“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.