“A TRICK OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS”
Mahala had been born at a period in the wedded lives of her parents when
both of them were at the high tide of joy in their union, of pride in
their hearts, of happiness without a cloud. She had made her advent
fortified with a happy heart. The slight pang that shot through her as
she looked at Edith was of short duration. As swiftly as it had come, it
was gone. When she caught Edith’s eye, the smile she sent her was
charming; a widening of her eyes, a little pucker of her lips, was meant
to convey to Edith that Mahala was saying: “How wonderful! You look
perfectly stunning.” This added one more degree to the joy that at that
minute was welling and singing in the heart of Edith Williams.
Out in the audience a satisfied flutter was rolling in waves through the
building. In her secret heart, each mother was thinking, that in some
way, her child had slightly the best of the other children. There was
almost a bewildered look on the face of Elizabeth Spellman. She was
constrained to admit, if only to herself, that she never before had seen
Edith Williams look like that, and she never had supposed it was
possible that she could look like _that_. It dawned upon her that a few
pounds of flesh, a few waves of happiness, judicious assistance in
dressing that would come to Edith when she travelled, were going to make
of her an extremely attractive young woman.
When she lifted the programme in her hands and glanced over it, her eyes
fastened upon two lines thereon and her slight sense of humour came to
the surface to such a degree that she nudged Mahlon and ran her finger
under them. What Mahlon saw, when he looked where the finger indicated,
read: “Sowing Seeds of Kindness” and beneath it, “Edith Williams.” It
was a poor place to catch Mahlon unprepared and unaware. The gurgle that
arose to his lips made him look, for an instant, as human as Jimmy
Price. Nothing could have mortified Mahlon more deeply.
The organ was rolling again. The imported soprano was warbling among
high notes about the “tide coming up from Lynn,” and a few seconds later
John Reynolds was delivering the salutatory and then sailing into the
bay he had left and prognosticating what was going to happen upon the
ocean that lay before him.
While her aunt and uncle clutched cold hands and dared not look each
other in the face, Edith Williams stood up and sowed her “seeds of
kindness” without a falter and without a break. She went straight
through as if she could not have lost a word if she had tried, and sat
down in such a spasm of self-congratulation that she could scarcely keep
from applauding her own performance. Never in all her life had she been
quite so surprised: never had she been one half so deeply pleased.
Immediately after her, looking as handsome as it was possible for him to
look, beautifully clothed, cool and utterly self-possessed, taking his
time, a jesting light in his eyes, half a laugh on his lips, for a few
minutes Martin Moreland Junior held forth on the Constitution of these
United States. He gave the impression that the Constitution should feel
much better since it had his approval.
Then, in a dress half way of Mahala’s making, the goods of her giving,
flushed and attractive, Susanna Bowers told the audience her conception
of the full duty of woman. It was difficult for any one in the audience
to imagine where Susanna had gotten her ideas as to what the full duty
of a woman might be. The audience would persist in thinking about the
place from which Susanna naturally would have been supposed to gain her
conclusions, but Susanna had been forced to go by contraries. She had
gotten her material where none of the other girls had secured theirs.
Her conception was one half the fruit of a vivid imagination, and the
other half Mahala Spellman. All Susanna needed to do in writing her
paper was to look at Mahala, then shut her eyes and concentrate on the
kind of a woman that she believed Mahala would be ten years hence. It
made an attractive paper; Susanna delivered it well.
Then Frederick Hilton repeated very creditably an oration of Patrick
Henry’s, and Samantha Price read what she had copied from encyclopædias
concerning Grace Darling. The women in the audience developed
expressions of uncertainty and from them there emanated a wave of veiled
protest when Amanda Nelson sailed into the subject of the peril of Susan
B. Anthony. There were a few women in that audience who did not regard
Susan B. as a peril. They looked upon her rather as an anchor, or a
light. They were not particularly obliged to Amanda for her version of
what Susan B. was attempting. Even those high-minded dames, who had
neither the desire nor the intention of soiling themselves in the
handling of a ballot at such a questionable place as the polls, felt in
their secret hearts that they should have the right to do this if they
chose. There were even those among them who resented the arrest of Mary
Walker, for appearing on the streets of New York in trousers. Of course,
they could neither be bribed nor forced so to appear themselves, but if
Mary desired to wear trousers, they rather felt that she was within her
rights. The wave of disapproval washed up to very nearly a murmur of
protest when the speaker made her best bow and sat down amid the
deafening applause of the men. No other speaker up to that time had had
such an ovation. The nearer the doctor, the lawyer, the judge, the
sheriff, the postmaster, the county chairman, the state senator, the
banker, and the dry-goods merchant, came to blistering their palms, the
more the women of the audience felt, that if they could have done
exactly as they pleased in seclusion, they would have soundly boxed
Amanda Nelson’s ears.
Before the cheers concerning the peril of Susan B. had subsided, Henrick
Schlotzensmelter plunged into his discussion of whether Might or Right
should prevail. Exactly how Henrick’s paper passed the Superintendent
and the Principal was a matter that Melancthon Reynolds, the county
prosecutor, could not figure out, because Henrick succeeded very
admirably in proving that “might” and “right” were synonymous, and that
“might” must and should prevail because it was “right” that it should.
His oration was even less popular with the men than had been that
concerning Susan B. with the ladies of the audience. Most of the
applause that fell to Henrick’s share came from his father and mother,
who had been born and had spent their early married life in Bingen on
the Rhine.
There was a movement of exasperation on the part of Elizabeth Spellman,
upon which Mahlon placed the high sign of his approbation, when little
pasty-faced Jane Jackson began a discussion as to whether Carrie Nation
should be suppressed, and again an intangible wave swept the audience.
There were two opinions concerning that subject, also. Evidently,
neither thought this the proper place for a discussion of temperance.
When the ushers, who had been busy all evening flitting up and down the
aisles carrying baskets and bouquets of every shape and condition to
heap at the feet of those who had triumphantly finished, were through,
it was noticed that the advocate, who felt very strongly that Carrie
Nation should not be suppressed, had reaped a very light harvest in the
line of flowers. There was no wonderful basket with a vine-wreathed
handle standing at her feet; only a few roughly bunched, home-grown
posies fell to her lot, flowers that had not been cooled in cellars and
refrigerators, and were not reinforced with stems packed in wet moss.
But she happened to be sitting beside Edith Williams whose bounty rolled
over and so encroached upon her that it was difficult for the audience
to tell where Edith left off and Jane began.
At last Mahala Spellman arose and came to the front of the stage,
smiling upon her parents, her friends, and neighbours with precisely the
same brand of assurance that had been hers ever since she had stood on
that same platform at four years of age and recited:
“Hush, hush!”
Said a little brown thrush.
It had been agreed upon that occasion that Mahala was a wonder. The
verdict held over. In the first place, standing in the spotlight of the
big chandelier that the Mite Society had cooked and sweated so
patiently, with such dogged persistence over a long period to pay for,
Mahala made a grand showing. She did the whole town credit. Hair that
has been carefully brushed twice a day for eighteen years is bound to be
silky. Mahala’s hung like spun floss brushed into curls over her
shoulders. The silvery wreath that held it in place looked as fragile
and white as the silver whiteness of the mass of ruffles and lace that
billowed around her. As she lifted her hands in a grave gesture, the
women of the audience noticed that she had a new sleeve. Lace edged, it
flowed from her elbows in fullness to the region of her knees; from the
elbows down to her wrists there was an inner sleeve that was a mass of
ruffling of fine lace. The dress was a work of art, and in it Mahala
looked like nothing else in all the world so much as a gorgeous, big
white rose with a heart of gold—a vivid heart, for her lips were red,
her cheeks were pink, her blue eyes were shining, and her hair remained
gold.
She loved her subject because she was talking about “Our Duty to Our
Neighbours.” Mahala felt that every one had a duty to his neighbours.
She did not feel that Ashwater always performed this duty creditably,
and to-night was her first chance to say to the ministers, the lawyers,
the doctors, and the church deacons, precisely what she conceived to be
the duty of any individual to his neighbour. As she talked, simply,
convincingly, at times eloquently, Elizabeth Spellman could not keep
from burrowing the hand next Mahlon down against his side where she took
a tight grip upon his coat, and he knew that she was praying with every
fibre of her being that Mahala might acquit herself in a manner that
would be unquestionably above criticism and redound inevitably to their
great credit.
Mahlon’s heart was pounding till it jarred him. There had been a great
deal to agitate it for a number of years past. At the present minute the
load it was labouring under was almost more than it could bear and
function properly. Mahlon’s feet were cold; his hands were cold; and his
head was hot—far too hot. He did not know why these things should be,
for the simple reason that there was not the shadow of a fear in his
heart that Mahala would fail. He knew Mahala well enough to know that if
she forgot the set speech she had arisen to make, she was perfectly
capable of improvisation that would fill the bill creditably. And he did
not know why he spent time thinking of such a thing as that, because it
was quite impossible that Mahala should fail. He was a bit irritated at
the grip of Elizabeth’s clutching hand at his side. He knew that it was
his full duty, as the head of the house, to quiet the fears of his
womenfolk. He should have covertly secured Elizabeth’s hand and allowed
the waves of certainty that were possessing his veins to be transmitted
to her, and why in the world he was not giving her this satisfaction in
mental support, he did not know. But the fact was that he would have
given quite a bit to be able to shake off her clutching hand. Why need
she be keyed up to such a point concerning his daughter that she must
clutch and grab? Why should she not sit erect in calm certainty that his
daughter would acquit herself perfectly in whatever she undertook? Look
at the splendour of her dress, fashioned mostly by her own hands. Look
at her cool forehead, her graceful gesture, her natural curls having the
temerity to curl tighter with the humidity of the night that was
spelling tragedy for products of the waving board and the curling iron.
Listen to the sweetness of her voice. Notice that her hand discarded the
fan that others worked assiduously.
Suddenly, Elizabeth’s hand dug in compellingly. She might as well have
clutched a stone, for Mahlon had very nearly accomplished that
transformation. Mahala was off the track! Elizabeth opened her lips to
prompt her child with the next word, but shut them in sudden daze. Calm
as she conceivably could be, Mahala was going straight ahead; but what
was that scandalizing rot she was talking? Elizabeth would have given
worlds to have had her daughter across her knee and a hair brush
convenient.
“Perhaps the highest duty any man owes his neighbour is to respect his
mentality, to grant to him the same intellectual freedom that he
reserves for himself,” the girl’s clear voice was saying.
“Too much contact with Schlotzensmelters and Nelsons!” Elizabeth
commented mentally.
“Each man has his personal relation to God to consider,” Mahala was
saying. “He wishes other men to respect his religion—to that same degree
let him consider and reverence the religion of his neighbours.”
“Campbellites slopping in a tank! Popery and bigotism!” hissed Elizabeth
in her seething brain.
“Each man gives his party affiliations deep study and believes
wholeheartedly in his views,” the girl was saying. “Why should he deem
his neighbour less interested, less capable of deciding for himself?”
“Democrats and Populists!” sweated Elizabeth, unsparingly kneading
Mahlon’s defenceless side.
“There are even those among us not willing to allow our neighbours to
choose which newspaper they will take, what books they will read, what
clothing they shall wear——” smooth as oil Mahala flowed on, but each
phrase was a blow, each idea revolutionary.
“Why should men be such bigots as to require that other men shall
conform to their ideas before they will grant them intellectual
freedom?” cried the girl.
“I’ll show you, Miss!” said Elizabeth.
But, hark! What was that? The church in a storm of applause, in the
midst of a speech! Unprecedented! It kept on and on. Suddenly, Elizabeth
found herself blistering her palms against each other. She looked at
Mahlon, to find him doing the same thing. Of all the world! How they did
applaud that slip of a girl! And those were some of the very things
Elizabeth had suppressed, or thought she had.
Mahala was back on the track now. Her excursion had been the triumph of
the Spellmans’ life, but limply wet, exhausted, and secretly outraged,
Elizabeth weakly prayed that Mahala would attempt no further
improvisation. That prayer was answered. The Defense having been granted
a brain as well as a body, Mahala was constrained to close as she was
expected. Mahlon drew a deep breath and used his handkerchief. To him,
as Mahala took her seat, with the sacred edifice rocking in the gust of
approval, she was a sacred thing. Whatever she did came out right. She
was a perfect picture, a white flower. That recalled him to the fact
that, shrouded in tissue paper between his knees, was a horribly
expensive basket that his pride had compelled him to order for her from
the nearest city. She had not had a peep of it. Through the tissue
enfolding it, Mahlon could feel the coolness that it distilled around
his feet, since the generous applause had warmed them. From the corner
of his eye he was watching the approaching ushers as Mahala finished and
the organ swelled triumphantly to proclaim that the first great public
event in the lives of these youngsters had been passed with credit to
each and every one of them.
As the ushers came nearer, Mahlon found, absurd as it might seem, that
it was going to be impossible for him to release that tissue covering
without at least the usher and Elizabeth seeing that his hands were
shaking. He kept them tightly gripped, one over each knee, to steady
himself. He had ordered that bouquet. It was the emanation of his taste.
He meant that nothing on the stage should approach it in elegance. His
hand should be the one to burst it forth, a wave of artistic beauty for
the eyes of the watching audience. In his heart, Mahlon never was quite
so thankful as when Elizabeth leaned across and with a little twitch
loosened the wrappings and lifted them, leaving the basket ready for his
hand. After all, Elizabeth was to be depended on; she was his
complement, she was the best thing in life that he had ever done for
himself. He was distinctly sorry that he had not taken her hand during
its clutching appeal but a few moments before.
He did manage to swing his left knee out of the way and with the right
foot slide the basket across to the attention of the approaching flower
girl. Her arms were already filled but she smiled on him, gave the
basket an appraising glance, and whispered: “I’ll come for that
specially, when I’ve delivered these.”
Mahlon approved, because it was not suitable that his wonderful gift
should be overshadowed or in any way brought in contact with anything
else. So he sat waiting while the flower girl laid her offering at the
feet of his smiling daughter and came back to bear aloft his triumph
alone.
Then Mahlon’s heart played him another queer trick. He had forgotten
that young upstart of a Moreland. Why hadn’t it occurred to him what the
fellow would do? Mahlon’s sick eyes saw Mrs. Moreland arise and step
into the aisle in order that there might be lifted from before her a
long, tray-shaped basket with an ornate handle that was outlined with
purple violets, while the basket was heaped with pale roses of
peach-blow pink, and walled in with the purple of a great roll of Parma
violets, and silver tulle and pink satin ribbons were showering down
from one side of the handle. Mahlon heard Elizabeth’s little gasp beside
him. They had seen the great armload of red roses that the Morelands had
sent up to their son; they were not prepared for this exquisite
demonstration that they were sending before the eyes of the assembled
town, to Mahala. Elizabeth’s hand was digging into Mahlon’s side in
spite and vexation until it hurt him, and this time he reached for it
and clung to it hard.
It was abominable luck. He would have given anything to be in the
secrecy of his bedchamber where he might have said all he thought to
sympathetic ears. But ill luck for the Spellmans was only beginning.
Down the opposite aisle came another flower girl, and those immediately
concerned had not seen who had delivered to her a great, upstanding
sheaf of enormous crinkly white roses with hearts of gold. Here and
there through the sheaf were big waxen lilies with hearts of gold, and
sharply etched leaves of tall fern, while through and around them there
was a mist of lacy maidenhair, so fine that no one ever had seen its
like. The sheaf was bound around the middle like a sheaf of wheat with a
great broad ribbon of gold. Thrust through the knot there was a mass of
the delicate fern leaves and daringly there glowed and flamed one
smashing big, blood-red rose.
Under the eyes of Junior and Martin and Mrs. Moreland, and before the
faces of the quivering Elizabeth and Mahlon Spellman, this triumph of
the florist’s art had been borne down the aisle and stood at the knees
of the valedictorian.
“_My land!_” gasped Elizabeth Spellman, for Mahlon’s private ear. “Who
do you suppose?”
Mahlon’s whole body was a tense note of protest. He did not suppose. He
was too stunned to suppose. He was too outraged to suppose. Where had
the damned thing come from? Elizabeth’s hand was cutting into his. It
required the reinforcement of Mahlon’s left hand to keep his mouth shut.
Spontaneous as always, Mahala had picked up the _pièce de résistance_ of
the evening, an offering beside which all else paled into
insignificance. She lifted it lightly, smiled on it, turned it a bit
that she might see its full beauty, her head cocked on one side in a
bird-like gesture habitual with her, lifted it level with her breast,
buried her face among its waxen satin petals and gracefully ran her
delicate finger-tips through the clinging maidenhair. Then the audience
caught the fact that she was searching for a card. She was looking, and
her fingers were feeling—and her search was not being rewarded. The
handsomest floral tribute that the Ashwater Commencement knew that night
had either been sent anonymously, or the card had been lost.
Mahala’s curiosity was making her look over the length and breadth of
the heap in front of her and at the two gorgeous baskets set before it.
Then she gently set down the lilies and roses at her knees and lifting
her head, she searched the audience with a long and deliberate look.
There was only one person in the audience who knew when that look found
its resting place. There was only one person, high up, far back, in the
gallery who read to the depths of Mahala’s eyes in that instant and
through whose heart flowed the cool acquiescence of peace when he saw
her fingers slip out and deliberately break from its stem the bud of a
white rose that she thrust among the laces covering her bosom.
It was only a moment more before the music was pealing; the
Superintendent had made his short speech, as president of the School
Board, Martin Moreland was telling what increasingly wonderful work was
done each year by the youth of the town, how well deserved were the
sheepskins that he was now to bestow upon them. The boys were trying to
figure out a problem none of them had remembered to concentrate upon—how
they least awkwardly might accept and dispose of the beribboned roll
thrust at them. They did not know whether to hold it like a ball bat or
a fan. It took the daring of Junior Moreland to make of it a trumpet
through which he sent a message to his shocked mother in the audience.
It was only a few seconds later that Jemima Davis was on her knees in
front of Mahala gathering into the folds of a widely spread sheet every
tribute, large and small, bearing the girl’s name.
Guarding like a soldier the beautiful baskets and the sheaf, she
whispered to Mahala: “Who sent you them lilies and roses, darlin’?”
Mahala leaned to Jemima’s ear to respond: “Hunt through them carefully,
Jemima. If you find a note, you will hide it for me, won’t you, old
dearest dear?”
Jemima answered convincingly: “You just bet your sweet life I will!”
So with a heart of contentment, Mahala led the procession down the
aisle, climbed into the omnibus before her parents had a chance to
object, and with the others was carried away to the banquet at the
Newberry House.
The big dining room filled speedily. Ranged around the long centre
table, having the graduates at one end, their parents at the other, were
smaller tables for the alumni, the School Board, the teachers, and the
invited guests of the graduates. The centre table was the pinnacle of
fame that night. The flushed, happy graduates, free of a haunting fear
of weeks’ duration on the part of most of them, could now laugh and talk
and be natural, the result of a whole school life of association. The
other end of the table had its troubles. When the Morelands, the
Spellmans, and the Williamses undertook to break bread and indulge in
social intercourse with the Schlotzensmelters, the Bowers, and the
Prices of the town, the situation soon became painful. The upper dog
tried to be condescending; the under dog resented it, and speedily lost
out by not knowing how to handle napkins, an array of cutlery, and a
queer assortment of fancy food that belonged in strange places. Pa
Schlotzensmelter, irritated beyond caution, audibly asked his wife:
“Vere do I pud dose celery?” And Jimmy Price hastened to answer: “In
your mouth.” The Schlotzensmelters were outraged, but later their
revenge was sweet when Jimmy took a drink from the rose-geranium scented
finger bowl, whose use he had not observed by his neighbours, and passed
it on to his wife, who followed his example!
The arising from the table was in the nature of a blessed release on the
part of the elders. With the graduating class in the lead, the
assemblage moved across the street to the dance hall.
Flushed and happy, Mahala stood on the floor, one little qualm of dread
in her heart. In that slight interval of waiting for the music to begin,
Elizabeth and Mahlon had their first chance at their offspring. Mahala
saw them coming and knew that her hour of explanation was upon her. They
never would understand how simple it had been. She smiled on them
without guile and took the initiative in self-protection.
“I was just hoping for a word with you,” she cried. “Were you badly
frightened? You see, it was this way——”
“A very charming way,” said Mahlon, gallantly kissing his daughter’s
hand. “Very charming! Your audience was with you. What more need be
said?”
“You certainly acquitted yourself nobly,” broke in Elizabeth, “and yet,
little daughter, didn’t you serve Papa and Mama rather a naughty trick?”
“‘Trick?’” Mahala’s eyes widened. “‘Trick?’ Pardon me, Mama, it was like
this: When I wrote the first draft of my speech I said what I thought
and felt. You and Papa argued so strongly that I cut it at your
suggestion, but every time I rehearsed it, those cut parts would flash
through my brain. I couldn’t stop them. I give you my word of honour, I
never intended to say them. I didn’t know I was saying them until I
heard them, and then I couldn’t stop until I had reached a place where I
could get back smoothly. After that, I was very careful. It was the
lights, the big crowd, the urge to express what I truly thought—you
believe me, don’t you?”
“Certainly, my child!” said Mahlon. “Don’t give the matter another
thought. I’ve never hoped to be so proud of you. It was a triumph!”
“Yes,” conceded Elizabeth, “there is no better word for it; it was a
triumph.”
Mahala studied the pair of them. She said slowly, reflectively: “If you
feel that over one little argument that pushed itself in, I wonder what
would have happened if I had been permitted to deliver my whole speech
as I wrote it.”
“A hint was all right,” said Elizabeth; “more would have ruined it.”
She turned to Professor James, who was passing, to inquire: “Professor,
did you notice Mahala’s bit of impromptu work?”
The Professor looked at them and then at Mahala searchingly.
“I’d hardly call that impromptu,” he said. “It so fitted with what had
gone before, so rounded out our neighbour’s side of the argument, that I
can only say that it is a great pity Mahala did not pursue her
conclusions a little further. It would have done all of us good.”
Elizabeth was a Tartar.
“I scarcely agree with you,” she said primly. “A touch might do, but
more smacked too loudly of masculinity. Ladies should allow their men to
say those things for them.”
Mahala knew, having settled this point to her satisfaction, what would
be coming next. She excused herself and hurried to join Edith who was
waiting for her, the glamour of her triumph still illuminating her. Her
programme was in very plain sight; as Junior came toward them, he could
sense it blocking his path. He had been constrained to admit to himself
that Edith looked that night as he had not dreamed that it was possible
that she could. But he never had liked her. He did not care for her now,
and every fibre of his being was in irritated protest against that sheaf
of lilies and roses that had been given Mahala. It might have been from
her father or mother, possibly she had out-of-town relatives, but if she
had, why had she never mentioned them? Who was there who could have
shown the taste and spent the money, and who had dared to set one
blood-red rose in a sheaf of virgin white?
He brushed roughly past Edith, paying not the slightest attention to
her. He seized Mahala’s programme, and against her protests, began
writing his name all over it. Her father and mother were standing
directly behind her; beside them, his own parents. Edith glanced toward
them in a vain effort to hide the quiver of her lips, and saw that all
of them were laughingly acquiescing. Junior, looking over Mahala’s head,
saw them, also.
Carried away by their approval, he caught Mahala into his arms and swept
her into the first dance. Then, guiding her to a flower-screened corner,
in the scarcely adequate shelter of the foliage, he deliberately crushed
her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth.
She pushed him away, protesting angrily. With a bit of lace supposed to
be a handkerchief, she roughly scoured the curve of her lips to a
brighter red than the freely flowing blood of the evening had tinted
them.
That provoked Junior so that he said to her: “You might as well stop
that! You’re the only girl I love, or ever intend to love, and I’m going
to marry you. I’ve got a lot selected and I’m working on the plans for
our house right now.”
Mahala drew back and looked at Junior intently for a few seconds, looked
as deep into his eyes as any one ever saw into the eyes of either
Moreland, father or son. She said slowly and deliberately: “If that’s
the truth, Junior, you’re wasting time. I’m not going to marry any one
until I’ve finished college, and I have not the slightest intention of
marrying you at any time.”
A slow red mounted into Junior’s cheeks, a queer spark of white light
snapped in the back of his eyes.
“You don’t mean that,” he said tensely. “You only say it to get me
going. You want me down on my knees before you. You want me to whine and
beg for you like a hungry puppy dog.”
Mahala reached out a hand and deliberately laid it upon Junior’s.
“Junior,” she said, “listen to me. You know that isn’t the truth. To
save your life, you can’t name one time when I ever said a word or did a
thing to encourage you in the belief that I liked you better than any of
the other boys. Think a minute. You _know_ I never did. I’m not going to
marry you. You might as well not set your heart on it. I don’t want you
to cringe and beg; I’m not asking anything of you but to leave me alone.
Can’t you get it into your head that I mean what I say?”
She brushed past him and started in the direction of her father and
mother. Junior saw that the fingers of the hand that had lain upon his
were now lightly touching the petals of a white rose that was homing on
her breast.
He stood in a sort of stupor for a minute; finally he lifted his head
and went swiftly from a side door. Without a deviating step, he took the
shortest cut to the nearest saloon and there he drank until he became
wild, so that he began throwing glasses and abusing the furniture. He
was venting the insane anger that swelled up in his breast on anything
that came in his way. Chairs and tables flew before him. Heavy bottles
and glasses went crashing. It was an accident that a poorly aimed
decanter smashed through the frosted glass of the front door, allowing
the passers-by to see what was going on inside.
Martin Moreland, who never lost sight of Junior for long, had seen him
draw Mahala into the flowery enclosure. In an ambling way he had
sauntered to the front side of the flowers and taken up a position where
he could hear what was being said while he was pretending smilingly to
watch the dancers with great interest. With that smile on his lips, his
clenched hands were aching to strike. The savage anger that many times
in his life had overtaken and swayed him, was swelling up in such a tide
as his tried heart never before had known. He wanted to take Mahala in
her flowerlike whiteness, and twist his fingers around her delicate neck
until the very eyes would pop from her head. He wanted to do anything
that was savage and cruel and merciless to the girl who would thrust
aside and repulse his son.
He realized, with that craft which forever walked hand in hand with love
in his heart, that he must take care of Junior. He must avoid scandal.
He hurried from the side door, knowing where he would find his boy. He
had reached the saloon and had his hand upon the door when the glass
came crashing into his face. Through the opening he saw Junior flushed
and dishevelled, his clothing already stained and ruined in a wild
debauch. Shaking off the splintered glass, he entered. He ordered the
proprietor to nail a piece of carpet, anything, over the opening
immediately; then he took his place beside Junior and made a deceiving
pretense of helping him to demolish the saloon.
Surprised at this, Junior stood watching his father who was really doing
no very great damage. He began to laugh and applaud; then he consented
to sit down at a table and drink with his father, and very speedily his
condition became helpless. Then Martin Moreland sent for his carriage
and took his boy home and with his own hands undressed him and put him
into his bed, a horrible contrast with the lad who had left the room a
few hours earlier.
Mrs. Moreland, becoming disquieted by the absence of both her husband
and her son, went in search of them. She thought possibly they had gone
back to the bar of the Newberry House, but an inquiry there told her
that they had not returned. So she hurried the few intervening blocks,
and seeing the light in Junior’s room, entered her home and climbed the
stairs to find him helpless, stretched on his bed, his father kneeling
beside him removing his shoes.
As a rule Mrs. Moreland let no word pass her lips that would irritate
her husband. She had learned through the years that she had lived with
him, to know what lay in the depths of his eyes. She had no desire to
plumb the depths of cruelty of which she vaguely felt him capable. She
stood one long instant studying the picture before her and then she
turned to him and said deliberately: “How do you like your work, Martin?
Are you pleased with what you are succeeding in making of your son?”
The Senior Moreland threw up his head and favoured his wife with a full
glance. In her eyes there was written large the love with which she
yearned over her boy. Something about her expression made more nearly an
appeal than anything she could have said to him. There was not much
mirth in the laugh he forced to his lips.
“Don’t be an everlasting killjoy,” he said to her banteringly. “It’s all
right for youth to have its fling. I followed him because I expected the
strain of the night to end like this. He’ll be all right in the
morning.”
Arising, he offered her his arm with extreme politeness and escorted her
from the sight of the boy. Once the door was closed after them, he
gripped her arm until his fingers cut into it cruelly. He rushed her
down the hall faster than she could comfortably walk and thrust her into
her room so roughly and forcibly that she fell upon her bed. Standing
over her, he said to her: “If you can’t manage to be anything better
than a sickly idiot, you keep out of men’s affairs altogether.” And
then, on a wave evoked by the nausea on her face, he added: “He’ll be
all right in the morning, I tell you!”
In the morning, when Mrs. Moreland lifted strained and sleepless eyes to
the doorway, she was shocked until she shrank back in her chair. Junior
was standing there, laughing at her. She could not see any trace of the
dissipation of the night before upon his face or person. He had bathed
and carefully dressed. He came across to her laughingly, and standing
behind her chair, he tipped her head back against him and kissed her. He
scolded her for the loss of sleep evident on her face. He assured her
that he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself and that she
never again was to worry in case he drank a little more than he should.
He didn’t care anything about the stuff; he simply drank it with the
other boys when they wanted to have a celebration. He pointed out the
fact that his father never had become intoxicated to a degree that in
the slightest interfered with his business or with his social position
in the community, yet he always had a drink whenever he wanted it. He
really succeeded in reassuring her to such an extent that she went to
her room and lay down to secure the sleep that she had lost.