“A SECRET AMONG THE STARS”
While the general appearance of improvement and progress was becoming
distinctly visible and encouragingly permanent on the leading business
street of Ashwater, precisely the same thing was happening in its
nearest neighbouring village, Bluffport. The old board side walks had
given way to flagging. The muddy streets had become paved with
cobblestone. The new brick bank and the hardware store and two dry-goods
stores radiated affluence. A fine, big high school stood near the centre
of the town and the spires of three churches lifted their white fingers
toward the sky as if to write thereon in letters large and plain: “This
is not a Godless community.”
Perhaps nothing new in all the village so became it as the proud brick
structure that arose on the corner where Smithley’s junk shop had
sprawled its disfiguring presence to the mortification of the city that
was beginning to lift its head and to take pride in demolishing fences
and spreading abroad smooth lawns brocaded with beds of gaudy flowers.
And this new building which had risen like magic on one of Bluffport’s
most prominent corners gave over its second story to Doctor Garvin, who
really cured a large assortment of Bluffport’s ills, and Squire
Boardman, who really settled a large proportion of Bluffport’s troubles.
Their offices were across the dividing hall from each other. They were a
pair of honest and respectable men, each of whom was trying, in his own
way, to do his share for the improvement of Bluffport and to acquit his
soul in a graceful manner of the obligation to love his neighbour as
himself. Neither the doctor nor the lawyer felt that he was loving his
neighbours in the degree in which he loved himself, but they did feel
that they were making a sweeping gesture in that direction, which was
infinitely better than apathy. Also, they regularly paid a reasonable
rent, which contributed to the prosperity of the owners of the building.
The lower story was occupied by, and the entire building belonged to,
Nancy Bodkin and Marcia Peters, and was so entered in the records of the
office of the county clerk. The corner location gave them advantageous
front-display windows and a large amount of side space. These windows
proved that, to an exclusive and attractive line of millinery, there had
been added fashionable neckwear for the ladies; scarfs of silk;
breakfast shawls of Scotch plaid and flowered merino; fancy hosiery;
pincushions and toilet articles, and a seemly collection of decorated
china.
The window displays were attractively managed. Inside the millinery was
kept in drawers and curtained cases. Several big mirrors and a number of
chairs constituted the greater part of the furnishings. Any one stepping
into this room had almost an impression of entering a well-ordered home.
The back part of the building was taken up with Nancy’s work room; the
living arrangements, which had increased to a separate room for each of
the friends, a most attractive sitting room, a small dining room, and a
tiny kitchen. For four years these two women had lived and worked
together. They had engaged in small financial enterprises and taken part
in the civic life of the town. They could be depended upon to
superintend attractive and unusual decorations when the principal street
needed to become festive upon some great occasion. They could be
depended upon to do their fair share for the churches, for the schools,
for the Grand Army, for their political party. Under the guiding hand of
Marcia, Nancy had bloomed like the proverbial rose lifted from the hard
clay soil of lingering existence and set where its roots could run in
congenial earth, watered with affection, nourished in the sunshine of
love. The change in Nancy had been so convincing that Bluffport only
dimly remembered a time when she had been an anæmic, discouraged,
overworked little woman. At the present minute, she was not overworked.
She had her work so beautifully in hand that she could accomplish it and
find time for rest and reasonable recreation. She had nourishing food,
skilfully prepared, and these things wrought a great physical change.
She was enjoying the companionship of a woman who was alert and eager,
who felt that life owed her much and who was bent upon collecting the
debt to the last degree, if it were a possible thing. When Marcia had
finished exercising all the arts of the toilet she knew upon Nancy
Bodkin, Nancy gradually developed into an extremely attractive woman.
She evolved a healthy laugh and a contagious interest in the flowing of
life around her.
As for Marcia herself, she was in truth blooming. Such a huge weight
rolled from her shoulders when she began life in the daily living of
which there was nothing secret, nothing questionable, nothing of which
to be ashamed. She might look her world in the face and go on with her
work in a healthful and prideful manner. Always an attractive woman,
under the stimulus of self-assertion and prosperity she had become
beautiful. Natural grace had developed until she had become gracious.
These two women were together every day and within speaking distance
every night. They were making of life the level best thing that was
possible for either of them through their united efforts. Nancy was born
a designer. Marcia had been born with executive ability. The combination
produced as a result the attractive store, exhaling prosperity, and a
pair of women of whom Bluffport was distinctly proud. The whole town was
proud of the Bodkin and Peters share of improvement on the business
street, proud of the two good-looking, well-dressed women who managed
their affairs so capably that they were able to meet their business
obligations and were rapidly repaying the encumbrances they had
shouldered in the erection of the building.
In this close contact, and in what the town supposed to be intimacy,
these two women, rapidly approaching middle age, lived and worked
together. The town would have been dumbfounded had it known that Nancy
Bodkin never had asked her new partner one word concerning her life
previous to her advent into the partnership. Conversely, Marcia had
respected the little milliner. They had simply begun life with the hour
of their meeting and gone forward to the best of their combined ability.
Neither of them had seemed inclined to be communicative concerning
herself, and each of them had too much inherent refinement to engage in
a business that a popular poet of their day graphically described as the
“picking open of old sores.” If either of them had an old sore, she was
depending wholeheartedly upon the other to help her in concealing it. In
breaking away from the years of her life with Martin Moreland, Marcia
had followed an impulse. In her heart she had always known that this
thing would happen some day. She had steeled herself from the very
beginning against Jason. She did not want to love him; she did not want
him to love her. When the day of separation came, as she always had felt
that it would, she figured upon reducing the pain of it to the minimum.
Exactly what she felt concerning the boy was a secret locked in her
heart. Freed of his presence and his influence, she found that the
greatest feeling possessing her concerning Martin Moreland was a feeling
of fear. Twice she had witnessed his brutality toward Jason when to her
it was without sufficient reason. She realized that any day the same
storm of wrath might break upon her head for as small cause.
When the sudden resolve had come to her, after the injustice of being
picked up bodily and forcibly without her consent or approval and set
down among strangers in a strange town, there had developed suddenly in
her heart a storm of rebellion that had ended in her seeking refuge and
independence with Nancy Bodkin. She had no idea what Martin Moreland
would do when he went to the house to which he had sent her, with the
expectation in his heart that he would find at least one room of it to
his liking and warm with the reception to which he was accustomed. She
had thought that he would come to the store, and in the daze of the
early weeks of her transplantation, she had lifted a set face and a
combative eye every time a hand was laid upon the latch.
One day she had seen Martin Moreland upon the opposite side of the
street, and sick at heart, she had fled to her room and thrown herself
upon her bed, complaining of a headache. For several hours she lay there
in torment, expecting each minute that the door would open and Nancy
Bodkin would level the finger of scorn at her, that the clear light of
her gray eyes would pierce her covering and see burning upon her breast
the loathsome scarlet brand. But night had come and Nancy Bodkin had
brought her a cup of tea, had brushed her hair and unlaced her shoes.
In the days that followed, Marcia found herself still watching the
street and the front door, but each day of her emancipation so fortified
her that she began to develop a confidence and an assurance. She did not
know Martin Moreland as well as she thought she did, when in the third
year, she had definitely made up her mind that he would not come. She
did not realize that he was the kind of a man who figured in his heart
that every step higher she climbed in the community that was so
graciously receiving her, would make harder the fall when the day came
upon which he decided to turn the tongue of gossip and slander against
her. Whenever he was passing through Bluffport on business, he made a
point of stopping on the opposite side of the street and taking a
detailed survey of the millinery store. He watched from the small
beginnings of soaped glass and painted casings, through the four years
to the new brick building with its attractive windows. The first time he
passed the new building, obtrusive in its newness, glowing with the
dainty colours of its excuse for being, the smile on his face was a
fearful thing to see. It was a thing shaded by such a degree of
malevolence that his consciousness realized that no one must see it. It
would be an outward manifestation of such an inward state as would shock
a casual observer. Even as that smile gathered and broke, with the same
instinct which prompted it, Martin Moreland clapped the palm of his
deeply scarred right hand over his face and an instant later applied a
handkerchief. As the smile died away, in its stead there came a look
that was very like the expression on the face of a hungry panther ready
to leap with certainty upon an unsuspecting victim.
Martin Moreland knew that, early in their separation, Marcia would
expect him and be on the defensive. He figured that by waiting until the
passage of time had given her assurance, his descent would be all the
more crushing and spectacular.
So it happened that Marcia occasionally saw him passing upon the street
and grew firm in her confidence that she was to go free. With the
passing of the years, she succeeded in a large measure in forgetting her
ugly past and allaying tremors for the future. It appealed to her that
Martin Moreland could do nothing to hurt or humiliate her without
humiliating himself; and that, she figured, he would not do. She became
all the more certain of this because occasionally she saw Junior on the
streets of Bluffport, and from the security of the store, she watched
him as he walked the streets or stood talking with other men.
To the observer, Junior was an extremely handsome man. He had his
father’s height, his mother’s dark hair and eyes. There was a dull flush
of red in his cheeks and on his lips. He could not have helped knowing
that he was a handsome and an attractive figure. He could scarcely have
helped being unmoral through his father’s training from his early
childhood. Always he had been supplied with a liberal amount of money to
use as he chose in the gambling rooms of Ashwater with the other men and
boys. Occasionally he lost, but frequently he came into the bank with
surprisingly large sums of money which he gave to his father to deposit
on his account. A few times, lounging in the bank, even during his
school days, he had listened to discussions between his father and other
men concerning matters of business and he had made suggestions so
ingenious, so simple in their outward manifestations, so astute, so deep
in their inward import, that the Senior Moreland had been in transports.
He always had been proud of his son. When to his fine figure and
handsome face he added indications of shrewd business ability, he
fulfilled his father’s highest dream for him.
Whenever occurrences of this kind took place, Moreland Senior
immediately supplied Moreland Junior with an unusually liberal allowance
with which to cut a wide swath in the social life of the town. During
the junior and senior years of high school, Junior made a practice of
arming himself with large boxes of sweets and huge bouquets of expensive
flowers and going to call upon Mahala.
Mahala always greeted him cordially, always accepted what he brought
casually as a matter of course, but never with any particular show of
pleasure. Having been accustomed to the admiring glances of women and
the exaggeratedly lavish praise of an element of the town greedy for his
father’s money, Junior could not believe that this attitude on the part
of Mahala was genuine. She must think him as handsome as his mirror
proved to him that he was. She must see that he was tall and straight
and shapely. Knowing the value of dry goods as she did, she could not
fail to know that always he was expensively clothed in the very latest
fashions sent out from the large cities of the East.
A few days before Commencement, armed with a particularly ornate box of
candy and a bunch of long-stemmed roses by way of an ice box from
Chicago, he made an evening call upon Mahala. The box of candy she set
upon the piano, unopened. The roses she arranged in a large vase. She
commented on their wonderful shape and velvet petals, the splendid stems
and leaves faintly touched with the bloom of rankly growing things. She
said that they were so perfect that it almost seemed that they were not
real roses that would yellow and wither in a few days.
They talked of the coming Commencement and Junior jestingly asked Mahala
if she were going to allow Edith Williams to be more handsomely gowned
than she. Mahala was amused that he should think of such a thing. She
looked at him with eyes so frank that to the boy they seemed almost
friendly. She laughed the contagious laugh of happy youth.
“Now, Junior, you know without asking,” she said, “that if anything like
that happens, it won’t be in the least little bit my fault. It will be
because I haven’t sized up the situation properly.”
“And how,” asked Junior, “have you sized up the situation?”
“I’ve depended,” said Mahala, “upon Edith running true to form. In a
given circumstance, she always has done a given thing. I can’t imagine
her changing. If she has, there’s nothing to do but accept it
gracefully.”
Junior laughed.
“For a level head commend me to you, young woman,” he said. “Now, here
is a state secret. My mother and Mrs. Williams are great friends,
and”—Junior lowered his voice and spoke through a trumpet made of his
hollowed hands, giving himself an excuse to draw very near to Mahala—“my
mother has seen the gown and she says it’s a perfect humdinger.”
Mahala’s laugh was young and spontaneous and thoroughly genuine.
“Naturally,” she said, “it would be. I figured on that.”
“And I fancy you figured,” said Junior, “on a dress that in some way
will go just a little bit ahead of Edith’s.”
“‘Naturally,’” mimicked Mahala, “being Edith’s best friend and closest
companion, I have figured on a dress that I hope and confidently believe
will be the prettiest thing on the stage, Commencement night.”
“And I haven’t a doubt,” said Junior, “but you’ve figured as correctly
as you ever did in algebra or geometry. But just suppose for once in
your fair young life that you’ve figured wrong.”
“Well, now, just suppose,” said Mahala. “Of course you have figured on
being better dressed by far than any of the other boys. And at the last
minute, if John Reynolds or Frederick Hilton should turn up with a
later-cut and finer goods than you were wearing, what do you think you
could do about it?”
“But the cases are not analogous,” said Junior. “In the back of my head
I am pretty well convinced that the clothing that Edith Williams always
has worn has cost more money than has been spent on you. That has not
been the case with any boy of Ashwater. Father always has seen to it
that I had the best. Where you have consistently gotten away with Edith
has been through being so much handsomer, through being lovely to every
one, and through the exercise of a degree of taste and ingenuity on the
part of your mother and yourself, that no other women of this
flourishing burg can equal. I haven’t a doubt but you’ll be the
loveliest thing in the building the night of Commencement, but I just
thought I’d come around and give you a hint of what you’re up against.”
“Now that’s nice of you,” laughed Mahala, “but you haven’t told me a
thing that I didn’t know and for which I was not prepared. Probably your
mother didn’t say, but I’d be willing to wager that Edith’s gown will be
either of velvet or heavy satin, and a crowded room in Ashwater grows
distressingly warm in June.”
Junior threw back his head and laughed heartily.
“Bully for you!” he said admiringly. “I’ll back you for a winner in any
undertaking in which you want to engage. It would be downright mean of
me to go any further with what Mother told me after she had seen Edith’s
dress, but I’ll say you are a winner in drawing nice deductions.”
And then Junior realized that he had not had such an enjoyable and
friendly talk with Mahala, that she had not been so cordial with him, in
he could not remember when. So he ventured further.
“What can we plan for this summer that will be a lot of fun?” he said.
“We ought to celebrate this getting through with school by picnics and
parties and excursions. It’s our time to have fun, and who’s to object
to our going ahead and having it?”
“Aren’t you going to college, Junior?” asked Mahala.
“Going to college?” repeated Junior scornfully. “Why would I go to
college? Which college does my father hold in the hollow of his hand?
Where could he pull the strings and make the professors dance like a
pack of marionettes?”
Mahala stared at him wide eyed, and at the same time she was amazed to
find herself commending his candour.
“Well, you certainly have nerve,” she said. “Of course everybody knows
the influence your father always has had with the School Board, and from
the time we’ve been little children we’ve had demonstrated to us what
your combined efforts could do, but I didn’t think you’d sit up and
boast about it—openly admit it!”
“Why not?” said Junior. “What’s calculus and radicals and Greek and
Latin got to do with figuring on exactly how big a mortgage it would be
safe to place on Timothy Hollenstein’s farm? I’ve gone through the
motions of this school thing. I’ve got the scum of it. Did you ever see
me make a mistake in addition? I’m not interested in subtraction, and
I’m not very particular about division, but have you ever noticed that
I’m greased lightning on multiplication?”
And again Mahala laughed when she knew in her heart that she should do
nothing of the kind. Coupled with Junior’s physical attractions there
was this daring, this carelessness of what any one might say or think,
this disarming honesty concerning transactions that had been the width
of the world from honesty or fairness.
“All right,” she said, “don’t go to college. You’d get nothing out of it
but the fun of spoiling other boys who were really trying to make men of
themselves. But I’m going. I think I shall go to Vassar, and as for
picnics and parties, I must put in the greater share of my time this
summer in making my own clothes. I figure that the new store has cut
into Father pretty deeply and I think I ought to help all I can by doing
my sewing.”
Then Junior, reinforced by the most agreeable evening he had ever spent
with Mahala, reached over and covered one of her hands with his. He
grasped it lightly, giving it a little shake as he said to her: “I have
to inform you, young lady, that it’s written in the stars that you’re
not going to college.”
Obliquely Junior watched the girl, and he was wondering what she would
think if he told her reasons that he could have told her, as to why she
would not go to college.
Mahala withdrew her hand under the pretext of rearranging her hair, and
laughingly remarked: “That’s very unkind of the stars to write things
first to you concerning me. But, while we’re on the subject, in the
epistle did the stars tell you what it is that I’m going to do?”
“Certainly,” said Junior. “I hope you noticed that I always came the
nearest to making a decent grade in astronomy. I have to inform you that
the swan went swimming down the Milky Way and he told a star lily
floating there that you were going to preside over the finest house in
Ashwater, furnished far more exquisitely than this place, that there was
going to be a devoted lover at your feet and your door plate is going to
read, ‘Martin Moreland, Junior’.”
For one minute Mahala stared at Junior with questioning eyes. Then she
decided that to laugh was the thing, so she laughed as heartily as she
possibly could. She laughed so heartily that it became an exaggeration
and then she shook her head and said: “Put no belief in astronomical
communications. They’re too far-fetched. I think Vassar will suit me
best and in about a week after Commencement I’m going to begin a trunk
full of the nicest school clothing that has gone East in many a long
day. And that reminds me that I’ve quite a bit of sewing to finish
before Commencement, and I must be at it. So take yourself away, but for
pity’s sake, don’t tell Edith that her aunt showed her dress. It’s
against the law and she’d be furious.”
“She’d be so furious,” interrupted Junior, “that she’d turn a darker
green than the Lord made her.”
“If you want to keep up your credit for a customary degree of
observation,” said Mahala, “you’ll have to admit that Edith is rapidly
shedding her greenness, that she is rounding out. She still insists that
she’s half an invalid, but if she’d take some exercise and forget
herself as I try and try to make her, she’d soon be the prettiest girl
you ever saw.”
Which proves that Mahala was strictly feminine, not that Junior was not
eager and willing to pick up the challenge.
“Yes, like hob she would!” he said instantly. “That sour green kicker
would come within a long shot of being the prettiest girl that I ever
saw while you’re in Ashwater!”
“Well, I’m not going to be in Ashwater long,” said Mahala, “and then you
can watch Edith and see how fast she grows handsome. You can go and take
a look for yourself right now, if you want to, because I really must get
to work.”
Junior arose and because he was accustomed always to think of himself
and his own considerations, he forgot to veil the glance that he cast
toward the big vase of rare flowers and the big box of unopened candy. A
cursory glance, but Mahala caught it and she knew that he left with the
idea that he had thrown away his money, and the merriest smile of the
evening curved her lips behind his back, because that was precisely what
she wanted him to think, and she hoped in her heart that he would follow
down the street and spend the remainder of the evening with Edith
Williams. Since they had been little girls, in the days of charm strings
and rolling hoops, Mahala had known that the one boy whom Edith Williams
preferred above all the other boys of the village was Junior Moreland.
She could not recall that she ever in her life had seen Junior extend to
Edith even decent courtesies. He made a point of being rough with her
and saying annoying, irritating things to her, of flatly repulsing even
the most timid advances that she might make in school or upon social
occasions for his preferment. And Mahala pondered as she climbed the
stairs with a bit of lettuce in her hand for the little gold bird, just
how it happened that Edith should care so much for Junior Moreland and
Junior Moreland should take malicious pleasure in hurting her feelings.
At the window of her room, she glanced down the street. If Junior turned
the corner, there was a possibility that he might delight Edith by
spending an hour with her. But Junior went straight on to Hill Street.
He made his way for quite a distance along it, and then turned into a
showy restaurant on a side street.
At his entrance two or three flashily dressed serving girls gathered
around him. He led the way to a booth in the corner. Here he swung one
of them to a table, took another on his lap, and kissing a third, he
ordered her to go and get everything good to eat that the shop contained
for a feast. Smilingly the owner of the restaurant encouraged the party.
If Junior was pleased, his bill would be larger, and this was a thing
that happened frequently.
When the food was brought, Junior unhesitatingly helped himself to the
parts for which he cared, leaving the remainder for the girls to divide
among themselves. He was familiar with them as a boy might be with his
sisters, but he was not vulgar. He treated them lavishly, taking only a
little of his first choice for himself.
When his bill was brought to him, he went over the figures carefully,
and then he forced the manager to make several changes. He proved
conclusively that while he was willing to spend money as he chose, he
was possessed of a close streak, and did not intend to waste it.
His appetite appeased, he kissed all of the girls, assured them that he
would be around again shortly, asked them how they would like to go to
Bluffport for a ride some night in the near future, and going out, he
rounded a corner, slipped up an alley, climbed a back stairway, and in
answer to a certain number of measured rappings on a darkened door, was
admitted to a room where a number of prominent men and boys of the
village were playing games for money.
Junior sat down carelessly, and leaning back, watched the games casually
until he decided that he would play poker. By midnight he had swept up
most of the stakes, and when the other men insisted that he should give
them a chance to retrieve their money, he laughingly explained: “I’ve
got to get home early to-night. To-morrow’s a final examination.”
“What difference does that make to you?” exclaimed Anthony Jones, a
schoolmate of Junior’s. “You know perfectly well you can’t pass in two
or three branches unless you cheat.”
Junior stood under a swinging lamp, lighting a cigar. He glanced at the
boy, a smile on his handsome face.
“My father has given old Dobson his job for the past four years,” he
said, “and so far as I know, Dob wants it for four more. Why should I
have to do anything but go through the motions? I ought to get something
out of it, oughtn’t I?”
“You ought to have to dig in and work for your grades like the rest of
us do!” retorted Anthony.
Junior expertly ringed his first puff of smoke toward the ceiling.
“Oh, I’ll work all right when the time comes. I do a whole lot of
thinking and scheming and planning right now that nobody knows anything
about. I’ll work, all right. But the trouble with you will be that you
won’t know when I’m working and when I’m not, because when I work it
does not always show on the surface.”
“Well, there’s one thing certain,” said Anthony, “you’ll work the
Superintendent for a diploma; you’ll work your father for all the money
you want.”
Junior stuck his hands in his well-filled pockets and sauntered to the
door. Just as he passed through it, he leaned back so that the full
light fell upon his face and figure, and he laughingly inquired: “How
about working you fellows once in a while?”