“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.