth or Mahlon could have delivered equally as well. All her
life she had been making her bow and speaking her piece at mite
societies and tea meetings, at Sunday School festivals, last days of
school, and Grand Army celebrations.
To Mahala, Commencement night was not a thing of cold shivers, shaking
knees, and throbbing heart. She had been trained from birth and was an
adept at public appearances. She could recall no occasion in her life
when she had come in contact with any of the other boys and girls in
public in which she had not easily made the most attractive figure and
carried off the honours.
At the noon hour, her father had said to her: “I’m going to stop at the
Newberry House and tell the busman he needn’t come for you to-night. I
don’t propose that you shall risk soiling your shoes and your dress by
climbing into that dirty omnibus, even though there is a supposition
that it is to be cleaned after the last load of drummers is taken to the
train.”
Mahala hesitated a second, then she looked at her father with
speculative eyes. “Don’t you think, Papa,” she said, “that it would be
better for me to go with the others?”
There were nerve strain and asperity in Elizabeth Spellman’s voice that
Mahala recognized. She gave Mahlon no chance.
“Mahala,” she said, “when Papa tells you that he’s going to do a thing
that he has studied out and has decided will be the best thing for you,
the proper answer for you to make is: ‘Yes, Papa. Thank you very much
for your loving consideration.’”
“I was only thinking,” said Mahala, “that the other boys and girls might
resent it; that it might make them feel that they were unfortunate not
to have a father who had made such a success of life that he could do
for them the lovely things that Papa daily does for me.”
Mahala looked at her father to see what effect this would have, and her
heart took one surging leap and then stopped for an instant and stood
still, frightened by the whiteness of Mahlon Spellman’s face. She
noticed his grip upon the fork he was handling and that his hand was
shaking so that he put back upon his plate the food he was intending to
lift to his lips. For one long instant Mahala surveyed him and a little
bit of the light went out of her eyes, the keenest edge of the colour
washing in her cheeks faded. She saw the shaking hand, and in her heart
she said: “Either Papa is dreadfully troubled, or he’s getting old; and
come to think of it, he is nearly twenty years older than Mama. He’s
been a darling papa, so I’ve got to begin taking extra good care of
him.” Her mind reverted to the variety of care that always had been
taken of her, and while she rebelled against a great deal of it, even as
she was now rebelling against this distinction to be made between her
and her classmates, she was placed where all her life she had been
placed, in such a position that she would look heartless and ungracious
to refuse.
“I am going,” said Elizabeth Spellman, “to spread a sheet all over the
back seat of the surrey and on the floor. Jemima has wiped the seats
very carefully and the steps, and swept the carpet until there isn’t a
particle of dust. You cannot crowd into that omnibus without crushing
your skirts. I think we can lift them in such a manner when you enter
the surrey, that by occupying the back seat alone, you won’t need to sit
upon them at all. It will enable you to head the procession down the
church aisle with your frock as fresh and immaculate as when it is
lifted from the form to be put upon you.”
“Very well, Mama,” said Mahala with a little sigh. “It’s awfully good of
you and Papa to take so much trouble and I do appreciate it, but I
cannot help thinking it would be better——”
“There, there, Mahala!” said Mrs. Spellman.
A queer, ugly red with which Mahala was very familiar crept into her
mother’s cheeks. So nothing more was said on the subject until that
night in the sweltering heat when the Newberry House omnibus had pounded
up and down and across Ashwater, picking up a red-faced boy here, a
perspiring girl there, pausing in state before the humble door of
Susanna and shortly thereafter before the gate of the banker.
The surrey was waiting to take Mr. and Mrs. Moreland to the church.
Junior’s mother came on the veranda with him and stood looking him over.
Her face was very pale and her hands were trembling.
“Do you think,” she questioned eagerly, “that you won’t get frightened,
that you can remember your speech?”
“You bet your life I can remember my speech!” said Junior boastfully.
“When did I ever forget a speech, if I wanted to make one? Never broke
down in my life. Why should I now? I’m going to try the old bank a
little and if I don’t like it, I’m going to be a lawyer. I think it
would be a lot of fun to be a lawyer, and you bet a lawyer doesn’t
forget a speech. You needn’t sit and shake and worry, or Father either.
Don’t have cold feet and hot sweats.”
The driver of the omnibus halooed and called to Junior to hurry, that he
was two minutes late. In order to show his authority and his position in
the village, Junior deliberately stepped inside the door. He could not
think of a thing on earth to use as an excuse for having done so. His
handkerchief was in his pocket, the notes for his speech he had placed
himself in order that he might refresh his memory if he felt a bit
rattled as his turn came to speak. He had no need to look in the mirror
to see that he was as handsome as a boy well could be. His mother
hurried after him.
“Junior, what is it?” she cried in a panic.
“Oh, I just thought I’d wet my whistle once more,” said Junior, starting
toward the dining room. His mother hurried to bring him a drink of
water, and when he was perfectly ready, Junior kissed her, telling her
to get his father and hurry up because she should be in her place before
the march down the aisle began. Mrs. Moreland, comfortable in the
dignity of reserved seats, also took her time. She was to be separated
from her lord who sat upon the platform as President of the School
Board.
She left Mr. Moreland at the side door opening into the small room where
the official board of the church transacted its business. He was the
last one of the officials to arrive. His fellow townsmen and neighbours
amused Martin Moreland that night. They stood so straight, their faces
were so grave, they were gasping in the heat, they felt over their hair
and held their heads at an angle calculated best to allow the
perspiration to run down their necks without touching their stiffly
starched high collars.
In casting his eyes over the gathering, he noted with satisfaction the
absence of his old enemy, Mahlon Spellman. Not that Mahlon knew that he
was the enemy of the banker. He did not. He thought that Martin thought
that they were friends. There was no intuition which told him that
Martin Moreland hated his precision of language, hated his taste in
dressing, hated his poise and self-possession, hated to loathing scorn
his fidelity to the paths of virtue, cordially hated any appearance in
public that he ever had made. It certainly was unfortunate for Mahlon
that only the spring preceding Mahala’s graduation his period on the
School Board had elapsed and a new man had taken his place.
As Mahlon made his way down the church aisle with Elizabeth on his arm,
he was probably the only man in the room who was not perspiring. A sort
of clammy indifference seemed to have settled upon him. It was purely
from force of habit that he ran his fingers over his hair, felt of his
tie, and went through the old familiar gestures of flecking his sleeve
and straightening his vest as he stepped into the light of the
chandeliers and marched to the strains of the organ down to their
reservations.
The unconscious Elizabeth was in the height of her glory. She had waited
for this, she had prayed for this; only God knew how she had worked for
it. She had just accomplished the delivery of her offspring at the side
door of the church without a fleck of dust having touched her shoes of
white satin, without a fold or crease disfiguring the billowing skirts
of her frock. She had done her share perfectly. Never a fear crossed her
mind that Mahala would fail. When had Mahala ever failed? Why _should_
she?
As Mahala stood a second to shake out her skirts after stepping down,
her mother had deliberately gone to the door and looked in upon the
assembled graduates. She had eyes for only one figure. She wanted to see
Edith Williams. Standing in the centre of the room, Edith had given her
a distinct shock.
All day the girl had been nervous, frantically trying to remember her
speech. In the humid heat of the evening she had gotten herself into a
closely fitting dress of heavy white velvet. It was a dress that a queen
might have worn upon a state occasion. Pearl-white like the shell of an
oyster, very plain both as to waist and skirt—a dress that trusted to
the richness of its material to make up for any lack of the elaborate
trimmings of the day. As Edith had stood before her mirror giving the
finishing touches to her toilet she had seen above the tightly embracing
waist her face flushed with the strain of fear that she might forget her
speech, her figure tense with the nerve strain of her unaccustomed
public appearance. That minute she was wildly envying even Susanna who
could have been called upon and recited any one of a hundred poems from
the readers that had been used in the school course or supplementary
works on elocution. The doubt and uncertainty in her mind had given to
the girl a flashing vividness she never before had possessed.
Lifting her skirts around her, she had entered the omnibus and glanced
at its occupants. She had said nothing until the driver turned the
corner and started in the direction of the church. Involuntarily she
threw up her hand, crying: “Stop him! He has forgotten Mahala!”
Instantly, Junior Moreland arose in his place, and catching a swaying
strap above his head, leaned to the opening beside the driver and spoke
to him roughly, crying: “Here you! You’ve forgotten Mahala Spellman!”
Without stopping, the driver cracked his whip over his team and plunged
ahead. There was rather a dazed look on Junior’s face as he lurched back
and dropped into his seat. Edith Williams leaned forward and with wide
eyes looked at Junior.
“What did he say?” she cried.
“‘Father’s fetching her,’” answered Junior tartly, and it happened that
he accompanied the information by a look at Edith. Unquestionably he saw
the lunge of her angered heart. He saw the red blood surge up to her
lips and paint her cheeks. He saw the black malice that stirred in the
depths of her eyes. He caught the smothered exclamation, a shocking
exclamation, that arose to her lips, and he knew, and every member of
the class knew, that the bitter little “Damn!” which sprang past the
lips of Edith Williams was unadulterated, forceful invective.
She was outdone in the first round. Mahala would not ride to the church
with the remainder of the class. Why was she in that omnibus among the
sons and daughters of blacksmiths, and cobblers, and lawn cleaners? Why
had she not had the sense to think of having her uncle take her in their
beautiful surrey? Why was she always letting Mahala Spellman get ahead
of her? There rushed through her heart the conviction that when Mahala
stepped through the door, in some way she would have managed, probably
with half the money Edith had spent, to outdo her costume.
The velvet of her dress, rose-petal soft, shut her in like the walls of
a furnace. The heat and anger in her eyes made her what she never before
in her life had been—arrestingly beautiful. She bit her dry lips and
clenched her gloved hands. What matter that she had bought herself what
she felt would be said to be the handsomest basket of flowers that would
be carried to the stage that night, with the imaginary name of an
imaginary lover attached by her own hands to the handle? What matter
that she had coached both her uncle and her aunt concerning the handsome
offerings that they were to send up to her? In some way, Mahala would
see to it that she would have finer. For one thing it was certain, after
the expense of the piano lamp of four years ago, that Junior would stop
at nothing. No doubt the basket he would send Mahala would far surpass
hers.
When the omnibus stopped at the church door, with his usual lithe
smoothness of movement, Junior was on his feet and out of it first.
Instead of marching straight into the church in the lead, as all of them
expected him to do, he had surprised them by turning, and with one
white-gloved hand upon the door, he had looked into the eyes of Edith
Williams. Instantly she arose, gathering her skirts around her, and made
her way to the door. She laid her hand in Junior’s outstretched one; she
encountered the look in his eyes in a state of dumb bewilderment. She
came carefully down the three steps leading from the eminence of the
omnibus. Her ears heard the sweetest music this world ever had
vouchsafed to them: “I say, Edith, you are a riproaring beauty to-night!
Keep your head up, and show folks how it’s done!”
In that instant Edith remembered that she knew her speech. A sort of
cold self-possession washed in a big wave through her entire body. Her
head tipped to a coquettish angle and she looked into the eyes of the
boy she was passing so closely, with an alluring smile.
“Thank you, Junior,” she said in dry breathlessness. “I’m so glad you
like me.”
Then she passed him and hurried across the sidewalk into the
prayer-meeting room.
Junior stood his ground and gave his hand to the girls in turn as they
alighted from the omnibus. In his heart he was saying to himself: “Oh,
Hell! I didn’t say I ‘liked’ her. I was trying to say that she was
good-looking for the first time in her life, and maybe the last. But if
she _could_ keep that up, she’d be some punkins to look at, and that’s
the truth!”
Junior’s words had been overheard by the class behind Edith. They stood
back, carefully scrutinizing her, and realized that what he had said was
the truth.
Edith worked her way to one side of the room and from her left hand let
slide down among the folds of her dress the copy of her speech that she
was carrying. With a deft foot she kicked it under the seats, confident
that no one had observed the movement. In this confidence she retained
her poise and her pose, and it was thus that Mrs. Spellman saw her.
At that instant the voice of the organ, rolling an unaccustomed march,
came to their ears. Again involuntarily the thing that was deep in
Edith’s mind arose to her lips, “Mahala!” Mahala’s mother was standing
in the door, smiling and bowing and speaking in her gracious way to all
of the boys and girls, cautioning them to keep cool, to keep in mind the
opening phrases of their speeches and the rest must follow; then she
made way for the Superintendent, who ordered them to “Come on!” and in
mechanical obedience, Edith led the way from the room. In the darkness
of the early June evening she could see a blur of white waiting on the
sidewalk.
In the order in which they were to sit upon the platform, the class fell
into line. The sidewalk cleared of a waiting crowd of unfortunates who
had not the clothing or the invitation to enter the coveted portals, who
yet had come to press back into the darkness and watch the spectacle.
As Mahala advanced up the broad walk that led to the front steps of the
church, there came scuffling through the crowd, she could not have told
from where, a figure in white, as white as the new-born thoughts of
white that contributed to her own dress. She realized that there was a
catching and a snatching, an effort to make some one pause, and then she
saw, scurrying up the steps before her, standing in the broad light of
the open doors of the church, her bonnet lost in the crowd, Rebecca, her
white flag lifted above the path the graduating class must follow to
enter the doors. The figures of two working men in their shirt sleeves,
with rough jests on their lips and their hands outstretched, started
forward.
Mahala looked up. Her first thought was that never in all her life had
she seen a figure so appealingly beautiful. Probably no one in all that
crowd, since the day of her self-imposed appearance with sheltered face
as the bearer of the flag advocating purity, had seen Rebecca Sampson as
she really was. The years untouched by mental strain had left her the
lovely rounded face of girlhood. The deeply shadowing headpiece, always
stiffly starched and filled in with sustaining slats of pasteboard, had
kept Rebecca’s complexion that of a little child. Her hands and arms
were soft and white. Her throat, delicately rounded, was a miracle of
whiteness. The plain white dress that she wore was as mistily white as
the petals of a cherry bloom. The fringed flag that she held in Mahala’s
pathway was as white as her dress. Suddenly Mahala threw out her hands.
“Never mind!” she cried to the men. “Let her alone! I have been passing
under her flag all my life.”
She smiled on the crowds pressing forward on either side of her.
“You know,” she said, “somehow this seems fitting. I rather like the
idea of passing under Becky’s emblem of purity on Commencement night.”
She half turned and called back to the other boys and girls: “Come on!
Let’s all pass under the white flag with Becky’s blessing. Maybe it will
help us to remember our speeches.”
She raised her skirts and stepped into the full blaze of light falling
from the church doors, and like a misty veil of purity, she shimmered
and gleamed as she climbed the steps. Her head was as yellow as
sunshine, her eyes were deep wells of blue-gray, and her long, dark
lashes swept her pink cheeks, while the smile with which she went toward
Rebecca seemed to Jason, crowded tightly against the wall of the church
looking up at her, the loveliest thing that this world could possibly
have to offer. To him the gold head and the billowing skirts of gauzy
fineness made Mahala look like a gold-hearted white rose.
Immediately back of her, with her head tilted and a new light gleaming
in her eyes, came Edith Williams. There was a smile on Jason’s lips. It
was lingering from the vision of Mahala as she had bent her head and
lifted her hands to her breast for the blessing of “Crazy Becky.” But
the smile merged into an expression of aroused indignation. His thought
had been that Edith Williams looked like a lily that needed a gold
heart, but that thought quickly passed, for with uplifted hand, she
struck aside the white flag and entered the church door. The crowd
outside heard Rebecca’s shrill curse: “To the devil, you velvet-clad
jade! You have a black heart—as black as your head!”
Little Susanna, ever anxious to save any unpleasant occasion, came next,
crying to Rebecca: “My turn now. I want to go under your flag, Rebecca!”
Instantly Rebecca was all smiles again and the flag was back in place
while her lips were murmuring a blessing.
Down the line, Junior had heartily sympathized with the uplifted hand.
What mummery that a crazy woman should be allowed to stand there! She
might even come into the church and spoil the graduating exercises. He
said to the men standing nearest him: “Watch her! Don’t let her get into
the church. She’ll spoil everything. She ought to be taken to the
lock-up at a time like this.”
But as he came up the steps, Junior had not quite the courage to subject
himself to the black curse that had fallen upon Edith. With a shamefaced
grin and a muttered, “Better avoid a fight,” he ducked under the flag
and hurried into the church. Following the example of the graduating
class, the Principal, the Superintendent, the high-school teachers, and
the School Board passed under the flag to Rebecca’s intense delight. The
last man in the procession was Martin Moreland. Since he could not be
first, he had deliberately chosen to be last. He would be more
conspicuous in the outside seat than he would be between two other men.
As he came up the steps, Rebecca’s eyes fastened on him. Instantly, she
whirled the flag from over the head of the man before him and snatched
it to her breast. She folded her hands over it and held it there tight,
crying to the outraged banker as he advanced: “Woe upon you, Martin
Moreland, despoiler of white flags, despoiler of white women! The
blackest curse of the Almighty is waiting for your head!”
Martin Moreland’s outstretched arm swept her off the steps and backward
into the crowd.
“Take that crazy helion where she can’t possibly get into the building,”
he said. “I’ll hold you responsible if it happens.”
Exactly who was to be held responsible, no man knew. It was Jason who
made his way through the crowd, put a protecting arm around Rebecca, who
whispered into her ear words that would calm and soothe her, who led her
to the outskirts of the crowd and saw her safely started on her homeward
way before he slipped up the stairs and found a seat in the suffocating
balcony from which he meant to watch until he saw whether his gift
gained any attention from Mahala.
It was not until they were seated that Edith Williams had an opportunity
surreptitiously to take a full look at Mahala from behind the screen of
her swaying fan. Mahala had been ahead of her. From the sidewalk, behind
her mother’s back, she had secured a full-length look at Edith, and she
had been as distinctly shocked as had Junior. There was no gainsaying
the fact that Edith was wearing an exquisite gown, and for that night at
least she was lovely. Mahala suspected that the red lips and the pink
cheeks were painted, and there she partially misjudged. Edith was
painted, but Junior had been the artist. She decided that Edith’s dress
was probably the most expensive in the church, that it was wonderfully
lovely, but it was not appropriate for the occasion. She felt that it
was not in as good taste as was her own; but there was a pang of
disappointment, because the verdict in her favour would not be so easy,
or so unanimous, as it always had been. Many in the house that night
would think Edith quite as beautiful as she and more handsomely gowned.
CHAPTER X
“A TRICK OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS”
Mahala had been born at a period in the wedded lives of her parents when
both of them were at the high tide of joy in their union, of pride in
their hearts, of happiness without a cloud. She had made her advent
fortified with a happy heart. The slight pang that shot through her as
she looked at Edith was of short duration. As swiftly as it had come, it
was gone. When she caught Edith’s eye, the smile she sent her was
charming; a widening of her eyes, a little pucker of her lips, was meant
to convey to Edith that Mahala was saying: “How wonderful! You look
perfectly stunning.” This added one more degree to the joy that at that
minute was welling and singing in the heart of Edith Williams.
Out in the audience a satisfied flutter was rolling in waves through the
building. In her secret heart, each mother was thinking, that in some
way, her child had slightly the best of the other children. There was
almost a bewildered look on the face of Elizabeth Spellman. She was
constrained to admit, if only to herself, that she never before had seen
Edith Williams look like that, and she never had supposed it was
possible that she could look like _that_. It dawned upon her that a few
pounds of flesh, a few waves of happiness, judicious assistance in
dressing that would come to Edith when she travelled, were going to make
of her an extremely attractive young woman.
When she lifted the programme in her hands and glanced over it, her eyes
fastened upon two lines thereon and her slight sense of humour came to
the surface to such a degree that she nudged Mahlon and ran her finger
under them. What Mahlon saw, when he looked where the finger indicated,
read: “Sowing Seeds of Kindness” and beneath it, “Edith Williams.” It
was a poor place to catch Mahlon unprepared and unaware. The gurgle that
arose to his lips made him look, for an instant, as human as Jimmy
Price. Nothing could have mortified Mahlon more deeply.
The organ was rolling again. The imported soprano was warbling among
high notes about the “tide coming up from Lynn,” and a few seconds later
John Reynolds was delivering the salutatory and then sailing into the
bay he had left and prognosticating what was going to happen upon the
ocean that lay before him.
While her aunt and uncle clutched cold hands and dared not look each
other in the face, Edith Williams stood up and sowed her “seeds of
kindness” without a falter and without a break. She went straight
through as if she could not have lost a word if she had tried, and sat
down in such a spasm of self-congratulation that she could scarcely keep
from applauding her own performance. Never in all her life had she been
quite so surprised: never had she been one half so deeply pleased.
Immediately after her, looking as handsome as it was possible for him to
look, beautifully clothed, cool and utterly self-possessed, taking his
time, a jesting light in his eyes, half a laugh on his lips, for a few
minutes Martin Moreland Junior held forth on the Constitution of these
United States. He gave the impression that the Constitution should feel
much better since it had his approval.
Then, in a dress half way of Mahala’s making, the goods of her giving,
flushed and attractive, Susanna Bowers told the audience her conception
of the full duty of woman. It was difficult for any one in the audience
to imagine where Susanna had gotten her ideas as to what the full duty
of a woman might be. The audience would persist in thinking about the
place from which Susanna naturally would have been supposed to gain her
conclusions, but Susanna had been forced to go by contraries. She had
gotten her material where none of the other girls had secured theirs.
Her conception was one half the fruit of a vivid imagination, and the
other half Mahala Spellman. All Susanna needed to do in writing her
paper was to look at Mahala, then shut her eyes and concentrate on the
kind of a woman that she believed Mahala would be ten years hence. It
made an attractive paper; Susanna delivered it well.
Then Frederick Hilton repeated very creditably an oration of Patrick
Henry’s, and Samantha Price read what she had copied from encyclopædias
concerning Grace Darling. The women in the audience developed
expressions of uncertainty and from them there emanated a wave of veiled
protest when Amanda Nelson sailed into the subject of the peril of Susan
B. Anthony. There were a few women in that audience who did not regard
Susan B. as a peril. They looked upon her rather as an anchor, or a
light. They were not particularly obliged to Amanda for her version of
what Susan B. was attempting. Even those high-minded dames, who had
neither the desire nor the intention of soiling themselves in the
handling of a ballot at such a questionable place as the polls, felt in
their secret hearts that they should have the right to do this if they
chose. There were even those among them who resented the arrest of Mary
Walker, for appearing on the streets of New York in trousers. Of course,
they could neither be bribed nor forced so to appear themselves, but if
Mary desired to wear trousers, they rather felt that she was within her
rights. The wave of disapproval washed up to very nearly a murmur of
protest when the speaker made her best bow and sat down amid the
deafening applause of the men. No other speaker up to that time had had
such an ovation. The nearer the doctor, the lawyer, the judge, the
sheriff, the postmaster, the county chairman, the state senator, the
banker, and the dry-goods merchant, came to blistering their palms, the
more the women of the audience felt, that if they could have done
exactly as they pleased in seclusion, they would have soundly boxed
Amanda Nelson’s ears.
Before the cheers concerning the peril of Susan B. had subsided, Henrick
Schlotzensmelter plunged into his discussion of whether Might or Right
should prevail. Exactly how Henrick’s paper passed the Superintendent
and the Principal was a matter that Melancthon Reynolds, the county
prosecutor, could not figure out, because Henrick succeeded very
admirably in proving that “might” and “right” were synonymous, and that
“might” must and should prevail because it was “right” that it should.
His oration was even less popular with the men than had been that
concerning Susan B. with the ladies of the audience. Most of the
applause that fell to Henrick’s share came from his father and mother,
who had been born and had spent their early married life in Bingen on
the Rhine.
There was a movement of exasperation on the part of Elizabeth Spellman,
upon which Mahlon placed the high sign of his approbation, when little
pasty-faced Jane Jackson began a discussion as to whether Carrie Nation
should be suppressed, and again an intangible wave swept the audience.
There were two opinions concerning that subject, also. Evidently,
neither thought this the proper place for a discussion of temperance.
When the ushers, who had been busy all evening flitting up and down the
aisles carrying baskets and bouquets of every shape and condition to
heap at the feet of those who had triumphantly finished, were through,
it was noticed that the advocate, who felt very strongly that Carrie
Nation should not be suppressed, had reaped a very light harvest in the
line of flowers. There was no wonderful basket with a vine-wreathed
handle standing at her feet; only a few roughly bunched, home-grown
posies fell to her lot, flowers that had not been cooled in cellars and
refrigerators, and were not reinforced with stems packed in wet moss.
But she happened to be sitting beside Edith Williams whose bounty rolled
over and so encroached upon her that it was difficult for the audience
to tell where Edith left off and Jane began.
At last Mahala Spellman arose and came to the front of the stage,
smiling upon her parents, her friends, and neighbours with precisely the
same brand of assurance that had been hers ever since she had stood on
that same platform at four years of age and recited:
“Hush, hush!”
Said a little brown thrush.
It had been agreed upon that occasion that Mahala was a wonder. The
verdict held over. In the first place, standing in the spotlight of the
big chandelier that the Mite Society had cooked and sweated so
patiently, with such dogged persistence over a long period to pay for,
Mahala made a grand showing. She did the whole town credit. Hair that
has been carefully brushed twice a day for eighteen years is bound to be
silky. Mahala’s hung like spun floss brushed into curls over her
shoulders. The silvery wreath that held it in place looked as fragile
and white as the silver whiteness of the mass of ruffles and lace that
billowed around her. As she lifted her hands in a grave gesture, the
women of the audience noticed that she had a new sleeve. Lace edged, it
flowed from her elbows in fullness to the region of her knees; from the
elbows down to her wrists there was an inner sleeve that was a mass of
ruffling of fine lace. The dress was a work of art, and in it Mahala
looked like nothing else in all the world so much as a gorgeous, big
white rose with a heart of gold—a vivid heart, for her lips were red,
her cheeks were pink, her blue eyes were shining, and her hair remained
gold.
She loved her subject because she was talking about “Our Duty to Our
Neighbours.” Mahala felt that every one had a duty to his neighbours.
She did not feel that Ashwater always performed this duty creditably,
and to-night was her first chance to say to the ministers, the lawyers,
the doctors, and the church deacons, precisely what she conceived to be
the duty of any individual to his neighbour. As she talked, simply,
convincingly, at times eloquently, Elizabeth Spellman could not keep
from burrowing the hand next Mahlon down against his side where she took
a tight grip upon his coat, and he knew that she was praying with every
fibre of her being that Mahala might acquit herself in a manner that
would be unquestionably above criticism and redound inevitably to their
great credit.
Mahlon’s heart was pounding till it jarred him. There had been a great
deal to agitate it for a number of years past. At the present minute the
load it was labouring under was almost more than it could bear and
function properly. Mahlon’s feet were cold; his hands were cold; and his
head was hot—far too hot. He did not know why these things should be,
for the simple reason that there was not the shadow of a fear in his
heart that Mahala would fail. He knew Mahala well enough to know that if
she forgot the set speech she had arisen to make, she was perfectly
capable of improvisation that would fill the bill creditably. And he did
not know why he spent time thinking of such a thing as that, because it
was quite impossible that Mahala should fail. He was a bit irritated at
the grip of Elizabeth’s clutching hand at his side. He knew that it was
his full duty, as the head of the house, to quiet the fears of his
womenfolk. He should have covertly secured Elizabeth’s hand and allowed
the waves of certainty that were possessing his veins to be transmitted
to her, and why in the world he was not giving her this satisfaction in
mental support, he did not know. But the fact was that he would have
given quite a bit to be able to shake off her clutching hand. Why need
she be keyed up to such a point concerning his daughter that she must
clutch and grab? Why should she not sit erect in calm certainty that his
daughter would acquit herself perfectly in whatever she undertook? Look
at the splendour of her dress, fashioned mostly by her own hands. Look
at her cool forehead, her graceful gesture, her natural curls having the
temerity to curl tighter with the humidity of the night that was
spelling tragedy for products of the waving board and the curling iron.
Listen to the sweetness of her voice. Notice that her hand discarded the
fan that others worked assiduously.
Suddenly, Elizabeth’s hand dug in compellingly. She might as well have
clutched a stone, for Mahlon had very nearly accomplished that
transformation. Mahala was off the track! Elizabeth opened her lips to
prompt her child with the next word, but shut them in sudden daze. Calm
as she conceivably could be, Mahala was going straight ahead; but what
was that scandalizing rot she was talking? Elizabeth would have given
worlds to have had her daughter across her knee and a hair brush
convenient.
“Perhaps the highest duty any man owes his neighbour is to respect his
mentality, to grant to him the same intellectual freedom that he
reserves for himself,” the girl’s clear voice was saying.
“Too much contact with Schlotzensmelters and Nelsons!” Elizabeth
commented mentally.
“Each man has his personal relation to God to consider,” Mahala was
saying. “He wishes other men to respect his religion—to that same degree
let him consider and reverence the religion of his neighbours.”
“Campbellites slopping in a tank! Popery and bigotism!” hissed Elizabeth
in her seething brain.
“Each man gives his party affiliations deep study and believes
wholeheartedly in his views,” the girl was saying. “Why should he deem
his neighbour less interested, less capable of deciding for himself?”
“Democrats and Populists!” sweated Elizabeth, unsparingly kneading
Mahlon’s defenceless side.
“There are even those among us not willing to allow our neighbours to
choose which newspaper they will take, what books they will read, what
clothing they shall wear——” smooth as oil Mahala flowed on, but each
phrase was a blow, each idea revolutionary.
“Why should men be such bigots as to require that other men shall
conform to their ideas before they will grant them intellectual
freedom?” cried the girl.
“I’ll show you, Miss!” said Elizabeth.
But, hark! What was that? The church in a storm of applause, in the
midst of a speech! Unprecedented! It kept on and on. Suddenly, Elizabeth
found herself blistering her palms against each other. She looked at
Mahlon, to find him doing the same thing. Of all the world! How they did
applaud that slip of a girl! And those were some of the very things
Elizabeth had suppressed, or thought she had.
Mahala was back on the track now. Her excursion had been the triumph of
the Spellmans’ life, but limply wet, exhausted, and secretly outraged,
Elizabeth weakly prayed that Mahala would attempt no further
improvisation. That prayer was answered. The Defense having been granted
a brain as well as a body, Mahala was constrained to close as she was
expected. Mahlon drew a deep breath and used his handkerchief. To him,
as Mahala took her seat, with the sacred edifice rocking in the gust of
approval, she was a sacred thing. Whatever she did came out right. She
was a perfect picture, a white flower. That recalled him to the fact
that, shrouded in tissue paper between his knees, was a horribly
expensive basket that his pride had compelled him to order for her from
the nearest city. She had not had a peep of it. Through the tissue
enfolding it, Mahlon could feel the coolness that it distilled around
his feet, since the generous applause had warmed them. From the corner
of his eye he was watching the approaching ushers as Mahala finished and
the organ swelled triumphantly to proclaim that the first great public
event in the lives of these youngsters had been passed with credit to
each and every one of them.
As the ushers came nearer, Mahlon found, absurd as it might seem, that
it was going to be impossible for him to release that tissue covering
without at least the usher and Elizabeth seeing that his hands were
shaking. He kept them tightly gripped, one over each knee, to steady
himself. He had ordered that bouquet. It was the emanation of his taste.
He meant that nothing on the stage should approach it in elegance. His
hand should be the one to burst it forth, a wave of artistic beauty for
the eyes of the watching audience. In his heart, Mahlon never was quite
so thankful as when Elizabeth leaned across and with a little twitch
loosened the wrappings and lifted them, leaving the basket ready for his
hand. After all, Elizabeth was to be depended on; she was his
complement, she was the best thing in life that he had ever done for
himself. He was distinctly sorry that he had not taken her hand during
its clutching appeal but a few moments before.
He did manage to swing his left knee out of the way and with the right
foot slide the basket across to the attention of the approaching flower
girl. Her arms were already filled but she smiled on him, gave the
basket an appraising glance, and whispered: “I’ll come for that
specially, when I’ve delivered these.”
Mahlon approved, because it was not suitable that his wonderful gift
should be overshadowed or in any way brought in contact with anything
else. So he sat waiting while the flower girl laid her offering at the
feet of his smiling daughter and came back to bear aloft his triumph
alone.
Then Mahlon’s heart played him another queer trick. He had forgotten
that young upstart of a Moreland. Why hadn’t it occurred to him what the
fellow would do? Mahlon’s sick eyes saw Mrs. Moreland arise and step
into the aisle in order that there might be lifted from before her a
long, tray-shaped basket with an ornate handle that was outlined with
purple violets, while the basket was heaped with pale roses of
peach-blow pink, and walled in with the purple of a great roll of Parma
violets, and silver tulle and pink satin ribbons were showering down
from one side of the handle. Mahlon heard Elizabeth’s little gasp beside
him. They had seen the great armload of red roses that the Morelands had
sent up to their son; they were not prepared for this exquisite
demonstration that they were sending before the eyes of the assembled
town, to Mahala. Elizabeth’s hand was digging into Mahlon’s side in
spite and vexation until it hurt him, and this time he reached for it
and clung to it hard.
It was abominable luck. He would have given anything to be in the
secrecy of his bedchamber where he might have said all he thought to
sympathetic ears. But ill luck for the Spellmans was only beginning.
Down the opposite aisle came another flower girl, and those immediately
concerned had not seen who had delivered to her a great, upstanding
sheaf of enormous crinkly white roses with hearts of gold. Here and
there through the sheaf were big waxen lilies with hearts of gold, and
sharply etched leaves of tall fern, while through and around them there
was a mist of lacy maidenhair, so fine that no one ever had seen its
like. The sheaf was bound around the middle like a sheaf of wheat with a
great broad ribbon of gold. Thrust through the knot there was a mass of
the delicate fern leaves and daringly there glowed and flamed one
smashing big, blood-red rose.
Under the eyes of Junior and Martin and Mrs. Moreland, and before the
faces of the quivering Elizabeth and Mahlon Spellman, this triumph of
the florist’s art had been borne down the aisle and stood at the knees
of the valedictorian.
“_My land!_” gasped Elizabeth Spellman, for Mahlon’s private ear. “Who
do you suppose?”
Mahlon’s whole body was a tense note of protest. He did not suppose. He
was too stunned to suppose. He was too outraged to suppose. Where had
the damned thing come from? Elizabeth’s hand was cutting into his. It
required the reinforcement of Mahlon’s left hand to keep his mouth shut.
Spontaneous as always, Mahala had picked up the _pièce de résistance_ of
the evening, an offering beside which all else paled into
insignificance. She lifted it lightly, smiled on it, turned it a bit
that she might see its full beauty, her head cocked on one side in a
bird-like gesture habitual with her, lifted it level with her breast,
buried her face among its waxen satin petals and gracefully ran her
delicate finger-tips through the clinging maidenhair. Then the audience
caught the fact that she was searching for a card. She was looking, and
her fingers were feeling—and her search was not being rewarded. The
handsomest floral tribute that the Ashwater Commencement knew that night
had either been sent anonymously, or the card had been lost.
Mahala’s curiosity was making her look over the length and breadth of
the heap in front of her and at the two gorgeous baskets set before it.
Then she gently set down the lilies and roses at her knees and lifting
her head, she searched the audience with a long and deliberate look.
There was only one person in the audience who knew when that look found
its resting place. There was only one person, high up, far back, in the
gallery who read to the depths of Mahala’s eyes in that instant and
through whose heart flowed the cool acquiescence of peace when he saw
her fingers slip out and deliberately break from its stem the bud of a
white rose that she thrust among the laces covering her bosom.
It was only a moment more before the music was pealing; the
Superintendent had made his short speech, as president of the School
Board, Martin Moreland was telling what increasingly wonderful work was
done each year by the youth of the town, how well deserved were the
sheepskins that he was now to bestow upon them. The boys were trying to
figure out a problem none of them had remembered to concentrate upon—how
they least awkwardly might accept and dispose of the beribboned roll
thrust at them. They did not know whether to hold it like a ball bat or
a fan. It took the daring of Junior Moreland to make of it a trumpet
through which he sent a message to his shocked mother in the audience.
It was only a few seconds later that Jemima Davis was on her knees in
front of Mahala gathering into the folds of a widely spread sheet every
tribute, large and small, bearing the girl’s name.
Guarding like a soldier the beautiful baskets and the sheaf, she
whispered to Mahala: “Who sent you them lilies and roses, darlin’?”
Mahala leaned to Jemima’s ear to respond: “Hunt through them carefully,
Jemima. If you find a note, you will hide it for me, won’t you, old
dearest dear?”
Jemima answered convincingly: “You just bet your sweet life I will!”
So with a heart of contentment, Mahala led the procession down the
aisle, climbed into the omnibus before her parents had a chance to
object, and with the others was carried away to the banquet at the
Newberry House.
The big dining room filled speedily. Ranged around the long centre
table, having the graduates at one end, their parents at the other, were
smaller tables for the alumni, the School Board, the teachers, and the
invited guests of the graduates. The centre table was the pinnacle of
fame that night. The flushed, happy graduates, free of a haunting fear
of weeks’ duration on the part of most of them, could now laugh and talk
and be natural, the result of a whole school life of association. The
other end of the table had its troubles. When the Morelands, the
Spellmans, and the Williamses undertook to break bread and indulge in
social intercourse with the Schlotzensmelters, the Bowers, and the
Prices of the town, the situation soon became painful. The upper dog
tried to be condescending; the under dog resented it, and speedily lost
out by not knowing how to handle napkins, an array of cutlery, and a
queer assortment of fancy food that belonged in strange places. Pa
Schlotzensmelter, irritated beyond caution, audibly asked his wife:
“Vere do I pud dose celery?” And Jimmy Price hastened to answer: “In
your mouth.” The Schlotzensmelters were outraged, but later their
revenge was sweet when Jimmy took a drink from the rose-geranium scented
finger bowl, whose use he had not observed by his neighbours, and passed
it on to his wife, who followed his example!
The arising from the table was in the nature of a blessed release on the
part of the elders. With the graduating class in the lead, the
assemblage moved across the street to the dance hall.
Flushed and happy, Mahala stood on the floor, one little qualm of dread
in her heart. In that slight interval of waiting for the music to begin,
Elizabeth and Mahlon had their first chance at their offspring. Mahala
saw them coming and knew that her hour of explanation was upon her. They
never would understand how simple it had been. She smiled on them
without guile and took the initiative in self-protection.
“I was just hoping for a word with you,” she cried. “Were you badly
frightened? You see, it was this way——”
“A very charming way,” said Mahlon, gallantly kissing his daughter’s
hand. “Very charming! Your audience was with you. What more need be
said?”
“You certainly acquitted yourself nobly,” broke in Elizabeth, “and yet,
little daughter, didn’t you serve Papa and Mama rather a naughty trick?”
“‘Trick?’” Mahala’s eyes widened. “‘Trick?’ Pardon me, Mama, it was like
this: When I wrote the first draft of my speech I said what I thought
and felt. You and Papa argued so strongly that I cut it at your
suggestion, but every time I rehearsed it, those cut parts would flash
through my brain. I couldn’t stop them. I give you my word of honour, I
never intended to say them. I didn’t know I was saying them until I
heard them, and then I couldn’t stop until I had reached a place where I
could get back smoothly. After that, I was very careful. It was the
lights, the big crowd, the urge to express what I truly thought—you
believe me, don’t you?”
“Certainly, my child!” said Mahlon. “Don’t give the matter another
thought. I’ve never hoped to be so proud of you. It was a triumph!”
“Yes,” conceded Elizabeth, “there is no better word for it; it was a
triumph.”
Mahala studied the pair of them. She said slowly, reflectively: “If you
feel that over one little argument that pushed itself in, I wonder what
would have happened if I had been permitted to deliver my whole speech
as I wrote it.”
“A hint was all right,” said Elizabeth; “more would have ruined it.”
She turned to Professor James, who was passing, to inquire: “Professor,
did you notice Mahala’s bit of impromptu work?”
The Professor looked at them and then at Mahala searchingly.
“I’d hardly call that impromptu,” he said. “It so fitted with what had
gone before, so rounded out our neighbour’s side of the argument, that I
can only say that it is a great pity Mahala did not pursue her
conclusions a little further. It would have done all of us good.”
Elizabeth was a Tartar.
“I scarcely agree with you,” she said primly. “A touch might do, but
more smacked too loudly of masculinity. Ladies should allow their men to
say those things for them.”
Mahala knew, having settled this point to her satisfaction, what would
be coming next. She excused herself and hurried to join Edith who was
waiting for her, the glamour of her triumph still illuminating her. Her
programme was in very plain sight; as Junior came toward them, he could
sense it blocking his path. He had been constrained to admit to himself
that Edith looked that night as he had not dreamed that it was possible
that she could. But he never had liked her. He did not care for her now,
and every fibre of his being was in irritated protest against that sheaf
of lilies and roses that had been given Mahala. It might have been from
her father or mother, possibly she had out-of-town relatives, but if she
had, why had she never mentioned them? Who was there who could have
shown the taste and spent the money, and who had dared to set one
blood-red rose in a sheaf of virgin white?
He brushed roughly past Edith, paying not the slightest attention to
her. He seized Mahala’s programme, and against her protests, began
writing his name all over it. Her father and mother were standing
directly behind her; beside them, his own parents. Edith glanced toward
them in a vain effort to hide the quiver of her lips, and saw that all
of them were laughingly acquiescing. Junior, looking over Mahala’s head,
saw them, also.
Carried away by their approval, he caught Mahala into his arms and swept
her into the first dance. Then, guiding her to a flower-screened corner,
in the scarcely adequate shelter of the foliage, he deliberately crushed
her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth.
She pushed him away, protesting angrily. With a bit of lace supposed to
be a handkerchief, she roughly scoured the curve of her lips to a
brighter red than the freely flowing blood of the evening had tinted
them.
That provoked Junior so that he said to her: “You might as well stop
that! You’re the only girl I love, or ever intend to love, and I’m going
to marry you. I’ve got a lot selected and I’m working on the plans for
our house right now.”
Mahala drew back and looked at Junior intently for a few seconds, looked
as deep into his eyes as any one ever saw into the eyes of either
Moreland, father or son. She said slowly and deliberately: “If that’s
the truth, Junior, you’re wasting time. I’m not going to marry any one
until I’ve finished college, and I have not the slightest intention of
marrying you at any time.”
A slow red mounted into Junior’s cheeks, a queer spark of white light
snapped in the back of his eyes.
“You don’t mean that,” he said tensely. “You only say it to get me
going. You want me down on my knees before you. You want me to whine and
beg for you like a hungry puppy dog.”
Mahala reached out a hand and deliberately laid it upon Junior’s.
“Junior,” she said, “listen to me. You know that isn’t the truth. To
save your life, you can’t name one time when I ever said a word or did a
thing to encourage you in the belief that I liked you better than any of
the other boys. Think a minute. You _know_ I never did. I’m not going to
marry you. You might as well not set your heart on it. I don’t want you
to cringe and beg; I’m not asking anything of you but to leave me alone.
Can’t you get it into your head that I mean what I say?”
She brushed past him and started in the direction of her father and
mother. Junior saw that the fingers of the hand that had lain upon his
were now lightly touching the petals of a white rose that was homing on
her breast.
He stood in a sort of stupor for a minute; finally he lifted his head
and went swiftly from a side door. Without a deviating step, he took the
shortest cut to the nearest saloon and there he drank until he became
wild, so that he began throwing glasses and abusing the furniture. He
was venting the insane anger that swelled up in his breast on anything
that came in his way. Chairs and tables flew before him. Heavy bottles
and glasses went crashing. It was an accident that a poorly aimed
decanter smashed through the frosted glass of the front door, allowing
the passers-by to see what was going on inside.
Martin Moreland, who never lost sight of Junior for long, had seen him
draw Mahala into the flowery enclosure. In an ambling way he had
sauntered to the front side of the flowers and taken up a position where
he could hear what was being said while he was pretending smilingly to
watch the dancers with great interest. With that smile on his lips, his
clenched hands were aching to strike. The savage anger that many times
in his life had overtaken and swayed him, was swelling up in such a tide
as his tried heart never before had known. He wanted to take Mahala in
her flowerlike whiteness, and twist his fingers around her delicate neck
until the very eyes would pop from her head. He wanted to do anything
that was savage and cruel and merciless to the girl who would thrust
aside and repulse his son.
He realized, with that craft which forever walked hand in hand with love
in his heart, that he must take care of Junior. He must avoid scandal.
He hurried from the side door, knowing where he would find his boy. He
had reached the saloon and had his hand upon the door when the glass
came crashing into his face. Through the opening he saw Junior flushed
and dishevelled, his clothing already stained and ruined in a wild
debauch. Shaking off the splintered glass, he entered. He ordered the
proprietor to nail a piece of carpet, anything, over the opening
immediately; then he took his place beside Junior and made a deceiving
pretense of helping him to demolish the saloon.
Surprised at this, Junior stood watching his father who was really doing
no very great damage. He began to laugh and applaud; then he consented
to sit down at a table and drink with his father, and very speedily his
condition became helpless. Then Martin Moreland sent for his carriage
and took his boy home and with his own hands undressed him and put him
into his bed, a horrible contrast with the lad who had left the room a
few hours earlier.
Mrs. Moreland, becoming disquieted by the absence of both her husband
and her son, went in search of them. She thought possibly they had gone
back to the bar of the Newberry House, but an inquiry there told her
that they had not returned. So she hurried the few intervening blocks,
and seeing the light in Junior’s room, entered her home and climbed the
stairs to find him helpless, stretched on his bed, his father kneeling
beside him removing his shoes.
As a rule Mrs. Moreland let no word pass her lips that would irritate
her husband. She had learned through the years that she had lived with
him, to know what lay in the depths of his eyes. She had no desire to
plumb the depths of cruelty of which she vaguely felt him capable. She
stood one long instant studying the picture before her and then she
turned to him and said deliberately: “How do you like your work, Martin?
Are you pleased with what you are succeeding in making of your son?”
The Senior Moreland threw up his head and favoured his wife with a full
glance. In her eyes there was written large the love with which she
yearned over her boy. Something about her expression made more nearly an
appeal than anything she could have said to him. There was not much
mirth in the laugh he forced to his lips.
“Don’t be an everlasting killjoy,” he said to her banteringly. “It’s all
right for youth to have its fling. I followed him because I expected the
strain of the night to end like this. He’ll be all right in the
morning.”
Arising, he offered her his arm with extreme politeness and escorted her
from the sight of the boy. Once the door was closed after them, he
gripped her arm until his fingers cut into it cruelly. He rushed her
down the hall faster than she could comfortably walk and thrust her into
her room so roughly and forcibly that she fell upon her bed. Standing
over her, he said to her: “If you can’t manage to be anything better
than a sickly idiot, you keep out of men’s affairs altogether.” And
then, on a wave evoked by the nausea on her face, he added: “He’ll be
all right in the morning, I tell you!”
In the morning, when Mrs. Moreland lifted strained and sleepless eyes to
the doorway, she was shocked until she shrank back in her chair. Junior
was standing there, laughing at her. She could not see any trace of the
dissipation of the night before upon his face or person. He had bathed
and carefully dressed. He came across to her laughingly, and standing
behind her chair, he tipped her head back against him and kissed her. He
scolded her for the loss of sleep evident on her face. He assured her
that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself and that she
never again was to worry in case he drank a little more than he should.
He didn’t care anything about the stuff; he simply drank it with the
other boys when they wanted to have a celebration. He pointed out the
fact that his father never had become intoxicated to a degree that in
the slightest interfered with his business or with his social position
in the community, yet he always had a drink whenever he wanted it. He
really succeeded in reassuring her to such an extent that she went to
her room and lay down to secure the sleep that she had lost.
CHAPTER XI
“THE DRIVER OF THE CHARIOT”
When Mahala left Junior, she immediately hurried to her mother,
forgetful of everything except that she wanted to be where she would not
be subjected to further annoyance. She had forgotten, for the minute,
what was in store for her the first time her mother found her alone. She
was not allowed to forget very long. Instantly Mrs. Spellman had
whispered in Mahala’s ear: “Where did those lilies and roses come from?”
Mahala had taken time for mental preparation.
“I hunted all I dared on the platform,” she said, “and I couldn’t find
the card. I told Jemima, when she took my flowers home, to watch
especially for it and to save it if she found one.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know where such a thing as that
came from?” demanded Elizabeth Spellman abruptly. She was trying to face
Mahala down with deeply penetrant eyes. Mahala objected to having her
good time spoiled by the ordeal she had known she was destined to
undergo when the exquisite sheaf had been stood at her knees. She showed
not the slightest inclination to avoid her mother’s eyes. She seemed
capable of looking into them with the utmost frankness.
“No, Mama,” she said quietly, “I haven’t any intention of telling you
anything. If there’s a card that belongs to the flowers, Jemima will
have found it by the time we reach home. If there isn’t, we will just
have to make up our minds that somebody cares enough about me to make me
a lovely gift, won’t we?”
It was Elizabeth Spellman’s proud boast that she had never struck her
daughter. The chances are very large, that for the second time that
evening, if she had been in seclusion, she might have been provoked to
what her fingers were itching to do, but the one thing Elizabeth was
forced to remember above everything else in time of crisis was that she
was a lady. She could not very well slap her daughter’s face at a
Commencement dance.
“Am I to understand,” said Elizabeth, “that we’re once more facing a
contribution from the mysterious source of your treasured canary bird?”
Her quick eyes saw a stiffening in Mahala with which she had been
familiar from her childhood. It seemed to be a faint tensing of muscles,
a bracing of the spine. It was with real relief that Elizabeth saw so
offensive a personality as Henrick Schlotzensmelter approaching her
daughter with a smile of invitation. She hated the whole
Schlotzensmelter tribe with their sauerkraut and their sausage and their
pumpernickel and their arrogant talk of might. Ordinarily, she would
have done almost anything to keep the Schlotzensmelter fingers from even
remotely touching the hand of Mahala. In the circumstances she made her
way to Mahlon’s side, sat down, and looked into his eyes. There she read
that he was baffled, perplexed, and thwarted even as she, and she
decided that it was not the time to whisper to him, no matter how
surreptitiously, concerning any matter that would cause him the least
disturbance. Her very deep annoyance over the Moreland flower basket and
the anonymous white sheaf faded into insignificance when compared with
the expression on Mahlon’s face, the look in his eyes.
Behind a busily waving palm leaf she had picked up, she kept murmuring
in her heart: “Hunted! Why Mahlon positively has a _hunted_ look on his
face. There’s no reason why he should take his disappointment over
Junior’s flower basket and that nasty white sheaf as seriously as that.”
To the last number Mahala danced out the party. She was wide eyed and
laughing, and her contagion spread to other members of the class, some
of whom would never again have the opportunity of a public appearance
with the high lights turned on, in the social life of Ashwater. She was
dancing with every one who asked her to dance—young or old—and all of
the others were following her example. Even Edith Williams had danced
with her uncle and with Mr. Spellman and with all the boys of the
graduating class. Mahala had been surprised when she saw her on
Henrick’s arm, but she had been constrained to admit to herself that the
evening had been filled with surprises. She had been surprised at Edith
several times. Not more so than when Edith had whispered at her elbow:
“Do you know where Junior Moreland is?”
She had replied: “I do not.”
The surprise lay in Edith’s comment: “I suppose he’s in some of the
saloons making a beast of himself. I should think he’d be ashamed.”
Meditating on this, Mahala remembered that it was the first criticism of
Junior she ever had heard Edith make. She wondered that Edith had
remained and gone on dancing when she felt reasonably certain that she
was not very greatly interested in what was taking place after Junior
disappeared.
When, at last, the harp was carried away, the weary musicians left the
orchestra pit, the lights were turned out, and the Spellman carriage
stopped at the gate, Mahala ran into the house, straight into the
waiting arms of Jemima, where a little wisp of paper was thrust deep
into the front of her dress. She knew that her mother was immediately
behind her, so she cried: “My flowers, Jemima, what did you do with my
lovely flowers?”
Jemima answered: “I carried all of ’em to the cellar. I put what I could
in water and I sprinkled the rest and put wet tissue paper over them.
Your Ma said she wanted to have a picture made of them to-morrow with
you in the midst.”
Mrs. Spellman untied her bonnet strings and swung that small article
from her head by one of them.
“Well, I don’t know,” she said in exasperation, “what made me think
anything so silly. It would look more like a funeral than a
celebration.”
Facing the possibility of having to look at a framed copy of such a
picture with the Moreland basket predominant in beauty above her own,
and with the mysterious roses and lilies in evidence, Elizabeth had
speedily decided that such a picture would be suggestive of a funeral to
her.
Across Mahala’s head she said to Jemima: “Was there any loose card or
anything you found to tell where those white roses and lilies came
from?”
Jemima very truthfully answered: “No, ma’am, there wasn’t.”
Her own curiosity had been sufficient to prompt her to read the little
twisted wisp of note paper she had found tucked under the confining bow
of gold that held the flowers, completely screened by the sheltering
maidenhair. On that scrap there had been written: “With undying
devotion,” and there wasn’t even an initial, back or front. So Jemima
had returned it to its original twist and thrust it where she very
rightly considered that it belonged, and at that minute it was pressing
into the flesh of Mahala’s breast, a vivid reminder that it was there.
She was thankful for the crunch of the wheels on the gravel of the
driveway which indicated that her father would tie up the horse at the
barn before he came to slip off his evening clothes preparatory to
putting the animal away. Mahala went straight to her mother and slipping
her arms around her, kissed her tenderly.
“Thank you very much, Mother dear,” she said, “for every lovely thing
you have done to make this night so wonderful for me. I’ll slip in and
kiss Papa good-night before I go to bed.”
She was half way up the stairs before she heard her mother calling:
“Wait, Mahala, wait!”
Because she had been all her life an obedient child, she paused with one
hand on the railing and leaned down. There was a distinct note of
exasperation in her voice as she asked: “What is it, Mama?”
Mrs. Spellman found herself equally unable to ask the question she
wanted to ask, and to the same degree unable not to ask it. She wavered.
Mahala could see the workings of her brain as plainly as she could see
her lips. Taking the bull by the horns was an old habit of hers. She
took hold now courageously as ever.
“If you’re bothering your head about those flowers,” she said very
distinctly, “I’d advise you not to. It’s wearing. They are very lovely.
Whoever sent them had only the kindest intentions. Jemima told you that
she didn’t find anything to show where they had come from. What’s the
use to speculate when all of us are worn out?”
Mahala went to her room, closed the door, and standing before the
mirror, surveyed her reflection from head to heels. She was not looking
quite so fresh as she had the last time she had looked in that mirror,
but she decided, that after delivering a valedictory and dancing for
hours, she was still extremely presentable. She slipped from her dress
and returned it to the form in the guest room from which it had been
taken to serve its great purpose. As she shook out the skirts she said
to it laughingly: “Let me tell you, you very nice dress, Edith gave me
the hardest run to-night she ever did. But I still think that you’re the
prettiest dress and the most appropriate that was worn at Commencement
to-night.”
She leaned forward and for an instant buried her face in the laces on
the breast of the dress covering the wire form. Going back to her room,
she put out the light. As speedily as possible, she slipped into her
nightrobe and then she went to the window where for four years the
little gold bird had sung to her daily from its shining house of brass,
and standing beside it in the moonlight, she smoothed out the twist of
paper and upon it she read three words. She stood a long time in the
moonlight looking across the roofs of neighbouring houses and down the
moon-whitened street; then she turned and walked back to her dressing
table. Among the bottles and brushes on top of it there lay a white
rosebud. She looked at it a few minutes; finally she picked it up,
twisted the wisp of paper around the stem of it, and went to her closet.
From a top shelf she took down a beautiful lacquered box that
represented one of the handsomest of her father’s gifts from the city.
It was shining in black and gold while across it flew white storks with
touches of red above a silver lake bordered by gold reeds.
She lifted the lining of her workbasket and from beneath it she took out
a tiny gold key. With this she unlocked the box and laid the white rose
and the three words inside it, relocked and replaced the box, and
returned the key to its hiding place beneath the lining of her
workbasket.
Then Mahala laid her head upon her pillow and tried to go to sleep, but
sleep was a long time coming. Never in her life had she found so many
things of which to think. She knew that her mother would not give over
her pursuit of the sender of the wonderful gift in the morning. She was
reasonably certain that Junior would not be thwarted in his desires
without putting up a fight that might very possibly, according to his
methods of soldiering, become disagreeable. And there remained in her
consciousness the memory of a look that she had seen in her father’s
eyes that night, a look that had been gradually disquieting her for a
long time. She had tried to evade it, to forget it, to make herself
think it was not there. From to-night on she knew that it was not a
thing to be longer evaded. It was something to be faced and to be dealt
with.
When she awakened in the morning, the house was so filled with sunshine,
and there were so many people coming to see her wealth of beautiful
gifts, to examine minutely the wonderful baskets and the sheaf of
flowers that had been bestowed upon her, to try to fix in their
consciousness, on the part of many filled with envy, just what amount of
expense had been lavished upon Mahala’s graduation, that her fears were
forgotten. Many of these callers were making the rounds. They had
already been to the Williams’ residence and a few of them had felt
sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Moreland to call there, also. By the
time they reached the Spellmans’, they were able to draw a convincing
conclusion as to which young person of Ashwater had received the largest
number of the most expensive gifts, the most flowers, and worn the
costliest clothing.
Serena Moulton, who was responsible for the foundations of Mahala’s
dress, stopped in for a view of the finished product. As she stood
before it, she clasped her hands and looked at Mahala laughingly.
“The first thing I know,” she said, “you’ll be taking my business from
me. It just ain’t in my skin to do all this little fine ruffly business
and all the handwork that you do. I’m terrible beholden to a sewing
machine. I do like a long straight seam that I can set down to and just
make my old Singer sing.”
Mahala knew that this was intended to be funny, and so she laughed as
heartily as she could over it.
“Well, Serena,” she said, “there’s no telling which way the cat’s going
to jump in this world. It may happen that very way.”
She almost started at hearing the words on her own lips, while a
fleeting shadow swept across her heart.
But Serena was saying: “I’ve worked for Mrs. Moreland ever since Junior
was a baby and I run in there. He’s only got a few things—mostly from
his Pa and Ma—but they certainly are wonderful expensive. I never saw
the beat of the watch his father give him for just a boy like him. About
all the rest he had come from his mother. If the Morelands only knew it,
they’re not any too popular with the folks of this town. Nobody’s going
to reward ’em for their overbearing ways by heaping presents and flowers
on ’em. And I had a good deal the same feeling at Mrs. Williams’.
There’s an awful display of flowers and there’s a lot of fine presents,
but a body don’t see such a flock of cards as there is tied to your
stuff, and I think, if the truth was told, it would be that most that
sour Edith got she bought for herself.”
“Oh, Serena, don’t!” said Mahala. “Mrs. Williams is a friend of yours.
She’d be awfully hurt if she thought you were going about town saying
things like that. Of course, I won’t repeat them, but if you said them
anywhere else, some one might.”
“Well, it strikes me,” said Serena calmly as her eyes roved over the
array of books and pictures, of glass and china and dainty feminine
trifles of all sorts spread on the top of the big, square piano, “it
strikes me that the really popular person of this town is standing
before me.”
Mahala made Serena an exaggerated courtesy, and in her prettiest manner
said: “I thank you, Serena. I think that’s a very nice compliment.”
Serena, looking at her clear eyes and the sweetness of her face, decided
that she might venture, and so she said: “I saw Morelands sending up
that awful elaborate basket, and I saw the nice one your Pa and Ma sent
up, but I didn’t see where that great wheat sheaf of lilies an’ roses
come from. It was terrible affecting. There wasn’t nothing in the church
to begin to compare with it. I never saw grander at any funeral. Who
give you that, Mahala?”
The question was point blank. Mahala had faced it for a nasty half hour
against the combined forces of her father and mother slightly earlier in
the day. She was steeled for it, expecting it at Serena’s entrance. She
looked Serena in the eyes and laughed, a laugh altogether free of
confusion and secretiveness.
“Now maybe that’s a secret I’m not telling. Maybe the card was lost, and
I don’t know. Maybe any one of fifty things, whichever suits you best. I
think, myself, that sheaf was the prettiest thing in the church last
night.”
Serena had the wit to know that she had all the answer she was ever
going to get. A quiver of confusion ran through her heart. She knew she
had had no business to ask the question. She had merely ventured
depending upon Mahala’s good humour, and Mahala had refused to answer,
so that meant that very likely some out-of-town person, maybe some of
the Bluffport boys, or some one that none of them knew anything
concerning, admired Mahala.
Serena arose. She was not accustomed to giving up that easily.
“And while we’re talking about the best-looking things in the church
last night,” she said, “what about you just pulling the wool over all of
’em?”
Again Mahala faced her with eyes of candour.
“I really don’t think I did,” she said. “Edith was as handsome as a girl
well could be last night, and I suspect her dress cost almost twice as
much as mine.”
“Not if you count all the hours and hours of dainty handwork you put on
it,” said Serena. “I’m going through the kitchen and say ‘Howdy’ to
Jemima.”
“Oh, certainly,” answered Mahala. She turned and preceded Serena to the
kitchen. She opened the door, and meeting Jemima’s glance, she gave her
a sharp little frown and pulled down the corners of her mouth. There was
a negative in the tilt of her head that Jemima well understood. As she
stepped aside to let Serena pass, Mahala said to Jemima: “Here’s your
friend come to have a visit with you. She’ll be wanting you to tell her
everything about Commencement that I didn’t.”
“Because it happened to be a secret,” put in Serena.
“Exactly,” said Mahala, her eyes hard on Jemima’s face.
Jemima shot back the answer for which she was waiting. With peace in her
heart so far as Serena was concerned, Mahala closed the door and sought
refuge in her room to avoid another unpleasant séance with her mother.
At ten o’clock that morning Junior Moreland went into the bank, stopping
a moment to chat with the bookkeeper and the cashier.
He said jestingly: “I believe I’ll just step back and suggest to the
President that I’ve left the bay and the presidential chair is floating
on the ocean before me.”
He lifted the latest model in straw hats from his handsome dark head and
laughed with the employees of the bank.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that I’d better get on the job and give
Father a rest? I have a feeling that I’d make a dandy bank president.”
With the laugh that went up pleasant on his ears, Junior opened the door
of the back office and stepped in.
He said to his father: “Dad, forget figures for a minute. I want to ask
you something.”
Moreland Senior indicated a chair.
“All right,” he said, “I am interested in anything you are. Out with
it.”
Junior hesitated. He was studying as to the best way of approaching his
father. Should he begin with what had occurred the night before, or
should he go back to the very beginning and explain that ever since he
could remember, Mahala had been the one girl with whom he wanted to
play, for whom he cared, that from the hour of earliest preconceptions,
he had selected for his very own? As he stood hesitating, he felt his
father’s eyes on his face and realizing that they were full of sympathy
and encouragement, he smiled. It was a brave attempt at a smile, but it
happened that the quiver of a disappointed four-year-old ran across his
lips. The elder Moreland saw, and instantly a wave of rage surged
through him. How would any one, any one at all, least of all a slip of a
girl, dare to hurt Junior?
“I don’t know,” he said in a deliberate voice, in which Junior instantly
detected the strain of effort at self-control, “that you’ve anything to
tell me, Junior. I’ve known that you liked Mahala Spellman all your
life. I even made it my business to get on the other side of that
oleander screen last night and hear what the young lady had to say. I’m
right here to tell you that if you want her, you needn’t pay the
slightest attention to what she says. She’ll find before she gets
through with it, she hasn’t got the say.”
Junior studied his father in amazement.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Martin Moreland leaned back in his chair. With each word he uttered he
brought the point of a pencil he was holding, down on the sheet of paper
before him with a deliberate little tap that accented and clipped off
each word with a finality and a certainty that were most reassuring.
“I don’t know,” said the elder Moreland deliberately, “that I’ve made
such a very good job of being your father. Your mother thinks not; but I
have tried, Junior, with all my might. You should give me credit for
that. Ten years ago I began to figure that to-day would come. At the
same time, I began to plan how to get the whip hand. Let me tell you
without any frills that I’ve got it. You can stake your sweet life that
I’ve _got_ it!”
Junior crossed the room and sat down upon the arm of his father’s chair.
He ran his hands through his hair, and bending over, kissed him.
“I haven’t a notion what you mean, Dad,” he said, “but you’re the
greatest man in all the world. You’ve always been away too good to me,
but some of these days I’m going to show you that it hasn’t been wasted.
You may go and travel clear around the world, if you want to, and I’ll
run this business, and you’ll find when you get back that you haven’t
lost a dollar and you’ve made a good many. I’ve been watching the way
you play the game all my life. You bet I can play up to you! But this
girl matter is another question. I don’t see how you’re going to make
Mahala change her mind if she doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me.”
“You poor ninny!” said Martin Moreland scornfully. “Can you look in your
glass and tell yourself truthfully that there is such a thing as a girl
that doesn’t want as handsome a young fellow as you are? Of course she
wants you. But you’ve heard of chariot wheels, haven’t you? They’re an
obsession that all women get in the backs of their heads. About Mahala’s
period in their career every one of them wants to think of herself as
riding in a chariot at the wheels of which she is dragging—the more
supine lovers the better. There’s no such thing as getting the number
too large. At the present minute, according to Miss Mahala, she has got
you under her chariot wheels; she wants you to kneel and to cringe and
to beg and to let her feel her power.”
“I wonder now,” said Junior. “Of course, if that is what she wants——”
“Well, you needn’t wonder,” said Moreland Senior. “Your Dad’s had some
experience with women, let me tell you. He knows. And whenever a real
he-man meets a woman who’s stressing this chariot idea to an
uncomfortable degree, it’s time for him to take the reins and do the
driving for a while himself.”
“But I don’t fancy driving Mahala would be such an easy job, even for a
strong man,” said Junior, once more on his feet and pacing back and
forth across the room. “I’ve spent the greater part of the day, ever
since we were six years old, nine months out of the year, in the company
of that young lady, and you don’t know her very well, Father, or you
wouldn’t use the term ‘drive’ in connection with her.”
“Don’t I?” sneered Martin Moreland. “Don’t I, Son? Well, let me tell you
something. For the past ten years I’ve been loaning Mahlon Spellman
every dollar I could get him to take, at the highest rate of interest
the law would allow me to extract. I’ve got him tied up financially
until he can’t move hand or foot. I’ve got notes with his signature that
will cover every dollar he’s worth in the world, store and house, and
furnishings as well. I’m not right sure but that if I made a clean
sweep, I’d stand to lose, I’ve gone so damn far getting the finnicky
little pickaninny exactly where I want him. All you’ve got to do is to
say the word and Miss Mahala will get down on her knees to you and ask
you very humbly to please lift her up and keep her in the position she
has always been accustomed to occupying.”
During the first part of this speech, Junior stood still in open-mouthed
wonder. As his father progressed, he began to pace the floor again. As
he finished, he was laughing and rubbing his hands.
He cried out: “You are the greatest old Dad any man ever possessed!
What’s the use to wait? Put on the clamps to-day! Let Mr. Spellman see
right now whether he can influence Mahala to marry me and to do it
soon!”
“Any time you say,” said Martin Moreland, and the pencil came down with
a vindictive tap.
“You know,” said Junior, “she’s got this going-to-college bug in her
bonnet. There’s no sense to it. She’s got all the education she’s ever
going to have any use for. She can get the rest out of books she reads.
I’ve come in here this morning to tell you that _I’m_ ready to go to
work. So should she. While I’m getting my hand in—and I’ve got a notion
of what my job should be and how I could help you to the best
advantage—she can go into the kitchen and have Jemima and her mother
teach her enough about housekeeping so that she can manage a house as
her mother does. I’m dead stuck on the way the Spellmans live. You can’t
start the wheels, Dad, too soon to suit me. Let’s try this chariot
you’re talking about and see who’s going to be the driver.”
“Very well,” said Martin Moreland. “Tell the bookkeeper to step across
the street and say to Mahlon Spellman that I want to see him for a few
minutes in my office.”
Mahlon Spellman sat at his desk facing a sheaf of bills—heavy ones from
the East for spring dry goods, smaller ones from town connected with
Mahala’s graduation. He lifted his head, a harassed look upon his face,
when the bookkeeper from the bank delivered Mr. Moreland’s message.
Instinctively, his hands reached for his hair, and then paused in
arrested motion. How did it come that Martin Moreland was sending for
him as if he were a servant? What right had he to undertake to dictate?
Nervously glancing at the row of ledgers facing him, and the overflowing
pigeonholes before him, a wave of nausea swept his middle.
He got up, and for the first time in years, he put on his hat and left
the store without looking in the mirror. He found that his hands were
trembling as he climbed the broad stone steps, flanked on either side by
huge dogs—big bronze creatures of exaggerated proportions, with
distended nostrils that seemed to be scenting dollars instead of any
living thing, their chests broad, their abdomens drawn in, their tails
stiffly pointing. Cordially Mahlon Spellman hated them. He remembered
the day upon which they had stood crated on the sidewalk before the bank
and he had said to the banker: “Why dogs, Martin?”
There had been the hint of a snarl in Martin’s voice as he had answered:
“You’d prefer the conventional lion, would you, Mahlon? Well, give me a
dog of about that size and build every clip. Especially a dog that I’ve
trained myself. Watch dogs of the Treasury. Instinct may be all right,
but I prefer training when it comes to guarding the finances of the
community!”
There was nothing he could do to them with his hands. As Mahlon Spellman
passed between the unyielding metal moulded in the form of powerful
hunters, he felt as if he were a creature at bay, in danger of being
torn and rended by their merciless jaws. He could not remember ever
before in his life having wanted to kick anything. He would have
considered such a manifestation as extremely distasteful on the part of
any gentleman; and he almost recoiled from himself as he stepped over
the threshold with the realization strong upon him that he would have
given a fine large sum, if he had had it to give, in order to have been
able to kick both of those menacing big bronze animals off their
pedestals and into the farthest regions of limbo.
In a minute more he was sitting in an easy chair fingering a fragrant
cigar and listening to the voice of Martin Moreland speaking so casually
that he was quite disarmed. He was talking about the Commencement of the
night before—how finely their young people had acquitted themselves;
complimenting their schools and their teachers and the ability of the
town to get together and handle an occasion like that in such a
creditable manner to every one concerned. He was so suave, so extremely
casual, so unlike the bronze dogs guarding his doorway, that Mahlon
Spellman began watching him narrowly with the impression that there was
something back of all this, and when Mr. Moreland looked him straight in
the eye with the friendliest kind of a smile and inquired: “Does it
impress you, Spellman, that my son and your daughter made the handsomest
couple on the floor last night?” Mr. Spellman knew that the crux of the
matter had been reached.
He kept fingering the cigar in the hope that the motion might cover the
trembling of his hands. His eyes narrowed and he tried to look far into
the future. It was with some hesitation that he finally said: “I quite
agree with you, Martin.”
“Have you ever thought, Mahlon,” inquired Martin Moreland, “how very
suitable a union between those two young people would be?”
Again Mahlon Spellman hesitated. A ghastly sickness was gathering inside
him. He had thought of that very thing, and he had hoped for it. But he
never had the slightest intention of coercion. He did not like the look
of this way of going about a betrothal. He had to say something. He said
it hesitantly: “Yes, I’ve thought about it. I have imagined that you
were thinking about it. As soon as my daughter finishes college and
becomes thoroughly settled in her own mind, I should like to join with
you in the hope that they will think seriously concerning each other.”
Martin Moreland had been decent almost as long as he was capable of
self-control. Outstanding in his memory was a vision of Mahala, gowned
like a princess, crowned with youth and beauty, scouring the touch of
his boy’s lips from hers as if he had been a thing of contamination.
There was an edge to his voice and a touch of authority as he cried:
“Nonsense! Sending a girl to college is the quickest way to ruin her!
Send her to the kitchen and teach her how to be an excellent housewife
like her mother! My boy is wild about her. He always has been. There’s
not a reason in the world why they shouldn’t get married this fall and
settle down to business.”
During this speech there rushed through Mahlon Spellman’s mind, first of
all because he was Mahlon, his own estimate of what had just been said
to him and the man who had said it. Then he thought of what his wife
would say, and then he thought of his daughter.
Before he realized exactly what he was doing, he found his voice crying:
“Impossible, Martin! Quite impossible! Mahala and her mother have their
hearts set on the girl’s going to college. They have prepared for it for
years. They have her clothing very well in hand, and in any event, I
don’t think Mahala has ever given marriage a thought, and in that
matter, of course, I couldn’t attempt to coerce her.”
All the cordiality dropped from Martin Moreland’s voice; all
congeniality faded from his face. The lean lines into which it fell gave
Mahlon Spellman a start, for he found they suggested to him the long
head and the set face of the bronze dogs watching outside. There was
something so casual that it was almost an insult in the way Martin
Moreland reached into a pigeonhole he had previously prepared in his
desk and pulled out an imposing packet of papers. Slowly he began to
open them and to spread them out on his desk. Mahlon Spellman, quivering
like a moth impaled on a setting board, surmised what those papers were.
His surmise was of no help to the internal disturbances at that minute
racking him.
As Moreland spoke, Mahlon Spellman forgot the bronze dogs, and there was
something in the slick smoothness of the banker’s voice that made him
think of a cat instead—a cat proportioned with the same exaggeration in
comparison with the remainder of its species as were the dogs; a cat big
enough to take a man and roll him under its paws, and toss him up and
set sharp teeth into him until he cried out, and let him think he was
escaping, and draw him back with velvet paws the claws of which flashed
out occasionally.
“Your business is not very flourishing since the coming of the new
store, is it, Mahlon?” asked Martin Moreland.
Mahlon Spellman’s lips were dry, his throat was dry, his stomach was
congested, his bowels were in spasms. He could do little more than
tightly grip the arms of his chair and shake his head.
“Is there any chance of your being able to pay even the interest on what
you owe me?” asked Martin Moreland, now a man of business, staring
penetrantly at Mr. Spellman.
Mahlon sank in his chair. He literally cowered. As he collapsed, it
seemed to his tortured brain that Martin Moreland was increasing in size
and consequence. He looked to Mahlon, in his hour of extremity, as much
bigger and colder and harder than an ordinary man as were those damned
dogs at his doorway bigger than an ordinary dog. There was insult,
positive insult, in the way he gathered up the big sheaf of notes. How,
in all God’s world, did there come to be so many? There seemed to be
dozens and dozens of them. How did he dare to flip them through his
fingers and leaf them over and beat them on the edge of his desk as if
they were not the very heart and the blood and the brain, not only of
himself but of his wife—his delicate, beautiful wife—and his daughter?
And what was it that this fiend in human form was saying?
“These cancelled notes would make Mahala a fine wedding present from me,
now wouldn’t they, Mahlon?”
Terrified, Mr. Spellman started to protest. Then the smile vanished from
the banker’s face. He ceased to be like a cat and became like the bronze
dogs again. He straightened up in his chair. He slipped a rubber around
the notes with a snap, put them back in the drawer which he locked with
great deliberation; then, in a dry, hard voice, he said: “Mahlon,
between men, business is business. I’m not overlooking the advantage to
me of this union between your daughter and my son. Mahala is a smart
girl and a pretty girl, and capable of being the kind of wife that her
mother is, and I’d prefer her about ten thousand times to some girl that
Junior might pick up in a minute of pique and marry, without giving
consequences due consideration. That’s where the shoe pinches me. I
don’t hesitate to admit it. This bunch of notes is where the same shoe
pinches you. You go home and talk this over with your wife, then your
daughter—with your wife especially. Elizabeth’s got the sense to see the
point to things; especially if you explain to her the present condition
of your business. As for the girl, no chit of Mahala’s age is supposed
to know her own mind.”
For the rest of that day Mahlon Spellman walked in a daze. In order to
escape being seen by his clerks, he carried home an armload of books and
papers, and going to his library, he plunged into them only to realize
that by evading unpleasant things and putting them aside and living for
the moment, he had also evaded the knowledge of how deeply he had been
putting himself in the power of the Senior Moreland.
At his moment of deepest despair, Mahala came into the room, her arms
heaped with catalogues from girls’ schools. She pushed the ledgers and
business papers aside, and spreading the catalogues out in front of him,
made a place for herself on the table facing him. After kissing him, she
began holding the catalogues before him.
“Forget your bothersome old bookkeeping, Father!” she cried. “Come help
me to decide which is the very nicest college for me to attend. I must
make my reservations as soon as possible.”
Then she had a comprehensive look at her father’s face and knew fear
herself.
With the candour constantly controlling her, she cried: “Father, dear,
forgive me! I didn’t know you were at important business. We can select
my college some other time.”
Mahala was on her feet, staring in wide-eyed terror, for her father’s
head dropped on his arms on the table before him, and the nerve strain
of many months, and of the day in particular, broke into great,
shuddering sobs. Mahala, at a very few times in her life, had seen her
father’s eyes moist with compassion, but she never in her life had seen
any man cry as men do cry when their backs are against the wall and
horrifying extremities yawn at their feet, when there comes to them the
realization that they are not living for themselves, but for those that
they truly love.
In a minute, Mahala was on her father’s knees beside the table; her arms
were around his neck; and by and by, when he had grown calmer and forced
himself into quietness, she began asking comprehensive questions. With
the memory of many months past culminating vividly before her, she was
not long in realizing the difficulty. With quick intuition and the clear
insight that had always characterized her, she knew the situation. When
her father assented to her question as to whether Mr. Moreland was
pressing him about money matters, she knew the essential thing that was
necessary for her to know.
“What a fool I’ve been,” she cried. “I’ve always wondered why Martin
Moreland was so friendly to you, why he was constantly urging you to
accept his offers of loans and trying to induce you to spend more money
than you really should for subscriptions and things. I’ve wondered and
now I understand. Junior has sent me word that he’s coming here
to-night, and he’s exactly like his father. He thinks that if he has
enough money, he can buy anything in the world that he wants. Well, he
is destined to learn that he hasn’t got enough money to buy me!”
In a panic, Mr. Spellman grasped her arm. He implored her to think of
her mother; to think of him; to think of herself. He tried to put into
cold words that would make very clear to her understanding, the exact
result of the ruin that would face them unless she prevented it. She
laughed at him and told him it was lucky that her mother had forced her
to learn to perform miracles with her needle.
“Only think, Papa,” she cried, “how very capable I am! I can earn enough
money with fancy embroidering and with sewing or millinery, to keep us
all three in comfort. Lift up your head. Go tell Martin Moreland to take
what belongs to him. Thank God that I don’t belong to him. He can’t buy
either my body or my soul!”
In the midst of this Mrs. Spellman opened the door. Her husband and her
daughter were so engrossed that they did not notice her. She stepped
back and stood listening, first in amazement, then in sickening fear, at
the end in rising defiance. At Mahala’s last words, she came into the
room. She took a stand beside her. She put her arm around her and told
her that she was right.
She said to her husband: “No, Mahlon, Martin Moreland shall not force
Mahala to marry Junior unless she has given him her love. Much as I
should like to see her Junior’s wife and presiding in the lovely home
that he would provide for her, I say that she shall not be forced to
take the step in order to insure comfort for us.”
Mahlon Spellman held up a shaking hand.
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth, be quiet!” he panted. “You don’t know. You
don’t understand. Are you contemplating what being forced from the
store, from this house, of being stripped of the greater part of its
furnishings, is going to mean? How am I to face the world bankrupt,
ruined, with not a penny for your care?”
Hopefully his eyes clung to the face of his wife; and in slow
bewilderment, he saw her desert him. She only tightened her grip on
Mahala. She only lifted her delicate head higher, and looked at him with
calm deliberation.
“Don’t feel so badly, my dear,” she said. “All our lives together you
have taken beautiful care of me and we’ve done our best for Mahala. If
you have allowed yourself to fall into the clutches of a man like Martin
Moreland, it’s nothing more than hundreds, yes, thousands of other men
in this village and this county, and many adjoining, have done. It is
very possible that some other man in exactly your position is
represented by nearly every transfer of real estate to the name of
Martin Moreland that the county recorder makes. Let him take the store,
let him take this house, let him take these furnishings, if we owe him
that amount of money. He cannot take Mahala unless she is willing,
unless she loves and hopefully desires to marry Junior.”
Deserted by his wife, Mahlon Spellman’s head dropped once more on the
table before him. Sick, afraid, defeated, he groaned in anguish. He
allowed his wife and Mahala to help him to the sofa where they put a
pillow under his head and covered him warmly. They brought him a cup of
strong tea; and after a time, when he lay quiet as they tiptoed from the
room, they decided that he had gone to sleep, so they went upstairs to
talk the situation over.
During this talk, Mahala began slowly to discern that the valiant stand
her mother had taken had been one of impulse, because Elizabeth Spellman
was impulsive, and her first impulse on matters concerning Mahala was to
be natural. When she took time to think things over, to reason, to
elaborate, she was very likely to be swayed by custom, by public
opinion, by financial advantage. It was plain to the girl that in a
short time she would be forced to combat the feelings of her mother as
well as those of her father.
Youth is undaunted, full of hope, full of confidence. Ever since she
could remember, Mahala had been in close contact with Junior much of the
time. She was thoroughly familiar with the domineering traits of his
disposition, his selfishness, his evasions, his cruelty, so like his
father’s, to those in social or financial position that he deemed
beneath him. In a few minutes alone, before his arrival that evening,
she had tried to face the situation fairly; and in those minutes she had
realized that all during the past year there had been a feeling of
unrest and disquiet, and a vague wondering if trouble might not be
coming her way. She found that she had been fortifying herself against
it; that she had been planning for it; that she had been wondering what
she would do if it came. Now that it was here, there was only one thing
that she could do. If her father was in Martin Moreland’s debt to the
extent of the store, of the valuable lands in which he had speculated,
of their home even, then those things must be turned over to Martin
Moreland even as the homes and the lands and the businesses of other men
had been turned over to him. She realized now, as she never had before,
that instead of being a tower of strength, her father had been a tower
of weakness. In order to give her and her mother all the comfort and the
joy to be gotten from life, he had brought this upon them. He had not
had the strength of will to refuse them anything. He had wanted them to
think that he was such a wonderful business man, so very successful,
that he could pamper them and give them pleasure to any extent. At his
elbow for years there had stood the man who had understood his
disposition and preyed upon his weakness, and who would now reap a rich
harvest.
Mahala was sufficiently practical to know that, in a foreclosure,
property would go for half of its real value. She tried to think if
there was some one to whom her father could turn for a loan that would
give them time to dispose of the store and of lands and even of the
house, at something like a fair valuation. Resolutely she went down to
the library. She peeped in and saw her father still lying in a stupor
that she supposed was natural sleep. She tiptoed to the desk, and
sitting down, she began going over the long columns of his account book.
At the foot of every page of entries a wave of indignation and scorn
swept her being. But all of her anger was not directed against Martin
Moreland; all of her pity was not expended upon the man lying in
collapse in that same room. She was a woman now, and her mother had been
a woman ever since she had married Mahlon Spellman—a woman with a good
brain and a keen mind. She should have made it her affair to know
something of her husband’s business; she should have refused instead of
placing her name upon mortgages and papers that imperilled their home
and their living. Instead of laughing and dancing and studying her way
through school, at least after she knew that her father was troubled,
Mahala felt that she should have inquired into his affairs, herself. She
should have tried to help him. She should not have spent the large sums
that she had upon clothing and things she might have done without.
Since recrimination did no good, since she could think of no one who
might help them in their hour of extremity, she was forced back to the
original proposition of trying to determine what there was that she
could do herself. Once she had a fleeting thought of Edith Williams. She
knew that her uncle held large sums in trust for her. For a moment she
wondered if Edith could secure for her a sum that would stay matters
until they could be fairly adjusted. She remembered that even in
personal expenses Edith always had been extremely close; that she would
only spend money where she had a definite object in view, and in
thinking deeply, there came to her the realization that it was barely
possible that what Edith Williams would rather see than any other one
thing was Mahala’s downfall instead of her salvation. Dimly there crept
into Mahala’s mind the confused thought that not only Edith but many
others might be glad to see her broken and humiliated. That, she
resolved, they should not see. If what she had considered theirs was
truly Martin Moreland’s, he must have it. She had enjoyed her good time,
now she would work.
She made herself as beautiful as possible and she was perfectly
controlled when Jemima called her that evening. She found that on
account of the humidity, or possibly in order that he might speak with
her alone, Junior had taken a chair on the front veranda. When she went
to him, she saw that he had brought her a huge bouquet of delicate
flowers and an extravagantly large box of candy. All day the house had
been sickening with the damp odour of the dozens of bouquets crowded
everywhere. The piano was still loaded with pounds of candy that she
must speedily give away or see it wasted in the heat. The very sight of
the flowers faintly sickened her. She dropped them on the porch table
and left Junior to relieve himself of the candy. Then she sat on a long
bench running the length of the porch, sheltered by vines. Junior came
over and seated himself beside her.
His first words were extremely unfortunate for he asked: “What has
aroused the temper of my fair lady?”
Mahala felt that “temper” was not the correct word to describe the state
of mind which Junior must know possessed her. Certainly she resented the
assumption that she belonged to him. A sneer flashed across her face. At
sight of it Junior lost his head. He threw his arms around her and tried
again to kiss her. She roughly repulsed him, and there flew from her
lips words she was sorry for the moment she had said them.
“Junior Moreland, if you had any sense, you would leave me alone! I know
a girl who is crazy about you. Why don’t you pay your attentions to
her?”
Then Junior was possessed with anger. He had been encouraged by both his
father and his mother to believe that he really had some rights where
Mahala was concerned.
In a voice tense with emotion, he said to her: “Ever since you’ve known
anything, you’ve known that I intended to marry you when we grew up, and
you’ve always been nice and friendly with me. What is the matter with
you now?”
Mahala drew back.
She waited until she could speak smoothly, and then she said
deliberately: “I don’t see how you can hold me responsible for what
you’ve intended. If your father and mother were not stone blind with
pride and conceit, they would know, and you would know, what this whole
town thinks about the Morelands.”
Angered further by this, Junior retorted: “And what’s the whole town
going to think when it finds out that the Spellmans will be in the
poorhouse if my father chooses to foreclose the mortgages and demand
payments on the notes that he holds on everything you’ve got on earth?”
In his anger and excitement, he had forgotten even to lower his voice.
Inside the window, Mahlon Spellman, roused by his tones and the import
of what he was saying, struggled to his feet and stood listening, one
hand on a chair back steadying him, the other clutching his heart.
Under the nerve strain, big tears began slowly to slip down Mahala’s
cheeks. That word “poorhouse” brought something menacing and gravely
real to her vision. She knew where the county poorhouse was and what it
was. She had gone there with her mother at Thanksgiving and Easter and
Christmas times to try to carry a degree of cheer. Could it be possible
that such a place threatened her father and her mother?
The tears softened Junior. He commenced to plead with her.
He said to her: “There’s no sense in a girl wasting time to go to
college. You know how to sew and to keep a house beautifully. If you
need a little help with the cooking, you can soon learn. You would only
have to superintend. I could afford servants for you from the very
start. Dad’s crazy about you. He’d do anything in the world I wanted for
you. Forget this college business. I can’t eat calculus and radicals or
drink syntax and prosody. You’re all right for me and for Ashwater,
exactly the way you are!”
He started to seize her roughly, but divining his intentions, she
swiftly evaded him and swung a heavy porch chair between them, and then,
anger surging up to a degree overcoming fear, she spat at him her real
thoughts.
“You coward! You always have been a coward! You always will be! You
never picked on a boy in school unless you were twice his size. You
never passed an examination without cheating. You even made the
Principal fix up the grades that allowed you to graduate. You’ve never
cared what happened to any other girl or boy so long as you were the
leader and had what you wanted.”
At that Junior turned ugly. He stepped back and began to sneer.
“What about the leader you have been, dressed in your fine clothes from
your father’s bankrupt store?”
Mahala lifted her head and dried her eyes.
“I never cheated any one out of their property,” she said. “My father is
only one out of dozens of men whose fortunes have been deliberately
wrecked by your father. If I can’t afford the clothing I’m wearing, I’ll
take it off and put on what I can, and I’ll earn with my own hands what
I need to take care of myself and my father, too!”
Then Junior shouted with rough laughter. He pointed to her hands, and at
sight of them, and at the thought of them being forced to work for a
living, he tried to catch hold of them.
“And what is it you propose to do with those mighty hands of yours?” he
asked.
Mahala held them up and looked at them speculatively.
“I’ll admit that they’re small, and that they’re white,” she said, “but
they’re strong as steel, and if you’ll be pleased to observe closely,
you’ll notice further that they’re clean.”
Then Junior tried another tack.
“What about your mother?” he said. “Haven’t you got the sense to realize
that it will kill your father to lose his business standing, to be
stamped a failure before the community? Don’t you know that it will kill
your mother to be driven from this house and to try to live in skimpy,
ugly poverty? Don’t be a silly fool!”
Then Mahala stepped back.
She said quietly: “I’ve always tried to treat you kindly, Junior. I’ve
always hoped that you might see what it was in your power to become, and
change your ways. But you never have. You don’t see even now where
you’re wrong. You don’t understand now why I’d die, and let my father
and mother die with me, before I’d marry you and bring little children,
who would be like you, into the world. I loathe the kind of man your
father has deliberately made of you. I’d rather see all of us dead than
to see us forced into the power of your horrible father!”
Inside the window that verdict struck Mahlon Spellman straight to the
heart. Both of his hands were clutched into his aching breast as he slid
forward across the chair beside which he was standing.
CHAPTER XII
“THOSE WHO SERVE”
Outside, Junior Moreland’s inherent cruelty asserted itself. His face
was transformed by anger and astonishment. His fists were clenched and
his face distorted as he cried to Mahala: “All right! If you refuse to
marry me, it won’t be many days before you’ll be kneeling to my father
imploring him for mercy!”
Possessed of spirit far above his own, Mahala laughed at him tauntingly.
“How perfectly true you are to your teachings and environment!” she
said. “Why put the dirty work on your father? Why don’t you say that
you’ll force me to kneel to you and implore your mercy? Your words and
the look on your face this minute prove conclusively the thing I’ve
always, deep down in my heart, known about you. Won’t you have the
decency to go?”
Mahala stood still, watching Junior down the walk and through the gate,
and as he went, dimly she visioned beside him the wraith of the girl she
always had been. She lifted her hands and looked at them questioningly.
She had made her boasts as to what she could do with them. She
thoroughly understood that by the time Junior could reach his father and
confide in him, her hour would have come. Again she looked back at her
hands, small, delicately shaped, soft and white as a child’s.
Unconsciously, she opened and closed them and stretched out her arms to
test her strength; then she turned to the door.
On entering the living room, she saw her father, whom she had forgotten
in the excitement of her meeting with Junior. Rushing to him, she tried
to lift his head, to change his position. One glance at the window told
her that he had awakened and had heard. She ran her hands over his set
face, then slipped them under his vest to the region of his heart, and
to her horror, found that it was still. Then she lost self-control and
screamed wildly, and this brought her mother and Jemima, who rushed
about summoning help and sending for a doctor.
Leaving the Spellman home, Junior hurried to the bank. He went to his
father’s room and told him in detail what had happened. He said that he
was convinced that Mahala really disliked him; that she had possessed
the courage to tell him what it was in him that she hated; that she had
defied him; that she had said she would prefer seeing her father and
mother give up their lives with her, rather than to contract a marriage
with him. He repeated her use of the expression “your horrible father.”
The face of Martin Moreland so reflected the ugly elements in his heart
that Junior, staring at him, drew back, half afraid. Suddenly he dimly
realized what it might have been that Mahala had seen and which she
feared and loathed. But Junior was so like his father that this
realization was a momentary thing and it passed, because watching him,
Martin Moreland, the astute reader of the faces and hearts of his fellow
men, saw that he was allowing too much of his personality to be mirrored
by his face. So he covered it for a moment with his hands and made a
physical effort to control himself.
There never had been sweeter music to his ears than the voice of his son
asking him to start immediately the legal forms of attaching all the
Spellman property that they could find. With any other man Martin
Moreland might have gone through a pretence of dreading to do this. With
his son it was not necessary. He drew his lean hands across each other
and moistened his lips. The malevolence of his smile he made no effort
to conceal.
“Ten years is a long time,” he said in his cold, incisive voice, “to put
into the building up of a structure, and it’s twice as long when it must
be put into the tearing down. The care used in building is not necessary
in demolition. We will now pull the underpinnings from Mahlon Spellman,
his sweet wife, Elizabeth, and the precious darling, and we’ll watch
them topple and fall.”
That afternoon father and son, ostentatiously accompanied by the
sheriff, went to the dry-goods store. As they approached the door upon
which the official was to nail the notice of attachment, they were
amazed to see heavy streamers of black crêpe fluttering from it, and
they learned for the first time, that while they had been closeted with
their lawyer working out details of the business, Mahlon Spellman had
escaped them. They would never have the pleasure of seeing him with his
heart broken and his proud body bowed. If they ever saw him again, it
would be when the dignity of death had set its ennobling mask upon his
features.
The groan that broke from the lips of Martin Moreland was taken by the
sheriff to be the product of compassion. He looked at him curiously. He
had thought he was a man who would enjoy the business with which he was
occupied.
His voice was softened to sympathy as he said: “I supposed you knew.
They say it was heart trouble, that he’d been bad with it for a year,
but he was too proud to let any one know.”
It was the elder Moreland who reached a detaining hand, saying: “We’d
better defer this business till after the funeral.”
It was Junior, his handsome face sharpened to wolf-like lines, who said
tersely: “Brace up, Dad. You’ve always told me that business was
business. It’s too bad about the old man, but what’s it got to do with
us? If this doesn’t turn the trick, nothing will. Nail it up!”
The sheriff was shocked. He protested. Martin Moreland ordered him to
tack the notice above the crêpe on the store door, but to delay placing
the one upon the residence until after the funeral.
As they turned away, Junior remarked: “I didn’t think you were so
chicken-hearted, Dad. Why don’t you go through with it? Why don’t you
give them all that’s coming to them at once?”
Martin Moreland walked in silence for a minute. Then he said quietly:
“Junior, did you ever hear of a boomerang? It’s supposed to be a weapon
that you throw at some one else with the knowledge that it may miss its
mark and return and bury itself in your own heart. There are plenty of
people in this town who would be overjoyed at an opportunity to get
their arrows into my heart. A wrong move in the present situation would
in my judgment be risking the boomerang. It’s better to go slow, to make
a pretence of sympathy and let the law, which happens to be inevitable
once it starts, and inexorable under headway, do the remainder for us.”
This was why, during the days when Mahlon Spellman lay stretched upon
the sofa, an expression of noble dignity on his face and forehead, that
his front door bore only a wreath of myrtle and roses with floating
ribbons of purple.
For the remainder of the day and during the first night following
Mahlon’s passing, Mahala had faced the prospect of meeting life alone.
Elizabeth Spellman had been so deeply shocked, so terrified and hurt,
that she had succumbed and had gone down to the verge of ultimate
collapse. It required the utmost efforts of Jemima, of Doctor Grayson,
and friends of the Spellmans who came in flocks, to keep the proud and
dainty woman alive. When her inherent strength triumphed over the blow
that had been dealt her heart, her brain, and her body, she lay
stretched upon her bed, one hand gripping into the coverlet that had
been accustomed to covering Mahlon’s heart, the other clutching her own.
The friends who attended her were compelled to watch closely in order to
discover that she was breathing at all.
By the arrival of the third day the town had talked the matter over. Men
had carried home news of the attachment upon the Spellman store. Women
in passing had stopped and read it with horrified eyes. It was the talk
of the streets and through the homes, that, but for the banker’s decency
in the matter, the same attachment would now be decorating the Spellman
front door. No one ever had thought of or voiced such a thing before.
Mahlon Spellman’s dealings in real estate, the outward and visible sign
of prosperity displayed by the Spellman home, the wife and the daughter,
the constant attitude of Mahlon himself, had thoroughly convinced the
citizens of his town that he was quite as prosperous as he desired every
one to think that he was. Now it required the three days, and in some
instances, longer, for people to adjust themselves to the idea that what
they had thought was a pillar of stone was really one of papiermâché—a
thing that could be picked up, crushed, and broken within an hour.
Strictly in accordance with the old manifestations of human nature, the
snake tongues of envy and jealousy and greed broke loose. The
unconscious Mahlon, lying in inarticulate dignity, became a target.
First people exclaimed in horror. They shed tears of sympathy. Very
speedily they reached the point where they dissected Mahlon as an expert
surgeon would use a knife. They laughed at his weaknesses. They felt for
their ties; they flecked their sleeves; they looked at their shoes with
exaggerated care. Women who only a week before had supposed themselves
to be the dearest friends of Elizabeth Spellman, suddenly discovered
that she had been too proud, and that “pride always goes before a fall.”
Like a pack of hungry wolves they tore and worried every manifest
characteristic of the dainty little woman who lay unconscious on the
borderland. They blamed her every extravagance in the furnishing of her
home. They pointed out the number of mantles, of shawls, and new gowns,
of shoes and of bonnets, that she wore during a year. They sneered at
the weakness which had made her spend her time and strength upon
dressing and rearing Mahala as she had done. The air was thick with
cold-blooded old maxims. Upon each lip there was heard the terse,
sneering comment: “The higher you climb, the harder you fall.” Through
curiosity they rallied around Mahala with some show of sympathy until
her father had been borne to the church, down the aisle of which he had
loved to walk in his pride, and then to his final resting place in the
Ashwater cemetery out on the River Road, where the birds sang among the
maples and the river, in a monotone, accompanied them all day; where in
spring the cradle swung through the golden wheat and in fall the lowing
of cattle was heard on the hills.
The next day the sheriff decorated the Spellman front door with a copy
of the writ of attachment that appeared upon the store. Mahala was told
by Albert Rich, the lawyer who knew more of her father’s affairs than
any one else, and who had offered his help in her extremity, that there
was very little if anything that could be saved, the Moreland claims
were so heavy, so numerous. He would search the records diligently, and
any possible thing that could be salvaged he would try to secure for
her. He told her that the law would allow her to take for her use six
hundred dollars’ worth of the household furniture, and looking at him
with sick eyes, Mahala had said almost to space instead of to Attorney
Rich: “My piano cost fifteen hundred.”
“Yes, I know,” said Albert Rich. “You mustn’t think of pianos to-day, my
dear. You must think of a cook stove, a couple of beds, some bedding,
dishes, and those things which you absolutely must have.”
From this interview Mahala went to the kitchen and laid her head on the
breast of Jemima.
“Jemima,” she said, “now that you’ve had time to think things over,
where do you stand? Do you feel toward us as you always did, or have you
discovered that we are examples of monumental extravagance, whitened
sepulchres who intentionally deceived our friends and neighbours?”
Jemima lifted a stove lid and poked the fire expertly. Then she
carefully wiped her hands upon the corner of her apron, and took Mahala
into her arms.
“You poor little lamb,” she said. “If I could get at the necks of some
of these old hens that have let you hear what they’re saying, I’d wring
’em good and proper! The other day Serena Moulton came nosin’ into my
kitchen with her whitened-sepulchre sentiments droolin’ from her lips,
and I told her pretty quick to cheese it and get where she belonged
among the other cats that was given over to clawin’!”
Mahala gripped her arms around Jemima’s broad shoulders and buried her
face in her warm breast and cried until she was exhausted. Jemima sat
down in the one easy chair conceded to her idle moments in the kitchen
and held the girl closely.
“Don’t you think I don’t understand, honey,” she said, “and don’t you
mind. You just cry till you get through, then you wipe up your eyes and
pick out what it is that you want to take with you that the law will let
you have. I been thinkin’ for you in these days when you haven’t had the
time to think for yourself. I’ve had Jimmy Price and his wife clean the
stuff out of my house and haul it over to my sister’s in Bluffport.
She’s got plenty of room to pack it away. Talkin’ with Jason Peters when
he brought in the groceries, I’ve found out that Peter Potter will let
him use his delivery wagon to move things for us. Mrs. Price and Jimmy
have got the house all clean, and while it’s nothing to compare with
here, it’s shelter till you can look around and see what you can do.
Fast as you make up enough bundles for a wagonload, Jason will stop and
haul ’em over for you free and for nothing.”
Mahala sat up and wiped her eyes.
“Jemima,” she said, “only a week ago I thought I was possessed of what’s
commonly spoken of as a ‘host of friends.’ To-day that host has dwindled
to you, Albert Rich, Peter Potter, Jason Peters, and possibly Susanna
Bowers. Do you realize that Edith Williams has not been here since the
day after Papa went? Mrs. Williams hasn’t been but once, and since that
writ of attachment is nailed on our front door, you’d think that it read
‘Leprosy’ instead of anything connected merely with dollars and cents.”
“Never mind, honey,” said Jemima. “Put this in your pipe and smoke it.
Fair-weather friends ain’t no good anyway. Them as sticks when the storm
comes is the only ones that’s worth having. Now you go pick out the
things you want Jason to move. I’m goin’ to stay right with you and take
care of your Ma and cook for you, and you needn’t bother about payin’ me
anything. I’ve been paid too much already. I bought my place with money
I earned here. Whatever you do, you’ve got to do with your fingers. It’s
all you know. You write out the kind of a sign you want to use and I’ll
have Jason paint it like he paints them nice, stylish signs he sticks up
fresh every day in Peter Potter’s windows. He’s real expert at it. He’ll
fix you a nice one and trim it up fancy, and he’ll put it in the front
yard, and then you’ll soon find out whether there’s goin’ to be anything
in this town you can do that will furnish us bread and maybe a
slatherin’ of butter once in a while.”
Mahala arose, wiped her eyes, and for the first time in her life, she
used her hands at work that was essential and not for the beautification
of her person or her home. With Jemima’s help she tried conscientiously
to make a selection of what would be a fair six hundred dollars’ worth
of the things that would be essential in the furnishing of Jemima’s
little house that she had rented since her husband’s death and her only
son had married and moved to Chicago. Whenever Jason delivered a load of
groceries, he drove a few blocks out of his way, and stopping at the
Spellman residence, carefully swept out the wagon, spread newspapers
over the bottom, and piled in as much furniture and household goods as
the horse could draw comfortably, and moved them to Jemima’s house.
Peter Potter had suggested that he should do this.
Coming in after the delivery of a load, Jason said to Peter: “Those
women are being too honest. They’re not taking enough to make them
comfortable. It’s a crime!”
“It’s worse than a crime,” said Peter. “It’s an outrage. I’ll tell you
what let’s do. Let’s take this matter into our own hands. Let’s fix up a
plan between us and the night the folks move out, let’s go and get
what’s right and fair they should have. We can store it in the upstairs
here, or in your room, till they get to the place where they’ve a bigger
house and use for it again.”
That plan Jason endorsed with enthusiasm. The evening of a hard day,
Jemima hitched up the Spellman horse and she and Mahala helped Elizabeth
into the surrey and drove her to her new home, and then gave the keys to
Jason. He was to return the horse and in the morning turn over the
property to the sheriff. That night was the busiest in the life of Jason
and Peter. The tongue of the exhausted delivery horse was almost hanging
from its mouth. There were narrow streaks of red in the east when the
conspirators sneaked into the alley behind the grocery with the last
load that they felt they dared take. Jason spent the day carrying these
things to the rooms which Peter Potter had made for him over the
grocery.
When the returns from the public auction of the Spellman furnishings
were brought to the Moreland bank, Martin Moreland was dumbfounded that
they should have been so small. He talked about going to the new
Spellman home and taking an inventory of what had been kept, but when he
mentioned it at home, Mrs. Moreland said quietly: “Martin, for your own
sake and for the boy’s sake, don’t push that matter any further. There’s
a reaction against the Spellmans right now because people can begin to
see what big fools they were to do such a lot of things they couldn’t
afford, but there’s never a wave breaks on the shore but some of the
water runs back to the sea. There’s going to be a considerable backwash
in this affair. From what I can see and hear, Mahala’s holding up her
head and going at this thing so bravely, that by and by there’s bound to
be a reaction. If you press things too hard and cut too close, it’ll be
worse for you, for the boy, and for me, too, in the long run. Besides
that, from the list of property you’ve attached that I read in the
papers, it looks to me like you’ve got about three times what you should
have had anyway.”
A slow grin overspread the face of Martin Moreland.
“Three times?” he said. “Well, maybe. But in interest I usually aim to
get about ten per cent. I don’t know why you’d think in a deal like this
that I’d be satisfied merely to triple things.”
Mrs. Moreland stood very still. Then she looked at her husband
reflectively.
“Would it be any use for me to ask you,” she said quietly, “to go as
light as you can? I don’t often interfere in business. I don’t recall
that I ever have before, but I like Mrs. Spellman. I liked Mr. Spellman.
I liked all of them. I thought they were fine people, and so did every
one else. I can see from the aggregate that you’ve been piling—I mean,
Mahlon Spellman’s been piling—up heaps of indebtedness all these years.
You shouldn’t have let him do it. His affairs _could_ have been
managed——”
“Now right here is where you stop,” said Martin Moreland tersely. “You
don’t know a damned thing that you’re talking about. You’re only
indulging in guess work. If you feel that you have a conscience that
must be satisfied in this matter, you come down to the bank and take a
look at the notes, the mortgages, and the loans that I’ve made that poor
fool, carrying him along, trying in every way to save his property and
to help him out, till it got to the place where I just good naturedly
had to get the money out of it or run the risk of smashing myself.”
Mrs. Moreland closed her lips and stood in meditation.
At last she remarked: “They tell me that, stuck up big and white and all
painted up fancy as if it were a thing to be proud of, Mahala has got a
sign in the front dooryard asking to make over hats and remodel
dresses.”
“She has,” said Martin Moreland. “I took the pains to see it myself.
It’s very big and the letters are most artistic; there’s a glitter about
it and it reads: ‘Miss Mahala Spellman will remodel your last year’s
gown and hat in the latest Parisian mode. Let her show you how
fashionable an expert needle can make you appear.’”
“For mercy sake!” said Mrs. Moreland, and then a glint came into her
eyes and a look of determination to her face. “Well, I call that pretty
nervy,” she said, “for a girl that’s been raised as she has, and has
been expecting all her life to go to one of the best colleges in the
land this fall, for four years more of pampering, I must say I like her
pluck!”
Martin Moreland grinned.
“I wonder what you’d think,” he said, “if I should tell you what the
young lady you admire so much has to say about your son and about me.”
And then he told her what had occurred. But he did not tell her that
because it had occurred, the writs of attachment had been issued at that
time. He finished by saying: “Since you so greatly admire the young
lady, by all means be her first patron. I’ve never seen you when either
your gown or your hat wouldn’t have been better for an application of
Spellman taste.”
Mrs. Moreland thought the matter over.
“Martin, I wonder at you,” she said slowly. “Of course, it makes me mad
to have her treat Junior the lovely way she always has, and then
suddenly turn on him like this. I can’t imagine why she did it. I can’t
believe she really meant it.”
“Junior believes that she meant it,” he said tersely.
“Anyway,” said Mrs. Moreland, “I couldn’t possibly follow your
suggestion since you issued those attachments and made the foreclosure.
It wouldn’t look right for me to be the first, or among the first, to go
and offer Mahala work.”
Martin Moreland’s laugh was so genuine that he almost convinced his wife
of its spontaneity.
“Well, it would look good to me,” he said. “It would look like just
exactly the right and proper thing.”
At the new Spellman home, with Jemima and Mahala at the task of
ministering to the stricken woman and arranging the house, matters
progressed speedily. In a day or two things were in a reasonable state
of order. Lying in her own bed in the tiny, dingy room, Elizabeth
Spellman kept her eyes shut, because every time she opened them her
surroundings struck her dainty, beauty-loving soul a blow that brought
into full realization the height and the depth of her loss. It was these
shocking, ugly things obtruding themselves that threw her back
constantly upon the greater proposition which constituted the loss of
Mahlon. She had believed in him; she had loved him; she had waited upon
him; she had well nigh worshipped him. He had completely satisfied her
every desire and ambition. She had no conception of life that would not
allow them to go hand in hand, as they had gone every day since their
marriage, down a peaceful path that was supposed to end at the pearly
gates. Elizabeth had no vision of Mahlon that did not encompass him
marching in full pride, head erect and unchallenged, through these same
pearly gates, and even the desire to be with and to help Mahala, could
not keep her from wishing that hand in hand with him, she was marching
beside him now. She could conceive of no reason in her orderly life as
to why she should be challenged entrance. “Sweeping through the gates”
with her was a literal proposition. She was sorry in her soul that when
Mahlon swept through, she had not been with him, and her deepest wish at
the moment was that she might join him as speedily as possible. She felt
in her heart that it was impossible for her to survive ugliness and
poverty and pity, not to mention the contempt, of her former friends and
neighbours. She did not want to see any of them. She was thankful when
they remained away. The few who came in order to inventory and report
what had been saved, had not been able to control either their eyes or
their lips.
Elizabeth Spellman was not mentally brilliant, but she was far from a
fool. She could translate what was said to her with accuracy. No matter
what was said, so long as she looked into eyes, she saw what the lips
would say were they really honest. She asked to see no one and refused
whoever called if it were a possible thing. She was not interested in
anything. She made no effort. She simply lay still, and what time was
not devoted to a dazed summary of her calamity and a struggle to think
how and why it had befallen her, she spent upon Mahala.
She decided that she had not known Mahala; that she was not the
delicate, sensitive creature she had thought her. She admitted that she
had failed miserably in rearing her. How could the girl come into her
presence with her curls twisted into a rough knot on the top of her
head, her body tied up in one of Jemima’s big kitchen aprons, her hands
and arms visibly soiled, at times even her face? She would have had more
respect for Mahala if the girl had lain down upon her bed, folded her
hands, and announced that the blow was too severe for her. It is quite
possible that, in such an event, Elizabeth might have arisen and gone to
work herself. She felt in her heart that she would die from the horrible
shock she had received; she also felt in her heart that her daughter
obviously should be enough of a lady to do the same thing. And
obviously, Mahala was not that kind of lady; some days her mother
doubted if she were a lady at all.
With the elasticity of youth, Mahala accepted her troubles, faced front,
and began striking with all her might in self-defence. She had done what
she could to make Jemima’s house as attractive as possible. What they
were going to live upon she had not discussed with her mother. She
wondered, sometimes, what her mother thought. She decided at last that
she must feel that there was some income from some property which would
furnish them food, and, in the future, the clothing that would be
required when the present supply was exhausted. Mrs. Spellman knew
nothing of the glittering sign in the small front dooryard, flanked on
one side by lilacs and on the other by snowballs, its feet firmly set in
the midst of a great bed of flowing striped grass, its outlines softened
by an overhanging mist of asparagus. She did not pay enough attention to
know that every minute of spare time in the kitchen, Jemima was ripping
up old hats and dresses, pressing material, steaming velvet, putting a
fresh edge upon artificial leaves and flowers, and that in the living
room Mahala, from early morning till far in the night, was bending over
frames and patterns, and with her deft fingers putting a touch upon the
dresses and the millinery of the few people who came to them that set a
distinctive mark destined to arouse envy in other hearts.
Mahala felt that eventually Ashwater would make its path to her door.
She was already talking with Jemima of the time when they would freshly
paper the walls and paint the house, and forecasting a time when there
would be a bigger and a better house.
Every time Jason, hurt and anxious eyed, delivered a basket of groceries
at the back door, he used the opportunity to offer to Jemima to hang
pictures or curtains, or do any heavy work entailed by moving. One day,
in Jemima’s absence, Mahala unpacked a basket Jason had brought and she
found in it several things that she had not ordered. These she returned
to the basket.
She said quietly to Jason: “You have made a mistake. I didn’t order
those things.”
Jason answered with hardihood: “No, but those things go into the baskets
of all of our customers these days. They are samples that are sent to us
by factories. They’re new kinds of food that Peter Potter wants all of
his customers to try.”
In the face of this Mahala thanked Jason and kept the samples that he
had brought. She may have had a doubt that every grocery basket in
Ashwater contained the lavish number of samples that came in hers, but
she realized that Jason and Peter were two persons out of the whole town
who were trying to be generous, to be kind, to conceal their heartfelt
pity for the thing that had happened to her and to her mother.
With the empty basket in his hand, Jason stood watching Mahala. He was
trying to think of some excuse for remaining. To him she shone like a
star in her dark, ugly environment. The boy who never had known a real
home or mother love, worshipped her as he would have worshipped an
angel. But in the close contact that he had reached with her in the days
of her adversity, he had learned that her needs were strictly human. He
could not help seeing that even her closest friends of a short time
previous were beginning quietly but definitely to desert her. Through
the assistance he had been able to give her in moving and settling, he
could not keep from observing that none of Mrs. Spellman’s former
friends and none of Mahala’s were on the spot to offer either sympathy
or help. In his heart the old bitterness and the rebellion against the
power of the banker surged up to white heat. Here was another
manifestation of what riches could do.
He had watched every day to learn whether Junior was still Mahala’s
friend, and he had decided that Junior had deserted her when he
discovered that she was not the creature of wealth and influence that
she always had been. His heart almost broken for her, he impulsively
started toward her.
“Mahala,” he cried, “I wish——”
Mahala turned toward him. The detailed picture of her beauty struck him
forcibly. He remembered the culture of her home life, her careful
rearing, her mental and physical fineness.
She was smiling on him quietly as she said, in a subdued voice: “You
wish what, Jason?”
Realizing the immeasurable distance between them, he found himself
unable to say what it was that he wished, so he temporized: “I wish,” he
said, “that everything in this world was different.”
Mahala knew that he, too, had been stripped of even the little that he
had; that he had lost his mother. She wholly misunderstood.
She asked sympathetically: “Do you never hear anything concerning your
mother, Jason?” and this, more than anything else, brought him to quick
realization of the distance between them.
Slowly he shook his head.
At last he said: “She never in all her life acted toward me as I have
seen other mothers act toward their boys, and since she went away and
left me without a word as she did, I am beginning to believe that she
was not my real mother.”
When his own ears heard this shameful admission from his lips, he was
overwhelmed. He wheeled and hurried from the house precipitately. Mahala
followed a step or two to the door and stood looking after him
thoughtfully. Then she heard her mother calling and hurried to attend to
her wants.
CHAPTER XIII
“ONLY THREE WORDS”
As the weeks went by and Mahala settled down to real work, she found
that she had not boasted in vain. She was capable of doing as much work
in a day as any other woman. She was capable of doing tasteful work,
becoming to her customers to such a degree, that no one else in the town
ever had even approached. With Jemima’s help she was slowly beginning
the foundation of a sum of savings that meant for them a better home in
the future; and then one day she was called to the office of Albert Rich
and told that in the settlement of her father’s estate he had found a
small, abandoned farm, with a ramshackle house standing upon it, wholly
unencumbered. He had kept this find a secret until Martin Moreland had
filed his last claim and taken over property sufficient to discharge all
indebtedness, at a very low appraisement.
Mahala hurried back to Jemima and to her mother with the glad news that
they really had a small inheritance.
The following Sunday, her mother feeling unusually well and being able
to sit propped in her bed for an hour, Mahala took the lunch Jemima had
prepared for her and started to the country on foot to see if she could
find the property from the descriptions given her by Albert Rich. She
wanted to see whether, by any possibility, the house could be utilized
for a home, or whether it could be sold for enough to buy a small town
house for them. She felt that if she owned a roof, the question of
clothing and food would be easy. Those were the days when more goods
could be bought for less money than ever before in the history of the
world. They were the days when the country was cleared and developed to
such a degree that gardens, orchards, vineyards, and farm lands were
pouring out a wealth of fruitfulness. They were the days before the
forests had been cut and land had been cleared to such a degree that the
heat and drought that attacked a following generation were unknown.
Factories all over the country were turning out lavish quantities of a
high grade of goods. People were rapidly advancing to a degree of luxury
and comfort that the country had never known.
With the furnishings from their former home, with the amount of fresh
food that could be secured in the days when milk was four cents a quart,
cream six, and a substantial pair of shoes could be had for a dollar and
a half, while the finest silk and satin dress material might be
purchased for from seventy-five cents to a dollar and a half a yard, if
she but owned a roof, the remainder of her problem would be easy.
She had learned to her surprise that she liked to work; that she took
pride in ripping up the old hats that were brought to her and making of
them something so fresh, so dainty, constructed so becomingly to the
face and figure of the wearer, that it was joy to do the work. She was
learning that lesson which all the world was later to learn—that the
greatest happiness that was possible to be experienced by any mortal
came through the performance of work which was loved and which was
beneficial to one’s fellow man.
She had been careful from the start not to overwork. When she had sat
for a certain length of time with her needle, she laid it down, squared
her shoulders, and went for a few minutes to walk over the grasses of
the front yard, through the garden where Jemima worked when she had no
other employment.
This morning she went down the road, her head erect, her nostrils
distended, hearing the bird songs above her, sensing the waves of sound
sweeping through the air around her, absorbing with her eyes and her
ears the rhythms of life that flowed in streams as she passed. She was
trying to gauge the quality and the value of the land through which she
had been accustomed to driving all her life in her father’s surrey.
She was following what was known as the River Road. She paused on the
bridge, looking up and down the length of the Ashwater, her heart and
soul alive to the beauty of the lazily flowing water, the great
sycamores, the big maples and elms which bordered it, to the gold shoots
of the willows with their long, graceful leaves and the red of the
cornels. She smiled down at the big, delicate pink mallows blushing at
the beauty of their own reflections in the clear water. Her heart was
weighted with grief over the loss of her father, with pity and regret
for her mother. It was filled with anger against Martin Moreland and
Junior.
She conceded her father’s weakness in having gone on keeping up a
business he could not afford and allowing himself to become so heavily
involved. At the same time, she was certain that Martin Moreland had
deceived him, had deliberately enmeshed him, had not mentioned notes
that were overdue, had conducted business in a loose and unbusiness-like
manner for the express purpose of accomplishing the downfall of a man
whose popularity and place in the community had always been an offence
to him.
That morning she tried to put these things out of her mind. She tried to
think that in some way, whatever happened to her might work out for the
best. She tried deliberately to fill her mind with the ripple of water,
with the flush of the mallow, with the lark song over the adjacent
clover fields.
When, finally, she aroused herself and went forward hunting for the
inheritance that was vastly welcome no matter how small, she was almost
shocked with the realization for the first time that ultimately peace
would return to her heart; never would she relinquish her old pride in
blood and breeding. Her father had been foolish, but he had not been
wicked. He had misplaced his confidence. He had lost his money; but he
had not involved other men. His name was clear. He might be blamed with
the tongue of envy or of jealousy, but he never could be defamed with
the tongue of slander.
As she chose her path beside the dusty highway, lifting her skirts and
taking care of her shoes as best she might, she found that she was
fervently thanking God for these things. Friends who did not stand by in
such a case were not friends. She would forget them and gradually life
would bring to her friends that were worth while.
When finally she reached the place that she had set out to find, she
realized why her father never had mentioned it. He had not considered it
worth mentioning. It probably had come into his hands with some other
deal and had remained there because he was unable to dispose of it.
Mahala did not know how to measure land by sight. She did not know where
the forty acres surrounding the house began or ended. The house itself
stood close to the road. It was so old that the roof was falling in. The
front door stood slightly ajar. Surveying the place from the road,
Mahala slowly shook her head. No one had lived there for years. The rank
grass falling over the board laid from the gate to the stoop for a walk,
proved it. The tangle of flowers and weeds growing across the front of
the house and on either hand, proved it. The myriad sprouts springing up
around the cherry and pear trees surrounding the house bespoke years of
negligence.
Mahala tested the broad front stoop and the veranda carefully before she
bore her full weight upon them. She pushed open the front door and used
the same care with the floors. There were places where she trembled lest
she should break through. In many spots the plastering had fallen and
the bare laths grinned at her. Wind-blown limbs had broken in the
windows and pieces of brick and stone testified that wanton children had
deliberately smashed the glass in many places.
She looked at the littered hearth of flagging and wondered who had
warmed their hearts before the fireplace. She counted the rooms and was
dejected over their smallness—a living room, two bedrooms, a dining
room, a lean-to kitchen, no upstairs, the roof and floors useless. The
framework seemed sound. The chimney stood straight.
She walked around the house and found at the back a neglected old
orchard of apple and other fruit trees and a stable slowly inclining
southward with the burden of years and its own dejection. On a trip
around the outside of the house, she found a wild sweet briar clambering
up and covering one whole end, and looking closer she could see the
siding boards that had outlined the dimensions of three-foot flower beds
surrounding the building. Peering among the dry leaves and weeds, she
saw that earlier in the season tulips, hyacinths, and star flowers had
bloomed there. There were seed pods ripening on the spindling peonies
and purple and white phlox were in bloom.
Instinctively, Mahala dropped to her knees and began to pull the weeds
from among the flowers. Suddenly she sat back on her heels and looking
up at the old building she smiled to it. Then she said to it: “So you
were once a home. Some one loved living in you. Some one grew a wreath
of flowers around you to make you pretty. Never you mind, you’re my home
now and as soon as I earn some money I’ll come here to live—that’s a
promise—and I’ll make you blooming and beautiful again.”
When Mahala heard her own voice saying these words, she realized the
pull on her heart of possession. This was a wretchedly poor thing, but
it was her own, her all. Every weed seemed to point an accusing finger
at her. The old apple trees reached pitiful arms, begging to be denuded
of suckers, to have their feet freed of encumbering growth, for their
soil to be fertilized. The old house needed a new roof, floors, and
plaster. The greater its needs, the stronger the appeal it made to
Mahala in the day of her own need. Here was something to fight for. Here
was something tangible to love and to live for, for after all, soil is
soil, and forty acres of it is not to be discarded because of neglect,
when it lies in a fertile valley near a river.
Finally Mahala arose. She returned to the back of the house and managed
to raise some water at the old pump. She washed her hands, and then
going back to the front, she sat down on the stoop, lightly screened by
sun-flecked shadows, and spread beside her the lunch Jemima had
prepared. She sat and ate her food very slowly, because her ears were
busy with the birds, her eyes were on the sky, among the bushes
outlining the indolent old fence sliding down of sheer inanition. She
noticed a distant figure trudging down the road, a figure that moved
toward her with a tired step actuated by unwavering purpose, a figure
that one could recognize as far as it could be seen as the plodding form
of a human following a hard road under the lash of duty. Mahala’s
perceptions were quickened in this case by the fact that the oncoming
figure was accentuated by a shimmering gleam of snowy white bobbing in
the rear. She looked intently, and then slowly one hand reached out
beside her and began dividing in halves the lunch that she had brought.
As Rebecca approached the gate, Mahala could see that she was covered
with dust, that she looked more worn and tired than she ever had seen
her. Whatever the thing might have been that inspired Rebecca’s endless
search, it had this time led her to far counties over rough roads. There
were times when she had been reported as having been seen beyond the
confines of the state.
Mahala, with the help of her foot, pushed wide the sagging gate, and
with the best smile she could summon, held her hand to Rebecca. The
lonely pilgrim on the long road paused and looked at her intently. She
strode toward her and began her customary speech: “Behold the White
Flag.” Mahala listened respectfully, the smile fading from her face. In
her heart there was a passion of painful emotion. There were reasons as
to why she folded her hands tightly over her aching heart and passed
under the flag in a spirit of deep reverence.
Then she pointed to the food on the stoop and asked Rebecca to come in,
to sit down and rest, to share with her. Rebecca asked for water. They
went back to the old well where the traveller manipulated the pump
handle and Mahala, holding her cupped hands tightly together, caught the
water and Rebecca drank from them. When she had quenched her thirst,
Rebecca’s hands—slender, delicate hands—closed together over Mahala’s.
Suddenly she bent her head and kissed the wet fingers she was holding.
“‘Cold water in His name,’” she murmured.
Mahala was deeply moved. She took one of Rebecca’s hands and started
toward the front of the house. She noticed that Rebecca’s footsteps
lagged, her eyes were searching everywhere. She withdrew her hand, and
going to the back door, pushed it open and peered inside.
After the words were spoken, Mahala was almost terrified to realize that
she had asked: “Becky, what is it that you spend your life hunting?”
Instantly, Rebecca’s figure grew rigid. Her face became a grayish white.
The dark lights that Mahala feared gathered in her eyes; her lips began
to tremble and her hands to shake. Terrified, Mahala again laid her hand
on Rebecca’s arm.
“Come,” she said soothingly, “come, and eat your food and then I’ll help
you. We’ll search together.”
Rebecca stood still. Now she was looking intently at Mahala. Then she
leaned her head and whispered: “No one ever offered to help me before.
It’s a secret. It’s a dreadful secret. Terrible things will happen if I
tell. My soul will be eternally damned.”
Mahala returned Rebecca’s steady look with eyes of frank honesty. “I
wouldn’t tell your secret, Becky,” she said.
“You will swear it?” cried Rebecca.
“I will swear it,” repeated Mahala.
Rebecca brought her lips close to Mahala’s ear and whispered three
words. Mahala drew back, staring at her with pitiful eyes.
“Oh, Becky!” she cried, “is _that_ what you search for? I will help you!
Truly I will! Come, now, and have something to eat. You’re so tired.”
They went back to the front stoop together. Because Mahala untied and
slipped it back with gentle hands, Rebecca spared her bonnet, and for
the first time, Mahala had the chance really to study her features, her
hair, the set of her head upon the column of her throat, and the figure
concealed by the unbecoming dress. She could see that in her youth
Rebecca must have been a beautiful girl. Under the grime of travel and
the nerve strain of fatigue, she was still beautiful.
Mahala made a pretence of eating after that. Surreptitiously, she pushed
all of the food she had under Rebecca’s fingers. When they had finished,
Mahala discovered that Rebecca was studying her intently. Then she
looked over the neglected dooryard, at the old house, and back to
Mahala.
“Little angel lady,” she said, “you are kind to me in Ashwater. Why are
you here?”
A sudden tremor quivered across Mahala’s face.
“Becky, dear,” she said, “this is my _home_ now. It’s the only place to
live, that I have left. You know that my father went to Heaven and I
lost my beautiful home, so now this is the only home I have. I’m coming
here to live, to see if I can cure my mother’s broken heart.”
Rebecca listened, her face full of intelligence.
Suddenly she leaned again and in a low voice she whispered: “Who broke
your mother’s heart?”
Mahala, to ease her own fear and because she credited Rebecca with
little more mentality than a child, answered truly: “Martin Moreland
broke her heart, Becky; broke it recklessly and deliberately; broke it
with malice and through long-pursued purpose.”
At the mention of that name, Rebecca stiffened. A look of deep
concentration came into her eyes. Again she seemed on the verge of going
into a violent attack. Her brow began to cloud, to draw down in
threatening darkness.
She muttered ominously: “Martin Moreland, Martin Moreland, breaker of
women’s hearts, and the hearts that he breaks never can be mended!”
Afraid of her in violent moments, Mahala began patting her arm. In an
effort to try to distract her attention, she begged her to listen to a
bird of black and gold singing on a knotty old cherry tree, to watch big
butterflies hovering over white phlox, to see the little growing things
being choked by weeds.
After they had finished their lunch and rested for a long time, they
started back toward Ashwater. They made a notable pair, Rebecca with her
round, childish face, the white flag waving with her every step; Mahala,
thinned and whitened with suffering and hard work, her arms filled with
white and purple phlox. Beside the road, whenever they passed Canadian
anemones, cone flowers, or any beautiful wilding, Mahala paused to
gather a few; and when they reached the cemetery, she divided her
fragrant burden in halves, and going in, she knelt beside her father’s
grave and scattered one portion over it, and burying her face above the
spot where she imagined Mahlon Spellman’s heart was resting, she sobbed
as if her own would break.
After a long time, Rebecca’s hand lifted her; she stood up and their
eyes met. Rebecca’s were clear and bright. She smiled at Mahala and then
she said a strange thing: “Oh, the blessing, the beautiful blessing of
tears! Mine all dried up long ago when I was young and pretty like you.
But when you say your prayers to-night, remember to thank God for the
surcease of tears.”
Mahala stood very still. She resolved that when she went home, for the
first time she would probe Jemima’s memory to the depths. These were the
thoughts and the words of a cultured woman. She remembered at that
minute that she never had heard any one say who Rebecca Sampson was, or
where she came from, or why she had no relatives. For herself she
decided in that minute that there were two things that she knew. Rebecca
had been a girl of radiant beauty; she had been cultured and was
accustomed to proper forms of speech and carefully selected, meaningful
words, and it seemed to Mahala, as they went down the road together,
that from things she could recall, sharply accentuated by what she had
been told occurred after her passing into the church the night of
Commencement, that she might be able to point a finger very straightly
toward the source that had wrecked the life of so fair a woman as
Rebecca Sampson.
When Mahala reached home she was hungry and tired. With inborn
fastidiousness she bathed and changed her clothing. She sat beside her
mother’s bed and told her of the day. She tried to paint the desperate
old house and stable as they were, but she found herself saying that the
beams and the partitions were of substantial wood, that the foundations
were solid. When she came to the orchard, she realized that she was
talking more of the bluebirds that twittered through the branches than
she was of the cavities in which they were nesting. She was more
concerned with the hair-like grass carpeting its floor than she was with
the borers burrowing in its branches. She realized, too, that she was
talking more of the many kinds of dear home flowers that marched in
procession, hugging closely to the old house, than she was of the
building itself. She deliberately embedded in her mother’s brain the
thought that here was a refuge, that here was a home that might be made
into a sanctuary for them; that she might end her days among the
bluebirds in the shelter of the pink boughs of the old orchard. For the
first time since disaster had laid violent hands upon her, Elizabeth
Spellman remembered that she was not an old woman. She was scarcely
middle aged. She had been much younger than the husband upon whom she
had leaned so confidently. The thought that there was something in the
world that was really theirs, to which they had a right, was the first
heartening thing that had happened. The hope that she might once again
preside in a home of her own, provided by Mahlon, beautified by even a
few of her former possessions, was such a tonic as nothing else in the
world could have been short of resurrection and complete repossession.
When at last she had composed herself for sleep, Mahala slipped from her
mother’s room and going to her own, threw herself upon her bed, and
without knowing exactly why, for the second time that day, she indulged
in the luxury of unrestrained tears, tears that made her realize that
Rebecca’s words had been true. Tears were a blessing; they were a
relief; they did wash the ache from the heart, ease brain strain, and
encourage the soul. They were a soothing balm devised by a Great Healer
for the comfort of earth’s creatures.
Exhausted, she arose and began undressing, when she heard some one
knocking at the side door. She remembered that Jemima had gone to attend
the evening church services and probably was late visiting with some of
her friends. She tried to think who it might be that was knocking at her
door at that hour. The thought came to her that possibly some of the
friends who had deserted her in her extremity might have regretted it.
Maybe Edith Williams had remembered her and slipped to the side door to
avoid disturbing the invalid. Maybe Susanna had come to extend to her a
few words of love and loyalty.
The knock grew louder, and thinking of her mother, she dried her eyes,
whisked a powdery bit of chamois skin across them, ran a comb through
the waves of her hair, and hastening to the door, she opened it to be
confronted by Junior Moreland.
When she saw who it was, Mahala planted her figure stiffly in front of
the doorway. Emphatically she shook her head. She said tartly and with
stiff lips: “No Moreland is welcome in this house,” and started to close
the door.
Junior caught it, pushed it open and stepping inside, leaned against it.
He had dressed himself with unusual care. Looking at him with searching
eyes of wonder, Mahala saw that never in her life had he appeared to her
so unusually handsome, so attractive. But when he opened his lips, he
said to her sneeringly: “Had enough yet?”
She stepped back, looking at him in amazement, and then she said
deliberately: “You Morelands tortured my father, for how many years I do
not know, and then murdered him deliberately. You are now engaged in the
process of killing my mother by slow degrees. For all I know you may be
able to do the same thing to me, but you sha’n’t do it under the
pretence of loving me. If you have determined to do it, if you are
strong enough to do it, every one shall know that it is cold blooded.”
This made Junior furious, but he did try to control himself. He said to
her in a voice meant to be conciliatory: “Your father was naturally a
bookworm. He never should have tried to run a business. Every one who
knew him knows that he had no business ability whatever.”
To his surprise Mahala nodded in acquiescence. She said slowly: “I think
you are quite right, else your father would not have been able to
complicate his business matters as he did. But my father was not the
only man to suffer, since the name of Martin Moreland stands for more
distress in Ashwater, and throughout the county, than the names of all
of the remainder of the wicked men put together.”
Before she knew what was coming, Junior had seized her in his arms. He
gathered her to him roughly, repeatedly kissing her, her hair, her
shoulders, the hands she thrust out to push him from her. Finally she
broke from his hold. She stood before him, looking at him in scorn.
“I wish you could realize,” she said at last, “that your touch is
hateful. I feel positively soiled.”
Then Junior lost his self-control. He said to her: “If you won’t marry
me, I’ll teach you what it means to be soiled in reality. I’ll put you
where the dogs won’t bark at you when you pass.”
Terrified at his strength and so dire a threat, Mahala stepped back and
pushed a chair between them. Under cover of this, she lightly ran
through the house, opened the front door, and stepped upon the walk
where she was in full view of the street, so that Junior was forced to
leave the house.
He came near her in passing and said: “Aren’t you afraid to refuse me?”
Mahala studied him intently for several seconds and then she said
deliberately: “What you threatened is consistent with Moreland
character. As I understand it, I realize that, if it is in your power,
you will break me, even as your father broke the heart and the brain of
Becky Sampson when she was young and helpless.”
At that Junior became furious. He advanced upon Mahala threateningly,
his fists doubled, his eyes blazing. “I won’t take that even from you,”
he cried. “You lie! My father never knew Becky Sampson!”
Goaded beyond endurance, Mahala laughed at him.
“I dare you to ask Becky!” she cried.
Forgetting everything else in his rage, Junior once more hurried to his
old refuge. He told his father what had occurred. The elder Moreland
scorned the accusation.
He said to Junior: “I hope that at last you are thoroughly cured, that
hereafter you’ll devote your time to the winning of a girl worth while.
Why spend any more time hanging around an evil-tempered little pauper?”
Junior thought this over; then he agreed; but as he turned from the room
he said to his father: “Pauper? Yes. But the prettiest girl God ever
made, and the prettiest pauper Martin Moreland ever made!”
Martin Moreland was pleased. He rubbed his hands together and laughed in
high glee. Junior stood a few minutes thinking deeply. Then he
disappeared.
The next morning Junior asked his father for the use of their best
carriage for the day and upon its being granted, he took it and
disappeared. In the middle of the afternoon he presented himself at the
Moreland front door having Edith Williams in his arms, and to his
astonished mother he introduced her as his wife. She had consented to go
to Bluffport with him and to marry him while her aunt thought that she
had gone into the country for a drive.
Exactly what had been in the heart of Edith Williams, who had adored
Junior from childhood, when he suddenly appeared in her home and asked
her to marry him, no one ever knew. The nerve strain had been so great
that Edith was in a state of collapse when Junior brought her into his
home. Mrs. Moreland immediately sent for Doctor Grayson and for her
husband.
When Martin Moreland reached home and was made to understand what had
happened, he was delighted. He did not share his wife’s terror that
Edith might die on their hands. He laughed when she suggested the
possibility and shocked her soul into a fuller realization than it ever
before had known concerning the inner workings of his mind when he said
scornfully: “Whatever she does, the marriage is perfectly legal. He is
now her husband, her only heir. Let her die if she wants to!”
While his wife was judging him with the severest judgment she had ever
measured out to him, she came to an abrupt stop as she observed that he
was lavishing every attention upon Edith. He was doing everything in his
power to quiet her, to humour her, to ingratiate himself. Then Mrs.
Moreland thought that possibly he had been unfortunate in expressing
himself. He really did have a tender heart; he really was delighted to
have Junior safely married to a girl they knew. She immediately set
herself to follow her husband’s example. She began doing things to
humour and conciliate Edith, while Edith proved herself to have been
wholly spoiled.
She hated the dark, forbidding house. The home in which she always had
lived had been filled with light and sunshine and beautiful things of
attractive colouring. She thoroughly disliked the sombre Mrs. Moreland
with her sad face, her deep-set eyes, her sallow complexion. Beyond
words, she hated Mr. Moreland. She could not endure his touch. The only
thing in her surroundings she did not dislike was Junior. She had no
hesitation about finding fault and complaining. Nothing pleased her;
nothing was right; but she had no complaint to make concerning Junior.
Both his father and his mother realized that to the furthest extent of
her nature she was in love with Junior. She insisted that he should
carry her to his room in his arms, and this he did. He helped his mother
to put her to bed; he waited upon her like a servant. Junior, who never
had performed for himself even the slightest service he could avoid,
dumbfounded his parents by accepting the rôle Edith laid down for him.
Instantly, he did exactly what she asked until his father remonstrated.
His face bore a look of shock and then of gratification when Junior said
to him: “Can’t you see that I’ve got to? She hates this house. She hates
you and Mother. She’s worth all that stack of money her father left. If
I don’t keep her in a good humour with me, she’s got just three blocks
to walk to go back to her uncle. Until I get her money in my hands,
haven’t I got to keep her pleased with me?”
This was the point at which the elder Moreland smiled—a sardonic smile,
a smile that set upon his face the most agreeable look of which it was
capable. He nodded in confirmation. He rubbed his slender hands in high
glee. He told Junior that he was exactly right, to spare neither money
nor pains to pamper and to please Edith. He set about spending money
upon her himself. He brought her more expensive gifts than either her
father or her uncle ever had given her. Very shortly after the marriage,
he carried to her a book of plans. He told her to look over them at her
leisure and select the kind of house that she would enjoy living in. He
suggested that Junior take her in the carriage, drive slowly over the
town and the immediate surroundings, and let her choose any location she
pleased upon which she would like to live.
This diverted Edith’s attention from herself. She delighted in taking
these drives with Junior. She studied the residential locations of
Ashwater with careful scrutiny, also attractive locations in the
outskirts. Since the elder Moreland was complacent, since he had
promised her a home for her wedding gift from him, she meant to see to
it that she had such a home as would completely overshadow any other
residence in the county. She was looking for an eminence, some place to
set a house carefully planned and built, from which she could look down
upon the remainder of the town. She meant to show every one that she had
the finest, the most attractively furnished and located home among them.
She was never so happy as when she rode beside Junior, or walked with
him upon the streets, and when it was possible, before the eyes of even
the most lowly, her face flamed with gratified pride if she could drop a
handkerchief or a pair of gloves and let people see Junior snatch them
up and return them to her. Her vanity was fed by his solicitude in
public. She pretended to be more helpless than she was because she
adored having the strong, handsome young man wait upon her. Up and down
the length of Ashwater, she metaphorically trailed Junior at her chariot
wheels.
Junior kept his body straight, his head high, and with a prideful
flourish, introduced Edith as his wife everywhere that she was not
known. There were two things of which he could be reasonably proud. The
one was the amount of her fortune which she began transferring to his
hands as speedily as she could get it into her possession, while the
other was her appearance. She was still the frail, delicate girl she
always had been, but having hypnotized herself into the belief that
Junior had been overpowered by her beauty Commencement night, that he
had truly been so attracted by her that he had forgotten Mahala, when he
had asked Edith to become his wife, she had blossomed into the wide-open
rose of love. She was a handsome woman whom any man might have been
proud to be seen with, while Junior was a man to whom anything that he
possessed multiplied immensely in value, merely because it was his
possession.
CHAPTER XIV
“THE CLOUD THAT GREW”
In the room over Peter Potter’s grocery, Jason, every day growing
taller, stronger, and developing in mentality, planned for spare time
that he might spend at his books and in taking care of the things that
he and Peter had salvaged for Mahala without her knowledge. As he had
advanced in his work in the grocery, and his benefit to Peter in his
business had become pronounced, Peter had generously recompensed him. In
the new building, the front room over the grocery had been designed for
Jason’s needs. He now had a living room and a small separate bedroom. He
had good lights, a table at which to work, a carpet upon his floor. This
room was a private place, a personal possession of his. With the
exception of Peter Potter and his wife, no one ever had entered it.
Jason had no intention that any one should. There were many things in it
which most of the people in Ashwater would have recognized.
Here Jason found his refuge; this was his place for meditation, for
rest, for study. In the grocery below he worked indefatigably. Every few
days fresh signs of the most attractive nature appeared in the windows.
These signs, surrounded by attractively displayed goods, had been the
means of reinstating Peter Potter. Two other clerks were busy behind his
counters. Jason had drilled them according to his own ideas. They were
not only efficient, but they were also honest. Peter found himself doing
more business than both the other groceries of the town. When he reached
this point he made Jason a partner in truth. Aside from a sufficient
salary, he recompensed his good work with a third of the profits of the
business. He realized that either of the other firms in town would be
delighted to add Jason’s ability, his untiring labour, and his personal
magnetism to its stock in trade. He knew that he could keep Jason only
by making it well worth his while to remain with him.
One day he said admiringly to Jason: “They tell me that young Junior
Moreland is pretty keen on a deal, but I’ll wager that he can’t beat
you.”
Jason laughed as he replied: “Junior will cut circles around me when it
comes to accumulating money because I am forced to be honest and he is
forced to be crooked.”
Peter had a way of opening his mouth wide, and then setting the thumb
and forefinger of his right hand immediately under his nose, he outlined
the orifice. Slowly he indulged in this familiar practice. Finally, when
his lips came together, he was looking at Jason, his head tilted to
intensify his vision, speculation rampant in his eyes.
“Jason,” he asked suddenly, “who taught you to be honest?”
Jason considered his reply and then he said: “Outside of your grocery
and what I learned at school, I can’t remember that any one ever taught
me anything. Marcia never did, and when she let Martin Moreland beat me
when I did not deserve beating, I began to feel that she was not even my
mother.”
Once again Peter outlined a circle back of which his tongue worked, and
then he asked another leading question. “By what right did Martin
Moreland come to your house and beat you?”
Jason’s laugh was bitter, while his reply was: “By the right of riches;
by superior strength, with the consent of the woman with whom I lived.”
Peter thought this over.
“I’ve known a few men in my time,” he said, “who were just naturally
cruel; but Martin Moreland is just naturally a devil.”
Jason assented, and then he asked his leading question of Peter.
“I’ve been told,” he said, “that Becky Sampson goes into George Sand’s
grocery, picks up whatever suits her fancy, and walks away, and that
Martin Moreland foots her bills. Do you know whether that’s the truth?”
“Come here a minute,” said Peter.
Jason followed him to the back of the store. Out of a safe which was a
part of the new building designed to do away with some of his trips to
Bluffport, since Peter had no use for the village banker, he took one of
the old ledgers he had brought back. He leafed over its pages until he
came to one at the head of which was written, “Becky Sampson.” He showed
Jason an account extending over years. He pointed to the foot of each
page where the account was totalled and the total was carried over and
added to the account of Martin Moreland.
As Peter closed the ledger and returned it to the safety of the vault he
said: “I lost a good deal of his business when my store got to its
lowest point. I lost the rest of it when I took you in; but I’ve made so
much more with your help that I don’t care. Martin Moreland always put
my back up like a mad cat’s whenever he came near me, anyway.”
Jason went through his work the remainder of that day without giving
much thought to what he was doing. In the back of his head he was
thinking of the woman, who, from childhood, had been supposed to be his
mother. While she never had treated him as he saw other women treating
their children, she never had been aggressively unkind to him. He had
been plainly fed on the simplest fare; he had been scantily clothed; but
he was comfortable. He never had been forced to go to school with icy
feet and a purple nose. He had always had a warm coat with mittens in
his pocket. From earliest remembrance he had worked all day and in a
manner that produced results. He realized that his deepest thanks were
due to Marcia; that she had taught him to do this, and that, had he not
known how to work efficiently and speedily when he was left alone, he
would have been deserted indeed. If he had not been quick and neat and
efficient, it would not have been in his soul to perform the near
miracle that he had performed in the transformation of Peter’s grocery
from the third in the town to the first. He would not have been able to
draw patronage in spite of the things that repeatedly came to his ear
that the powerful banker was doing secretly to prevent Peter’s business
from flourishing.
There were many things that Martin Moreland could do to any man he had
in his power financially. The one place in which Peter Potter always had
shown deep wisdom was in keeping out of Moreland’s hands financially. In
his worst days, if he had a small surplus to bank, he had left the store
in charge of Jason, climbed into his delivery wagon, and jogged to
Bluffport. So long as he was not under financial obligations at the
First National, so long as his store was fresh and shining, his windows
filled with attractive signs encircled by attractive food in the way of
corroboration, Martin Moreland had not been able either to say or to do
anything that would injure him.
Reviewing all these things, and studying them over, Jason was slowly
beginning to arrive at conclusions. As he grew older and watched the
ramifications of life unfold everywhere around him, he began to see and
to understand and to place his own interpretation upon things that had
happened to him ever since his childhood. Because Marcia had never been
actively unkind to him, because life with her was the only life he had
known up to the time that she had vanished in one black night of horror,
Jason’s thoughts of her were not wholly unkind. As he studied the
situation in Ashwater, as he realized what financial power like that of
Martin Moreland meant in the hands of an unscrupulous man, he found
himself thinking more frequently, and even in a kindlier way, concerning
Marcia. If Martin Moreland were a man sufficiently bright mentally,
sufficiently unscrupulous to encompass the downfall of one after another
of the financial men of Ashwater and adjoining counties, it was not so
very much of a marvel that he might also have in his power a woman who
was standing alone.
Jason began to wonder where Marcia was; what life was doing to her;
whether she really was his mother, and if she was, whether she would be
pleased to see him, to know that he was prospering, to know that very
frequently he made the journey to Bluffport for Peter Potter, and that
in the bank there stood an account to his credit from which nothing ever
had been deducted except for his barest necessities—food, clothing, and
books. With the stigma of his mother’s occupation removed from him, with
the changed appearance through years of growth, sufficient food, and not
too strenuous work, Jason was slowly developing into an attractive
figure. Always he had kept in mind, that if he did make a noteworthy
success of life, he must remember his books. He found that during the
years when he had fixed his lessons in his mind, repeating formulas,
tables, and equations at the same time he was selling tomatoes and
raisins and tobacco, he had acquired what might be denominated the
“habit” of study. He liked to study; he liked to carry a problem in his
head, thrash it out to a certain point, and to experience the feeling of
power he experienced when sudden interruptions diverted his mind, and
yet, with the return of leisure, came the ability to return to his
problem, take it up where he had left off, and carry it to a successful
conclusion. This argued well for the fact that he was able to attain for
himself, by himself, a degree of culture that might possibly surpass
that which others were acquiring in their school work. When Commencement
was over and Mahala no longer entered the store to show him how far the
classes had advanced, Jason had procured for himself higher books and
gone on with what really were the beginnings of a college education.
Somewhere, inherent in his nature, there was a love of the soil. He was
particularly interested in the wagons of the farmers who stopped at the
back door of the grocery with great loads of crisp cabbages, golden
tomatoes, purple beets, silvery-skinned onions, long white radishes with
blue tops, and turnips of the same colour, spreading into great, juicy
circles of crisp tartness. He liked to slice the top from one of these,
peel it, and stand biting into it like an apple, as he negotiated the
purchase of the load and its transfer to the back of the grocery.
Sometimes he went and stood beside the teams and slipped his slender
fingers under the harness, easing it about the horses’ ears,
straightening out the mane, talking to them as if they had been people.
The one thing upon which he had determined was that he would not remain
much longer with Peter Potter, and the other thing about which he had
not determined, but concerning which in his heart he admitted the lure,
was land. He would like to grow such wagonloads of fruits and vegetables
as he constantly handled in Peter Potter’s grocery. He would like to own
a stable filled with cows and calves and sheep and horses. He would like
to have around his feet once more a flock of chickens such as he had
lost upon the night when he lost everything else on earth that belonged
to him except his life and the clothing he wore.
He understood what it meant when boys who had scorned and taunted him at
school began dropping into the grocery and asking him to the backs of
certain buildings after working hours were over. Now that they knew he
had money, they were willing to gamble with him. As he increased in
stature and it became known that he really was a partner in Peter
Potter’s business, there were boys, and girls as well, who began to be
friendly and occasionally he was asked to a party or some social
gathering; but not in one instance had Jason ever accepted any of these
invitations. Firmly fixed in his mind were his days of privation, the
days when he would have been so delighted to be included at the merry
makings devised for other children, the days when his heart and brain
were hungry. Now that he was mentally occupied and physically satisfied,
he could not quite control the feeling of repulsion that crept up in his
heart when he met with an advance on the part of any boy or girl who,
once upon a time, had seared his brain and repulsed his body with the
taunt: “Washerwoman’s son!”
Jason knew, in the depths of his heart, that as the years passed, the
same hunger for love, for companionship, for the diversions of the young
around him, were even stronger than they had been as a child. He
realized that there was something for which he was waiting, something
that he wanted with an intensity that at times seared his body like a
fever, but what it was that he wanted was not a thing that could be
supplied by tardy kindness on the part of his former tormentors.
For four years the bright spots in Jason’s life had been the few minutes
each Friday evening of the school week when Mahala, usually armed with a
list of groceries, had slipped into the store, come straight to him and
put in his fingers the neat slip giving the pages of advance over the
previous week; and sometimes there had been written out the start of a
difficult equation, a hint that read: “You will find a catch in the
fifteenth problem on the sixty-seventh page. You divide by nine and
multiply by fifty-four,” and sometimes she had carried to him for a few
weeks of his use, a volume of supplementary reading that helped him.
With Commencement these things stopped. Almost immediately thereafter,
Mahala’s troubles had begun, and then, to Jason’s bewilderment, there
had speedily come the time when there were things that he could do for
her, things that saved her work, that saved her money, that helped her
to keep her head high and her face pridefully lifted and fronting the
world that so soon had forgotten her. There was beginning in his heart a
yeasty ferment, a boiling up of many things, a wandering and a
questioning, and above everything else, each day more deeply rooted, the
conviction that the same hand that had so much to do with his destiny
was the hand that deliberately had brought ruin into the life of the
girl who, alone of the whole town, had gone out of her way to show him
compassion and human kindness. He was beginning to wonder what there was
that he could do to free Mahala from this sinister power under which so
many others had fallen. He was beginning to study, occasionally to ask
questions, and in his heart there grew a slow wonder as to just what
money was, how it had originated, and why it gave to any man the power
to ride in a carriage, to mingle in the best society, to hold up his
head in the churches, to control for years in the schools and the town
council, in every enterprise in which money or business welfare was
concerned, and at the same time to be the unseen cause of financial
wreck, of physical downfall for other men.
Definitely Jason was beginning to settle in his own mind as to what such
power also entailed in the lives of women. Sometimes, when his thoughts
were skipping over the surface, or delving deep, he thought of Mrs.
Moreland. He remembered her dark face, the pathetic lines around her
mouth. He remembered the story of how she had come to the village upon a
visit in the days when she was young and good looking and richly
dressed. He had been told of the whirlwind courtship of Martin Moreland
and how she had married him, believing that he loved her, and how she
had put her fortune into his hands and was now so dependent upon him
that she might only spend of her own money by charging an account at the
stores which would be paid by a check from the bank. Certainly, she was
not a happy woman. Certainly, she could not be, if she knew anything
concerning the financial transactions in which her husband indulged.
Because she remained the larger part of her time at home and busied
herself about her household affairs, it was generally conceded that she
did not know many of the things that were known concerning her husband.
There was a tendency to speak of her in a whisper as “the poor thing.”
Then one day Jason’s brain found a new subject for consideration. He had
gone to the Bluffport bank, carrying an unusually heavy deposit for
Peter Potter and himself. Standing at a small side desk, occupied with
pen and blotter, going over his account, he caught an oblique glimpse of
a woman entering the door, a woman in the very prime of life, having a
frank face of alluring beauty. He noticed the attractive way in which
her hair was dressed; he noticed the neatness, the dignity, the style of
her clothing. The fact that she was bareheaded told him that she must be
from one of the near-by stores. With the sure step of one accustomed by
a long-formed habit, she took her place at the window of the paying
teller and transacted her business. Jason slid around the corner of the
desk, pulled his hat a bit lower over his face, and gripping the pen
firmly, watched in almost stupefying bewilderment.
It could not be possible; but it was possible. There was no mistaking
the tones of the quick, incisive voice. It was the same voice that had
told him, almost every day of his youth, that his only chance lay
through books. It was the same frame now fashionably, even expensively,
clothed, that had bent above the washtub in the dingy kitchen of his
childhood. It was the same face, with the accompanying miracle of
elaborate and attractive hair dressing and a chamois skin dusted with
pink powder. When Jason’s lips met, he realized that they had been
hanging open until they were dry. Above the marvel of seeing Marcia
standing so confidently at the wicket of the bank, transacting a
financial matter that appeared to be of considerable importance, came
the marvel of the deference with which she was treated by the cashier.
For her the wicket was swung open; for her there were polite greetings
and a few words concerning the weather and outside matters; for her
there was a laughing jest as she turned away and went swiftly as she had
come.
Jason laid down the pen and followed at a distance. One block down the
street she crossed and went into an interesting building on the corner.
From across the street, he looked at the front window, at the side, at
the entrance, and read, in letters of white china placed upon the glass,
“Millinery and Ladies’ Furnishings. Nancy Bodkin and Company.”
Jason repeated it over and over—“‘and Company.’” Did that mean that
Martin Moreland had given liberty to his slave, that she was no longer a
creature of dingy kitchens and the subterfuge of washtubs in order that
for a few night hours she might be the creature Jason once had seen in
the rose-pink environment and the dress of snow? Was Marcia the woman
who could carry such an alliance further, and at the same time look and
move and speak as he had just seen her?
Jason found himself entering the store behind him. It proved to be a
drug store. He bought a glass of milk shake, and sitting down at the
counter, he began a conversation with the clerk as he drank. He started
by remarking upon the wonderful growth of Bluffport—how many new
buildings and how attractive they were. Then he came to the point which
concerned him.
“In all the tidying up you’ve done here in the past four or five years,
I don’t see anything to beat this establishment or the one just across
the street. I’d call that the kind of an enterprise that wouldn’t look
so bad in Indianapolis or Chicago,” he said.
“And that’s a funny thing,” said the clerk. “Ever since I was a little
shaver running around town, Nancy Bodkin has been in the millinery
business here. Good years she managed to make ends meet and bad years
she didn’t. And I’ve heard here lately that she was just at the point of
going bankrupt and giving up in despair when along comes a stranger in
town and they get to work together.”
“Oh,” said Jason, “then the stranger represents the ‘and Company’?”
“Yeh,” said the clerk, “represents the ‘and Company.’”
“And the ‘and Company’ had money to pull the concern up to a corner
building and all that foxy millinery and ladies’ fixings?”
“No,” said the clerk. “That’s the funny part of it. The ‘and Company’
came in and went to work as she stood. There’s been quite a bit of talk
among the womenfolks off and on, but nobody has ever discovered, either
from the ‘and Company’ or from Nancy, where she came from or how she
happened to come. She didn’t have anything but herself, but she knew how
to wash windows and how to clean up. I can remember that I saw her
myself the day she climbed on a store box and started painting the front
of Nancy Bodkin’s store with a bucket of paint and a brush. When she got
it painted on the outside as far as she could reach, she painted it on
the inside. She had such a knack of selling goods and she was so keen
about buying, that in no time at all they pulled right out, and now look
where they are!”
“You think they did it all by themselves?” persisted Jason.
“Sure of it,” said the clerk. “So’s every one else. They didn’t get a
cent of help from any one; the banker says so. This ‘and Company,’ whose
name happens to be Marcia Peters, marched into the bank and told the
banker what she was going to do and she told it so convincingly that he
believed her. He loaned her what she needed for her first order of
millinery, on the strength of her face and her convincing talk. It shows
what a couple of women can do if they put their heads together and
decide that they’ll do it.”
Without realizing precisely what he was doing, Jason reached up and took
off his hat. He hung it over one of his knees and sipping at the milk
shake, he sat looking across the street. He could see Marcia moving back
and forth behind the counters. Once she followed a customer to the door
and stood talking a minute, her face full of interest and animation. She
looked the proud, competent, confident woman of business. He was
possessed of an impulse to cross the street and say to her: “Mother, I
am glad that you are getting along so finely. I’m gladder than I’ve any
words to tell you that you are capable of taking care of yourself.”
When the impulse was quite the strongest, there came to Jason the
realization that the woman he was watching could not, by any
possibility, have been his mother. If his head ever had lain under her
heart through the long journey from conception to birth, if his lips
ever had mouthed at her breast and his babyhands slid over her face, it
would have been impossible for the woman he knew Marcia to be, to have
vanished in the night as she had, five long years ago. It was because
she had not known these experiences, that even the boy sensed as the
life, the heart, and the soul of the experience of women who are
mothers, that she could stand there with her head erect and her eyes
clear, meeting the world openly and unafraid.
She must know that he was in Ashwater. She must know what he was doing.
If she wanted him, she knew where to find him. Since she did not seek
him, since she sent no word, why should he thrust himself upon her? He
could see that she was happy. He could see that she was respected and
prosperous. And he found as he watched her, that there was a feeling of
satisfaction growing in his heart concerning her. She was more of a
woman than he had thought her. She was one human being who had escaped
the power of Martin Moreland and who seemed to have come out unscathed.
As he drove back to Ashwater he was debating in his mind as to whether
he would tell Peter Potter about her and he was finding that he was
consoled concerning her by the knowledge that she was comfortable and
happy.
Jason was right in his conjecture. Marcia was happy. She was happy to
such a degree as she never had hoped to experience. Prosperity was
written large all over the millinery store on the corner. It was written
on Marcia, which made small difference to Bluffport as it had no
realization that Marcia might not always have been reasonably
prosperous. The concern of Bluffport centred upon Nancy Bodkin, who,
following Marcia’s example, had lifted up her head, dressed her hair
becomingly, powdered her nose, and exercised her art upon her dry goods
as well as her head piece.
These two women, each with her own secret in her own heart, so far as
the world knew, formed a combination that was the subject of prideful
commendation in Bluffport. There was not an enterprise in the town in
which they were not interested. When the Grand Army needed help for an
entertainment, they were first class at decorations and resourceful in
suggesting programmes. When a campaign was in full blast, they were of
great help to their party in the decoration of wagons and the management
of parades, and on one occasion, Marcia had stood in the full blaze of
the sunlight of late October upon one of these wagons, in streaming
robes of white, her gold hair unbound and falling almost to her knees,
and shown all Bluffport and the surrounding country what a living,
breathing Goddess of Liberty should look like. When an epidemic of
diphtheria struck the town and the Presbyterian minister lost his wife
and baby, leaving him helpless with another motherless little daughter,
Marcia was sent by the church with lace and veiling to prepare the
bodies for burial. Moving through the house at her work, she definitely
caught the attention of the minister. He noticed her grace and her
beauty. His heart was touched with her kindness to his terrified little
daughter and her ability to soothe and quiet the frightened child. He
carried the thought of her in the back of his head, and when time had
healed his wounds and necessity had driven him to think of replacing his
wife, the memory of Marcia came first to his thoughts and he began
quietly and persistently to seek her company.
Marcia tried to evade him, to escape his attention, but he soon made it
apparent to every one that he was deliberately seeking her. One day he
entered the millinery store carrying an armful of beautiful flowers that
one of his parishioners had given to him. He explained to Marcia that he
thought that she might like to have them, and so he had brought them to
her.
Peering from behind a case of hats, the little milliner watched with
intense interest. If any male person ever had courted her, she never had
mentioned the matter to any one. In her heart there was the interest
which any woman feels in watching another woman whom she loves being
courted by an attractive man. Nancy Bodkin’s lips were parted and her
eyes shining as she saw Marcia’s hand reach out to take the flowers, as
she heard her graciously thank the minister for his thoughtfulness.
Behind them, through the open doorway, she saw the figure of a tall,
slender man whom she knew. He had been pointed out to her years before
on the streets of Bluffport as Martin Moreland, the richest man of the
county seat, the banker, a land holder who had so many farms covered
with mortgages that he was not supposed to know the exact number
himself.
The minister was acquainted with Martin Moreland and at once introduced
him to Marcia. Moreland explained his presence by saying that he wished
to be shown a gray hat displayed in the window which he thought might
possibly make a suitable gift for his daughter Edith. He spent some time
telling the minister in detail what a charming woman his son had
married, the delight he found in spending his hard-earned money for her
pleasure. Then he began playing with Marcia.
At his first entrance he had merely bowed to her and devoted himself to
the minister. After his explanation concerning the hat, he took it in
his hands and examined it critically; he asked her personal opinion of
it; he described the woman who was to wear it; then he asked Marcia to
put it on in order that he could get its effect when worn.
Frightened almost to paralysis, tortured beyond endurance, afraid to
refuse, Marcia put on the hat. It was one that had been built in
particular reference to the lines of her face and head. As she settled
it and turned, her beauty was strikingly enhanced. She was forced to
stand before the two men, turning that they might get the full effect of
it. Moreland admired the hat extravagantly and ended by purchasing it.
While Marcia was packing the hat in a box that he might carry it away,
he said to her very casually: “You have displayed such wonderful art in
the making of hats that evidently the good Lord designed you to be a
milliner. I scarcely think you would be successful should you ever
attempt to be anything else.”
Marcia understood. She mustered the courage to look him in the face as
she replied: “I have not the slightest intention ever to attempt to be
anything except a milliner.”
Moreland laughed; the old crafty look that Marcia so well knew was
gleaming in his eyes. Then he took the hat and left the store with the
remark that since he had discovered a place where such charming hats
could be secured so reasonably, he thought that he would call again
frequently. Swept by sickening waves throughout her being, Marcia had
great difficulty in standing erect and keeping her facial muscles under
control.
The first thing she knew the minister had reached across the counter and
caught her hands. He was telling her that it was his opinion that the
good Lord had designed her to be the helpmate in his clerical work, the
love of his heart, and a mother to his lonely little daughter.
Marcia drew away, telling him that it was quite impossible that this
should ever be. Disappointed, but unconvinced, the minister left the
store, saying that he would give her time to think it over. He would
come again and he would continue to plead his cause until he won.
He had not reached the front door before Marcia rushed to the seclusion
of the back room. She dropped beside a table, covered with gay flowers
and ribbons, and sobbed out her heart to Nancy who had become her friend
in deed and in truth.
Since Martin Moreland had reëntered her life, Marcia contemplated
herself in astonishment. How had she ever dared to hope that he would
drop out of it so easily? Why had she ever thought that there was any
possibility other than that he was merely biding his time, waiting to
crush her, until he could make his triumph over her the greater? All the
sunshine had vanished from her day; all joy was dead in her heart. The
life she must face she visioned as a dreary thing of suspense and fear.
In agony she slid to her knees on the floor, laid her head in the lap of
Nancy Bodkin, and with her arms around her, purged her soul. A few terse
sentences were all that were necessary.
Then in torture she cried to Nancy: “I am tempted to walk into the
church and stand up before the minister and all the people, and proclaim
myself!”
Horrified, Nancy began to protest. She told Marcia what she already
knew: that the public never forgives a woman; that she would be driven
from the town; that she would be forced to start life again among
strangers; and that no matter where she went, Moreland would pursue her
and try to exert his evil influence over her. Marcia stretched out her
hands.
“Nancy,” she cried, “when you say people never forgive, does that
include you?”
Nancy began to cry. She threw her arms around Marcia’s shoulders and
drew her head against her breast, and there she stroked it with shaking
hands.
“No!” she protested. “No! it doesn’t include me. I have not one word to
say. I know nothing about your beginning. I know nothing about your
temptation. I know nothing of the forces—they must have been something
underhand and terrible to drive so fine a woman as you into years of the
life you say you have lived.”
From that day forward it seemed to Marcia that she must never be out of
the thoughts of Nancy Bodkin. Everything that she could do to protect
her, to shield her, she did instinctively. When Nancy realized that
Marcia was beginning to be afraid of the front door, she moved her work
table to a point where she could command a view of it. She began the
practice, whenever there were footsteps and the door opened, of sending
a hasty glance in that direction and then nodding her head or calling to
Marcia, and Marcia understood that in case Martin Moreland entered
again, it was the intention of the little milliner to face him in her
stead.
Because of these things there developed in Marcia’s heart a feeling for
Nancy Bodkin’s breadth of mind, her largeness of soul, and her
clear-eyed judgment, that was pitiful. There was nothing that she would
not gladly have done for Nancy. When she saw the light beginning to fade
from Nancy’s eyes, the colour to pale on her cheeks, she was heart
broken.
And Nancy, in watching Marcia, was hurt infinitely worse. So hand in
hand, the two of them went stumbling forward, making their bravest
effort to meet life having the appearance of being upright and unafraid,
when in reality each of them was filled with dreadful forebodings.
CHAPTER XV
“THE LAST STRAW”
As Mahala went intently and industriously about her work, she was doing
a great deal of thinking. She was forced to the conviction that she had
no real friends in the whole of the town who would pursue her with
friendship, who would thrust themselves upon her and make an effort to
force her to feel that all of the years of her life when she had tried
to be reasonably considerate of the people with whom she came in
contact, had not been wasted. Out of the wreck, she was left with her
mother’s servant, whose roof now afforded shelter. There were times when
she tried to think in a sort of dull daze what would have become of them
had not that shelter been forthcoming. She looked at Jemima and found
that she was loving her and clinging to her, giving to her at least a
degree of the gratitude and the affection that should have gone to her
mother.
As she bent to stitch linings and wrestled with contrary wirings, Mahala
was forever busy at her problem, because she had a problem to face. She
realized from the manner in which her mother had listened that she would
be interested in repairing the house and moving to the bit of land that
had fallen to them. But if she did this, she must either keep a working
place in the village and go back and forth, or she must undertake to
handle the land in such a way as to make a living from it. On this part
of her problem Mahala was helpless. She knew nothing whatever of sowing
and reaping, the rotation of crops; of gardening, of chickens, and of
the raising of stock. The only thing she did know that she could turn to
dollars and cents was the thing that she was doing. The only way in
which she could procure even a small degree of comfort for her mother
was to keep on with the work she really could do with assurance and with
extremely profitable results.
With a sharp eye upon every detail of expense, she began deliberately to
see how much she could save that might be laid away toward the repairing
of the farm house. If she had a few minutes to read, she found that she
was reading about land. If there was spare time in which Jemima came and
sat beside her and tried to help her with the coarser part of her work,
she constantly questioned her to learn what she knew about soil,
poultry, and gardening.
One day she said to Jemima: “Old dear, how much of your life are you
going to give to me? I want to know definitely how long I can depend on
you.”
Jemima smiled at her.
“Now, my dear,” she said, “don’t be botherin’ your head about that.
There’s only one thing on earth that could happen that would take me
away from you.”
“You mean your son?” questioned Mahala.
“Yes,” said Jemima. “I mean my boy. He’s a fine, upstanding lad. From
the time his father died till he could look out for himself, I took care
of him. He’s a good boy; he’s got a good wife. He’s got a houseful of
fine babies. As long as everything goes all right with them, I’m free to
stay with you and do all I can for you, and if it’s goin’ to be any
comfort to you, I want you to understand that’s what I mean to do.”
Mahala laid aside her work, and sitting on Jemima’s knee, she kissed her
and smoothed her hair and told her how deeply she loved her, how sure
she was of her friendship and sympathy. Then she went back to thinking
who else there was that had proved a friend in her hour of need. After
Jemima, Jason loomed large on her horizon. She had no positive
knowledge, but she felt a certainty that he must be amplifying the
baskets he delivered to her. She could hear him in the kitchen offering
his services for any hard work requiring a man about the premises. Any
new food that was sent to the grocery, she was comfortably certain would
be advertised with sufficient samples for a meal for the three of them
in her basket. Any errand she could delegate to him he seemed delighted
to do for her. So Mahala was forced to realize, that outside of her
home, the best friend she had in Ashwater was the son of her mother’s
washerwoman.
Edith Williams had not been to see Mahala on a real, friendly, old-time
visit since the day of her catastrophe. She had not been in her home
upon any excuse for even a short period since the day of her marriage.
Mahala had understood a great deal concerning that marriage. She had
realized how hard it would be for Edith to come. She had scarcely
expected that she would, and yet, when one is utterly stranded,
altogether bereft, one will cling even to straws, and if there was a
girl in the town who should have stood staunchly by Mahala, it was Edith
Williams. Many times in a day there was a click of the latch of the gate
at which Mahala lifted a busy head, and in the beginning, there
frequently had been a rush of colour to her cheeks, a light in her eyes.
As the weeks went by, very frequently she did not even take the trouble
to raise her head. Life had reduced things to the certainty that any one
entering her gate came to have a dress remodelled, a hat made over. The
last straw was the desertion of Susanna of the outskirts, Susanna who
had kept the embroidered petticoat. Thinking on this subject, Mahala
fell into a mental habit of saying: “Even Susanna!”
In the beginning, Mahala forced her customers to realize quite all that
she was worth to them. She did her work conscientiously and honestly.
She could not be forced, in remodelling a dress, to make an extremely
wide skirt and panniers for a fat woman; she would not put a narrow
skirt and a long polonaise on a thin woman. She frequently required
changes in hair dressing before she would make a hat for a customer. She
flatly refused either to make a hat or to remodel a dress unless she
were allowed to use her own taste. When her customers really learned
what had happened to them under Mahala’s skilful fingers, they were
compelled to admit that she had made such a great improvement in their
appearance that they were in her debt.
When she had fully forced this realization upon them, Mahala began
quietly but persistently to raise her prices. She did nothing but good
work. She made her charge commensurate with the time and the labour she
had expended. Gradually she began to teach the whole town how to make
the most of their looks, of the material that they could afford to use.
So it was only a few months until she was making a comfortable living
for herself and for her mother, till she was slipping away small sums
destined for the restoration of the old house.
One morning, one of her customers stopping for a word of gossip, told
Mahala that Edith Moreland was a very sick woman. She was having great
difficulty in breathing and was being frequently attacked with fainting
spells, and the doctors had ordered an immediate change of climate.
After the woman had gone, Mahala sat thinking. Some undiscovered malady
always had preyed upon Edith. During the past year Mahala had hoped that
she was better. This report seemed to indicate that she was not. As she
bent above her work, Mahala was wondering what would constitute a change
of climate. Where would they take Edith in the hope that she might
escape a severe illness? She thought of Junior. She could picture his
dismay at being bound to a woman who was ill. He had no stomach for
people who were in pain and trouble; that Mahala thoroughly understood.
It was while she was pondering on these things that the grinding of
wheels before her door caused her to look up, and to her deep surprise,
she saw Mrs. Moreland alighting from her carriage and coming in. Mahala
always had been sorry for Mrs. Moreland. She had recognized in her a
woman who was trying to do what was right, to live an exemplary life
before her community. Through her own distaste for the methods of Martin
Moreland and Junior, she had arrived at a realizing sense of how
frequently this same distaste must be in the mouth of a right-thinking
woman who was trying to live with them daily.
She opened her door and admitted Mrs. Moreland quietly and with the
self-possession which always had characterized her. It was evident that
her visitor was very much perturbed. She refused to be seated.
Without preliminaries she said: “Mahala, Edith is very sick this
morning. She can scarcely breathe. The doctor has said that her only
chance depends upon getting her to another climate as promptly as
possible. We have planned to start her South and she should go at once,
but she positively refuses until she has at least a dress to travel in
and a hat of the latest mode. Right away I thought of you. I want you to
come and help me get her off as soon as possible.”
Mahala stood very still for a second, then she said quietly: “Thank you
very much, Mrs. Moreland. For your sake I should like to do what you
ask, but it is quite impossible. Mother is still confined to her bed and
I never go from the sound of her voice. I’m always here in case she
wants me. Surely there is some one else who can help you with Edith.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Moreland, “there are a number of people who could,
but you know as well as I do that Edith wouldn’t touch what they did.
She’s always sent away for her things and had her dresses made by that
woman in Covington who works on a form from her measurements. There
isn’t time to wait for her. It’s a matter of life and death, I tell
you!”
“I’m sorry,” said Mahala, “but I can’t possibly come to your house to
work. As I told you before, I don’t want to leave Mother, and in the
next place, I can’t afford to miss the work that I might lose by being
away.”
“So far as that is concerned,” said Mrs. Moreland, “of course, I’m
willing to pay you for anything you might possibly lose through helping
us to get Edith off. I can’t understand your refusal when you and Edith
always have been the dearest friends.”
Mahala opened her lips and then she closed them. She looked at Mrs.
Moreland intently.
“I had supposed,” she said gently, “that every one in Ashwater knew that
I haven’t been overburdened with friends of late. When I was in a
position where I could not go to my friends and they failed to come to
me, I had not the feeling that it was my right to seek them afterward. I
took their failure to appear as conclusive evidence that they were not
my friends.”
“I scarcely think,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that such a criticism applies
to me.”
“No,” said Mahala, “it does not. You did come, and you were kindness
itself. But you happen to be the one woman in town from whose hands I
could not accept kindness.”
“It seems to me,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that you’re not quite as big and
as fine as I always have thought you if you allow anything that has
happened to keep you from doing what you can to save a life. I’m sorry
if you feel you have reason to blame Mr. Moreland or me for anything
that happened concerning your father’s loss of his property. Certainly,
you can’t feel that Edith had anything to do with it. She was your
friend, and you were hers; and now she is ill and asking for you—such a
little favour that you could so well grant—and you refuse. Mahala, I am
surprised at you!”
It was on Mahala’s lips to tell Mrs. Moreland that she was quite welcome
to be surprised or the reverse. That pride that had caused her father’s
downfall was a lively part of her inheritance from him. It touched her
pride that she should be accused of failing a friend when she was ill.
Possibly it was her part to teach Edith the better way.
“If you put it in that light,” she said, “I’ll ask Mother. If she thinks
she can spare me, I will come.”
She stepped to the bedroom and found her mother soundly sleeping. Upon
her relaxed face there was a look of quiet and peace that was not
present when her mental processes were working. Mahala imagined that she
was better. She went out and explained the situation to Jemima.
“You go straight ahead,” said Jemima. “Go and do what they want, and
then soak it to them good and proper. Make ’em pay fully three times
what you would anybody else.”
Mahala gathered up her workbag, the implements she was accustomed to
handling in her trade, and climbing into the carriage, was driven to the
Moreland residence.
Her first day’s work progressed finely. She was given exquisite material
that had been clumsily made to alter. With touches here and there Mahala
could transform a dress into a garment expressing the height of the
prevailing mode. The instincts of the artist awoke in her and she began
her work with enthusiasm and growing confidence. Junior and his father
did not appear. Edith was so ill that she only spoke to her when it was
necessary to find out what she wanted done, and how she wanted it. When
she left at night she took several hats with her to remodel. Until past
midnight she was bending over them, changing, altering, then adding
touches to heighten their attractiveness. When Edith sat up long enough
to try them on in the morning, she was effusive in her gratitude.
An effort was being made to have her ready to leave on the noon train.
She sat on a chair before the mirror where she could study the effect of
the hats she tried on. Mahala was standing beside her fitting one upon
which she was working, when Junior entered the room. He brought himself
into immediate proximity with Mahala. He kissed Edith and made a great
display of affection for her. He told her that his mother had finished
packing her trunks and that everything would be ready for them to start
on the noon train. He dropped into her lap, for safekeeping, a pocket
book which he told her contained the money for their journey and also
the money to pay Mahala when she had completed her work. He explained
that he would be forced to return to the bank on some business matters
that he must finish before they started.
Edith picked up the pocket book and returned it to him. She said: “Put
it on the table in the parlour beside the coat that is laid out for me
to wear.”
Junior took the pocket book and stood an instant holding it, and then he
said to her: “Is there any one else in the house?”
Edith replied: “No, there is not.”
“All right,” said Junior, “I guess it will be safe then, but I’ll warn
you to keep an eye on it. Father wants you to have every luxury while
we’re away, and he nearly broke the bank when he filled that pocket
book.”
He stepped into the parlour and laid the long bill book on the table
where he had been told; returning immediately, he left by passing
through the dining room and kitchen, stopping a minute to speak to the
gardener who was at work in the back yard. He went out of the side gate,
which opened into an alley used by the Morelands as a short cut to the
bank, and there he encountered Rebecca Sampson.
Rebecca was coming down the alley, her well-filled market basket on her
arm, her white flag flashing in the sunlight. When Junior saw her, he
stopped short, seeming to be possessed with an idea. He paused in deep
thought for a minute, and when Rebecca lowered the flag, crowded to the
farthest width of the alley and started to pass him with forbidding
countenance, he took off his hat and smiled at her in a friendly manner.
In an aggrieved voice he said to her: “Becky, I am surprised at you! How
can such a beautiful woman as you are let other people see that you
think I have a bad heart? How can you have a clean heart yourself,
unless you forgive other people? I know I was wild when I was a boy, but
I’m a married man now, a staid business man. I’ll never tease you again
or allow the other boys to, if you’ll let me pass under your flag.”
Instantly, Rebecca relented. She held up the flag, since one of the
greatest objects of her wrecked brain was to see any one, whosoever
would, bow his head and reverently pass under it. That her old-time
enemy and tormentor had promised never to tease her again, had asked the
privilege of passing under the flag, delighted Rebecca so that she held
the white emblem high and said an unusually long blessing as Junior
Moreland bowed his head and passed under. Then he talked to her for a
minute longer and hurried up the alley to the bank. Before he left the
alley, he turned and watched Rebecca’s movements. When finally he saw
her go from sight, he smiled to himself and hurried on his way.
Mahala put the finishing touches on the hat, and carrying it into the
parlour, laid it beside the coat as Edith had told her to do. Returning
to the living room, she closed the parlour door enough to conceal Edith
from the view of any one who might enter the room, and began work on the
front of the waist she was altering. When the waist was finished, her
work was done. She gathered up her measures, her scissors, and began
packing her workbag.
Edith watched her and into her selfish, indifferent heart there crept a
pang of remembrance of the many happy times that they had enjoyed
together as children.
She said to Mahala: “I can’t tell you how much I thank you for helping
me out. I really am awfully sick. I suppose I shouldn’t have stopped a
minute for anything, but I’m going to be better in a few days and I
couldn’t endure the thought of being packed off where I might look like
a rag to Junior.”
“You’re quite welcome,” said Mahala quietly. “I was glad to do anything
I could for you.”
Edith hesitated. She opened her lips. She knew what she should say, but
she had not quite the moral courage to say it. Seeing Mahala, with the
joy of youth wiped from her face, with the dancing sparkle lost from her
eyes, her delicate hands roughened through handling contrary material
and the constant plying of her needle, hurt her. She wanted to open her
arms and cry: “Mahala, forgive me! Let’s be friends again. When I come
back, let’s be friends!”
Lacking moral courage, as she always had lacked it, what she did say
was: “Junior said the money to pay you was in the pocket book he laid
beside my coat. Will you hand it to me?”
Mahala swung open the door and stepped toward the table. Then she paused
and said over her shoulder: “Why, Edith, the pocket book isn’t here.
Mrs. Moreland must have taken charge of it.”
At that minute Mrs. Moreland entered from the dining room.
Edith said to her: “Mother, have you been in the parlour?”
Mrs. Moreland shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m trying to help get a
decent dinner on the table for you before you leave.”
“That’s strange,” said Edith. “There’s nobody else in the house, is
there?”
“Not that I know of,” said Mrs. Moreland.
Immediately turmoil began. Edith asked Mahala if she had seen the pocket
book when she entered the parlour with her hat, and Mahala replied that
she had. It was lying in plain sight on the table beside the coat. No
one else had been in the room. There was a hush; and then both the
Moreland women focussed amazed, questioning eyes upon Mahala. Suddenly
it occurred to her that as she was the only one known to have entered
the room, they were looking accusingly at her. A gush of red from her
outraged heart stained her face and then sank back and left it, by
contrast, all the whiter.
Both hands clutched her workbag tightly and she cried to Edith: “It is
not possible that you think I touched that pocket book?”
Edith replied slowly: “I don’t want to think that, Mahala. But since
you’re the only person who’s been in the room, and since every one knows
that you’ve been needing money so badly, I should say that, at least,
it’s up to you to find it.”
Mahala lifted her head. All the pride of a long race of proud people was
in her blood. Her voice was smooth and even as she said: “You’re quite
mistaken, Edith. It is not ‘up to me’ to do anything except to receive
the pay for the work I have done for you and then to go home.”
Edith’s smile was the most disfiguring her face had ever known. Seeing
it, Mahala spoke further.
“We were not in a position to see who might have entered the room while
I was working on your waist. If you want to search me, I am perfectly
willing that you should satisfy yourself that I have not the pocket book
before I leave the house.”
At this unfortunate juncture, Martin Moreland entered the room.
Instantly, he sensed the tense situation and began asking questions.
Edith reached out her hands to him and began to cry. Immediately, he
rushed to Mahala, seized her roughly by the arm, and cried: “You’ll stay
right here, my lady, till you’re searched from head to heels. You’ll not
leave this house till that pocket book is discovered. It was crammed as
full as it would hold with money for this journey.”
Edith immediately chimed in to explain that Junior had said that the
purse contained a large amount of money when she had told him to put it
with her coat. She had not been sitting where she could see in the other
room, but there had been no sound, no one had opened or closed a door,
no one had entered the parlour or passed down the hall. The pocket book
must be in the room.
During the ensuing discussion, Junior came hurrying in to tell them that
time was flying and that they had none to waste. His father and mother
and Edith joined in excitedly explaining the situation to him.
Instantly, he went to Mahala, put his arm across her shoulders, and said
to her in a voice filled with pity: “My poor little schoolmate, have
death and misfortune driven you to this? If you needed money so badly,
why didn’t you ask me? You know I would gladly have given it to you.”
Mahala sprang away from him, staring at him with tense, wide eyes.
Mr. Moreland straightened up.
“Junior,” he said sharply, “we haven’t time for any nonsense of that
sort! Get yourself down town by the shortest cut and bring a policeman
to search her.”
At this Mahala lifted her head. She said to Mr. Moreland: “No officer
shall touch me. If it is your wish that I be searched, you may leave the
room and Mrs. Moreland may satisfy herself and Edith that neither the
pocket book nor the money is on my person.”
At this juncture Edith began to gasp for breath; then she collapsed on
the sofa, declaring that she was dying. Mrs. Moreland spoke
authoritatively for the first time: “No one is going to lay a finger on
Mahala Spellman in this house,” she said. “Every one of you very well
knows that she’s quite incapable of touching anything that doesn’t
belong to her. If she says she did not touch that pocket book, she
didn’t!”
Then she turned to Mahala and said to her: “Put on your hat, child, take
your workbag, and go home.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Moreland,” said Mahala, and she started toward the
door.
The elder Moreland stepped in front of her. He had worked himself into a
rage. He declared that she should not leave the house carrying three
thousand dollars with her. Junior agreed with him.
He said to his father: “This breaks my heart. What a dreadful thing that
the loss of her money should have so undermined the principles of such a
girl as we always have supposed Mahala to be!”
And then he turned to Mahala in direct appeal. “Mahala,” he begged,
“please tell me where the pocket book is and you shall go free. All of
us will agree never to mention it. You couldn’t possibly get away with
stealing that amount of money.”
He extended his hands to her and pleaded with her to save herself while
there was yet time.
“Mahala, you can’t do it! What are you thinking of?” he cried.
Mahala replied quietly: “I’m thinking of a threat you made only a few
weeks ago to degrade me till even the dogs of Ashwater would not bark at
me. I’m thinking that this is your first move in fulfilling that
threat.”
Edith immediately recovered her breath. She sat erect and demanded: “Why
should Junior have made such a horrible threat as that against you?”
Mahala answered: “Well, if Junior were like other men, I should advise
you to ask him.”
Edith instantly turned to Junior. He went to her, forcing her to lie
down, and begging her to calm herself. He turned to his father and said
to him: “Take Mother and Mahala into the parlour. Shut the door. If this
thing’s carried much further, it may kill Edith.”
The elder Moreland immediately obeyed.
As soon as they were left alone, Junior said to Edith: “You very well
know how Mahala always hung around me and bothered me with her
attentions, and there were times when she had me fooled into thinking
she was the one I really cared for. But when I learned Commencement
night how beautiful you really were, superior in every way to Mahala,
and when I let you see it, right away she got ugly. She threatened to
ruin our happiness when I told her that I meant to ask you to marry me.”
Instantly Edith put her arms around him and kissed him and comforted
him. She turned against Mahala, saying: “She’s so plausible she could
deceive St. Peter with her innocent face and her snaky airs. Go, and
call a policeman. I don’t care if you do. Make her shell out all that
money and then put her out of this house!”
The horrible scene ended on the entrance of the gardener with the
policeman, who forcibly conducted a search of Mahala and her bag, and
announced that neither the pocket book nor the money was on her. When
Junior was told that the bill book could not be found, he said slowly:
“She must have managed to hand it out of the front door to some one to
take to her house for her. Cheer up, Dad, if it isn’t here, it’s there.
You’ll find it all right!”
Martin Moreland then told the policeman to take Mahala to the station
and detain her until he had time to swear out a warrant for her arrest
and a permit to search her house. The policeman knew he had no right to
detain Mahala without a warrant, but she did not, so he took her by the
arm and started down the street with her toward the station.
As they reached the gate she said to him: “Will you kindly remove your
hand from my arm? I’ve not the slightest intention of trying to escape.”
It was the officer’s first chance to display the depths of his nature to
the girl against whom the venom of unsuccess in his heart had secretly
been directed all her life. He deliberately tightened his grip until he
felt her wince; he started walking so rapidly that every one was forced
to notice that Mahala was in his custody, as he intended that they
should. So the main street of the town stood gaping at the sight of
Mahala being forcibly propelled in the direction of the station house by
the village policeman.
In passing Peter Potter’s grocery they met Jason arranging a display of
baskets outside the window. In despair Mahala caught his arm.
In a low voice she cried to him: “Jason! Jason! Junior has managed to
make trouble for me! Run quick to Albert Rich’s office and ask him to
hurry to the police station!”
A few minutes after her arrival, Martin Moreland entered. He was shaking
with anger, white with emotion. Unhesitatingly he swore out a warrant
charging Mahala with the theft of three thousand dollars, and also a
search warrant for her home. He asked that she be required to furnish
bail to cover the amount she was accused of having taken. Mahala was
terrified; she was nauseated; but she tried to keep her head erect,
tried to think.
She replied: “You very well know that I cannot.”
A few minutes later she was behind the bars of a cell allotted to the
vagrants and the common drunks of the town. She stood erect in the
middle of it, holding her skirts that they might not be contaminated.
Then Albert Rich and Jason entered the building. The lawyer immediately
began to arrange details for her release.
With his first understanding of the situation, Jason said: “I will
furnish the money for her bail, but if it has to be cash, I’ll have to
drive to Bluffport. I must draw it from the bank.”
He begged that Mahala be allowed to go home, even if the policeman must
accompany her, till he could secure the money. This was refused, and
Mahala was forced to remain in the cell until Jason could make the drive
to Bluffport and return with the amount needed taken from his years of
savings. During all that time Mahala stood waiting. She never spoke save
to ask repeatedly for water; thirst seemed to be consuming her. It was
three hours later that the cell door was unlocked. Mahala stepped out,
and between her lawyer and Jason, entered a carriage and was driven
home.
There she found the Senior Moreland and the police officer searching the
house in detail; her mother again lying unconscious, having been
brutally told of the trouble. Moreland’s complaint was formally lodged
against Mahala and her trial was set, at her own request, almost
immediately. In a daze she worked over her mother.
Jason and Albert Rich made frantic efforts. They exhausted every means
possible to them to find whether any one had been seen around the
Moreland house at that time. Most of the women in the town did their own
work. It was near the noon hour that the pocket book had disappeared.
All of the neighbours had been in their kitchens at the time. No one
could be found who had seen any one upon the streets that was not a
resident going about his business.
A few days later, in a dull daze, Mahala stood in the town court house
and heard herself arraigned upon the charge of having stolen three
thousand dollars from the residence of Martin Moreland. She listened to
the readings of the depositions of Junior Moreland and his wife, who had
left on the noon train as arranged on the day of the trouble. She
listened to the harsh testimony of Martin Moreland. She saw him glare at
his wife. She saw the cruel grip with which he clutched her arm as he
pretended carefully to lead her to the witness stand. She saw the
shrinking, cowering woman lift a blanched face to the judge, and having
been sworn, she heard her testify to having seen her son enter the
living room with the pocket book in his hand, to having been told by him
what sum it contained as he passed through the kitchen where she was
hurriedly preparing dinner. He had explained that the money to pay
Mahala was to be taken from it and the remainder was for the expenses of
his trip with Edith. She told of hearing his voice as he talked to the
two women and of having spoken with him again as he passed back through
the dining room and kitchen on the way out. She told of having seen him
stand a minute in conversation with the gardener at the back door and
then start on his way toward the alley gate to go back to the bank. She
could testify to nothing else except entering the room when she had been
called after the loss of the pocket book had been discovered.
Pressed by Albert Rich with the question: “Have you any theory, Mrs.
Moreland, can you offer any explanation as to how that pocket book might
have disappeared?” she hesitated, evidently suffering cruelly, then with
dry lips she said: “I have not.”
And again Albert Rich asked her: “Is it your belief that Mahala
Spellman, the daughter of Mahlon and Elizabeth Spellman, stole that
money?”
She answered promptly: “It is not.”
Pressed again to explain how else it could have disappeared, she
answered: “I do not know, but there must have been some other way.”
Then Mahala was asked if there was anything she wished to say. She took
the stand and clearly and unwaveringly, she made her testimony. She
detailed every occurrence simply and explicitly. She admitted having
seen the pocket book, which she described, in Junior’s hands and again
in the parlour lying where Edith had told him to place it, when she had
been sent to lay the hat she had finished beside the coat. She stoutly
denied having touched it.
Under skilful questioning by Albert Rich the facts were developed that
it would have been possible for any one who knew that the money was
there to have entered the hall quietly, either at the front or side
door, and taken it away. In rebuttal the Morelands were prompt with the
evidence that no one knew that the money was in the house except Junior
and his father, both of whom were occupied at the bank at the time of
its disappearance, and the people who had been in the Moreland home,
each of whom could be accounted for. Mahala’s lawyer made much of the
fact that the money could not be found upon her or in her home, and that
she had not been from the sight of the Junior Mrs. Moreland except for
the minute when she had laid the finished hat beside the coat.
Anticipating this testimony, Martin Moreland had packed the front seats
of the courtroom with his followers. At this statement all of them
laughed immoderately. There was confusion in the court. Mahala turned
deliberately, and so standing, she slowly searched the room filled with
faces on not one of which could she find real sympathy, compassion, or
comfort save on the agonized white face of Jason gazing up at her. Then
she studied the jury, man by man, and as she did so, she realized that
the power and the wealth of Martin Moreland had been lavished upon it.
She turned to the judge, who had been a friend of her father, with whose
children she had played, and who had known her all her life.
Unexpectedly, she flashed at him the question: “Judge Staples, do you
truly believe that I stole that money?”
The judge leaned toward her with tears in his eyes.
He answered: “What I truly believe, Mahala, can be of no earthly value
to you now. The only thing that can help you here with this accusation
against you, is for the prosecutor to fail in proving that you took it.”
Mahala cried to him: “You know I cannot prove that I did not take it;
but you know equally as well that he cannot prove that I did.”
Sorrowfully the old judge said: “In order to be cleared of this charge,
Mahala, the prosecutor _must_ fail to prove that you took the money.”
Her head bowed, Mahala stood thinking.
Finally she said to the judge and to the jury: “So far as I know, I am
quite helpless. I have no proof to offer other than my own word. If you
will not accept that I seem to be at your mercy. I beg that you will get
through with this in the speediest manner possible.”
The judge closed the case by instructing the jury on the subject of
“reasonable doubt” and sent them to agree on a verdict. After a day’s
deliberation a verdict of disagreement was rendered. That jury had
contained one man whom Martin Moreland dared not approach, a man who had
convictions, and was above a price. He had obstinately refused to agree
to finding Mahala guilty. He roundly scored the other men for their lack
of penetration, of mercy, of honesty.
When Mahala heard the verdict, she quietly slid down in her seat and was
taken home unconscious by her lawyer and Jason. When reason returned,
many days later, she had to be told that the shock of the trial had
driven her mother, in agony and doubt, to her long rest. There awaited
Mahala this alleviation: Her case had been dismissed by the sympathetic
judge. It was his feeling that the evidence was not sufficient to merit
punishment on Mahala’s part. He told the lawyer for the prosecution that
he must produce something more tangible than the mere fact that Mahala
had been in the house at the time the purse was taken.
This knowledge came too late to be of material help to Mahala. When
Jemima tried to tell her, she discovered from her bright eyes, her
burning cheeks, and a quivering of her lips that she had developed a
fever, and for weeks she lay scorching and babbling while Jemima and
Doctor Grayson, with Jason in the background, worked over her.
In leaving the courtroom, Jason made an attempt to attack Martin
Moreland. The banker was half expecting that something of the kind might
happen. He had so surrounded himself with people craving his favour that
the boy was not able even to reach him.
Then Jason felt the hand of Albert Rich on his arm and he heard his
voice saying: “Don’t be a fool, Jason. You can’t get at him that way.
You can’t help her that way. We must make a clean job of this even if
it’s a long one. We’ve got to trace this thing out and find exactly how
it happened. Every one knows there’s been some underhand work
somewhere.”
When Jason became more controlled, he said to Albert Rich: “Isn’t it
like Junior Moreland to make this horrible trouble and then disappear
and leave his father to get through with the dirty work?”
“Yes,” said Albert Rich, “it’s exactly like Junior to do that very
thing.”
“The day is coming,” said Jason, “and it’s coming very speedily, when I
shall be forced to kill both of those slippery snakes.”
“Hush!” cautioned Albert Rich, “I tell you that when you say such things
you make a fool of yourself. You must not let people hear you. If they
did, and anything happened to either one of them, those who heard would
remember and your day of trouble would come. In that case, you would
cease to be of any help to Mahala.”
With scarcely a thought of food or sleep, completely neglecting his
work, Jason got through the first days of Mahala’s illness. When he
learned that it would be a thing of long duration, that it was an hourly
fight that would stretch out for weeks, he saw that the best thing he
could do was to find another woman to help Jemima and himself, to be on
hand as frequently as possible in order that their every need might be
quickly supplied. In this extremity Jason was so obsessed in helping
with the fight for Mahala’s life that he had no time to pay any
attention to any one else. If he had been paying attention, he might
have seen that there was something of a turning in the tide of feeling
concerning Mahala. There had been many people who, in the beginning, had
accepted the thought that because of her father’s disaster and her need
for money, she might have done this thing, even as Junior had pityingly
suggested to every one he could before leaving.
But there were a number of people in the town, who, when they stopped to
think for a few days, realized the fact that Mahala was not in financial
extremity. Albert Rich had discovered a piece of land belonging to her,
that with cleaning up and cultivation, might become valuable. Jemima was
furnishing her a roof. With her own efforts she was earning a
comfortable living for herself and her mother. It was these people who
began saying, at first tentatively and later with confidence, that the
whole thing was another piece of dirty work on the part of the
Morelands; that it was quite impossible that the daughter of Mahlon and
Elizabeth Spellman should be a common thief; that it was unthinkable
that the little girl who had been reared among them with such fastidious
care should have developed a moral nature that could so easily be broken
down.
In the days that passed while Mahala lay muttering on her pillow, there
were many people who began making the journey to her door, and the door
was as far as any of them ever travelled. Right there the face of
Jemima, as coldly graven as any face of stone, met them, and Jemima did
not mince words.
She said to Mrs. Williams flatly: “You’re about three weeks too late.
The time you ought to have come and made a stand and done something was
before that damned trial. You let things go on and let her be tortured
to the breakin’ point and now you want to know if there’s anything you
can do! Let me tell you pretty flat that there ain’t! What Mahala needs
right now is cold baths and any nourishment she can take, and the loving
care of people who understand her and sympathize with her, and that
she’s gettin’ from me. If any of the rest of the folks is meditatin’
comin’, at this time of the day, you can tell ’em from me that I wish
they’d stay away. They’re takin’ up time and they’re usin’ strength that
Mahala needs!”
She shut the door with all the emphasis she dared—but her consideration
was solely for the girl lying in the room in which her mother had lain
for such a long time before her. Her heavy hair was unbound and spread
over the pillow. Her body lay quiet; her head kept rolling back and
forth; her hands picked at the covers or twisted together, and from her
lips there came constantly a plaintive murmur: Where were all her
friends? Had she no friends anywhere in the world? Sometimes she spent
hours trying to convince her father or her mother that she was not a
thief. Sometimes she cried pitifully and begged the whole town to
believe that it was impossible that she could have done the thing of
which she was accused.
Presently, the greater part of the town began to believe this. Martin
Moreland found he was meeting a look of cold questioning on the faces of
men who always had been friendly. The pastor of the Presbyterian Church,
of which he was a deacon, had entered his room at the bank and no one
knew what took place behind the closed doors, but as he left the room,
several customers in the bank had heard his voice distinctly as he said
to Martin Moreland: “I have the feeling that the life of this girl is
endangered. If it is to be saved, it is upon your head to discover the
necessary evidence to save it.” That was repeated over the town, and
there were many who came to feel the same way.
For once in her life Mahala was being the perfect lady that her mother
had always exhorted her to be. She was lying still, having the typhoid
fever, undoubtedly from germs she had accumulated in the county jail
where she had drunk avidly to quench a consuming thirst while she waited
for Jason—having it quietly, in a way that her mother would have highly
approved had she been there to dictate exactly the manner in which a
lady should have a fever.
Sitting on the back steps waiting to see if the opportunity to be of any
service might arise, Jason said to Jemima early in Mahala’s illness:
“I’ve been thinking. The money I put up for Mahala’s bail has been
returned to me. I’ve a notion to take some of it and fix up her house in
the country so that it will be ready for her to go to when she gets over
this. There’s nobody here she’ll be interested in seeing. The change
might give her something to think of, it might help her. How do you feel
about it?”
“I think,” said Jemima, “that it would be the very thing. I’ll go with
her and we’ll live together. We’ll raise chickens and calves and pigs
and she’ll feel better, be stronger, than she would at what she’s been
doin’.”
So the two conspirators began a plot that ended in Jason’s finding a new
interest in life. He told Peter Potter what he was planning, and with
his approval and his help, Jason went at the work of repairing the house
and redeeming the piece of land that Mahlon Spellman had thought so
worthless that he had even forgotten to mention that he ever had
purchased it.
CHAPTER XVI
“THE EYES OF ELIZABETH”
At a famous hotel in a summer resort where people of wealth gathered, in
the bridal suite, pampered and indulged in every whim, Edith Moreland
was supposed to be recovering from her illness. She had been greatly
disturbed over the money matter. The more she thought of it, the more
frequently she said to Junior: “You know, as I have time to study about
it, I see that Mahala couldn’t possibly have taken that money, even
though she couldn’t account for its disappearance. You see, if I had
been calling there instead of being your wife, and if I had been
arrested, I couldn’t have proved that I didn’t take it.”
By unlimited and plausible lying, Junior managed to keep her reasonably
satisfied. He kept her room filled with flowers. He gave her expensive
pieces of jewellery. He spent the greater part of his time with her, but
she only grew more irritable and felt worse. Junior could see that she
really was ill and that, in spite of his best efforts, she was not
regaining her health. He began to fear that she was thinking of Mahala
and brooding over her when she was supposed to be talking and thinking
of other things.
Junior had been distinctly surprised at himself concerning Edith. In a
fit of angry disappointment at Mahala’s rejection and her scathing
arraignment of him, he had naturally turned to the girl, who all her
life had taken pains to let him see that she highly approved of him. His
one thought had been, that since he could not have Mahala it made no
difference whom he married. But in courting Mahala, the thought of
marriage had strongly entered his mind, and the night of Commencement
had shown him that Edith was a woman of distinctive beauty. He
worshipped beauty almost as deeply as he worshipped money. From the
books in the bank he had been able to gather a very agreeable estimate
of Edith’s fortune which was so considerable, that once convinced that
Mahala would never marry him, Junior proved the reckless trait in his
character by immediately marrying Edith.
She was quite as handsome as he had thought her. He was surprised to
find himself enjoying the demonstrations of affection that she lavished
upon him. He was willing to wait upon her. His father and mother were
consumed with wonder when they saw him fetching and carrying, but if
they protested, Junior merely laughed at them and went on doing
everything that Edith asked.
One evening, to escape the constant chattering of women on the upstairs
veranda, in whose talk Edith was not interested, she arose. She stepped
into her room, and picking up a Persian shawl, threw it over her
shoulders and walked the length of the veranda. At the corner of the
building she turned down a side porch and made her way past the windows
of the other guests, pausing occasionally to look down to the grounds
below.
Seeing that she appeared ill and pale, a woman sitting before the French
doors opening into her room, shoved a chair in Edith’s direction and
asked if she did not wish to sit down and rest for a few minutes.
“Thank you,” replied Edith, “you’re very kind. I have been ill, but I am
much better now.”
She glanced at the woman, and seeing that her dress and manner indicated
that she was not a babbling person who would tire her with senseless
chatter, she took the chair and sitting down, leaned against the balcony
railing and looked at the people moving through the grounds below. There
were wide stretches of beautifully kept lawns, every kind of tree and
shrub imaginable. There were fountains around which grew tropical water
plants and in which goldfishes swam lazily. It was the first minute of
quiet that Edith had experienced outside of her rooms. She enjoyed the
night air. She watched big, velvet-winged moths fluttering toward the
lights at the entrance to the grounds and to the building. A sense of
peace and rest stole through her. The torment of doubt and uncertainty
that had racked her ever since her marriage to Junior eased slightly.
She had cared for him so intensely that she found herself doing what he
asked without stopping to look into his reasons, but after a few weeks
of deliberation, she had reached the conclusion that while he was doing
his best to be nice to her, to keep her pleased and happy, he did not
love her and he never had. This had bred a bitterness in her heart
surpassing anything she ever before had experienced. Undoubtedly, it had
been the cause of her illness. Her one hope had been that in time Junior
would come to care for her as she knew he always had cared for Mahala.
When the real breakdown came, and the mystery of the lost pocket book
refused to be solved, Edith was tried to the breaking point. She could
not eat; she could not sleep; she could not keep from thinking, and
occasionally in her thoughts there would be thrust into her
consciousness ugly things that she always had heard said about the elder
Moreland and Junior.
Hour by hour, she kept reviewing her whole life in reference to her
relations with Mahala. With Junior she never had come in contact except
through Mahala. She remembered how she had stood with her programme
ready Commencement night and he had not even asked her for one dance as
he stood laughingly sprawling his name all over Mahala’s card. Even
Henrick Schlotzensmelter had known that it was proper for each boy of
the class to ask each girl for at least one dance. For a minute as she
descended from the omnibus, Edith had thought that at last Junior had
really seen her. His words had furnished her the spur that carried her
through her first public appearance triumphantly, when she had started
with every expectation that she would fail and be forced to resort to
her written speech.
She had her hour of hope, but Junior had seen to it that it was promptly
quenched; and then, in a short time, he had come to her urging the hasty
marriage to which she had consented because she preferred whatever life
might bring to her in his company to what it would bring without him.
To-night she was realizing more keenly than usual that it might be going
to bring her a very sorry scheme of things. Leaning upon the railing,
she forgot the woman sitting a few yards away, as she sat staring down
into the rapidly deepening shadows.
Then her eyes widened. Her breath caught in a gasp. One hand crept up to
her heart, as she leaned forward, peering down intently. She must be
mistaken, yet certainly a man passing through the shadows from the back
of the building, accompanied by one of the maids, was Junior. Gazing
earnestly to convince herself that she must be mistaken, she saw them
pause and look around them to assure themselves that no one was
watching. As the man turned, she saw for a certainty that he was Junior.
With her lips parted and her eyes incredulous, she sat an instant
watching him indulge in familiarities with the maid. She saw him give
her money. She saw him take her in his arms and kiss her.
Quite unconscious of what she was doing, possibly in order to make sure
of what was really happening, Edith arose, leaning far over the balcony.
As the maid started to go, Junior caught her back and kissed her
repeatedly. A terrible cry broke from Edith’s lips. The hand upon which
she was leaning, slipped. Head first she plunged over the railing and
down to the stone walk far below.
At the sound of her voice, Junior looked up. The next instant he saw her
plunging fall. He stopped a second, cautioning the maid to disappear. He
was the first to reach Edith. He gathered her in his arms and carried
her down the walk, offering the plausible explanation that in leaning
over the railing to speak to him as he was passing below, she had lost
her balance and fallen.
He carried her to their room and physicians were summoned, but it was
found that her neck was broken. So it was Junior’s task to take her back
to Ashwater, lay her away with every outward sign of mourning and lavish
expenditure, and ingratiate himself as deeply as possible with her
relatives by a clever semblance of heart-broken grief.
The morning after the funeral, Junior entered the president’s room of
the bank and closing the door behind him, went to the table and sat
down, facing his father.
“Dad,” he said, “you’ve looked so ghastly ever since I’ve been home that
I’ve come to put you out of your misery. Cheer up! Things are not as bad
as they might be. In the first place, you will be rejoiced to know that
I’ve got complete control of all of Edith’s finances. And in the second
place, if I don’t mistake my guess, for once you will be even more
rejoiced to know that what happened really and truly was an accident. I
was downstairs. Edith did lose her balance and fall. There was a woman
on the veranda with her near enough to see what happened and there were
people on the veranda below when she came smashing down. I got to her
first because I was coming that way and it wasn’t far. But it was an
accident pure and simple.”
Moreland Senior leaned back in his chair and breathed to the depth of
his lungs.
“Well, Junior,” he said. “I don’t know that I ever heard anything in all
my life with which I was better pleased. I may, or I may not, have a few
things I regret on my own soul, but I’d hate to undertake the strain of
carrying a burden like that concerning you. As a man grows older, he
doesn’t sleep so well as he did when he had the cast-iron constitution
of youth, and there are times when the night gets pretty bad if a man’s
conscience is not altogether clean. Of course, I’m not intimating that
I’ve got anybody’s blood on my hands, but in the wild, hot-headed days
of youth I may have done two or three things and been through a few
experiences that I’d hate to see measured out to you. I want you to have
a good time and get all you can out of my money—which is really your
money—but be slightly careful. See to it that you don’t get into
anything that’ll raise the hair on your head about three o’clock in the
morning twenty years from now.”
Junior laughed. “Sure!” he said. “Don’t worry, Governor, I’ll be
careful. I’ve never done anything so terrible and I’m not planning to do
anything except go on with the work I’d started before I went away. Has
anything come up concerning Mahala?”
Mr. Moreland shook his head.
“That’s one of the things, Junior,” he said, “that I’m not quite easy
about. It was a big sum to disappear and I was after the Spellmans and I
didn’t hesitate to give it to them as hard as I could, but to tell you
the plain truth, I haven’t an idea where that money went. I don’t know
how it got out of the house, or whether it was out of the house. Are you
sure you put that pocket book on the table when Edith told you to?”
“I certainly am,” said Junior. “I went into the room, laid it beside her
coat, and stepped back. You’ll remember that Mahala testified that it
was there when she finished Edith’s hat and laid it with the things she
was going to wear.”
Mr. Moreland slowly nodded his head.
“I remember,” he said. “That piece of testimony of hers is about the
only alleviation I’ve got when Elizabeth Spellman looks at me too hard,
at three in the morning. Sometimes I’m tempted to send to Chicago for a
real detective and put him on the case. I find that there are things
that I can do with impunity, and then there are some that I can’t. I’d
rather see Mahala Spellman freed from that ugly charge against her than
anything that could happen on earth right now. It’s beginning to react
against us, pretty strongly, my boy.”
“In the present circumstances,” said Junior, “so would I. But money is a
material thing. The earth doesn’t open and swallow it up. It’s
somewhere, and I cautioned you before I left to do the most thorough
piece of searching of Mahala Spellman’s _home_ that could possibly be
done. _I was sure you’d find the money there._ I don’t see yet how it
happens that you didn’t.”
Mr. Moreland drew another deep breath. He picked up a letter in one hand
and a letter opener in the other. Junior suddenly realized that his face
was drawn and haggard and that the eyes that were lifted to him had a
hunted look.
“Well, it happens, no doubt, because it wasn’t there,” he said. “If it
had been I’d have found it. I’ve worn myself out searching our house and
when I haven’t been at the job, your mother has. This thing has hurt her
a great deal worse than it has either one of us. I strongly suspect,
that among the old hens of this town, she’s likely getting hers. Since
people have had time to think things over, I get a hint once in a while
that the thing I cautioned you would happen is slowly happening. As
people have time to calm down and to study things, there’s a kind of
sentiment growing that Mahala never could have taken that money. After
all, she didn’t really need it. Jemima had furnished her shelter; she
was honestly earning her daily bread, while that damned Rich dug up a
forty-acre piece of land that doesn’t need anything but cultivation to
make it as fine river bottom as you ever laid your eyes on. She knew
about it before this thing happened. She wasn’t what you might call
destitute or in extremes, and she had a kind of pride that made her meet
the thing in a way that her mother couldn’t have done. I’ve got a notion
in my head that Elizabeth Spellman would have been prouder of her girl
if she’d laid down beside her and died with her, instead of putting on
an apron and beginning to sew for a living.”
Junior arose and stood looking at his father.
“No doubt you’re right, Dad,” he said quietly. “You most generally are.
But since you didn’t have anything to do with this, since you are in no
way to blame for it, don’t you think you’d better stop worrying about
it? Let it go for what it’s worth.”
“Well,” said Mr. Moreland, “my dear friends and my devoted neighbours
are beginning to make me feel that I’m none too popular in this
community. That little ape of a Spellman, feeling and flecking and
scraping, could make himself a commanding and respected figure, and I
thought I’d done it, but I’m none too sure that I have. I’m none too
sure that it wouldn’t take only one more little slip on my part to have
every dog in the county worrying at my throat. I understand that Albert
Rich, Peter Potter, and Jason Peters, are pooling issues against us.
They’re doing everything in their power to find some hook or crook by
which they can clear Mahala, and if the thing happens, and happens to
our discredit——” The Senior Moreland paused and drew fine lines down the
side of a blotter with a sharp pencil.
Junior stood waiting, studying him intently. At last the elder Moreland
resumed: “If the thing happens, and happens to our _discredit_, I’m not
any too sure that things won’t go pretty rough with us.”
Junior laughed outright, but it wasn’t a hearty laugh, and not a
mirthful one.
“Don’t you think it!” he cried. “Don’t you think it!”
Martin Moreland drew a line so deep that it cut through the blotter. “I
don’t think it,” he said with a terse, cold incision that arrested
Junior’s deepest attention. “I don’t think it. _I know it._”
Junior stiffened slightly and stood studying him.
“There’s just one thing that can save the situation,” said the elder
Moreland. “If you’re ready to go to work, go to work now on the task of
finding out where that pocket book went. Find it in such a way that it
will be a credit to _us_ to have found it. Find it in such a way that it
will turn public opinion in our favour. Give me the chance to be the
leader in doing anything that could be done to reinstate Mahala.”
As he finished, Junior laughed again, this time more naturally. “That’s
something of a job that you’ve set for me, Pater,” he said. “I haven’t
an idea in ten states where that pocket book is, but if that’s the way
you feel about it, I’ll get on the job and see if I can resurrect it, or
duplicate it, or do something. And in the meantime, is there anything
you want me to do in connection with putting a small slice of the fear
of God into the hearts of Albert Rich, and old Potter and Jason?”
The Senior Moreland thought intently a few minutes and then he said
quietly: “Right there you had better stay your hand. They happen to be
on the popular side right now. You had better just drop that and evade
it, and get around it the best you can, and in the meantime, you had
better spend some time and money on seeing how popular you can make
yourself in this town right now.”
“All right,” said Junior, “at least one of the jobs you’ve set me is
agreeable. I don’t mind in the least seeing how popular I can make
myself. As a matter of fact, I deeply enjoy it, and in about ten days
I’ll show you an altogether different atmosphere. It’s evident to my
young mind that this village has needed me, that I’m of importance on
this job, and in the meantime, I think you had better take Mother and go
on a vacation. If you’ll allow me to say so confidentially, you’re
looking as if a keen blast of the wrath of Heaven had struck you.”
Junior left the room. Martin Moreland went on decorating the blotter. No
one kept any account of the length of time he spent or the intricacy of
the designs that he drew. He heard the whistles blowing for noon before
he arose and reached for his hat, and as he left the room he was saying
softly to himself: “‘The wrath of Heaven.’ I wonder what the wrath of
Heaven can do to me?”
CHAPTER XVII
“A MILLSTONE AND THE HUMAN HEART”
During the days that Mahala lay approaching the culmination of the final
test as to whether her physical forces were strong enough to endure the
ravages of the fever and leave her only sufficient strength to go on
breathing, Jason worked frantically. For the first time in his life he
found himself doing the thing that was popular. Every one was willing to
help him. Carpenters would work over hours and on holidays; painters and
paper hangers were equally accommodating. The neighbours on the farms
surrounding Mahala’s forty acres came to his rescue. Without being
asked, they mowed weeds, burned brush heaps, trimmed the orchard, and
rebuilt tottering fences. They made a day of straightening the leaning
stable on its foundations and staying its framework, so that with new
roof and sheathing, it would be a tenable building for many years to
come.
Jason superintended everything, but he confined his personal work to the
house. While the men were nailing shingles and laying flooring, he was
peeling off rotten plastering, tearing away broken lathing, working
wherever he could lend a hand in most swiftly furthering the task he had
undertaken. Every morning he stood at the foot of Mahala’s bed looking
down at her a few moments before he went to work. All day her tortured
face was the spur that drove him to accomplishments worthy of the best
efforts of two men. Jemima kept assuring him that he need not be so
terribly anxious. There would be a crisis, but she and Doctor Grayson
and the nurse were watching for it; they would be prepared; they would
save Mahala.
But there came a day when Jason staggered into the little house wearing
a ghastly face. He paid no attention to the food Jemima set out for him.
He made his way to Mahala’s room, and clinging to the foot of the bed,
he stood staring down at her, an agony of doubt, of fear, written over
his face and figure. Finally, Jemima could endure it no longer. She put
her arm around him and helped him from the room. He went out and sat
down on the back steps, where Jemima followed him.
“Don’t feel so badly, Jason,” she said. “You’re working so hard that
your nerve is givin’ way. All of us feel that Mahala is holdin’ her own.
She’s goin’ to come out of this. You needn’t be so afraid. We won’t let
her die.”
The face that Jason lifted to hers was so ghastly that Jemima never
forgot it.
“You haven’t stopped to consider,” he said, “that death might be the
best thing that could happen to her.”
“No, I haven’t,” said Jemima stoutly, “because I don’t think it. She’s
young, and she’s strong, and she’s innocent.”
Jason sat so still that it occurred to Jemima that he had stopped
breathing; and then he said quietly: “One man said she was innocent.
Eleven say that she is guilty. That is a stain that is going to mark her
the remainder of her life. I’m not sure that life is the best thing for
her.”
“The only thing of which I’m sure,” said Jemima heartily, “is that
you’ve worked to the breaking point, or you may have picked up this
fever yourself. Doctor Grayson says people do get it from one another.
Now you come and get some food, and go to bed and have a good sleep, and
to-morrow you work just half as hard as you have to-day.”
There were three anxious days at the time the fever ran its course, but
Doctor Grayson was a skilled and a conscientious physician and he was
dealing with a condition that he had handled many times in his life when
he did not have the vitality of youth to aid him. The thing that he
would have to combat in Mahala’s case would be her lethargy, the
indifference that he felt sure she would feel, when consciousness
returned, as to whether she lived or died, and this proved to be the
hardest battle that he had to fight. But she was young; she was
physically strong. Jemima, the nurse, and Doctor Grayson never faltered
in their unwavering work and faith. The result was, that a week after
the crisis, they were beginning to whisper of mysterious things to
Mahala. There was a journey that she was to make; there was a wonderful
surprise in store for her; something delightful was going to happen.
Because she was very weak, because she was desperately tired, because
her heart had been as nearly broken as human hearts ever come to that
condition without ultimate completion, Mahala found the easiest way was
to listen, to accept what was being said. Several times she had sat in
her chair by the window for an hour; her feet had touched the floor; she
had stood upon them and performed a few wavering journeys around the
room.
Jemima had been dismantling and sending away everything in the house
belonging to Mahala that she could spare. Her clothing was packed, and
she was counting the days until the removal could be made, when there
came to the faithful creature a telegram from her daughter-in-law, and
this time the hand of fate had fallen heavily upon Jemima. In the prime
of her son’s life, in the full tide of his strength, with his wife and a
house full of small children depending upon him, a piston had burst in a
piece of machinery upon which he had been working in the factory that
employed him, and the remainder of Jemima’s life was taken out of her
hands. She was asked to come and help to rear and to support seven
children, all of them youngsters needing everything. She was asked to
come immediately, so there was nothing to do but to tell Mahala that
there was trouble in Jemima’s family; that she had been called, and to
leave Mahala to the care of the nurse.
So many things had happened to Mahala that one more did not matter. She
wept a few weak tears of compassion for Jemima and pity for herself and
went soundly to sleep at the hour of Jemima’s departure. The nurse was a
kindly woman, a judicious woman, and for the remainder of her stay she
found herself adhering very rigidly to the rules that Jemima had
explained to her. Backed by Jemima’s reasons, they seemed very good
rules. People who had failed Mahala in her hour of tribulation might
stay away and attend to their own affairs; they might learn the lesson
very thoroughly that the friend in need is the one who is the friend in
deed; and that if people were not friends in need, there was every
likelihood that they never would be friends again in any conditions that
might obtain.
On the day that Jason announced that the house was ready, that he was
very certain that he and the daughter of one of the neighbouring farmers
who had been helping him to arrange the house, would be able to care for
Mahala in the future, the nurse helped him to lay springs and a mattress
in Peter Potter’s delivery wagon and make up a comfortable bed. With a
smile on her pale lips and that brand of hopelessness in her heart which
amounts to passivity, Mahala walked between the nurse and Jason and was
lifted to the bed. With closed eyes she lay quietly while she was driven
through the streets of Ashwater, out country highways, and slowly down
the River Road until they reached the house she once had visited.
As they had driven along in the warming sunshine she had felt that it
made small difference to her whether she lived or died. When she saw the
transformation that had taken place in her house and land, there came to
her with a distinct shock the feeling that it would be ungracious of her
to die. There was an expectant look about the face of the waiting house.
It proclaimed itself with dignity and pride; it was alluring to look
at—all fresh paint and lace-curtained windows. It was standing up
straight upon its foundations. A veranda had been added across the
front, and everything was a vision of peace and quiet beauty. It gave
Mahala the feeling that she would not be doing the square thing not to
live in it, not to love it, not to search for happiness there.
Sitting on the veranda was an attractive young girl. When she saw the
covered wagon coming, she arose and came down to the gate, swinging it
open. She was a slip of a thing with light hair, wide-open questioning
young eyes, and a provoking red mouth. She was quite tall for a girl,
slender, and neatly dressed. There was the vivid pink of fresh air, an
outdoor flush on her cheeks.
Mahala looked at Jason; her lips formed the one word: “Who?”
Jason answered: “Her name is Ellen Ford. She’s the daughter of your
nearest neighbour. She’s taken a lot of interest while I was fixing up
the place. She’s agreed to stay with you and take care of you until you
feel well enough to manage by yourself. She’s a real nice girl with
sufficient sense to keep her mouth shut. She thinks you wonderful and
she’s crazy about having the chance to stay with you.”
For a long time Mahala’s eyes looked intently down the road in front of
her. The sight of the little house, almost buried in green, of the
neatly fenced fields, and the thought of searching for happiness again
had brought rushing back to her brain the one thought that, since her
day of direst disaster, had persisted with her. Suddenly the big tears
began to brim from her eyes and slide down her cheeks. Then she lifted
her head and looked into Jason’s eyes.
“Jason,” she cried, “you know that I never touched that money!”
Jason put his arms around her and muttered words of comfort. He was
telling her to be brave, to be calm, to think of nothing but that she
was coming to her very own home, that for the remainder of her life, if
she chose, she was to do nothing but tend her flowers and her garden and
do whatever she pleased there. When they stopped, Jason lifted her
bodily, carrying her across the veranda and into her room where he laid
her on the bed upon which she had slept as a child.
When she opened her tired eyes, she saw that the room was almost an
exact reproduction of her old one. She swung her feet to the floor, and
steadying herself by the furniture, made her way around the room in
wonderment almost too great for words. At sight of her, the gold bird
burst into song. She looked into the living room and she cried out in
astonished delight when she saw upon the walls pictures that had
belonged to her father and mother, the oil portrait of her mother
hanging above the mantel—a whole room full of precious things that she
had thought lost to her forever. There were several cases of the books
they had loved like old friends waiting to greet her. She forgot her
weakness. She voiced a cry of delight as she stood in the middle of the
room gazing in an ecstasy at each precious thing she never had hoped to
see again.
She made her way to the door of the next room, and there she found a
guest chamber furnished with more of their home possessions, and another
door led to the dining room—floor, side walls, furnishings—each object
was familiar to her. Crossing it, she looked into the kitchen, furnished
as were the other rooms, with her possessions. And there she saw Ellen
Ford busy preparing supper for her. Through the back door she could see
a roofed veranda having chairs and a small table, and on back to the old
orchard from which she could hear the humming wings of bees, and the
voices of the bluebirds. She could see the stable with white chickens
busy around it and a cow and a calf in the lot beside it. Her quick eyes
took in the upper part of the stable where she judged, from the
arrangement of windows, that Jason had made a room for himself while he
worked.
With the bravest effort at self-control of which she was capable, Mahala
turned to Ellen Ford. “I want to thank you very much for your kindness
in helping to make a home for me,” she said.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” answered the girl, busy over the stove. “We join
land, you know, and we always try to do what we can for any of our
neighbours.”
And then, in an effort to be friendly, to cover an embarrassing
situation, she rattled a kettle lid and fussed with some things on the
table as she remarked casually: “Of course, we’d expect you to do
anything for us that I’ve tried to do here, in case we needed it.”
Mahala looked at the girl quickly. She divined that the speech had been
made to put her at ease, but she also divined something else. It was
innocent, it was simple, it was honest. Here was some one who had faith
in her, who had been willing to bolster that faith with works; some one
who was proud to be with her, to help her till she should again be able
to help herself. Before she thought what she was doing, she found
herself standing face to face with Ellen Ford. She realized that her
hands were reaching up to the shoulders of the girl, who was taller than
she. She found herself crying out: “You know, don’t you, that I never
touched that money?”
Instantly the stout young arms closed around her. Mahala felt herself
drawn to Ellen Ford and a work-coarsened young hand was stroking her
hair. “Why, of course you didn’t!” she said. “Every one with any sense
knows you couldn’t!”
Mahala turned suddenly and went back to her room where she was greeted
with another gush of song from the throat of her bird. She was too weak
to reach its cage. She dropped upon the side of the bed and sat staring
through the window. When Ellen came presently, saying supper was ready,
she went to the dining room and tried with all her might to force down
her throat some of the very good food which the girl had deftly
prepared. Then she sat for an hour in an arm chair on the veranda,
looking at the flowers redeemed from the trespassing of overrunning
weeds, fertilized, and cultivated. How they would bloom in the spring,
how well the bushes looked, and the trees; how rank the grass! By and
by, the moon came up and the night was filled with the soft sounds of
fall. It was Jason who said to her: “I wish you would lie down now,
Mahala. I think you’re taxing yourself too far. You’ve got to take this
slowly. In a few weeks you’ll be surprised at what the air, and the
food, and the work that you will find, will do for you.”
Mahala arose and went to him. She laid her hands upon his arm. “Jason,”
she said in a shaking voice, “I had hopes about this land the minute I
saw it. It will take all the rest of my life to tell you what a
wonderful thing I think you have done in fixing up my house for me. I
never, never can tell you what it means to me to have these things from
my home back again. How does it happen?”
“Don’t, Mahala,” said Jason, taking her arm and trying to guide her
toward the door. “Don’t worry about these things now. Don’t try to talk.
There’s a long time coming when you can tell me anything you want to.”
Mahala stood looking up at him.
“Jason, are you going back to Ashwater to-night?” she asked.
“No,” answered Jason, “I’m only going to Ashwater when business takes me
there. I’ve still got my interest with Peter. I am going to help him
with his books. I’m paying a good man that I trained myself to take my
place. After I got your house started enough that I knew what it would
cost, I had sufficient money left to buy forty more acres joining yours,
so I went into partnership with you. As soon as you’re able, you’re
going to do the house work and I’m going to do the farm work, and we’re
going to share and share alike. There’s nothing the matter with your
land. All it needs is work. The cost of the improvements on the house I
have charged to you; I’ll take that much out of your share. Now you go
to bed and go to sleep. My room is over the carriage room in the stable,
and Ellen’s going to stay all night with you as long as you want her.”
Then Mahala found herself standing beside her bed. Slowly, she slipped
down on her knees. She leaned forward; she tried to pray. But she found
there was nothing that she wanted to say to God except to beg of Him to
take care of Jason, to reward his thoughtfulness and his kindness. Then
she put out the light, laid her head on her pillow, and in spite of
herself, began an intensive review of the day.
She recalled and dwelt upon each incident and suddenly, with the torture
of memory, there came to her the thought that while Jason had
overwhelmed her with kindness, had given her every assurance that she
would be sheltered and cared for, he had not said the words that her
heart had been hungering to hear him say. He had not gripped her hands
tightly and looked straight into her eyes and said with the firmness of
deliberate assurance: “Mahala, I know that you didn’t touch that money.”
The thought shocked and startled her. She recalled that she had expected
it. She wondered how he could have forgotten to give her the assurance
that he must have known her heart would crave. She found herself sitting
up in bed, looking through the window at the moon-whitened world
outside. The notes of a whippoorwill came sharply stressed through the
night. Back in the orchard she could hear the wavering complainings of a
hunting screech owl. She could hear the little creatures of night
calling. With her hands gripped together and pressed hard against her
heart, she heard her own voice repeating: “Oh, Jason, I didn’t! I
didn’t!” Over and over she reached the moment of the question she had
asked. Finally, she was able to comfort herself with the kindness of the
things that he had said, with the manifestations of the thoughtfulness
and the planning and the work that he had done in her behalf. She
succeeded in making herself believe that Jason was so sorry, and his
mind so filled with what he had been doing, that he had merely neglected
to speak the words her heart so longed to hear.
She made a brave effort in the days that followed, to keep that thought
from entering her mind. She was too proud to mention the matter again,
but constantly she kept watching Jason. She found that she was waiting
to hear him involuntarily say the words that she longed to hear. As she
studied him and the situation, there came to her the realization that he
was thinking for her, that he was planning for her, that he was working
for her, but equally he was thinking, he was planning, he was working
for himself. He was making the money that would insure her having a home
again and freedom, but he was assuming nothing. Whatever he made, he
divided equally. For the share of land that she furnished he was doing
his equivalent in work. The division was fair enough. She did not know,
until Jason told her, that he always had loved the country, that it had
been a boyhood hope to own and to work upon land, that he had only done
the thing that he was glad in his heart to do when he had escaped from
the grocery through the arrangement he had made, and found himself free
to devote most of his time to the development and cultivation of land.
He pointed out to her the extent of the land he had purchased adjoining
her nearest neighbour, James Ford, the father of Ellen who was still
helping her about the house and in the garden.
Nothing could have given Mahala more comfort at that minute than the
thought that Jason was not sacrificing himself; that he was doing the
thing that he had hoped, and for a long time planned, to do; that he was
happy with the wind in his hair and his feet in the freshly turned earth
of a furrow. Watching him at his work, sometimes answering the chatter
of Ellen, who was so full of the joy of living that she talked upon any
occasion that she felt it proper that she might speak, milling these
things over in her heart, there came to Mahala the realization that
Ashwater stood to Jason Peters in some small degree in the same light as
it now did to her. It had been a place where an unkind fate had bound
him and he had suffered from taunt and from insult; he had suffered from
unjust persecution; manhood had brought to him the power to fend for
himself and the friend he needed in his hour of trial, but it had not
taught him to love the place in which he lived or the people among whom
he had endured humiliation and suffering.
The first wave of gladness that she had known since her earliest
calamity had befallen her, washed up in Mahala’s heart with a real
comprehension of the fact that Jason was happy; that he wanted to live
upon the land; that he enjoyed every foot of his environment. It pleased
her when she discovered that he disliked that day upon which he was
forced to go upon errands to Ashwater to repair implements or for food.
When she had watched him until she thoroughly convinced herself of these
things, one degree of the bitterness in Mahala’s heart was assuaged.
Another thing that helped her on the road toward an approach to her
normal condition was the attitude of Ellen Ford. Ellen was a charming
girl. Mahala soon learned to love her. She was frank, unusually
innocent. Mahala decided that her mother must have used a much greater
degree of caution in speech before her daughter than she had understood
was common with country women in general. Ellen came when she was
wanted; with perfect cheerfulness went home when she was not. She
chattered on every other subject on earth, but she never evinced the
slightest curiosity concerning Mahala or what the future might have in
store for her. If the task Mahala laid out for herself was so heavy she
could not finish it, Jason went down the road and told Ellen. The girl
came singing, did what was wanted efficiently, begged the privilege of
brushing Mahala’s hair or doing any possible personal service for her,
and went back singing, Mahala thought, as spontaneously as the bluebirds
and the fat robins of the garden and the orchard. For these reasons,
Mahala found her heart running out to her; found herself praising her
and loving her; listening for her song and her footstep; wishing that
she might do for her some pleasing service in return for the many kind
and practical things that Ellen could think of to do for her.
Imperceptibly each day, but surely in a total of days, Mahala’s strength
began to return, and with it came a high tide in her beauty. Washed in
rain water and dried in the sun, the golden life came back to her hair;
an adorable pink flush into her cheeks; a deeper red than they ever had
known stained her lips. The one place that the mark remained was in the
depths of her eyes. In them dwelt a dread question, a pain that never
left them. Looking deep into them at times, Jason felt that the one
thing for which he could thank God was that he did not there find any
semblance of fear. The horror that had hovered over his boyhood from a
gnawing stomach, a beaten body, and a tormented brain, had left him in
such a condition that at times he acknowledged a sickening surge of pure
fear sweeping through him. Whenever this happened, he set himself to
master it, to prove that he was not afraid. There had been a few times
in his life when the obsession was heaviest upon him, that he had
deliberately put himself in Martin Moreland’s presence, in order to
prove to himself that he could stand, in those days, at the height of
the banker with his shoulders squared and his eyes able to meet those of
any man straightly. He never had been afraid of Junior physically since
the first day in which he had tested the high tide of his youth upon
him. Knowing what Junior had been able to do to him, feeling in the
depths of his heart that the troubles that had fallen upon Mahala were
of Junior’s devising, would breed and keep in Jason a nauseating nerve
strain springing from mental suffering, so strong that it caused
physical reaction.
Mahala spent much of her time in the house. She experienced such joy as
she never had hoped for again merely in walking over the carpets, in
touching the curtains, in handling the linens, the books, the needle
work, and the silver that had been her father’s and her mother’s. By
imperceptible degrees she had altered Jason’s arrangement of the house
until the place became a reproduction of the delicate colour, of
alluring invitation, of nerve-soothing rest that she had homed among
during her childhood. When she could find nothing further to prettify
inside her house—the little house that was truly hers—she walked around
it lavishing love upon the flowers and the bushes, the trees and the
shrubs. She spent a great deal of time on her knees before the boxed bed
running around the house, loosening and fertilizing the soil, picking
out the sly weeds that tried to find a home under the shelter of the
star flowers and the daffodils and the iris. She loved every foot of the
old garden. On her writing desk there were catalogues from which she was
selecting the seeds and bulbs she meant to order for fall planting so
that the coming summer her garden should once more spread its tapestry
of colour and wave its banners of beauty on the air.
She liked to cross the corner of the orchard and feed the chickens and
the white pigeons that shared the barn loft with Jason. She liked to pet
the calf and make friends with the cow. With the assistance of Ellen,
and under the advice of Mrs. Ford, remembering what she could of
Jemima’s methods and following the instructions of several cook books,
she began to prepare meals for Jason and herself which were nourishing
and sustaining, and at the same time, appetizing and attractive. It was
several months before the morning dawned upon which Mahala realized that
the full tide of health was flowing in her veins; that strength had come
back to her; that when she sent for Ellen, most frequently she was doing
it because she wanted company, for the day had not yet arrived when
Mahala would face Ashwater.
There was no one there whom she cared to see; nothing there that she
cared to do. A written slip naming her necessities went in Jason’s
pocket on his trips to town on business connected with the grocery or
conveniences necessary for his farm work. She found, after a few months
of experience of living with the woman who was herself, that a mark had
been set upon her, literally burned into her brain, her heart, and her
soul,—a mark that never could be effaced. The other doors and windows of
the house stood wide open. The front door was always closed, always
locked. She found, too, that if, while she sat by an open window sewing
or under the trees of the dooryard, she heard the rattle of wheels and
saw a face she recognized, she arose and on winged feet put herself out
of hearing in case any one should knock upon her door, so that she would
not be forced to open it and face them.
There were times when she deliberately tried to determine what she
thought and felt concerning Jason, but her brain was still in such
tumult that she could not be definite even with herself. Life had
narrowed her proposition to the one fact that he was everything that she
had left of her old life. She could not look at any beloved possession
that had belonged to her father and her mother without the knowledge
that, save for him, she would have been denied even this poor
consolation from life. She could not move through the small home that in
her heart she soon grew almost to worship without the knowledge that she
owed to him her joy in having it to live in so soon. As she tried to
think things out, it appealed to Mahala that the time had passed in
which she could spend even a thought on remembering the days of his
youth. She herself had been stripped to the bone. She had lost
everything but her respect for herself. Every material comfort she had,
she owed to him. Slowly in her heart there began to take form the
decision that whatever there was of her personality, of her life,
belonged to Jason if he wanted it. If there was any way in which he
cared to use it, it was for him to say what he desired.
During the winter Mahala found herself living passively. She found that
she was allowing each day to provide its duties, and on land she learned
that they were many. Whatever there was to do, she went about casually
and determinedly. Slowly, through absorption in her work, through
contact with the growing and the rejuvenating processes of nature,
through the healing power of spontaneous life around her, the shadow
began to lift. One day she stopped short in crossing the kitchen with a
pan of odorous golden biscuit fresh from the oven in her hands, stunned
by the realization that she was hearing her own voice lifted in a little
murmuring song. There had been days in Mahala’s life when she never
expected that song could ever again return to her lips. After a while,
she realized that she was laughing with Jason over things that occurred
when he came in ravenous from work to food of her preparing. She found
herself talking happy, nonsensical things to the calf and the chickens
that she was feeding, and she had trained the pigeons until they came
circling around her, settling over her head and shoulders like a white
cloud when she entered the barnyard with her feed basket.
So spring came again.
To repay Ellen Ford for the many things that she had done for her for
which she had refused to accept payment in money, Mahala had selected,
from samples she had Jason bring her, a piece of attractive pink calico
and a blue gingham and a finer piece of dainty white goods. From these
she fashioned attractive dresses for Ellen. The white one she made foamy
with lace and feathery with ruffles. Ellen was delighted. She made bold
to throw her arms around Mahala and kiss her repeatedly in an effort to
express her thankfulness for this gift. But when the Ford carriage
passed the house on Sunday morning, taking the family to church, Mahala
was surprised to see that Ellen was wearing the pink dress instead of
the white one.
As she served Jason’s plate at dinner that day she said to him: “I
thought Ellen would wear the white dress I made for her to-day, but I
noticed as they passed that she wore the pink one.”
And Jason answered: “Perhaps she’s saving the white one for some very
special occasion.”
“I suspect that is it,” said Mahala. “Maybe there’s going to be a picnic
or a party.”
A few days later, sitting on her front steps in the soft air of evening,
Mahala saw Ellen slowly coming down the road in her direction, and then
she saw Jason coming from one of his fields carrying a hoe over his
shoulder. His lithe leap carried him over the fence as Ellen was
passing. She saw them stop and begin talking, and then she saw Jason
lean his hoe in the fence corner, turn, and slowly walk back down the
road with Ellen. He stood for a long time at her gate talking with her
before he came back, picked up his hoe, and came on to the house.
For a long time Mahala sat thinking. Then she got up and went to her
room. She shut the door, and lighting a lamp, stood before her mirror
and looked intently at the reflection of her face. It was a very white
face that she saw and it was gazing at her with wide, questioning eyes.
Then slowly she undressed and went to bed without saying good-night to
Jason.
For a few days Mahala went about her work in a sort of stupefied
fashion. Sometimes she lifted her head and ran her hands over her face
as if it were a numb thing that needed, in some way, to be galvanized
into expression by an outside agency. And then, a few days later, there
were steps on the veranda, the door opened, and Jason and Ellen Ford
came in together. Ellen’s face was flushed, her eyes were dancing, and
her red lips were laughing. The white dress was clothing her
beautifully.
In a voice that was steady but slightly husky, Jason said: “Mahala,
Ellen is my wife. We were married an hour ago. I am glad that you’ve
learned already to love her.”
There is large advantage in having been born a thoroughbred. Mahala
kissed Ellen’s pink cheeks. She patted down a white ruffle that was not
quite in place. She said very quietly: “Indeed I have learned to love
Ellen.”
She offered Jason a steady hand and hearty congratulations, and then she
sat down and said evenly: “Now tell me about your plans.”
Their plans were extremely simple. Ellen’s people were selling their
farm and moving away. Jason meant to buy what he needed of their
furniture and set up housekeeping in the home the Fords were abandoning.
He told Mahala that the reason he had set up the bell in her back yard a
few days before and stretched a cord to her room was so that she might
ring any time during the day or night when she wanted either of them.
One ring should be for him, two for Ellen. There was to be no change in
anything except that Jason would not take his meals with her and instead
of sleeping over the stable, he would be across the road and a few yards
farther away. Otherwise they were expecting life to go on exactly as it
always had.
Then Ellen kissed Mahala repeatedly, and with an arm around Jason’s
waist and his hand on her shoulder, they went down the road together.
Mahala fled to her room and locked the door behind her, without
realizing that there was no one against whom she need lock it. Once more
she faced herself in her truthful mirror.
“Exactly the same,” she said at last, “exactly the same.” And then she
cried out at her reflection: “Fool! Fool! You big fool! You’ve worried
your brain, you’ve lain awake nights, trying to figure out whether Jason
was good enough for you. He’s settled your problem by letting you see
that you’re not good enough for him. Fool! Fool! You big fool!”
Her eyes turned inward and backward. Wildly she tried to understand how
this thing could have happened. Then, suddenly, realization came to her.
Her face was dead white, her lips stiff when she announced the
ultimatum: “The reason he didn’t say anything the day we got here was
because he thinks I took it. He thinks I’m a thief. He wouldn’t make me
the mother of his children because in his heart he believes I’m guilty.”
Then Mahala dropped over in merciful unconsciousness. Far in the night,
a heavy moon ray, falling persistently on her face, aroused her. She
drew herself up on her bed and lay as she was till she heard Jason’s
step on the back porch the next morning. Then she forced herself to her
feet, unlocked the door, and went out to meet the day as if it were
going to be exactly like any other day that had passed before it.
In the days that followed, Mahala learned that the extent to which the
human heart can be tortured is practically without any limit. One may
suffer and suffer for years, only to discover that there are still
unplumbed depths of pain and degradation to which one may be forced. In
these days she really was a primitive creature, stripped to the bone.
She was seeing herself now, not as she always had seen herself, but as
other people were seeing her, and slowly there was beginning to rise in
her heart the feeling that if some one did not do something to
reëstablish her before the world and in her own self-respect, she would
be forced to do it herself. With every ounce of strength she had, she
fought herself to keep Jason and Ellen from seeing that she was
suffering, that once more the power to see beauty had left her eyes. Her
ears no longer heard song; hourly they were tortured by the sound of her
own voice muttering in dazed amazement: “He thinks I’m guilty!”
CHAPTER XVIII
“A TRIUMPH IN MILLINERY”
Just at the time when Nancy Bodkin felt that life might be taking on a
happier aspect for Marcia, she heard the slam of the screen door and
looking from her work down the long aisle of the store, she saw coming
toward her what she thought was the handsomest man that she ever had
seen. In her hasty summary she could note that he was tall, that he was
dark, that he was tastefully and expensively clothed. Her eyes raced
about the room searching for Marcia who was standing before a case in
which she was arranging some finished hats. She saw Marcia start and
cast a glance in her direction. She saw her hesitate before she moved
forward to meet the stranger. Nancy laid down her work, crossed her
hands on it, and sat watching intently. She saw the young man take an
envelope from his pocket and with a few polite sentences he drew
therefrom some old yellowed papers which he showed to Marcia but did not
give into her keeping. She saw him hand Marcia some clean, new papers,
and with a bow of exaggerated deference, she saw him turn and leave the
store. She watched Marcia follow him, close the door and turn the key in
the lock. It was mid-day; customers might come at any minute. In a daze
she watched Marcia with a ghastly face come the length of the store
toward her and draw the curtains behind her. She felt the papers thrust
into her hands. Then she realized that Marcia was on her knees; she felt
the weight of her head in her lap, the clinging grip of her arms around
her.
The little milliner slowly straightened. She never had felt quite so
important, quite so confident, quite so worth while in all her life.
Suddenly, to herself she became a rock upon which a craft was being
splintered. The hand she laid on Marcia’s bent head was perfectly firm.
“Now you buck up,” she said authoritatively. “You must. I don’t know
what this means till I’ve had time to look and to hear, but I can make a
fairly good guess. Whatever it is, I can tell you without either looking
or hearing that we’re going to fight.”
Marcia sat back on the floor. She exposed a pitiful face.
“Fight!” she cried passionately. “Fight? It’s all very well for the
innocent to fight, but how can the guilty wage battle?”
Nancy looked at the woman she loved—her efficient partner, the being
upon whom she had come to depend for hope and help and human
companionship when stiff bones and gray days and a sordid stomach and
nerves that pulled and muscles that twitched were upon her. With a
gesture that was truly regal, she shook open the papers and carefully
went through them. Then she looked at the formidable sum total at the
bottom. It would practically wipe out the savings of six years for
Marcia and cut heavily into her own.
“Do you owe this?” she asked tersely.
Marcia shook her head.
“They’re vultures,” she said. “They prey equally on the quick and the
dead.”
Nancy stared at Marcia. The thumb and first finger of her right hand
were busy working her lower lip into folds.
“Marcia,” she said softly, “you’ve never told me anything, and I’ve
never asked; but now we’re at the place where I must know. So tell me.
Were you the mother of a child born of Martin Moreland?”
Marcia promptly and emphatically shook her head.
“But there was a child?” insisted Nancy.
Marcia nodded. “Yes,” she said, “there was a child, but I was not his
mother. Martin Moreland brought him to me when he couldn’t have been
more than a few hours old.”
“Check!” cried the little milliner in tones of triumph. Then she sprang
up. She lifted Marcia to her feet. She kissed her and smoothed her hair.
She shoved back the curtains, unlocked the front door and set it wide.
Then she returned to her work table, pushed aside the soft feathers and
the gay flowers, and taking a big sheet of paper and a tall pencil, she
sat down and began asking Marcia searching questions and recording the
answers. Inside of an hour she had completed a considerable bill for
nursing Jason in infancy, caring for him for sixteen years, washing,
mending, nursing, and boarding him.
When she had finished, she went over her work to verify it, and then she
looked up at Marcia and said: “Now, then, let the Morelands come on! Let
them undertake to collect a bill for the rent of that house for sixteen
years! Unless I’ve lost all my art at figuring, I’ve got this bill
strictly within reason and nearly three times the amount of theirs,
which will allow it to be lopped considerably and still make you some
profit.”
Marcia picked up the sheet and studied it, but her hands shook so that
she was forced to lay it upon the table and sit down in order to go over
it accurately.
“It is all right,” she said. “I haven’t a doubt but that in law it will
hold, but it spells ruin. I can’t go into court with this thing and come
out of it unscathed. It means that while I may make him pay it, I must
turn over to you my share of the business; I must leave the only home
and the people I know, and the only one on earth who loves me, and go
somewhere else and start all over again among strangers.”
Then Marcia began to cry, terrible sobs that racked and shook her. Again
she stretched out helpless hands and again Nancy stood rock bound.
“Now stop!” she said firmly. “Stop it! We haven’t got anything to do but
send this to Martin Moreland. We must make him think that it was sent by
a lawyer. We’ve got to let him know that we’re able to fight, that we
will fight. But you can bank on one thing that’s certain and sure. He
isn’t going to explain to the public to whom the child he brought for
your care, belonged. He isn’t going to want the other deacons of the
Presbyterian Church and the directors of the bank and the county
officials to know where he got the boy he forced you to take care of.
Certainly he isn’t going to want to face the question, ‘Who’s his
mother?’ You needn’t be the least bit afraid. Never in the world will he
let that happen. He’s just what you said he was—a vulture. He doesn’t
care whether the meat he lives on is fresh or rotten. He can thrive on
either kind equally well.”
Marcia sat a long time gazing into the kitchen. It was a strange thing
that she could draw comfort from a cook stove and pots and pans. They
are not particularly attractive to many people, but they were attractive
to Marcia. There are souls in this world so stranded that they are
fortunate if they have an animal upon which to lavish their affections;
and there are others whose lives are so bleak that they must love mere
things—the bed on which they sleep, the chairs on which they sit, the
pots and pans in which they cook the food that they eat. And then, pots
and pans are a symbol. They do not mean beauty, but they mean utility.
They suggest nourishment, strength, and sustenance. They spell home, and
home means sheltering walls and sometimes it means love. It meant love
to Marcia. As she looked up at Nancy, still in her rock-bound attitude,
she saw upon her face a thing that swept a wave of emotion through
Marcia’s sick soul such as it never before had known. She was not going
to be forced to give up the accumulations of years against comfort for
age and illness. That meant something. But it did not mean the highest
thing. She was still young and strong. She knew that there were several
ways in which she could assure bodily comfort. The thing of which she
got assurance in that hour was the greatest thing in all this world. It
was the assurance that the little milliner would stand by, that she was
not going to desert a sinking ship. Whatever happened, her friendship
was going to weather; whatever storm broke on her friend, she was going
to be the anchor that would hold.
In that hour Marcia deliberately went down on her knees again. She put
her arms around the waist of Nancy, she met her eyes frankly, and she
purged her soul. Torn beyond control when she had finished the last word
of self-condemnation she had to utter, when the last scalding tear she
had to shed had burned its way down her cheeks, she pulled open the
dress she was wearing, exposing her firm white breast to her friend. Her
own eyes were upon it.
“Look,” she said, “it looks soft and white, doesn’t it, but the dreadful
scarlet brand has scorched for years; it’s burning there now. It always
will. I can see that for your sake, for the sake of the business, I must
go on hiding it until I die. Personally, it would be almost a relief to
stand up outside our door or before the altar in the church, and tell
every one what I have told you.”
Nancy Bodkin was doing some crying for herself at that minute, but
presently she wiped her eyes and surprised even herself with the joy of
her inspiration.
“That isn’t necessary,” she said. “It wouldn’t help in any way. The
thing you must do is to go to God. Tell Him what you have told me. Ask
His help. Your sin is against God. He will forgive a woman whose
greatest fault is that she loved the wrong man; that she loved a man who
betrayed her and used her for his purposes when he should have sheltered
her and sustained her. God is great and He is merciful.”
Nancy helped Marcia to her feet. She led her to the door of her room,
and opening it, she shoved her through. “Go and make your peace with
God,” she said. “I have nothing to forgive you. If He has, He will know
about it and He will let you feel His forgiveness and His love.”
She shut the door, and going back to her work table, she sat down, and
with steady hands, she sheared, twisted, and sewed, and by and by, when
Marcia came from her room with peace in her heart and less pain in her
eyes, the little milliner almost paralysed her. She held up a thing that
was really a creation and she cried gayly: “Go wash and powder your nose
and get ready to try this! I believe it’s the damnedest best-looking hat
that I’ve ever made!”
CHAPTER XIX
“REBECCA PRONOUNCES JUDGMENT”
The seasons run with swift feet. It was in February that Mahala answered
a hasty knock at her door. She jumped into her coat and overshoes and
hurried down the road through the snow and the storm of a wild night on
the shaking arm of Jason. She could see that the house to which she was
going was filled with light. When she entered it, she found Ellen’s
mother in charge and Doctor Grayson at work. An hour later, through one
of those queer turns of fate which no one can explain, it became her
part of the thing that was taking place there to carry a small, warm
bundle, strongly suggestive of olive oil and castile, and lay it in the
arms of Jason.
It seemed to Mahala as she carried Jason his son that the bitterness
which at that minute surged up in her heart surpassed anything else she
ever had known. She turned from him and went to lay her hand on the head
of Ellen. There it was her mission to report that Jason thought his son
was fine and wonderful.
By noon the next day she was back in her home. Everything had been done
that was necessary. Ellen’s mother and Jason could care for her. There
was no reason why Mahala might not go back to her little house and again
take up her life with her dead. Because that was what Mahala was doing
in those days. She was living hourly with her father. At first it had
been difficult to vision him in the country house, but now she could see
him before the bookcase, at the hearth, in the dining room. Sometimes
she dreamed of him, and with the awful reality of dreams, she again
heard his voice, her nostrils were filled with the personal odours of
his body, every familiar gesture was before her eyes.
Her mother came there, too. Hourly now she stepped down from the frame
above the mantel and walked through the rooms, twitching a curtain into
place, setting a picture at a different angle, drawing a finger across a
polished surface to make sure that no particle of dust had settled
there.
In those days when winter was the coldest and the storms raged outside,
and the amount of physical exercise required to keep her in good health
was difficult to obtain, Mahala paced the rooms of the little house, and
beside her walked another of her dead. Jason was there—thoughtful, kind,
always taking care of her, always watching that she should be sheltered,
that she should be comfortable—but he was a dead Jason. There was no
life in him. The living part of him belonged to Ellen. The mouthing
little pink bundle lying on Ellen’s breast very shortly would be on his
feet, holding Jason’s hands, making demands of him.
The one thing for which Mahala tried to be thankful in those days was
the steady round of duties entailed by living. After Mrs. Ford had gone
home, there were days when Ellen was feeling badly and the baby cried,
that Mahala went down to Jason’s home, and with light step and skilful
fingers, straightened out problems that were too much for Ellen, taught
her patience and forbearance and the love that ministers, that expends
itself and demands little. Then she went back to her house and during
the long nights she deliberately turned her pillow where she could look
through the window at the storm-whipped arms of the old orchard and
watch the elements having their way with the world, rolling on its
age-old route around its orbit.
In these days Mahala found that, in her own home, life had simmered to
the asking of one question. She did not ask it of God. She had stopped
praying when she had been overwhelmed. She asked it of her mental vision
of her father: “Why?” She faced the skilfully painted portrait of her
mother, and with stiff lips cried to her: “Why?” She asked the walls of
each room in the house. She asked the authors of the books she tried to
read. She looked from the windows and asked the winds raging past. She
asked the moon of night and the first red rays of morning. “Why?”
Eternally, “Why?”
When spring had come again and all the world was busy with the old
miracle of rejuvenation, when the apple orchard was sweetest and the
lilacs were a benediction and the star flowers were shining, when the
doors were opened and Nature was trying with all her might to rejuvenate
the hearts of men as easily as she pushed welling sap into bud and
bloom, one day when Mahala’s lips had cried “Why?” to the white pigeons
and the bluebirds of the orchard, her question was answered.
A livery conveyance from the village stopped at her door, and in
wonderment she watched Albert Rich and the town sheriff, the
Presbyterian minister and dear old Doctor Grayson alight from it. She
took one swift look at the party as they were coming through the gate,
and then, without stopping for thought, she flew to the back door and
gave the bell one violent spang. A pause, and then another. It was her
pre-arranged call for Jason to come with all speed.
Hearing, Jason said to Ellen: “Something has gone wrong with Mahala. She
never rang like that before. I must go.”
He dropped a rake that he was mending at the back door, raced across the
yard, sprang over the fence, crossed the road, and leaping another
fence, took a short cut toward Mahala’s back door. As he ran, he could
see the carriage, he could see the men going up the walk and crossing
the porch, and without knowing why, a sick apprehension sprang in his
heart.
He entered the back door and came through the kitchen. He reached the
door of the living room as Mahala was offering her guests seats. His
first glance was for her. He saw that her face lacked all natural colour
and he noticed that she was perfectly controlled, that she was greeting
her guests with the graciousness of the lady she had been born to be.
As she returned from laying aside their hats, Albert Rich went to meet
her. He deliberately put his arm around her. Then he said: “Mahala,
dear, Rebecca Sampson made trouble in the bank to-day. She may have
slipped or they may have been rough in putting her out, at any rate, she
fell and struck her head a severe blow. She’s now lying on the couch in
the directors’ room and every one agrees that she’s quite sane. Her
first conscious words were to ask if you found the money that Junior
Moreland told her to take from their parlour table and hide in your
house for you when no one would see her.”
“_Here?_ Does she say that she put it _here_?” cried Mahala. Both hands
were gripping her heart. She had seemed to shrink, to grow into a
helpless, childish thing. The tremors that shook her body were visible
through her clothing.
The men were eager in their acquiescence.
“She says,” answered the sheriff, “that she put it through a hole in the
plaster on the right-hand side of the front door. You’re vindicated,
Mahala, beyond a doubt in the mind of any one, but it would be better,
it would be fine, if we could discover that pocket book.”
Jason stood straight in the doorway. His eyes were travelling from the
face of one man to another, but they avoided Mahala. Slowly his form
tensed, his breathing began to come in short gasps. Albert Rich turned
to him.
“Jason,” he said, “get an axe. I’m going to break through the wall on
the right-hand side of the front door and search the place where Becky
says she put that pocket book.”
Slowly Jason shook his head. His lips were very stiff, but he managed to
speak.
“There’s no use,” he said. “You’ll find nothing there. I mended that
lath and plastered that broken place with my own hands.”
Suddenly Mahala’s head fell forward, and then she lifted it, and as
people have done since the beginning of the world in the ultimate agony,
she called on God. Her voice was torn and pitiful past endurance. She
was calling on God, but she was reaching to Jason, stretching out her
hands to him.
“Oh, God!” she cried. “Help me! Won’t you please help me? Why couldn’t
it have been there? Why couldn’t vindication have been complete? Oh,
God, won’t you help me?”
Big tears rolled down her cheeks.
She cried directly to Jason: “Oh, Jason! think! Think hard! Can’t you
think of any place that it might be?”
She appealed to Doctor Grayson: “You’re sure Becky says she brought it
_here_?”
“Yes,” said Doctor Grayson, “she says you gave her food here, you told
her that this was the only home you had, that this was your house.”
Mahala slowly nodded her head.
“I did,” she said. “I told her that this was the only home I had left.”
Again she turned to Jason. “Oh, Jason!” she cried. “Do this much more
for me! Find it! Oh, find that pocket book!”
Jason’s face was that of a man in fierce physical torture. With one hand
he was tearing at the neck of his shirt, trying to pull it open.
Suddenly the attention of the entire party centred on him; it became
patent to every one that he was on the rack. For a long second he
hesitated, staring with wide eyes of anguish at Mahala, then slowly he
ran a hand into his pocket. He drew from it a heavy pruning knife. He
stepped across the room and lifted from its fastening above the
fireplace the oil portrait of Elizabeth Spellman. Setting it to one
side, he ran his fingers over the papered wall behind it, feeling for
something. When he found it, he inserted the knife, and ran it around a
small space that had been papered over. Prying off a light wooden cover,
he stepped back. In the opening where a couple of bricks had been
removed, lay a long, black bill book.
For one instant a wild light of rejoicing leaped into Mahala’s eyes, and
then a sick horror overwhelmed her as she looked at Jason. She opened
her lips, but no words came. Suddenly she stepped back; both her hands
clutched her heart tightly. Unable to endure her gaze further, Jason
made a gesture toward the opening. His head fell forward on his breast,
and, turning, he staggered from the room.
Mahala recovered herself only with the utmost effort. She stretched one
hand toward the sheriff, but her eyes were upon the minister.
Her voice said: “You are the executor of the law. My hands never have
touched that pocket book. They never shall. Lift it down, and in the
presence of these witnesses, open it.”
The sheriff obeyed her. He spread the money, the railroad tickets, and
the contents of the pocket book upon the table. The minister, at the
call of Mahala’s eyes, went to her. He put his arm around her and drew
her shivering little body to him with his strength. Looking into her
eyes, he said: “Tell us, Mahala, why did Junior Moreland want to ruin
you?”
Mahala drew a deep breath that steadied her. “You must ask him,” she
said, never so true to her best instincts as in that hour.
Albert Rich came to her other side and took hold of her also, because he
was human and his heart ached intolerably. Across her, he said to the
minister: “Ask me. They were classmates from childhood. She watched the
development of his character, day by day. Fashioned as God made her, she
could do nothing but loathe him. Repeatedly she refused to marry him.
This is her punishment. This is a new demonstration to Ashwater of the
power of riches directed by the Morelands.”
Mahala thrust her hands wide spread before her. She drew away from the
men, who were trying to reinforce her strength with theirs. She said to
them: “If all of you are satisfied, will you please go?”
Albert Rich said to her: “Mahala, are you strong enough? Could you
endure a trip to town with us? Becky feels that she can’t die in peace
until she has seen you. She is begging for you constantly.”
Mahala assented. “Wait in the carriage,” she said. “Give me a few
minutes to think, to make myself presentable, and then I will try to go
with you.”
She hastily straightened her attire, then she went through the back of
the house. She found Jason sitting in the kitchen, his face buried in
his arms. In tones of cold formality as to a stranger, she said to him:
“Becky is asking for me. Will you close and lock the house and then come
to the bank after me? They say she is dying, that she feels she cannot
go in peace until she has seen me. I am forced to go.”
As they drove through the brilliancy of spring along the River Road, the
men tried to say kindly things to Mahala. Presently, they realized that
she was not hearing them, that they were wasting words.
The outskirts of the town of Ashwater showed that it had been shaken
from centre to circumference. Women were running bareheaded across the
streets. Men were hastening here and there, and it could be seen that
their hands were shaking, that their faces were set, that the
expressions upon them more clearly resembled ravenous animals than men.
They were calling out to each other, they were breathing threats, they
were uttering awful curses. Man was telling man what the hands of the
Morelands had done to him. Here was a man whose land had gone
delinquent, and before he was able to redeem it, Martin Moreland had
taken it from him for a third of its value. Here was a seamstress who
had not been able to pay the street taxes in front of her little home,
and because she had borrowed from Martin Moreland she had lost her
shelter.
Even from the country there were beginning to come teams driven by men
whose faces were pictures of outrage. Conspicuous on the village streets
was the form of Jimmy Price. He was rushing around with a sickle in one
hand, telling every one who would listen what every one else had said.
For once in his life he had forgotten to try to make himself ridiculous.
In his excitement he became a pathetic thing. He who never had anything
to lose was blustering, threatening, and wildly gesticulating over the
wrongs of others. Men who had lost heavily, many of them the savings of
a lifetime, were in a different mood. They were gathered in grim
consultation. They were passing from house to house, in harsh tones they
were making sure of their grievances: “Just what was the sum he skinned
you out of, Robert?” “Did you say, John, your wife needn’t have died if
you hadn’t been forced to move her in mid winter when she’d just had the
baby?”
They were remembering, they were recalling, they were computing, they
were sowing the germs of a mob spirit right and left, but their work was
certain and methodical. Unmolested, the boys of Ashwater had been busy.
As the carriage came down the street, Mahala could see great streaks of
yellow paint smeared across the front of the bank. The bronze dogs, so
proudly referred to by Martin Moreland as the “watch dogs of the
Treasury,” had been crudely muzzled with heavy wire, the yellow paint
had been liberally used on them. Some one had broken off their tails and
stuck them between their legs; the rough stumps were festooned with tin
tomato and peach cans.
When the carriage stopped in front of the bank, the party could only
force their way a step at a time to the door. At sight of Mahala
pandemonium broke loose. Here was the most tangible thing upon which
they could lay their hands. On her they might give their imaginations
free rein, with justice. Nothing could be done that could ever, in any
degree, atone for the misery through which she had passed.
She had thought that she was keeping her set white face straight ahead
and pressing forward as swiftly as she could force her way, but as she
neared the door she saw an arresting sight that caused her to pause and
turn, looking the mob in the face. At first glance a spasm of fear shook
her. She was forced to look penetrantly to recognize some of the faces
she had known all her life. They were so distorted, so unrecognizable in
the spasms of emotion now possessing them. Swift as memory flies, she
recalled a few of the stories in the hearts of some of the men in the
front of that circle, and yet, pressing nearest of all to the building,
with disarranged clothing, disordered hair, and almost frothing at the
mouth, pranced Jimmy Price. Encouraged by the growl behind him as Mahala
paused, he was the first man to lift a hand and crash a brick he carried
through the heavy plate glass of the bank window. Even as the glass
cracked and broke there came to Mahala the realization that it was very
likely that Jimmy Price never had deposited ten dollars in the First
National at one time in his life. He never had owned real estate, and
the thought came to her even in that crisis, that among the mob probably
there were many others like Jimmy taking a vicarious revenge when no
personal wrong had been done them. Her sense of justice and fair play
came to life instantly.
She lifted her hand and cried out to the mob: “Wait! For the love of
God, wait! Learn the truth and act sincerely. Nothing can right the past
for some of us, but I beg that you will wait!”
The mob drew back slightly, but it did not disperse. In alternating
waves of quiet and of flaming anger as some new recruit from the
suburbs, or the country, arrived and began detailing his grievances, it
surged back and forth before the bank. When the door was unlocked from
the inside, Mahala entered and followed the men to the directors’ room.
As she stepped through the door, she saw Rebecca lying pillowed on a
leather couch. All the look of childish unconcern had left her face. As
she turned toward Mahala it could plainly be seen that she was in
possession of her reason. She was a middle-aged woman, tried and hurt
past endurance. Her breath was dragging heavily. One hand was fingering
nervously at the edge of the leather, the other tightly gripped the
osier, the white flag lying across her knees.
Swiftly Mahala knelt beside her. She tried to smile. She opened her lips
and she was almost surprised to hear her own voice asking evenly: “You
wanted me, Becky?”
“Yes, oh, yes!” cried Rebecca. “The cloud has lifted but it’s a strange
thing that there remains in my memory every least little thing that ever
happened to me. I know now what happened to the best friend I ever had
in Ashwater, when I did what Junior Moreland told me would please you
so.”
“It’s all right now, Becky. Don’t try to talk,” whispered Mahala, taking
the straying hand in both of hers and holding it close against her
breast. “We found the pocket book. It’s all right now.”
“But I must talk!” panted Rebecca. “I must hear you say that you forgive
me. You had been kind to me, you had fed me, you told me that the little
house on the River Road was your home. I thought I was repaying you for
your promise to help me in my search. I thought I was doing a thing that
would surprise and please you. Junior said you would be so surprised
when you found the money in your home.”
In bitterness Mahala bowed her head over Rebecca’s hand. For an instant
her mind worked over that thought. The sardonic humour of Junior saying
that she would be surprised when the money was found in her home!
Certainly she would have been if it had been found there. A chill shook
her as she paused a moment concentrating on the quality of Junior’s
mind. He must have known that to have the money found in her home would
kill Elizabeth Spellman as cruelly as death could be inflicted; that it
would possibly fasten lasting disgrace on her; yet he had done his best
to accomplish those things. Recalled by Rebecca’s clinging hand, she
tried to comfort her.
She said to her: “Since every one knows now that I never touched the
pocket book, it’s all right, Becky. Don’t try to talk any more. Lie
quiet so that you will soon be better.”
But Rebecca shook her head.
“First I had to have your forgiveness,” she said. “Now I must see Martin
Moreland.”
Mahala turned to Albert Rich. “Step to Mr. Moreland’s private office and
ask him to come here,” she said.
Albert Rich assented, but he returned in a minute saying that Mr.
Moreland refused to come. The wave of whiteness that swept Rebecca’s
face, and the spasm of pain that shook her body, both reacted upon
Mahala. She lifted her head.
“Mr. Moreland has no option,” she said steadily. “He is no longer the
controlling factor in the life of this town.”
She nodded to the sheriff and to Albert Rich. “Once he worked his will
on me without authority. Now it is my turn. Bring him here.”
Forced by a strong man on either side of him, Martin Moreland stood at
the feet of Rebecca Sampson. For what seemed an endless time to the
tensely silent people waiting in the room, Rebecca’s eyes studied Martin
Moreland.
Then she cried to him: “That my soul may pass from this foot-sore body
in peace, tell me, Martin Moreland, was I a scarlet woman?”
Up to that time Martin Moreland had refused to look at Rebecca. He had
kept his eyes turned toward the doorway, to the ceiling. At that appeal,
in spite of his intentions, something in his inner consciousness forced
him to meet her look. To Mahala, at that minute, Rebecca was appealingly
beautiful. The mass of her waving fair hair had been loosened and spread
over the pillow around her in the examination of her injury. The
maturity that realization had brought to her face only gave to it
greater appeal. No matter how widely she had journeyed, or how inclement
the weather, she always had kept her person with the neat daintiness of
any fine lady. It seemed to the onlookers that Moreland was moved to
some degree of remorse. There seemed to be forced from him, in spite of
the effort he was making for self-preservation, the cry: “No! No! You
were my wife. The divorce was fraudulent, not the marriage.”
The rigours of Rebecca’s body eased. She sank back with a deep breath
and two big tears trickled from her eyes. But almost immediately she
roused again. She drew from Mahala’s clasp the hand she was holding and
stretched it to Martin Moreland.
“My baby!” she cried. “What did you do with my baby? I want him! Oh,
Martin, I want to see him before I die!”
Martin Moreland drew back. Slowly he shook his head.
Rebecca appealed to Mahala. She began to cry in a pitiful, broken way,
her body torn by physical emotion added to the difficulty in breathing
that the concussion was making.
“Mahala,” she begged, “you know the weary years that I’ve hunted and
I’ve hunted. You’re the only one I ever told that I ever had a little
baby—a darling little baby—and Martin Moreland took him away, and I
couldn’t find him! You said you’d help me. Beg him, oh, beg him, to give
me back my baby!”
Mahala arose. She took one step toward Martin Moreland and slightly
extended a hand.
“Mr. Moreland,” she said, “I’d die on the rack before I’d ask anything
of you for myself. Because of my word to Becky, I’m asking you now to
give her back her baby.”
Mahala did not realize that the baby for which Rebecca was asking must
be a man at that time. She was visioning a little pink bit of humanity
bundled in white as it must have been when Rebecca had lost it. For an
instant she stood thinking. She realized that some one had taken a place
beside her, and looking up, she saw that Jason had been admitted to the
room, and was standing near enough to reinforce her strength with his.
The dying woman saw him also, and instantly she stretched her hand
toward him.
“You have always been my friend,” she said. “Help me only this once
more.”
“What shall I do, Rebecca?” asked Jason.
“When he was a tiny thing, only just born, Martin Moreland took my
baby,” she said. “I only had him once for a minute. Make him give him
back to me before I must die.”
Jason stood looking in a dazed way from Martin Moreland to Rebecca. Then
he looked at Mahala as she spoke: “For the love of God, Martin Moreland,
tell Rebecca what you did with her baby!”
She dropped on her knees beside the couch and again gathered to her
breast the hand that Rebecca was reaching to Martin Moreland.
Jason lifted his head. He shook it, and his shoulders twitched as he
stepped forward, his face ashen and cut deep in lines of torture.
Throwing out his arms, he pushed back the other men and closed on the
old banker. With a powerful hand he gripped one of his arms and drew him
nearer to Rebecca. There was something terrible in his voice, something
final and ultimate, something discernibly deadly as he ground out the
question: “Is this woman’s child living or dead?”
Martin Moreland was pulling back. He had taken one look at Jason’s face,
and what he had seen appalled him. His lips were white and stiff; it was
only a whisper, the answer he made: “Living.”
Then Jason demanded: “Do you know where he is?”
The banker nodded.
Jason gripped him more firmly. He drew him closer and then he said in
tones of finality: “You shall tell Becky where her child is.”
Martin Moreland shook his head.
“You shall tell her,” said Jason, “or I’ll take you out and explain to
the mob that is howling for your blood.”
Again Martin Moreland shook his head.
Suddenly Jason swung him around; he shoved him in front of him across
the room and into the hall from the back end of which there could be
seen the big plate glass window, shattered at the top, and the glass
door. Pressed against what remained of the broken glass of the window
and the door, and reinforced by the width of the packed street behind
them, there were faces topping the forms of men, yet one scarcely would
have recognized them as the faces of men,—menacing faces by the hundred,
upon the bodies of men who had been men of peace, men of patience, godly
men. They were farmers and business men and day labourers. They had been
outraged to a degree that had turned them into a compact mob of
snarling, blood-thirsty beasts. In their hands could be seen revolvers,
rifles, sickles; some of them carried axes, some of them bricks and
stones, or clubs. At the sight of the banker a snarling cry broke from
them and they surged forward until the front of the building shook with
their impact.
Galvanized with terror, Moreland summoned strength to break from Jason’s
grasp and rush back toward the directors’ room. But Jason was at his
heels as he reached the door, he caught and whirled him around, once
more forcing him to face Rebecca. She struggled to a sitting posture and
stretched out both hands in a last appeal.
“My baby! Give me back my baby. Let me have him only one minute before I
die!”
Martin Moreland shook his ghastly white head.
Then Jason gripped his other arm and brought his strength to bear until
the old banker shrank and winced. Rebecca was rapidly losing strength.
Great tears began running down her cheeks.
“Martin, I loved you so,” she pleaded. “Don’t you remember that I gave
you everything? And you took all I had to give and you took my baby,
too, and you threw me away and God punished me. He made me an outcast
and a wanderer, while you had everything. It wasn’t fair. I’ve spent my
life searching for my baby, and I can’t find him——”
Suddenly the beast broke in Doctor Grayson, in Albert Rich, in the
sheriff, in the cashier. With black menace on their faces, they crowded
up to reinforce Jason. The old banker looked around wildly for an avenue
of escape; and there was none. He hesitated an instant longer and then
he lifted a shaking hand as he said: “If you will have it, then, there
is your baby.” He indicated Jason.
Rebecca lifted herself free of all support. She stared at Martin
Moreland and then she studied Jason. Her eyes seemed to leap to his face
and to cling there. A desperate inquiry was running in waves over her
tortured face. She began to see lines that she recognized, a likeness to
herself in the colouring of the hair and the eyes, suggestions of the
lean face of Moreland, reproduced in Jason. A look of wonder crept into
her face, and then one of horror. She drew back from Martin Moreland, a
look of repulsion on her face, on every line of her figure.
“You devil!” she cried to him. “You let me walk the roads of earth every
day seeking my baby, every day seeing him; experiencing his kindness,
and not knowing he was mine. That knowledge would have cured my sick
brain, would have saved me——”
She paused from weakness, but an instant later she gathered her forces
and raised her hand.
“The curse of God shall fall as heavily on you as it has on me,” she
cried. “It is His justice. He wills that you shall now take up the white
flag that I have been forced to carry every day for the salvation of my
soul, and for the salvation of yours you shall carry it for the
remainder of your life! After all, you are the worse off of the two. I
lost my baby; you have lost your soul. Now you shall go and seek it.”
She thrust the white flag into his hands and said to the men: “Let him
go free. This is the work of God. Start him on his journey.”
The men stepped back. With bowed head, the flag in his hand, Martin
Moreland turned and sought what safety was promised him in the shelter
of his private room. There were men in his employ awaiting him there,
and they watched him with repulsed eyes as he tottered into the room
carrying the white emblem. Freed from the torturing hands that had
gripped him, he tried to think. He made an effort to recover the ground
that their faces told him he had lost in their estimation. Mechanically,
he made his way to his chair. The absurd flag was in his hands. What
would he do with it? He glanced around and then he thrust the holder
into an urn standing on a bookcase behind his chair. It was an
unfortunate disposal to make of the flag, for when he dropped into his
accustomed seat, it was hanging directly over his head, its snowy
whiteness stained by contact with the street and with the blood of the
woman who for many years had borne it, a self-imposed penance for the
easement of her soul.
In the directors’ room, Rebecca lifted her face to Jason. She stretched
out her shaking arms.
“Jason!” she cried, “do you think this is the truth? Are you my baby?
Oh, are you my baby? And if you are, will you come to me only a minute
before I go?”
Jason came crashing to his knees beside her. He slid an arm under her
body and caught her shoulders in a firm grip.
“Yes, I think it is the truth,” he said. “I believe you, and I believe
him. In my heart I feel that you are my mother.”
He gathered her into his arms and kissed her face and her hands while
she made her crossing.
CHAPTER XX
“THE DECISION MARCIA REACHED”
When Marcia and the little milliner finished compiling the bill for the
length of time that Marcia had boarded and cared for Jason, they did not
know what to do with it. They were in doubt as to whether they should
present it at once or wait until the Morelands made their move and then
use the bill to counteract it. They discussed every phase of the
situation repeatedly. They waited what seemed to them a long time, and
at last it was Marcia who reached a decision for both of them.
“I simply refuse to live in this uncertainty any longer,” she said to
Nancy. “I’m going to take this bill to Ashwater. Albert Rich is the best
lawyer there. In the old days I did a great deal of work for Mrs. Rich.
I believe that he is a considerate man. I know that he has no cause to
love Martin Moreland. I’m going to tell him what I think is necessary.
I’m going to ask his opinion. I’m tired shivering and shaking and being
tortured with fear. I realize that Martin Moreland’s hand is heavy, but
after all, there are two things that are stronger than he—one is public
opinion and the other is God. Both of them would be against him if the
truth were known.”
Nancy thought deeply.
“You are right,” she said. “It isn’t fair that he should keep us
shivering and shaking and make our days unhappy and our nights a terror.
Go to Ashwater. Tell this Albert Rich what you think is necessary. I
can’t see that you need to go into full detail. Make him understand only
what is essential.”
“All right,” said Marcia, “I’m going.”
Nancy put the kettle to boil and brewed a cup of strong tea while Marcia
was dressing, for it could be seen that she was labouring under heavy
mental strain. Nancy followed her to the corner where Marcia took the
daily omnibus that ran between the two towns. She kissed her good-bye
and clung to her hands with a reassuring grip. After she had gone back
to the shop, she condemned herself that she had allowed Marcia to go
alone. She felt niggardly. Why did people let their fear of losing a few
pennies intervene when matters concerning their hearts and their souls
were at stake? What was money that it should make such dreadful things
of men and women? After all, men had made money; it was an emanation of
their brain. It was not one of the things that God had made. It was an
invention by which man, himself, had put upon his soul such shackles as
the Almighty never would have imposed. She wondered why she had not
locked the door and let people think what they would. Was there any
woman in Bluffport who needed a hat so badly that she could not have
waited one day while Nancy sat beside Marcia and gave her the comfort of
the grip of her hand, the sound of her voice, the chance to say a word
here and there that might have distracted her mind from its burden?
Nancy sat trying to think how she would feel if her soul were stained
with the red secret that she realized never ceased to burn and to eat
into the consciousness of her friend. And because she was her friend,
and because she had learned to love Marcia as she loved no one else, the
big tears rolled down her cheeks and several times that day she sewed
their stains under deftly folded velvet.
When Marcia stepped from the omnibus at the courthouse corner in
Ashwater, she realized that some disaster had overtaken the town. Here
and there she saw women weeping and wringing their hands. Little
children scuttled past with terrified faces. Half-grown boys went
running in one direction, their faces small mirrors of their elders’,
their arms loaded with sticks, with bricks, with stones. Men hurried
past, some of them carrying antiquated firearms on their shoulders,
flintlocks, and old army muskets; some of them with guns of modern make,
with revolvers; and there were men in that crowd who carried a grubbing
hoe, the blade of a scythe, a hickory “knockmaul,” or an axe.
She had difficulty in finding any one who would stop long enough to tell
her about the brain-storm that was sweeping Ashwater, but soon she had
the essentials of what had occurred from people with whom she talked
upon the street. She struggled for self-control, but in spite of herself
she grew terribly excited over the recitation of the tragedy that the
Morelands had worked in the lives of Rebecca Sampson, of Mahala, of
Jason, of hundreds of other people.
She had known Rebecca all the years of her residence in Ashwater. She at
once understood that Martin Moreland had lured her, Marcia, from her
home in an adjoining county to the little house in which she had lived
for so many years, for the sole purpose of using her as his tool in
taking care of Jason. He had made love to her in the most alluring
manner possible to him, and hers had been a nature that gave without
question and without fear. For him she had sacrificed relatives and
friends and gone with him willingly. Both the questioning and the fear
she now knew came later, and in an intensified form. What she realized
was, that, through all the best years of her life, under cover of a
menial task, she had been merely a servant for Martin Moreland. It was
not true that he was bound in an unhappy marriage from which he was
vainly striving to free himself, as he had told her in the beginning. He
had never meant to free himself. He had never intended to offer her
marriage and an honourable position. He had planned to take everything
she had to give; to have her take care of the boy, for whom she had
always struggled to keep from forming an attachment, because the threat
had hung over her that any minute he chose Martin Moreland would take
him away.
Her mind was milling over her own problem; there then came the problem
of Rebecca Sampson, and she saw, that even before he had determined on
the wreck of her life, Rebecca had gone down; yet these people were
saying that he had admitted that he was legally married to her. Rebecca
had been weak, a clinging thing, a tender, delicate girl; yet she had a
spirit and a resistance that he could not break; so he had been forced
to marry her. No one on the streets knew from where she had come or who
her people were. They remembered that a young thing lacking mentality
was sheltered by a little house in the outskirts. The few who had tried
to make friends with her in the beginning had been repulsed with insane
spasms so menacing that they had allowed her to go her way, as people in
that day were permitted to go, even though it was known that they lacked
balanced mentality.
Finally, in her mental milling, Marcia reached Mahala, and her soul
sickened over the things that people on the street were saying. By the
hour she had handled Mahala’s little undergarments and wash dresses. She
had mended the delicate laces and the embroideries that Elizabeth
Spellman’s fingers had fashioned. Through the papers and Bluffport
gossip, she had heard of the tragedy that had overtaken her. She had
talked it over with Nancy, and she had said to her: “To save my life, I
cannot believe that Mahala Spellman ever laid her fingers upon anything
that did not belong to her. There must have been some reason, there must
have been some plan on the part of the Morelands to ruin her. If there
was property they could get by doing it, the wreck of a woman’s life
would not stop them.”
Now the motive was furnished. Albert Rich had not hesitated, when the
crisis came, to tell people why Junior wanted to do anything that would
hurt and humiliate Mahala.
Finally, she reached Jason. She found herself saying aloud: “Jason was a
good boy. If I had been permitted, I could have made life different for
him.”
Not knowing what the outcome of the trouble in Ashwater would be, Marcia
felt that since the Morelands had come into the open and were doing
terrible things to other people, her time would soon come. They would
crush her as they had crushed Rebecca, Mahala and her mother, Mr.
Spellman and the other men who had fallen into their power in a
financial way—these other men who were raging up and down before the
courthouse block in the main business square of the town, like
blood-thirsty hyenas.
It seemed to Marcia that in order to collect her thoughts, she must get
away from people, she must go where her mind would not be diverted by
what she was seeing and hearing on the streets. She had thought that she
might find refuge in the office of Albert Rich, and she had gone there,
but it was locked and when she inquired for him, she had been told that
he was in the bank. No one knew what was happening there or when he
could be seen. Then Marcia followed an impulse she could not define, did
not realize that she was following. Her face turned to a familiar
direction; her feet carried her on a well-known path. She went straight
to the house in the outskirts where she and Jason had spent so many
years together. The whole place had been changed. It was now
comfortable. It was gay with paint; there was grass in the dooryard;
there were flowers blooming in small round and square beds and lining
the inside of the new fence. There was a carefully tended garden, but
she could see no one and hear no one as she paced up and down before it.
She thought that the people, who evidently were living happily there,
must have been drawn down town by the excitement.
Being very tired, Marcia went slowly up the walk. She sat on a chair on
the veranda shaded by the big, widely branching maple tree, and there
she tried to think. It was quiet and a robin was singing in the
branches, but she found that her brain, her heart and her blood, were in
such turmoil that she was unable to sit still. So she left the veranda,
and following the street to where it reached the country, she took up a
foot path across a meadow and at last she entered the wood behind the
house where Jason had taken refuge as a child.
Tired out at last, she sat on a log in the stillness of the deep wood,
and there she tried again to think. But she found that instead of
thinking, she was seeing things. As she looked at the dark floor of the
forest with the great trees, the thickness of the bushes, she began to
see a vision of the night of horror that a terrified boy must have spent
there when he fled before the wrath of Martin Moreland. As if she really
had shared that night with him she saw the things that had tortured him.
She visioned his return to the deserted house and his grief and
loneliness when he had found himself abandoned. She remembered what she
had been told of the success that he had made of life, of how he had
prospered in partnership with Peter Potter, and how his love of land had
culminated in his efforts for Mahala and himself.
Into her vision there came the pathetic figure of Rebecca, hiding the
bloom and the beauty of her young face, proclaiming herself everywhere
she went with her self-imposed emblem of purity, trying to convey to
others the belief that possessed her that her soul was white even as she
suffered torments in the fear that it was scarlet. Marcia thought of the
long path over which Rebecca had journeyed. She even tried a mental
estimate of the hundreds of miles that one woman’s feet had travelled,
driven in insane unrest from point to point. She recalled having been
told that in three different states the white flag had been seen, a
voice had been bravely lifted exhorting every one to acknowledge the
love of the Saviour, His power to heal. Marcia, in imagination, saw
Rebecca’s waving banner gleaming in the light, her tireless eyes always
searching from side to side, looking at the arms of every person
carrying a child, peering into the little buggies in which women dragged
after them the babies they had brought into life through love, and were
permitted to keep. She thought of Rebecca a long time and wondered who
her people might have been and where her home might be; she thought of
the price that she had paid to protect her honour, and very slowly a
resolve began forming in Marcia’s heart.
Into her vision Mahala came flying down the village street, her feet
scattering the gold and red leaves of the maples of autumn, her broad
hat hanging across her throat by its ties, her pretty, wide skirts blown
around her, as she dexterously rolled a gay hoop before her. She thought
of the girl’s youth and her beauty, and of how she had been stripped of
her parents, her home, her friends, and worse than all that, of her
honour.
Then Marcia saw a woman coming toward her through the forest, a woman of
her own height and form, a woman of her own face, but she wore a long,
trailing robe of scarlet, and she was lost. Her outstretched hands
seemed to be feeling their way, her eyes were not efficient; they were
looking up, but they were not helping her feet to find the path.
Sometimes as Marcia saw her in a shaft of sunlight, there was the hope
in her heart that the stumbling creature might find the way; sometimes
she saw her standing lost in deep darkness, but always one hand was
covering her heart, and always she was stumbling over the scarlet robe
that trailed around her and seemed to creep up to her arms and her
shoulders like the hot scorching of a flame.
Finally, the figures of the two Morelands came through the forest. They
were like giants that had broken into the wood. They did not seem to be
made of flesh and blood; they did not seem to be men like Mahlon
Spellman and Albert Rich and Doctor Grayson and the Presbyterian
minister; they seemed to be made of bronze or iron, while their hands
were huge, without hesitation crushing little children, frail women, and
weaker men; they reached out and wrested from people their homes, their
most precious possessions, and with heavy feet they trampled upon
everything that came in their path.
Then she saw the son leave the father and advance toward her, his
unsparing hands outstretched, his feet ready to trample, on his face the
sneer that had been there when he had entered her place of business and
found enjoyment in dealing the blow that had struck the light from her
eyes and hope from her heart.
Suddenly, Marcia arose and slipped through the wood in the dark,
inconspicuous dress she had selected to wear. When she came to the open,
she was amazed to find that it was night. Fully half the day she had
struggled alone in the forest. She came from it with one determination
fixed in her mind. She went to the business part of the town, being
unnoticed among the throngs that still crowded the streets, until she
reached the bank. She was familiar with the back part of it. She watched
her chance, slipped down the alley, climbed the back stairs, and tried
the door. It was locked, but she easily climbed through the open window
into the room that bore Junior’s name above the side stairs.
The flares of light on the street lit the office intermittently. She
walked around the room. She went to Junior’s big desk; she sat down in
his chair in front of it. She looked over the books and the litter of
papers that were piled on it. She moved slowly and deliberately. Then
she began opening the drawers in front of her. In the top right-hand one
lay a big revolver. It seemed to fascinate her. She picked it up and
fitted it to her hand. She laid her fingers upon the trigger. Then she
heard a rush of footsteps coming up the inside stairway from the private
room of Martin Moreland. Snatching up the revolver, she shoved the
drawer shut, and running across the room, entered a closet the door of
which was standing slightly ajar.
CHAPTER XXI
“WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWS”
Jason remained with Mahala and Rebecca in the directors’ room of the
bank as long as there was life in Rebecca’s body. After that he spent
some time in consultation as to what was to be done. With his own hands
he carried Rebecca from the bank to the rooms of the undertaker. When he
had finished the things that required immediate attention, he went back
to the bank and demanded admittance to the private room of the
president; but the door was locked. Then he inquired for Junior and
found that no one knew where he was. Suspecting that he might be in
hiding in his room above the bank, Jason went around the block and down
the alley. He crept up the back stairway and going to the window which
looked into Junior’s room, he saw him sitting before his table. He
seemed to be leaning forward, and was so still that Jason fancied that
he might be completely exhausted or even asleep.
He stepped through the window, and walking around the desk, placed
himself in front of Junior. He saw that Junior was crouched in his
chair; that there was a ghastly expression on his face. A revolver was
lying on the table in front of him. His left hand was gripping his
clothing that he was pressing hard over the region of his heart. In the
air two predominant taints were mingling. Either of them was sickening.
About the combination there was a nausea that shook Jason on his feet,
but he braced his hands on the table, and leaning forward, he tried to
stare deep into Junior’s eyes.
Junior smiled at him in a stiff, set way that was disarming. The first
time his lips moved, Jason could not catch what he was saying. He leaned
closer, and then he heard distinctly: “You have come to settle with me?”
Jason nodded grimly. He studied Junior an instant longer and then he
said quietly: “With my naked hands I’m going to tear you limb from
limb!”
To his surprise, Junior nodded in agreement.
Jason continued: “And when I have finished with you, I am going to do
the same thing to your horrible father.”
Surprise arrested Jason as he saw Junior’s lips draw back over his teeth
in a stiff smile, a stiff, set smile, and yet there was something about
him, about the wave of the hair around his white face, about the light
in his eyes, that was bonny. He must have been a beautiful baby. His
mother might have been excused for loving him to idolatry.
Junior’s voice was hoarse, scarcely understandable: “You’re too late,”
he said. “A woman got ahead of you.”
Jason rounded the corner of the table. He seized the coat which Junior
was holding to his side. Then both of them heard a battering on the
outer door. Both of them recognized the voice of Mahala crying: “Jason!
For God’s sake let me in!”
Jason withdrew his hands from Junior and stared down at him, and then he
looked at the door. But Junior met his eyes, and gathering his forces,
he said quietly: “Let her in. It is her right to be present at the
finish of the Morelands.”
Slowly Jason crossed the room and unlocked the door. Mahala rushed
inside and Jason slammed shut the door after her, relocking it. He could
almost feel the steps rocking from the weight of the men crowded upon
them. Mahala’s eyes raced over Jason from head to foot and a breath of
relief escaped her. Then she turned to Junior. She saw his ghastly face;
she saw a slow red spread over the hand that was gripping his side. She
saw the revolver on the table before him, and she cried out in horror:
“Oh, Jason! Am I too late to keep you from blackening your soul?”
Junior gathered his remaining forces. He made a brave struggle to
straighten in his chair. The smile that he meant to be attractive was
ghastly. There was something beyond description in his tones: “Mahala,
you’ve been a long time coming,” he said to the terrified girl. “Pardon
my bad manners, I would stand to welcome you if I could.”
Mahala watched him in fascinated wonder and again that awful smile
flashed across his face.
“Don’t look so horrified,” he said to her. “This is not fratricide.”
He lifted his right hand and grasping the revolver, drew it toward him.
“I have the honour to inform you,” he said, “that at the eleventh hour I
have had the decency to remove myself from the world for the express
purpose of saving a lady and my dear brother the disagreeable task. In
about three minutes, Mahala, I’m going to be a very dead man.”
A door near the closet opened and Martin Moreland hurried into the room.
In a panic of terror, he rushed to Junior, calling in a high, strained
voice: “Up, boy, up! This is no time to sleep! The mob is hot after our
blood! The mob! They mean business, I tell you! They’re going to beat us
and strangle us like dogs!”
He rushed to Junior, seized him by the shoulder and dragged him to a
sitting posture. “Wake up, Junior!” he cried. “Wake up!”
There was still life in Junior. With a gasp and a rattle, he answered
his father: “Too late, Dad, I’ve finished this in my own way. They can’t
get me, because I’m not here.”
Then he relaxed, and what might have been a beautiful and a gallant
spirit took its flight.
Seeing the revolver clasped in Junior’s hand, and realizing what he had
said and what the blood-soaked side and hand meant, Martin Moreland
stood still. The room was filled with the roar of angry voices. The door
was shivering under the blows that were being trained against it. He
raced across the room to take refuge in the closet. He jerked open the
door and stood facing Marcia looking at him with cold, relentless eyes.
In his fear and agony, he did not realize that she was a living woman;
it never occurred to him that she could be standing there in flesh and
blood. He thought what he was seeing was an avenging spirit. He drew
back, overcome with horror, and then suddenly he dropped on his knees
and reaching up his hands to her, he began to pray as he should have
prayed to the Mother of God. He begged her to forgive him, to have
mercy; he implored her to restore to him the life of his beloved son.
Looking down at him, in a tone of utter finality, Marcia suddenly began
to quote: “‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he
that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.’”
Under the lash of her pointing finger and her white face of accusation,
the last trace of reason fled the brain of the old banker. He shrank
back from her, and cowering on the floor, began jabbering incoherently.
Marcia stepped from the closet and faced Jason and Mahala. Instantly,
they recognized each other. Jason left Mahala’s side and went to Marcia.
“You?” he cried in bewilderment. “Did Junior shoot himself to save you
from having blood on your soul?”
“Yes, Jason,” answered Marcia. “Junior knew that I already had enough
sin on my soul.”
Jason cried out in protest: “No! No! Your soul always has been white.”
Marcia held out her hands. She bowed her head, but presently she lifted
her face and made her confession.
“No, Jason,” she said deliberately, “I gave myself to the man I had
learned to love in defiance of everything. God knows that I have had,
and shall continue to have through all the days of my life, my
punishment. Maybe He will forgive me some day. But, Jason, will you
forgive me now for your unloved childhood? I never dared teach you to
love me, but I do feel that my chance with God would be better, if you
would say that you forgive me before I make my appeal to Him.”
Jason took her in his arms. He ran his hand under her chin and lifted
her face. He laid his lips on her forehead.
“Don’t cry, Marcia, it’s all right,” he said quietly.
There was no time to say more. The outer door would give way any minute.
Martin Moreland crept to the feet of Mahala, whimpering like a
frightened dog. He kept working her body between him and Jason.
Mahala looked at him in sick dismay. “We must get him out of here,” she
said to Jason.
“Let them have him!” cried Jason. “His blood belongs to a hundred men in
that crowd, only God knows to how many women.”
Mahala looked down at Martin Moreland, crouching, fawning. “Stand up!”
she cried suddenly; and he obeyed. “Did you come here by an inside
stairway?” she asked.
Martin Moreland drew a ring from his pocket, but his shaking fingers
could only indicate the key. He turned to the door by which he had
entered. Mahala opened it and said to Jason: “You and Marcia take him
down to his private office. I’ll come in a minute.”
When the door closed after them, Mahala drew the lock and opened the
outside door so that the sheriff and the men crowding the stairs could
come into the room. She indicated Junior. “There is one of the men you
want,” she said, “but he is out of your reach.”
She pointed to the revolver lying near his right hand. “He admitted to
three of us and his father that he took his own life,” she said, “which
is his way of acknowledging his guilt and showing that he was too big a
coward to endure himself, what he put upon me—— But let that go, the
debt is paid now.”
As she talked, Mahala backed toward the door to the inner stairway. When
she reached it she added: “I was here when Martin Moreland heard Junior
say he had shot himself and then he saw a ghost, and his brain gave way.
The father is as far past your vengeance as the son. He is a cringing
maniac. You people must go home quietly. Your work is finished for you.”
She swiftly stepped through the door and hurriedly locked it after her,
running down the stairs. At the door to the private office she stood
dazed. Martin Moreland, with shaking hands and babbling voice, was
exhorting Jason and Marcia to pass under the white flag in the exact
words of Rebecca, but there was no light of reason in his eyes.
Mahala looked at him a long time. Then she said to Jason: “Both of them
have escaped you, and for your sake, it is best. Come on, we will take
him home. No mob will attack an insane man, and once we have taken him
to his home, our share of this is finished. Bring him along.”
“Wait a minute,” said Jason. He turned to Marcia. “There is no necessity
for you to face the mob and be connected with this,” he said. He
stretched his hand toward Mahala. “Give me those keys until I find the
one that fits the back door. As soon as I let Marcia out, I will come
back and do what you wish.”
As soon as Jason returned, Mahala went through the directors’ room and
down the hall where she was in sight of the mob. As soon as they saw
her, quiet fell upon them. She advanced to the front door, and unlocking
it, she threw it wide. Then she stepped out, lifting her hands for
silence. Before she had time to speak, the sheriff came down the outer
stairway and took up his place beside her. At sight of him, a babel of
cries broke from the mob and they surged forward, shouting: “Where are
they?”
Mahala began to speak. When they heard her voice, silence again fell on
the mob.
“Men and women of Ashwater, I have this to tell you,” she said in a
clear, cold voice. “I admit the justice of your anger, but none of you
has so great cause against the Morelands as I have. I admit that they
have escaped me, and I am here to tell you that they have escaped you.
The sheriff and the men accompanying him found Junior lying in his room.
He has made the great crossing by his own hand. He admitted to three of
us, and in the presence of his father, that he had taken his own life.
That was his admission of guilt. When his father realized this and
turned from it to see a ghostly spectre of his past standing before him,
a strain that must have been of long duration, gave way. Dying, Rebecca
Sampson cursed him and declared that the punishment God had meted out to
him was to spend the remainder of his life carrying the white flag and
preaching the doctrine of purity as her conscience has forced her to do
all these years among us. Coming from the sight of Junior’s ghastly
face, his father saw the flag that Becky had decreed that he should
carry. He had brain enough to recognize the justice of the obligation.
He is standing in the directors’ room with it now. I beg that you will
agree with me that this is finished. I beg that you will stand back
quietly and let him pass; let us lead him to his home and turn him over
to another woman who does not deserve punishment, yet who will be
bitterly punished by the sins of the Morelands. Men of Ashwater, will
you let an insane man pass?”
Slowly the faces of the mob changed. The snarling anger, the hatred,
began to fade. A few in the immediate foreground stepped back. Others
held their places. Suddenly, Mahala leaned forward. “If you will let him
pass unmolested,” she said, “I will promise you this. A committee shall
be appointed, headed by Albert Rich, and the claims of each one of you
and your papers shall be carefully investigated, and where wrongs have
been committed you shall have back your property. I know that Mrs.
Moreland will agree to this, and I know that the courts of the county
will compel it. Now, will you let us pass?”
Slowly the mob fell back. Mahala turned and beckoned to the doorway. A
minute later there appeared in it the shaking form of Martin Moreland.
His clothing was in disorder, his white hair disarranged; his face was
ghastly. With his left hand he was clinging to Jason, who could scarcely
support him; in the right he was clutching the osier that bore the white
flag, at that minute stained with the blood from Rebecca Sampson’s
broken head. The sheriff stepped to his side and assisted Jason. Between
them he advanced to the steps leading to the sidewalk. Fear had fled the
face of Martin Moreland with the going of his reason. In still amazement
the mob saw him swing over them the blood-stained banner and heard his
voice, flat and toneless, begin a sort of chant in the exact words with
which Rebecca had familiarized them through many long years: “Behold the
emblem of purity! Clean hearts may pass under with God’s blessing. Come,
ye workers of darkness, wash your hearts clean by passing under the
white flag!”
Slowly the look of hate and of anger faded from the faces of the people.
There is in the average mob at bottom a sense of justice. They are moved
to the course they take by indignation over a great wrong, but there is
always the possibility of their being swayed quickly, as they were
swayed at that minute by the fact that Martin Moreland was insane. Had
he stood there, clothed in his right mind, they would have fallen upon
him and torn him like beasts. Bereft of his reason, he was a helpless,
childish thing. Not one of them cared to touch his soiled, repulsive
body. Silently they drew back; they allowed him to go down the steps and
to make his way toward his home unmolested. There was a look more of
pity than of anger upon their faces as they saw his shaking hands, his
tottering step, and heard the high, strained quality of the voice that
besought every one he met to pass under the white flag.
CHAPTER XXII
“BEHIND THE LILAC WALL”
As soon as it was possible for Mahala to escape from the Moreland
residence, she left Ashwater and was driven back to her home. She sought
it instinctively as a shelter. It seemed to her that the River Road was
unending, that she never again would see the light of her house; and
because there was no light when she reached it, she was surprised at
last to find that she was there. As a haven she plunged into it and
closed the door behind her to shut out the horrors she had witnessed.
Predominant in her mind at that minute was the thought that there was
nothing in the whole world so dreadful as the power of riches wrongly
used. When she thought back to the peace, the happiness, the sheer
beauty of her childhood and her home life, it seemed to her quite
impossible that such disaster as had overtaken her had been made
possible by the unscrupulous power of one man holding his position
through the right of riches dishonestly accumulated. After the passing
of her father, after the testing of her own strength, she had found that
she was sufficient; that she could take care of herself and of her
mother as well. There was the possibility that she might find a
confident sort of happiness in facing life and making it clothe and
provision her that she never would have found had she gone ahead under
her father’s sheltering care. She had come dimly to realize that the
sheltered life is rather a dull affair. It lacks the spirit, the
development, the fraternity that can be found in an equal battle with
other men and women for food and shelter.
Then had come the final blow. The Morelands had heaped dishonour upon
her. From that hour she had felt that to be vindicated was the only
thing that life held in store for her. Now the thing had happened. A
thousand people had rushed around her. They had almost crushed her in
their desire to touch her, to weep with her, to tell her that they
always had known that she never could have been guilty. And there had
been an impulse hot in her soul to cry out at them: “Why, then, was I
deserted? Why, then, was I left alone? Why, then, did you not rise up
and make the thing that happened to me impossible as you have made it
impossible for the work of the Morelands upon their fellow men to
continue?”
The thing that dazed her, that kept sleep from her eyes, the knowledge
of how weary she was from her brain, and sent her wandering from one
room to another all through the night, and at the break of day, to the
little gold bird that still sang in her window, to the garden, and from
the garden to the pigeons, and from the pigeons to the calves, and back
again to the cases of her father’s books and to the pictured faces of
Mahlon and Elizabeth—the one thing that she found predominant out of the
whole matter, the one thing that in the end mounted above everything
else, was the fact that Jason had doubted her, that because he doubted
her, he had made another woman his wife, the mother of the child that
should have been hers.
All the morning Mahala struggled to understand him. She tried to tell
her heart that it was because of the scorching humiliations he had
endured in his youth, the worst of which she now understood she had
never realized. It was the taunts that had been flung at him, the
loneliness of his unloved childhood, that had influenced him in his
decision not to make any woman concerning whom there was a shadow of
doubt, the mother of his child. It was not in the power of a woman like
Mahala to gauge the depth of physical passion, to understand the force
that drove Jason, in addition to the knowledge that he had found the
money where he supposed she had, in some way, managed to have it placed.
Throughout the day, Mahala found her heart crying out achingly and
unceasingly over Jason’s lack of confidence in her. She had learned that
she could spare the rest of the world. They might think what they
pleased. It was Jason alone who mattered. In living over the previous
day in her tortured wanderings about the house, through the orchard, in
the dead stillness that always precedes a summer storm, she found
herself speaking aloud at times. She cried to the walls of her room:
“Oh, Jason, I would not have doubted you, if I had seen you take the
money myself!”
To the trees of the old orchard she stretched out her arms. She said to
them: “If it had been Jason, I’d have known that there had to be some
explanation. I’d have felt that anything else might have happened except
that he could have been guilty.”
Across the road and down a few rods farther, Jason had reached his home
and Ellen in a condition that alarmed her. He had tried to tell her what
had happened. He had tried to explain to her, but she had felt that he
was speaking as if there were a weight upon his heart and brain that was
almost more than he could endure. She had felt that he scarcely realized
what he was saying to her. She had tried to feed him; she had wept over
him; she had rejoiced with him that there could be no stain upon his
name and upon his birthright, and through it all she had seen that he
did not hear her, that he did not care for anything she might say or
anything she might do. Then she watched him stagger across the road and
start toward Mahala’s house.
She stood awhile meditating. She decided that probably there were things
that she might do. She ought to go herself and prepare some food. She
might give Mahala the comfort of playing with the baby while she worked.
She was half in doubt as to whether she should go, and yet she could
think of many reasonable excuses. She realized that it was on slow feet
that she walked down the road carrying the baby that every day was
growing a heavier burden for her slight young shoulders. She was
thinking a queer thing as she went along. He was heavier to carry when
he was asleep than when he was awake. Asleep, he lay a dead weight on
her arms; awake he clung around her neck, he scattered his weight over
her chest and shoulders. She was surprised that she had thought this out
for herself.
As she reached the gate, she was saying to herself: “He’s a dead weight
asleep. He’s not near so heavy when he’s awake!”
Seeing that the front door was closed, she followed the narrow path of
hard-beaten earth running around the house. As she came to the big clump
of lilacs at the corner, she heard Mahala’s voice cry, “Jason!”
Through the lilac bushes she saw that Jason had fallen at Mahala’s back
door. He was lying face down upon the ground, either exhausted or
unconscious. She stood one instant in paralysed apprehension. The thing
that kept her from movement was the look that was upon Mahala’s face as
she crossed the back porch and went to him. Ellen saw that Mahala’s
skirts were drawn back and there was a look of scorn and repulsion on
her face. It was quite out of the girl’s power to move. She merely stood
and stared at them. As she watched, she saw a slow change pass over
Mahala. She saw her clenched hands relax; she saw her face soften and
break up; she saw a quiver come to her lips and big tears squeeze from
her eyes; she saw her fall on her knees beside Jason, and with
unsuspected strength, lift and turn his body. She saw Mahala take
Jason’s head on her lap and lean over him; she saw her hands slip under
his vest and down to the region of his heart. She caught the torn note
of agony in Mahala’s voice as she cried to him: “Jason, have the
Morelands killed you, too?”
Then Ellen saw Mahala lose her self-control. She stood watching her as
she took Jason’s head in her arms and kissed him from brow to lips.
“Jason! Oh, Jason! I understand you now! I know that you’ve always loved
me. But you couldn’t, you simply couldn’t, make me the mother of your
child when you thought it would be born through me to the suffering you
have known. Oh, Jason, it wasn’t fair of you! Your love always has been
mine! Your very body is mine! Your child should have been mine!”
As Mahala talked she smoothed his hair, she beat his hands, she tried
with her fingers to make his eyes open. Ellen stood and watched. When
Jason came to his senses and realized where he was, she saw him look up
at Mahala, and then she saw him cover his face with his hands. She
watched with a kind of dumb indifference while his body was torn and
racked with the deep sobbing that seemed to rend him through and
through.
She saw Mahala kneeling before him, looking at him. She heard her saying
to him: “I understand now, Jason. I understand you now!”
She watched him struggle to a rising posture. She saw him reach out his
hands and help Mahala to her feet. She heard a voice that she did not
know crying: “Great God! What have I done? If I had not been a common
thing, a vile thing, myself, I might have known!”
Then Mahala laid her hands on his arm. She looked up at him and said
quietly: “Square your shoulders, Jason. You’ve got to adjust them to the
burden they must carry for the rest of your life. We both know now, but
we must finish our lives as if we didn’t.”
Then Ellen saw Jason lean forward. She saw his strong hands reach out.
She heard him cry: “Mahala, you know, you always have known, how I love
you. If there had been in me the manhood to wait for this hour, would
you have been mine?”
She watched Mahala lay both her hands in his. She saw her look at Jason
for a long time. She saw the smile of ecstasy that broke over her face.
She heard a sweetness she never before had heard in the tones of a human
voice as Mahala said: “Why, Jason, when I think it all out, I can’t
remember the time when my heart was not fighting your battles for
you—when I didn’t love you.”
Standing there, Ellen saw Jason gather Mahala in his arms, lift her
clear of the ground, and kiss her face, her hair, her shoulders, even,
in a passion of utter despair.
Then Ellen came in for her share of the Moreland tragedy. She turned
softly. Lightly she picked her steps around the house. She flashed
through the gate; with flying feet she ran back down the road to her
home. She had forgotten how heavy the baby was. There seemed to be wings
on her feet. When she reached home, she laid him in his cradle because
that was the thing she was accustomed to doing when he was asleep. Then
she dropped on her knees beside him and caught his little hands, and
without caring whether she awoke him or not, she laid them against her
face, on her throat, on her eyes, on her hair. At last she found her
voice.
She told him: “Your father does not love me. He loves Mahala. He always
has loved her. He is really hers and you should be hers. Oh, Baby, tell
me what I must do!”
She was kneeling there in a sort of dull lethargy when Jason staggered
back home, bowed by the weight of the crucifying revelation that Mahala
always had loved him; that he had sacrificed her love; that he had
thrown away the beauty of her soul and her body through his doubt of
her.
As he stepped inside his door and saw Ellen kneeling beside the cradle,
her unheeding head being rumpled and battered by the uncertain hands of
the baby, he wondered for a moment. Then he stepped over to her and
lifted her to her feet, and then he saw her distorted, pain-tortured
face, and there he learned, that in some way, she knew. There was only
one way in which she could know. Even then he revealed an inherent
fineness. He made no accusation.
He said to her gently: “You felt that you would be needed? You followed
me?”
Ellen assented. Then he was speaking again.
“You saw us? You heard what we said?”
She bowed her head in acquiescence.
Jason released her and dropped into the nearest chair, and Ellen sank
down again beside the cradle and buried her face in the baby’s clothing.
Finally, Jason could endure no more. He went over to Ellen and lifted
her up; he helped her to a chair.
With a halting voice and stricken eyes of misery she said to him:
“Because you found that pocket book when you were fixing up the house,
you thought that in some way she’d had it put there?”
Jason nodded.
In the passion of her agony, she cried at him: “How could you? Any one
so delicate, so beautiful—why, I have always known she never could have
done it! I couldn’t have loved her if I had thought her a common thief.”
Before the storm of her wrath Jason stood bowed and helpless. She seemed
a long way from him, and yet he could hear her voice crying at him: “You
loved her. You would work for her, you would take care of her, but you
had not the manhood to wait for her hour of vindication!”
Then Jason spoke: “When I found the money hidden in her house, I thought
there never could be such a thing as vindication. With my own hands I
hid it where it never would have been discovered, waiting for the hour
when she should come to me and tell me herself that she had taken it.”
Ellen cried to him: “And now, what are you going to do?”
He looked at her helplessly. The finger she was pointing toward the
cradle was shaking but her voice was clear: “You are giving her your
love. You have given me your child. What are you going to do?”
So these two souls battled in agony during an evening of that tense
stillness which almost always presages heavy storm in the Central
States. The elements outside seemed in keeping with the inside strain
when a sudden wind sprang up and boiling yellow clouds were driven
before it, and heavy black ones took their place. In a short time their
world was enveloped in thick darkness, broken by the flash of lightning,
the jarring of thunder and dangerous winds.
Worn out at last with nerve strain, Ellen stood up. She faced Jason,
crying: “You haven’t been fair. You had no right to make me the mother
of your child when you knew in your heart that you didn’t love me. It
isn’t truly mine. Martin Moreland robbed Mahala of her people, her home,
her wealth. He would have taken her honour if he could. And how much
better are you? You have robbed her heart of the love of a lifetime. I
heard her say it. And, at the same time, you robbed her of motherhood.
Your child belongs to her, not to me! You may take it to her!”
Jason had endured nerve strain almost to the limit. He was at that dumb
place where the brain ceases to function for itself. He realized that he
might have had Mahala in his home and in his arms if he had kept firm
rein on his physical nature and had had Ellen’s faith in her. The
foundations of his life had been shaken. It seemed to him that nothing
further could happen. He was past thinking clearly for himself. The
first thought that came to his muddled brain was one of protest.
“No, Ellen, no!” he said. “That can’t be done! You’re insane to think of
it!”
Nerve strain works one way with some people; it works differently with
others. First Ellen had cried until she was exhausted. Then she had
argued until she could think no further. When she reached her decision,
at that time she had meant what she said. She proved the courage of her
convictions by lifting the baby from its cradle, wrapping the blanket
around it, and thrusting it into Jason’s arms.
She opened the door, and with apparent calmness and deliberation, she
said to him: “I have told you until I’m tired. That child does not
belong to me. You may take it to its real mother.”
Jason took the baby because he did not know what else to do. But he
stood shaking his head.
“You can’t do this, Ellen,” he said to her pleadingly. “For God’s sake,
try to understand that you can’t give away your baby!”
Ellen caught up the words. “Give away my baby?” she repeated after him.
“It is not I who give it away. It is you. You gave it to me when it
belonged to Mahala. I tell you to take it to her!”
She pushed him into the night and closed the door behind him, regardless
of the storm into which she was thrusting him. Then Jason’s soul knew
fear. He was worn to the marrow with as keen suffering as any man can
experience. Every nerve in his body was strained to the breaking point
and a ghastly nausea possessed him inside. There was only one rational
thought in his head. He must get the baby out of that storm. He must do
what he had been told.
He was reeling like an intoxicated man as he staggered blindly down the
road through the wildly gathering storm which broke in a torrent as he
reached Mahala’s door. He realized that he might have been unable to
find her door if her house had not been filled with light. Evidently,
she was nervous and afraid. He could see light in every room of the
house, and as he stumbled toward it, he could see Mahala’s figure
passing from room to room, and he knew that she was alone and that she
was afraid.
There was in his heart a fear that his knock might frighten her further,
so he called at the same time. He heard her footsteps flying across the
floor, and she swung the door wide. He stepped through it, already
drenched, with the face and eyes of a stranger, huddling the baby
against his breast.
As Mahala closed the door, she stepped back to the centre of the room.
Jason held out the bundle to her. He was past the point of trying to
screen her. He was past anything except a parrot-like utterance of what
he had been told.
With no preliminaries, he said to Mahala: “Ellen saw us this afternoon.
She won’t have her baby any longer, because she knows now that I never
really loved her. She made me bring it to you. She says, because I love
you, my child is yours.”
Mahala held out her palms before her as if to keep back an enemy. Every
trace of colour faded from her face. Her eyes stretched their widest in
amazement. She had been trying to think, trying to plan, trying to
reason, all the afternoon, and the conclusion she had reached was, that
to the end of their days, she and Jason must travel different roads,
each carrying a burden upon their tortured shoulders, the weight of
which they must learn to endure. But here was the climax. This was the
worst of all. They might not even be permitted to suffer together. All
afternoon she had been thinking: “Ellen has had nothing to do with this.
She is perfectly innocent. She must never know.”
And now, smashing as the crash of the lightning outside, she was facing
the terrible knowledge that Ellen did know, and that she had practically
lost her reason through that knowledge. Her heart was primitive like the
heart of every other woman. She had seen her man, she had loved him, she
had taken his head on her breast, she had given him all she had to give.
And through youth and inexperience, through willingness to believe, she
had believed that she was having all that he had to give in return. Now
she knew that she had had nothing. She had merely been an instrument.
This knowledge had driven her to frenzy.
And this was the thing that Mahala now had to face. Through the months
of torture that she had experienced, striking her first in the heart,
then in the brain, and then physically, she had learned what this must
mean to Ellen.
She could only cry: “Impossible! Quite impossible!”
Jason advanced toward her, holding out the baby. It had awakened with
the flashes of lightning and the jarring of the thunder. Throwing up its
little arms, it pushed the blanket back, revealing its face, the soft,
curling brown hair, the pink cheeks, the delicately veined temples. The
little fellow knew Mahala. She was his beloved playmate. He reached his
hands toward her, crowing and laughing and begging to be taken for one
of the romps he was accustomed to indulging in with her. He liked
spatting her cheeks with his hands. He liked to tousle her hair. He
liked her kisses on his hands and his feet and the back of his neck and
all over his little head.
Mahala retreated until she was pressed flat against the wall. Even her
hands, as they stretched out at her sides, were hard pressed, palm to
the wall, behind her. She could go no farther. She was a tortured thing
brought to bay. Jason advanced.
“You’ve got to take him,” he said in a voice torn with suffering.
“You’ve got to take him!”
Then Mahala began to cry. She looked at Jason imploringly.
“What does my heart know of the heart of a child beating beneath it?”
she said to him. “How are my dry breasts to furnish life for another
woman’s baby?”
Jason still pressed the child toward her. Mahala became primitive. The
strength of temper that had always characterized her swept through her.
She lifted her head shamelessly. She used the lids of her eyes to
squeeze the tears from them. Her voice was stern and relentless as she
said to Jason: “You big fool! Ellen can’t give away her baby. Haven’t
you got the sense to see it? It’s bone of her bone and flesh of her
flesh. Take it back to her and make her listen to reason! Make her see
that a real woman couldn’t possibly give up her baby. You would drive
her as insane as your father did Rebecca.”
“You’re right,” said Jason.
He wrapped the blanket around the child, turned its face to his breast,
and started toward the door. As he opened it, there was a horrible
crash. He was blinded with running streaks of lightning till he
staggered back. There was the ripping sound of a bolt that had struck
something solid so close that it rocked the house. He turned appealingly
to Mahala. She darted past him and pushed shut the door.
“Wait!” she said. “Wait till I get the lantern, I’ll go to Ellen with
you. I can make her understand better than you can.”
Jason looked down at the small bundle struggling in his arms. “I ought
not take the boy out in this,” he said. “We might be struck.”
Mahala shook her head. “Ellen can’t be left alone. We’ve got to go. Some
terrible thing will happen.”
Mahala hurried to the kitchen to find and light the lantern. For one
second she stood at the window, her hands cupped around her face, trying
to peer through the darkness, to see if the lights were burning in
Jason’s house. She would not have been surprised to see great tongues of
flame leaping from it, but the rain was beating in sheets against the
window, small branches and wet leaves were plastered on it and a black
bird, blown from its shelter among the bushes, struck the glass and slid
down, white lights streaming from its green eyes, its wings outspread,
its breast bleeding.
As the door closed behind Jason, Ellen had turned and fallen across the
empty cradle. As she raised herself, her hands struck the warm sheets
and the little pillow where the baby’s head had lain. On her knees
staring into it, there came the first realization of what she had done.
She had sent her baby to be mothered by another woman. Dazed at the
tragedy that had befallen her, she caught up the little pillow and held
it warm against her face and then her empty arms folded around it.
Suddenly she was on her feet. She threw the pillow back into the cradle
and sprang to the door. She opened it wide and screamed into the night:
“Jason! Jason! Bring back my baby!”
She bent her head and tried to hear his voice in answer. But the wind
howled past her. Flying leaves and branches and a dust storm from the
road almost blinded her as she tried to raise her voice, to scream with
all her might: “Jason! Jason!”
She realized that she could not make him hear her above the fury of the
storm. She realized that she had only a minute. The rain would come in
torrents very soon. With her arms extended before her to protect her
face and breast, she rushed into the night. She found the gate and
started down the road. With every flare of lightning she could see a few
yards in advance of her. Until the next flare, she was in darkness. The
wind blew her wide skirts so tightly around her that she could scarcely
step. She realized that she could not have found her way had it not been
for the light in Mahala’s house. That she could see, and she tried to go
straight toward it. The difficulty in running told her that she had lost
the road, but so long as she could see the light, she knew that she must
reach the house. Once she had a fight to extricate herself from a
thicket of bushes and then she ran into a big tree, and the tree told
her where she was. She was very near the house now. This was a friendly
tree in whose shelter she liked to walk whenever she went to Mahala’s
house. She had stopped beneath it to pick up shining acorns for the baby
to play with. She had seen the squirrels racing up and down it. She had
seen great, horned owls spread their wings and sail from their day-time
shelter among its heavy, gnarled branches. It was almost like meeting a
friend in a time of extremity.
She threw her arms around it and laid her face against it and waited for
the next flare of lightning to show her how to find the road again, but
following that flash there came a dreadful bolt that struck the oak
tree, rending it from top to base.
Through the most terrific storm she ever had experienced, holding the
lantern high above her, Mahala stumbled down the foot path beside the
fence trying to light the way for Jason who kept as close behind her as
he could with the baby’s face buried in his breast. Trying to see her
way ahead of her, Mahala stumbled over the body of Ellen lying in a
crumpled heap at the foot of the oak tree. The flickering glare of the
rain-dripping lantern showed her still face and the splintered tree
beside her.
Wordless, Mahala set down the lantern and held out her arms for the
child. Jason gave the baby to her and lifted Ellen. Mahala picked up the
lantern, and they carried Ellen home and laid her on her bed. The baby
had fallen asleep and they put him in his cradle and covered him. Then
they knelt, one on each side of Ellen, and sobbed out the pain, the
grief, and the torture that had torn their hearts to the limit of
endurance.
CHAPTER XXIII
“THE FLAG ON ITS JOURNEY”
Stumblingly Marcia made her way from the alley, and finding the nearest
livery stable, she had some difficulty in persuading a man to drive her
to Bluffport. During that ride she realized only one thing. The hand of
God had intervened and she was forever freed from the power of either of
the Morelands. Never again need she fear the Martin Moreland whom she
had last seen clutching the white flag and babbling over Rebecca’s
speech. Never again need she fear the sardonic smile, the merciless
cruelty of the beautiful boy, who, with the utmost politeness, had taken
the revolver from her shaking hands with a deep bow and a gay, “Permit
me,” and with no instant of hesitation had discharged it into his own
breast. He must have known that no escape was left him and that the
wrath of Jason would be as inexorable as Fate itself. He had preferred
escaping all of them in his own way. Abominable as he had been, Marcia
was almost stunned at herself as she rode through the night thinking
things over, to find that she had been unable, either when she stood
before him alone, or as she watched from the closet during the
appearance of Jason and Mahala, to keep from admiring Junior. She found
herself saying to the darkness: “What a wonderful man he might have
been! How lovable, how brave!”
It comforted her heart as they came down the main street of Bluffport,
to see a light in the back of the Bodkin Millinery, to know that there
was food and a warm welcome awaiting her. In a few minutes more she was
sobbing in utter abandonment on the narrow breast of Nancy. After she
had regained her composure and Nancy had done everything to comfort and
to console her, they sat until almost daybreak talking things over.
When she had rehearsed every detail of the day, Marcia lifted her head:
“I think,” she said, “that I am as safe at last as I ever can be. Jason
will never do anything to harm me. All the mentality Martin Moreland has
left will be occupied from now on with fulfilling the curse set upon him
by Rebecca. I truly believe that I have nothing further to fear.”
Nancy sat thinking for a long time. Then she looked at Marcia and said
softly: “And now, Marcia, will you listen to the minister?”
Marcia sat a long time in deep thought, and then she said quietly: “To
have the love of a good man, to have the home and the security that he
would give me if he did not know, might be a wonderful thing. But I
could not marry him without telling him, because, so surely as I did
not, some way, some of my graves would open and the dead would confront
me; and there is the child that I would not be considered suitable to
mother. The only way I can see out of it is for you and me to go on
together making the best that we can of life.”
It hurt Nancy Bodkin sorely to see Marcia suffer. She had a pang, too,
for the minister, but deep in her heart she was ashamed of herself for
the little throb of rejoicing that sprang up at Marcia’s words. She
might dismiss her remotest fear. Nothing ever could sever their
partnership or spoil their friendship; until one or the other of them
lay down in the final sleep, the Bodkin Millinery would go on doing
business and each of the partners would give to the other the undivided
devotion of a sincere heart.
When another winter had run its course, under the old apple trees of
May, Jason sat on a bench in the orchard with young Jason on his lap.
Kneeling in front of them, Mahala was playing a game almost as old as
babies. Holding up one pink, bare toe for every line, she chanted:
“This is a fat king, out for a ride,
This is a fair queen, close by his side.
This a tall soldier on guard with his gun;
This a fine lady who walks in the sun.
This is a baby curled up in his bed,
Here go all of them over your head!”
Jason and Mahala laughed together with gleeful shouts from the baby.
As she lifted her head to push back her hair, Mahala glanced down the
road and a flicker of white slowly coming beside the river caught her
attention. She said nothing, but she kept watching, and after a time she
recognized a tottering figure, bowed and stumbling along slowly.
The penetrant sun of spring was beating mercilessly upon Martin
Moreland’s old white head. When Jason realized who the traveller was, he
drew back repulsed, but Mahala arose, and as Martin Moreland came past
the odorous lilacs and across the grass toward them, she motioned him to
a seat. He refused to be seated, but he drew himself together the best
he could and made her a courtly bow.
In a wavering voice he said to her: “Beautiful little lady, you seem
strangely familiar to me, yet I do not recall your name.”
Fearing that her name might awaken unpleasant memories that would
produce such an attack as in her childhood she had seen Rebecca suffer
from, Mahala merely smiled at him and said: “Names do not matter. Was
there something you wanted?”
Martin Moreland tried to stand straight. He struggled till the pain of
the effort to think was visible on his face; but at last he gave up.
“There was a reason for my coming,” he said, “but I regret to say that I
cannot at the present minute recall it.”
In a low voice at her side Jason said to Mahala: “Send him away. I can’t
endure the sight of him.”
Mahala lifted her hand to silence Jason. Patiently she said to the old
man: “Maybe I can help you to remember what it is that you have
forgotten. Did you want to tell me something, or was it Jason?”
At that name Martin Moreland lifted his head. A flash of memory came
back to him.
“I want Jason,” he said. “I wanted my son, Jason. He is the only friend
that I have left in all the world. I am old, I am tired, I am tortured,
I lack food. I have come to beg of him only a crust of bread.”
Mahala went into the house. She brought food and drink. She helped
Martin Moreland to seat himself securely upon the chair she brought. She
tried to relieve him of the white flag, but he would not allow it to be
taken from his fingers. With one hand he clutched it tightly. With the
other he took the glass of milk Mahala offered him, but he was shaking
so that he could only lift it to his lips with her help. The food he did
not touch at all.
He rested a few minutes and then he arose and extended the white flag.
He lifted his face to the skies and with more strength and sureness in
his voice, he cried: “Behold the emblem of purity. Clean hearts may pass
under with God’s blessing. Come, ye workers of darkness, wash your
hearts clean by passing under the white flag!”
Mahala gently turned Martin Moreland’s face toward the road again. She
led him to the gate and pointed in the direction of Ashwater. “I think,”
she said, “that there are a number of sinful people coming along the
highway. No doubt many of them will be glad to pass under your flag.”
“Thank you, little lady,” said Martin Moreland. “Thank you. Now that you
suggest it, I believe that is the case. I will go forward in my work of
upholding the white emblem of purity. I wish you a very happy good day!”
Mahala went back and once more dropped on her knees beside Jason. She
put one arm around him and the other around the baby, and buried a face
of compassion against the hearts of both of them. Until it faded from
sight, they watched the bowed, lean figure trudging the River Road, the
flag flashing white in the sunlight.
THE END
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