“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.