“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.