“THE DRIVER OF THE CHARIOT”
When Mahala left Junior, she immediately hurried to her mother,
forgetful of everything except that she wanted to be where she would not
be subjected to further annoyance. She had forgotten, for the minute,
what was in store for her the first time her mother found her alone. She
was not allowed to forget very long. Instantly Mrs. Spellman had
whispered in Mahala’s ear: “Where did those lilies and roses come from?”
Mahala had taken time for mental preparation.
“I hunted all I dared on the platform,” she said, “and I couldn’t find
the card. I told Jemima, when she took my flowers home, to watch
especially for it and to save it if she found one.”
“Do you mean to tell me that you don’t know where such a thing as that
came from?” demanded Elizabeth Spellman abruptly. She was trying to face
Mahala down with deeply penetrant eyes. Mahala objected to having her
good time spoiled by the ordeal she had known she was destined to
undergo when the exquisite sheaf had been stood at her knees. She showed
not the slightest inclination to avoid her mother’s eyes. She seemed
capable of looking into them with the utmost frankness.
“No, Mama,” she said quietly, “I haven’t any intention of telling you
anything. If there’s a card that belongs to the flowers, Jemima will
have found it by the time we reach home. If there isn’t, we will just
have to make up our minds that somebody cares enough about me to make me
a lovely gift, won’t we?”
It was Elizabeth Spellman’s proud boast that she had never struck her
daughter. The chances are very large, that for the second time that
evening, if she had been in seclusion, she might have been provoked to
what her fingers were itching to do, but the one thing Elizabeth was
forced to remember above everything else in time of crisis was that she
was a lady. She could not very well slap her daughter’s face at a
Commencement dance.
“Am I to understand,” said Elizabeth, “that we’re once more facing a
contribution from the mysterious source of your treasured canary bird?”
Her quick eyes saw a stiffening in Mahala with which she had been
familiar from her childhood. It seemed to be a faint tensing of muscles,
a bracing of the spine. It was with real relief that Elizabeth saw so
offensive a personality as Henrick Schlotzensmelter approaching her
daughter with a smile of invitation. She hated the whole
Schlotzensmelter tribe with their sauerkraut and their sausage and their
pumpernickel and their arrogant talk of might. Ordinarily, she would
have done almost anything to keep the Schlotzensmelter fingers from even
remotely touching the hand of Mahala. In the circumstances she made her
way to Mahlon’s side, sat down, and looked into his eyes. There she read
that he was baffled, perplexed, and thwarted even as she, and she
decided that it was not the time to whisper to him, no matter how
surreptitiously, concerning any matter that would cause him the least
disturbance. Her very deep annoyance over the Moreland flower basket and
the anonymous white sheaf faded into insignificance when compared with
the expression on Mahlon’s face, the look in his eyes.
Behind a busily waving palm leaf she had picked up, she kept murmuring
in her heart: “Hunted! Why Mahlon positively has a _hunted_ look on his
face. There’s no reason why he should take his disappointment over
Junior’s flower basket and that nasty white sheaf as seriously as that.”
To the last number Mahala danced out the party. She was wide eyed and
laughing, and her contagion spread to other members of the class, some
of whom would never again have the opportunity of a public appearance
with the high lights turned on, in the social life of Ashwater. She was
dancing with every one who asked her to dance—young or old—and all of
the others were following her example. Even Edith Williams had danced
with her uncle and with Mr. Spellman and with all the boys of the
graduating class. Mahala had been surprised when she saw her on
Henrick’s arm, but she had been constrained to admit to herself that the
evening had been filled with surprises. She had been surprised at Edith
several times. Not more so than when Edith had whispered at her elbow:
“Do you know where Junior Moreland is?”
She had replied: “I do not.”
The surprise lay in Edith’s comment: “I suppose he’s in some of the
saloons making a beast of himself. I should think he’d be ashamed.”
Meditating on this, Mahala remembered that it was the first criticism of
Junior she ever had heard Edith make. She wondered that Edith had
remained and gone on dancing when she felt reasonably certain that she
was not very greatly interested in what was taking place after Junior
disappeared.
When, at last, the harp was carried away, the weary musicians left the
orchestra pit, the lights were turned out, and the Spellman carriage
stopped at the gate, Mahala ran into the house, straight into the
waiting arms of Jemima, where a little wisp of paper was thrust deep
into the front of her dress. She knew that her mother was immediately
behind her, so she cried: “My flowers, Jemima, what did you do with my
lovely flowers?”
Jemima answered: “I carried all of ’em to the cellar. I put what I could
in water and I sprinkled the rest and put wet tissue paper over them.
Your Ma said she wanted to have a picture made of them to-morrow with
you in the midst.”
Mrs. Spellman untied her bonnet strings and swung that small article
from her head by one of them.
“Well, I don’t know,” she said in exasperation, “what made me think
anything so silly. It would look more like a funeral than a
celebration.”
Facing the possibility of having to look at a framed copy of such a
picture with the Moreland basket predominant in beauty above her own,
and with the mysterious roses and lilies in evidence, Elizabeth had
speedily decided that such a picture would be suggestive of a funeral to
her.
Across Mahala’s head she said to Jemima: “Was there any loose card or
anything you found to tell where those white roses and lilies came
from?”
Jemima very truthfully answered: “No, ma’am, there wasn’t.”
Her own curiosity had been sufficient to prompt her to read the little
twisted wisp of note paper she had found tucked under the confining bow
of gold that held the flowers, completely screened by the sheltering
maidenhair. On that scrap there had been written: “With undying
devotion,” and there wasn’t even an initial, back or front. So Jemima
had returned it to its original twist and thrust it where she very
rightly considered that it belonged, and at that minute it was pressing
into the flesh of Mahala’s breast, a vivid reminder that it was there.
She was thankful for the crunch of the wheels on the gravel of the
driveway which indicated that her father would tie up the horse at the
barn before he came to slip off his evening clothes preparatory to
putting the animal away. Mahala went straight to her mother and slipping
her arms around her, kissed her tenderly.
“Thank you very much, Mother dear,” she said, “for every lovely thing
you have done to make this night so wonderful for me. I’ll slip in and
kiss Papa good-night before I go to bed.”
She was half way up the stairs before she heard her mother calling:
“Wait, Mahala, wait!”
Because she had been all her life an obedient child, she paused with one
hand on the railing and leaned down. There was a distinct note of
exasperation in her voice as she asked: “What is it, Mama?”
Mrs. Spellman found herself equally unable to ask the question she
wanted to ask, and to the same degree unable not to ask it. She wavered.
Mahala could see the workings of her brain as plainly as she could see
her lips. Taking the bull by the horns was an old habit of hers. She
took hold now courageously as ever.
“If you’re bothering your head about those flowers,” she said very
distinctly, “I’d advise you not to. It’s wearing. They are very lovely.
Whoever sent them had only the kindest intentions. Jemima told you that
she didn’t find anything to show where they had come from. What’s the
use to speculate when all of us are worn out?”
Mahala went to her room, closed the door, and standing before the
mirror, surveyed her reflection from head to heels. She was not looking
quite so fresh as she had the last time she had looked in that mirror,
but she decided, that after delivering a valedictory and dancing for
hours, she was still extremely presentable. She slipped from her dress
and returned it to the form in the guest room from which it had been
taken to serve its great purpose. As she shook out the skirts she said
to it laughingly: “Let me tell you, you very nice dress, Edith gave me
the hardest run to-night she ever did. But I still think that you’re the
prettiest dress and the most appropriate that was worn at Commencement
to-night.”
She leaned forward and for an instant buried her face in the laces on
the breast of the dress covering the wire form. Going back to her room,
she put out the light. As speedily as possible, she slipped into her
nightrobe and then she went to the window where for four years the
little gold bird had sung to her daily from its shining house of brass,
and standing beside it in the moonlight, she smoothed out the twist of
paper and upon it she read three words. She stood a long time in the
moonlight looking across the roofs of neighbouring houses and down the
moon-whitened street; then she turned and walked back to her dressing
table. Among the bottles and brushes on top of it there lay a white
rosebud. She looked at it a few minutes; finally she picked it up,
twisted the wisp of paper around the stem of it, and went to her closet.
From a top shelf she took down a beautiful lacquered box that
represented one of the handsomest of her father’s gifts from the city.
It was shining in black and gold while across it flew white storks with
touches of red above a silver lake bordered by gold reeds.
She lifted the lining of her workbasket and from beneath it she took out
a tiny gold key. With this she unlocked the box and laid the white rose
and the three words inside it, relocked and replaced the box, and
returned the key to its hiding place beneath the lining of her
workbasket.
Then Mahala laid her head upon her pillow and tried to go to sleep, but
sleep was a long time coming. Never in her life had she found so many
things of which to think. She knew that her mother would not give over
her pursuit of the sender of the wonderful gift in the morning. She was
reasonably certain that Junior would not be thwarted in his desires
without putting up a fight that might very possibly, according to his
methods of soldiering, become disagreeable. And there remained in her
consciousness the memory of a look that she had seen in her father’s
eyes that night, a look that had been gradually disquieting her for a
long time. She had tried to evade it, to forget it, to make herself
think it was not there. From to-night on she knew that it was not a
thing to be longer evaded. It was something to be faced and to be dealt
with.
When she awakened in the morning, the house was so filled with sunshine,
and there were so many people coming to see her wealth of beautiful
gifts, to examine minutely the wonderful baskets and the sheaf of
flowers that had been bestowed upon her, to try to fix in their
consciousness, on the part of many filled with envy, just what amount of
expense had been lavished upon Mahala’s graduation, that her fears were
forgotten. Many of these callers were making the rounds. They had
already been to the Williams’ residence and a few of them had felt
sufficiently familiar with Mrs. Moreland to call there, also. By the
time they reached the Spellmans’, they were able to draw a convincing
conclusion as to which young person of Ashwater had received the largest
number of the most expensive gifts, the most flowers, and worn the
costliest clothing.
Serena Moulton, who was responsible for the foundations of Mahala’s
dress, stopped in for a view of the finished product. As she stood
before it, she clasped her hands and looked at Mahala laughingly.
“The first thing I know,” she said, “you’ll be taking my business from
me. It just ain’t in my skin to do all this little fine ruffly business
and all the handwork that you do. I’m terrible beholden to a sewing
machine. I do like a long straight seam that I can set down to and just
make my old Singer sing.”
Mahala knew that this was intended to be funny, and so she laughed as
heartily as she could over it.
“Well, Serena,” she said, “there’s no telling which way the cat’s going
to jump in this world. It may happen that very way.”
She almost started at hearing the words on her own lips, while a
fleeting shadow swept across her heart.
But Serena was saying: “I’ve worked for Mrs. Moreland ever since Junior
was a baby and I run in there. He’s only got a few things—mostly from
his Pa and Ma—but they certainly are wonderful expensive. I never saw
the beat of the watch his father give him for just a boy like him. About
all the rest he had come from his mother. If the Morelands only knew it,
they’re not any too popular with the folks of this town. Nobody’s going
to reward ’em for their overbearing ways by heaping presents and flowers
on ’em. And I had a good deal the same feeling at Mrs. Williams’.
There’s an awful display of flowers and there’s a lot of fine presents,
but a body don’t see such a flock of cards as there is tied to your
stuff, and I think, if the truth was told, it would be that most that
sour Edith got she bought for herself.”
“Oh, Serena, don’t!” said Mahala. “Mrs. Williams is a friend of yours.
She’d be awfully hurt if she thought you were going about town saying
things like that. Of course, I won’t repeat them, but if you said them
anywhere else, some one might.”
“Well, it strikes me,” said Serena calmly as her eyes roved over the
array of books and pictures, of glass and china and dainty feminine
trifles of all sorts spread on the top of the big, square piano, “it
strikes me that the really popular person of this town is standing
before me.”
Mahala made Serena an exaggerated courtesy, and in her prettiest manner
said: “I thank you, Serena. I think that’s a very nice compliment.”
Serena, looking at her clear eyes and the sweetness of her face, decided
that she might venture, and so she said: “I saw Morelands sending up
that awful elaborate basket, and I saw the nice one your Pa and Ma sent
up, but I didn’t see where that great wheat sheaf of lilies an’ roses
come from. It was terrible affecting. There wasn’t nothing in the church
to begin to compare with it. I never saw grander at any funeral. Who
give you that, Mahala?”
The question was point blank. Mahala had faced it for a nasty half hour
against the combined forces of her father and mother slightly earlier in
the day. She was steeled for it, expecting it at Serena’s entrance. She
looked Serena in the eyes and laughed, a laugh altogether free of
confusion and secretiveness.
“Now maybe that’s a secret I’m not telling. Maybe the card was lost, and
I don’t know. Maybe any one of fifty things, whichever suits you best. I
think, myself, that sheaf was the prettiest thing in the church last
night.”
Serena had the wit to know that she had all the answer she was ever
going to get. A quiver of confusion ran through her heart. She knew she
had had no business to ask the question. She had merely ventured
depending upon Mahala’s good humour, and Mahala had refused to answer,
so that meant that very likely some out-of-town person, maybe some of
the Bluffport boys, or some one that none of them knew anything
concerning, admired Mahala.
Serena arose. She was not accustomed to giving up that easily.
“And while we’re talking about the best-looking things in the church
last night,” she said, “what about you just pulling the wool over all of
’em?”
Again Mahala faced her with eyes of candour.
“I really don’t think I did,” she said. “Edith was as handsome as a girl
well could be last night, and I suspect her dress cost almost twice as
much as mine.”
“Not if you count all the hours and hours of dainty handwork you put on
it,” said Serena. “I’m going through the kitchen and say ‘Howdy’ to
Jemima.”
“Oh, certainly,” answered Mahala. She turned and preceded Serena to the
kitchen. She opened the door, and meeting Jemima’s glance, she gave her
a sharp little frown and pulled down the corners of her mouth. There was
a negative in the tilt of her head that Jemima well understood. As she
stepped aside to let Serena pass, Mahala said to Jemima: “Here’s your
friend come to have a visit with you. She’ll be wanting you to tell her
everything about Commencement that I didn’t.”
“Because it happened to be a secret,” put in Serena.
“Exactly,” said Mahala, her eyes hard on Jemima’s face.
Jemima shot back the answer for which she was waiting. With peace in her
heart so far as Serena was concerned, Mahala closed the door and sought
refuge in her room to avoid another unpleasant séance with her mother.
At ten o’clock that morning Junior Moreland went into the bank, stopping
a moment to chat with the bookkeeper and the cashier.
He said jestingly: “I believe I’ll just step back and suggest to the
President that I’ve left the bay and the presidential chair is floating
on the ocean before me.”
He lifted the latest model in straw hats from his handsome dark head and
laughed with the employees of the bank.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that I’d better get on the job and give
Father a rest? I have a feeling that I’d make a dandy bank president.”
With the laugh that went up pleasant on his ears, Junior opened the door
of the back office and stepped in.
He said to his father: “Dad, forget figures for a minute. I want to ask
you something.”
Moreland Senior indicated a chair.
“All right,” he said, “I am interested in anything you are. Out with
it.”
Junior hesitated. He was studying as to the best way of approaching his
father. Should he begin with what had occurred the night before, or
should he go back to the very beginning and explain that ever since he
could remember, Mahala had been the one girl with whom he wanted to
play, for whom he cared, that from the hour of earliest preconceptions,
he had selected for his very own? As he stood hesitating, he felt his
father’s eyes on his face and realizing that they were full of sympathy
and encouragement, he smiled. It was a brave attempt at a smile, but it
happened that the quiver of a disappointed four-year-old ran across his
lips. The elder Moreland saw, and instantly a wave of rage surged
through him. How would any one, any one at all, least of all a slip of a
girl, dare to hurt Junior?
“I don’t know,” he said in a deliberate voice, in which Junior instantly
detected the strain of effort at self-control, “that you’ve anything to
tell me, Junior. I’ve known that you liked Mahala Spellman all your
life. I even made it my business to get on the other side of that
oleander screen last night and hear what the young lady had to say. I’m
right here to tell you that if you want her, you needn’t pay the
slightest attention to what she says. She’ll find before she gets
through with it, she hasn’t got the say.”
Junior studied his father in amazement.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
Martin Moreland leaned back in his chair. With each word he uttered he
brought the point of a pencil he was holding, down on the sheet of paper
before him with a deliberate little tap that accented and clipped off
each word with a finality and a certainty that were most reassuring.
“I don’t know,” said the elder Moreland deliberately, “that I’ve made
such a very good job of being your father. Your mother thinks not; but I
have tried, Junior, with all my might. You should give me credit for
that. Ten years ago I began to figure that to-day would come. At the
same time, I began to plan how to get the whip hand. Let me tell you
without any frills that I’ve got it. You can stake your sweet life that
I’ve _got_ it!”
Junior crossed the room and sat down upon the arm of his father’s chair.
He ran his hands through his hair, and bending over, kissed him.
“I haven’t a notion what you mean, Dad,” he said, “but you’re the
greatest man in all the world. You’ve always been away too good to me,
but some of these days I’m going to show you that it hasn’t been wasted.
You may go and travel clear around the world, if you want to, and I’ll
run this business, and you’ll find when you get back that you haven’t
lost a dollar and you’ve made a good many. I’ve been watching the way
you play the game all my life. You bet I can play up to you! But this
girl matter is another question. I don’t see how you’re going to make
Mahala change her mind if she doesn’t like me and doesn’t want me.”
“You poor ninny!” said Martin Moreland scornfully. “Can you look in your
glass and tell yourself truthfully that there is such a thing as a girl
that doesn’t want as handsome a young fellow as you are? Of course she
wants you. But you’ve heard of chariot wheels, haven’t you? They’re an
obsession that all women get in the backs of their heads. About Mahala’s
period in their career every one of them wants to think of herself as
riding in a chariot at the wheels of which she is dragging—the more
supine lovers the better. There’s no such thing as getting the number
too large. At the present minute, according to Miss Mahala, she has got
you under her chariot wheels; she wants you to kneel and to cringe and
to beg and to let her feel her power.”
“I wonder now,” said Junior. “Of course, if that is what she wants——”
“Well, you needn’t wonder,” said Moreland Senior. “Your Dad’s had some
experience with women, let me tell you. He knows. And whenever a real
he-man meets a woman who’s stressing this chariot idea to an
uncomfortable degree, it’s time for him to take the reins and do the
driving for a while himself.”
“But I don’t fancy driving Mahala would be such an easy job, even for a
strong man,” said Junior, once more on his feet and pacing back and
forth across the room. “I’ve spent the greater part of the day, ever
since we were six years old, nine months out of the year, in the company
of that young lady, and you don’t know her very well, Father, or you
wouldn’t use the term ‘drive’ in connection with her.”
“Don’t I?” sneered Martin Moreland. “Don’t I, Son? Well, let me tell you
something. For the past ten years I’ve been loaning Mahlon Spellman
every dollar I could get him to take, at the highest rate of interest
the law would allow me to extract. I’ve got him tied up financially
until he can’t move hand or foot. I’ve got notes with his signature that
will cover every dollar he’s worth in the world, store and house, and
furnishings as well. I’m not right sure but that if I made a clean
sweep, I’d stand to lose, I’ve gone so damn far getting the finnicky
little pickaninny exactly where I want him. All you’ve got to do is to
say the word and Miss Mahala will get down on her knees to you and ask
you very humbly to please lift her up and keep her in the position she
has always been accustomed to occupying.”
During the first part of this speech, Junior stood still in open-mouthed
wonder. As his father progressed, he began to pace the floor again. As
he finished, he was laughing and rubbing his hands.
He cried out: “You are the greatest old Dad any man ever possessed!
What’s the use to wait? Put on the clamps to-day! Let Mr. Spellman see
right now whether he can influence Mahala to marry me and to do it
soon!”
“Any time you say,” said Martin Moreland, and the pencil came down with
a vindictive tap.
“You know,” said Junior, “she’s got this going-to-college bug in her
bonnet. There’s no sense to it. She’s got all the education she’s ever
going to have any use for. She can get the rest out of books she reads.
I’ve come in here this morning to tell you that _I’m_ ready to go to
work. So should she. While I’m getting my hand in—and I’ve got a notion
of what my job should be and how I could help you to the best
advantage—she can go into the kitchen and have Jemima and her mother
teach her enough about housekeeping so that she can manage a house as
her mother does. I’m dead stuck on the way the Spellmans live. You can’t
start the wheels, Dad, too soon to suit me. Let’s try this chariot
you’re talking about and see who’s going to be the driver.”
“Very well,” said Martin Moreland. “Tell the bookkeeper to step across
the street and say to Mahlon Spellman that I want to see him for a few
minutes in my office.”
Mahlon Spellman sat at his desk facing a sheaf of bills—heavy ones from
the East for spring dry goods, smaller ones from town connected with
Mahala’s graduation. He lifted his head, a harassed look upon his face,
when the bookkeeper from the bank delivered Mr. Moreland’s message.
Instinctively, his hands reached for his hair, and then paused in
arrested motion. How did it come that Martin Moreland was sending for
him as if he were a servant? What right had he to undertake to dictate?
Nervously glancing at the row of ledgers facing him, and the overflowing
pigeonholes before him, a wave of nausea swept his middle.
He got up, and for the first time in years, he put on his hat and left
the store without looking in the mirror. He found that his hands were
trembling as he climbed the broad stone steps, flanked on either side by
huge dogs—big bronze creatures of exaggerated proportions, with
distended nostrils that seemed to be scenting dollars instead of any
living thing, their chests broad, their abdomens drawn in, their tails
stiffly pointing. Cordially Mahlon Spellman hated them. He remembered
the day upon which they had stood crated on the sidewalk before the bank
and he had said to the banker: “Why dogs, Martin?”
There had been the hint of a snarl in Martin’s voice as he had answered:
“You’d prefer the conventional lion, would you, Mahlon? Well, give me a
dog of about that size and build every clip. Especially a dog that I’ve
trained myself. Watch dogs of the Treasury. Instinct may be all right,
but I prefer training when it comes to guarding the finances of the
community!”
There was nothing he could do to them with his hands. As Mahlon Spellman
passed between the unyielding metal moulded in the form of powerful
hunters, he felt as if he were a creature at bay, in danger of being
torn and rended by their merciless jaws. He could not remember ever
before in his life having wanted to kick anything. He would have
considered such a manifestation as extremely distasteful on the part of
any gentleman; and he almost recoiled from himself as he stepped over
the threshold with the realization strong upon him that he would have
given a fine large sum, if he had had it to give, in order to have been
able to kick both of those menacing big bronze animals off their
pedestals and into the farthest regions of limbo.
In a minute more he was sitting in an easy chair fingering a fragrant
cigar and listening to the voice of Martin Moreland speaking so casually
that he was quite disarmed. He was talking about the Commencement of the
night before—how finely their young people had acquitted themselves;
complimenting their schools and their teachers and the ability of the
town to get together and handle an occasion like that in such a
creditable manner to every one concerned. He was so suave, so extremely
casual, so unlike the bronze dogs guarding his doorway, that Mahlon
Spellman began watching him narrowly with the impression that there was
something back of all this, and when Mr. Moreland looked him straight in
the eye with the friendliest kind of a smile and inquired: “Does it
impress you, Spellman, that my son and your daughter made the handsomest
couple on the floor last night?” Mr. Spellman knew that the crux of the
matter had been reached.
He kept fingering the cigar in the hope that the motion might cover the
trembling of his hands. His eyes narrowed and he tried to look far into
the future. It was with some hesitation that he finally said: “I quite
agree with you, Martin.”
“Have you ever thought, Mahlon,” inquired Martin Moreland, “how very
suitable a union between those two young people would be?”
Again Mahlon Spellman hesitated. A ghastly sickness was gathering inside
him. He had thought of that very thing, and he had hoped for it. But he
never had the slightest intention of coercion. He did not like the look
of this way of going about a betrothal. He had to say something. He said
it hesitantly: “Yes, I’ve thought about it. I have imagined that you
were thinking about it. As soon as my daughter finishes college and
becomes thoroughly settled in her own mind, I should like to join with
you in the hope that they will think seriously concerning each other.”
Martin Moreland had been decent almost as long as he was capable of
self-control. Outstanding in his memory was a vision of Mahala, gowned
like a princess, crowned with youth and beauty, scouring the touch of
his boy’s lips from hers as if he had been a thing of contamination.
There was an edge to his voice and a touch of authority as he cried:
“Nonsense! Sending a girl to college is the quickest way to ruin her!
Send her to the kitchen and teach her how to be an excellent housewife
like her mother! My boy is wild about her. He always has been. There’s
not a reason in the world why they shouldn’t get married this fall and
settle down to business.”
During this speech there rushed through Mahlon Spellman’s mind, first of
all because he was Mahlon, his own estimate of what had just been said
to him and the man who had said it. Then he thought of what his wife
would say, and then he thought of his daughter.
Before he realized exactly what he was doing, he found his voice crying:
“Impossible, Martin! Quite impossible! Mahala and her mother have their
hearts set on the girl’s going to college. They have prepared for it for
years. They have her clothing very well in hand, and in any event, I
don’t think Mahala has ever given marriage a thought, and in that
matter, of course, I couldn’t attempt to coerce her.”
All the cordiality dropped from Martin Moreland’s voice; all
congeniality faded from his face. The lean lines into which it fell gave
Mahlon Spellman a start, for he found they suggested to him the long
head and the set face of the bronze dogs watching outside. There was
something so casual that it was almost an insult in the way Martin
Moreland reached into a pigeonhole he had previously prepared in his
desk and pulled out an imposing packet of papers. Slowly he began to
open them and to spread them out on his desk. Mahlon Spellman, quivering
like a moth impaled on a setting board, surmised what those papers were.
His surmise was of no help to the internal disturbances at that minute
racking him.
As Moreland spoke, Mahlon Spellman forgot the bronze dogs, and there was
something in the slick smoothness of the banker’s voice that made him
think of a cat instead—a cat proportioned with the same exaggeration in
comparison with the remainder of its species as were the dogs; a cat big
enough to take a man and roll him under its paws, and toss him up and
set sharp teeth into him until he cried out, and let him think he was
escaping, and draw him back with velvet paws the claws of which flashed
out occasionally.
“Your business is not very flourishing since the coming of the new
store, is it, Mahlon?” asked Martin Moreland.
Mahlon Spellman’s lips were dry, his throat was dry, his stomach was
congested, his bowels were in spasms. He could do little more than
tightly grip the arms of his chair and shake his head.
“Is there any chance of your being able to pay even the interest on what
you owe me?” asked Martin Moreland, now a man of business, staring
penetrantly at Mr. Spellman.
Mahlon sank in his chair. He literally cowered. As he collapsed, it
seemed to his tortured brain that Martin Moreland was increasing in size
and consequence. He looked to Mahlon, in his hour of extremity, as much
bigger and colder and harder than an ordinary man as were those damned
dogs at his doorway bigger than an ordinary dog. There was insult,
positive insult, in the way he gathered up the big sheaf of notes. How,
in all God’s world, did there come to be so many? There seemed to be
dozens and dozens of them. How did he dare to flip them through his
fingers and leaf them over and beat them on the edge of his desk as if
they were not the very heart and the blood and the brain, not only of
himself but of his wife—his delicate, beautiful wife—and his daughter?
And what was it that this fiend in human form was saying?
“These cancelled notes would make Mahala a fine wedding present from me,
now wouldn’t they, Mahlon?”
Terrified, Mr. Spellman started to protest. Then the smile vanished from
the banker’s face. He ceased to be like a cat and became like the bronze
dogs again. He straightened up in his chair. He slipped a rubber around
the notes with a snap, put them back in the drawer which he locked with
great deliberation; then, in a dry, hard voice, he said: “Mahlon,
between men, business is business. I’m not overlooking the advantage to
me of this union between your daughter and my son. Mahala is a smart
girl and a pretty girl, and capable of being the kind of wife that her
mother is, and I’d prefer her about ten thousand times to some girl that
Junior might pick up in a minute of pique and marry, without giving
consequences due consideration. That’s where the shoe pinches me. I
don’t hesitate to admit it. This bunch of notes is where the same shoe
pinches you. You go home and talk this over with your wife, then your
daughter—with your wife especially. Elizabeth’s got the sense to see the
point to things; especially if you explain to her the present condition
of your business. As for the girl, no chit of Mahala’s age is supposed
to know her own mind.”
For the rest of that day Mahlon Spellman walked in a daze. In order to
escape being seen by his clerks, he carried home an armload of books and
papers, and going to his library, he plunged into them only to realize
that by evading unpleasant things and putting them aside and living for
the moment, he had also evaded the knowledge of how deeply he had been
putting himself in the power of the Senior Moreland.
At his moment of deepest despair, Mahala came into the room, her arms
heaped with catalogues from girls’ schools. She pushed the ledgers and
business papers aside, and spreading the catalogues out in front of him,
made a place for herself on the table facing him. After kissing him, she
began holding the catalogues before him.
“Forget your bothersome old bookkeeping, Father!” she cried. “Come help
me to decide which is the very nicest college for me to attend. I must
make my reservations as soon as possible.”
Then she had a comprehensive look at her father’s face and knew fear
herself.
With the candour constantly controlling her, she cried: “Father, dear,
forgive me! I didn’t know you were at important business. We can select
my college some other time.”
Mahala was on her feet, staring in wide-eyed terror, for her father’s
head dropped on his arms on the table before him, and the nerve strain
of many months, and of the day in particular, broke into great,
shuddering sobs. Mahala, at a very few times in her life, had seen her
father’s eyes moist with compassion, but she never in her life had seen
any man cry as men do cry when their backs are against the wall and
horrifying extremities yawn at their feet, when there comes to them the
realization that they are not living for themselves, but for those that
they truly love.
In a minute, Mahala was on her father’s knees beside the table; her arms
were around his neck; and by and by, when he had grown calmer and forced
himself into quietness, she began asking comprehensive questions. With
the memory of many months past culminating vividly before her, she was
not long in realizing the difficulty. With quick intuition and the clear
insight that had always characterized her, she knew the situation. When
her father assented to her question as to whether Mr. Moreland was
pressing him about money matters, she knew the essential thing that was
necessary for her to know.
“What a fool I’ve been,” she cried. “I’ve always wondered why Martin
Moreland was so friendly to you, why he was constantly urging you to
accept his offers of loans and trying to induce you to spend more money
than you really should for subscriptions and things. I’ve wondered and
now I understand. Junior has sent me word that he’s coming here
to-night, and he’s exactly like his father. He thinks that if he has
enough money, he can buy anything in the world that he wants. Well, he
is destined to learn that he hasn’t got enough money to buy me!”
In a panic, Mr. Spellman grasped her arm. He implored her to think of
her mother; to think of him; to think of herself. He tried to put into
cold words that would make very clear to her understanding, the exact
result of the ruin that would face them unless she prevented it. She
laughed at him and told him it was lucky that her mother had forced her
to learn to perform miracles with her needle.
“Only think, Papa,” she cried, “how very capable I am! I can earn enough
money with fancy embroidering and with sewing or millinery, to keep us
all three in comfort. Lift up your head. Go tell Martin Moreland to take
what belongs to him. Thank God that I don’t belong to him. He can’t buy
either my body or my soul!”
In the midst of this Mrs. Spellman opened the door. Her husband and her
daughter were so engrossed that they did not notice her. She stepped
back and stood listening, first in amazement, then in sickening fear, at
the end in rising defiance. At Mahala’s last words, she came into the
room. She took a stand beside her. She put her arm around her and told
her that she was right.
She said to her husband: “No, Mahlon, Martin Moreland shall not force
Mahala to marry Junior unless she has given him her love. Much as I
should like to see her Junior’s wife and presiding in the lovely home
that he would provide for her, I say that she shall not be forced to
take the step in order to insure comfort for us.”
Mahlon Spellman held up a shaking hand.
“For God’s sake, Elizabeth, be quiet!” he panted. “You don’t know. You
don’t understand. Are you contemplating what being forced from the
store, from this house, of being stripped of the greater part of its
furnishings, is going to mean? How am I to face the world bankrupt,
ruined, with not a penny for your care?”
Hopefully his eyes clung to the face of his wife; and in slow
bewilderment, he saw her desert him. She only tightened her grip on
Mahala. She only lifted her delicate head higher, and looked at him with
calm deliberation.
“Don’t feel so badly, my dear,” she said. “All our lives together you
have taken beautiful care of me and we’ve done our best for Mahala. If
you have allowed yourself to fall into the clutches of a man like Martin
Moreland, it’s nothing more than hundreds, yes, thousands of other men
in this village and this county, and many adjoining, have done. It is
very possible that some other man in exactly your position is
represented by nearly every transfer of real estate to the name of
Martin Moreland that the county recorder makes. Let him take the store,
let him take this house, let him take these furnishings, if we owe him
that amount of money. He cannot take Mahala unless she is willing,
unless she loves and hopefully desires to marry Junior.”
Deserted by his wife, Mahlon Spellman’s head dropped once more on the
table before him. Sick, afraid, defeated, he groaned in anguish. He
allowed his wife and Mahala to help him to the sofa where they put a
pillow under his head and covered him warmly. They brought him a cup of
strong tea; and after a time, when he lay quiet as they tiptoed from the
room, they decided that he had gone to sleep, so they went upstairs to
talk the situation over.
During this talk, Mahala began slowly to discern that the valiant stand
her mother had taken had been one of impulse, because Elizabeth Spellman
was impulsive, and her first impulse on matters concerning Mahala was to
be natural. When she took time to think things over, to reason, to
elaborate, she was very likely to be swayed by custom, by public
opinion, by financial advantage. It was plain to the girl that in a
short time she would be forced to combat the feelings of her mother as
well as those of her father.
Youth is undaunted, full of hope, full of confidence. Ever since she
could remember, Mahala had been in close contact with Junior much of the
time. She was thoroughly familiar with the domineering traits of his
disposition, his selfishness, his evasions, his cruelty, so like his
father’s, to those in social or financial position that he deemed
beneath him. In a few minutes alone, before his arrival that evening,
she had tried to face the situation fairly; and in those minutes she had
realized that all during the past year there had been a feeling of
unrest and disquiet, and a vague wondering if trouble might not be
coming her way. She found that she had been fortifying herself against
it; that she had been planning for it; that she had been wondering what
she would do if it came. Now that it was here, there was only one thing
that she could do. If her father was in Martin Moreland’s debt to the
extent of the store, of the valuable lands in which he had speculated,
of their home even, then those things must be turned over to Martin
Moreland even as the homes and the lands and the businesses of other men
had been turned over to him. She realized now, as she never had before,
that instead of being a tower of strength, her father had been a tower
of weakness. In order to give her and her mother all the comfort and the
joy to be gotten from life, he had brought this upon them. He had not
had the strength of will to refuse them anything. He had wanted them to
think that he was such a wonderful business man, so very successful,
that he could pamper them and give them pleasure to any extent. At his
elbow for years there had stood the man who had understood his
disposition and preyed upon his weakness, and who would now reap a rich
harvest.
Mahala was sufficiently practical to know that, in a foreclosure,
property would go for half of its real value. She tried to think if
there was some one to whom her father could turn for a loan that would
give them time to dispose of the store and of lands and even of the
house, at something like a fair valuation. Resolutely she went down to
the library. She peeped in and saw her father still lying in a stupor
that she supposed was natural sleep. She tiptoed to the desk, and
sitting down, she began going over the long columns of his account book.
At the foot of every page of entries a wave of indignation and scorn
swept her being. But all of her anger was not directed against Martin
Moreland; all of her pity was not expended upon the man lying in
collapse in that same room. She was a woman now, and her mother had been
a woman ever since she had married Mahlon Spellman—a woman with a good
brain and a keen mind. She should have made it her affair to know
something of her husband’s business; she should have refused instead of
placing her name upon mortgages and papers that imperilled their home
and their living. Instead of laughing and dancing and studying her way
through school, at least after she knew that her father was troubled,
Mahala felt that she should have inquired into his affairs, herself. She
should have tried to help him. She should not have spent the large sums
that she had upon clothing and things she might have done without.
Since recrimination did no good, since she could think of no one who
might help them in their hour of extremity, she was forced back to the
original proposition of trying to determine what there was that she
could do herself. Once she had a fleeting thought of Edith Williams. She
knew that her uncle held large sums in trust for her. For a moment she
wondered if Edith could secure for her a sum that would stay matters
until they could be fairly adjusted. She remembered that even in
personal expenses Edith always had been extremely close; that she would
only spend money where she had a definite object in view, and in
thinking deeply, there came to her the realization that it was barely
possible that what Edith Williams would rather see than any other one
thing was Mahala’s downfall instead of her salvation. Dimly there crept
into Mahala’s mind the confused thought that not only Edith but many
others might be glad to see her broken and humiliated. That, she
resolved, they should not see. If what she had considered theirs was
truly Martin Moreland’s, he must have it. She had enjoyed her good time,
now she would work.
She made herself as beautiful as possible and she was perfectly
controlled when Jemima called her that evening. She found that on
account of the humidity, or possibly in order that he might speak with
her alone, Junior had taken a chair on the front veranda. When she went
to him, she saw that he had brought her a huge bouquet of delicate
flowers and an extravagantly large box of candy. All day the house had
been sickening with the damp odour of the dozens of bouquets crowded
everywhere. The piano was still loaded with pounds of candy that she
must speedily give away or see it wasted in the heat. The very sight of
the flowers faintly sickened her. She dropped them on the porch table
and left Junior to relieve himself of the candy. Then she sat on a long
bench running the length of the porch, sheltered by vines. Junior came
over and seated himself beside her.
His first words were extremely unfortunate for he asked: “What has
aroused the temper of my fair lady?”
Mahala felt that “temper” was not the correct word to describe the state
of mind which Junior must know possessed her. Certainly she resented the
assumption that she belonged to him. A sneer flashed across her face. At
sight of it Junior lost his head. He threw his arms around her and tried
again to kiss her. She roughly repulsed him, and there flew from her
lips words she was sorry for the moment she had said them.
“Junior Moreland, if you had any sense, you would leave me alone! I know
a girl who is crazy about you. Why don’t you pay your attentions to
her?”
Then Junior was possessed with anger. He had been encouraged by both his
father and his mother to believe that he really had some rights where
Mahala was concerned.
In a voice tense with emotion, he said to her: “Ever since you’ve known
anything, you’ve known that I intended to marry you when we grew up, and
you’ve always been nice and friendly with me. What is the matter with
you now?”
Mahala drew back.
She waited until she could speak smoothly, and then she said
deliberately: “I don’t see how you can hold me responsible for what
you’ve intended. If your father and mother were not stone blind with
pride and conceit, they would know, and you would know, what this whole
town thinks about the Morelands.”
Angered further by this, Junior retorted: “And what’s the whole town
going to think when it finds out that the Spellmans will be in the
poorhouse if my father chooses to foreclose the mortgages and demand
payments on the notes that he holds on everything you’ve got on earth?”
In his anger and excitement, he had forgotten even to lower his voice.
Inside the window, Mahlon Spellman, roused by his tones and the import
of what he was saying, struggled to his feet and stood listening, one
hand on a chair back steadying him, the other clutching his heart.
Under the nerve strain, big tears began slowly to slip down Mahala’s
cheeks. That word “poorhouse” brought something menacing and gravely
real to her vision. She knew where the county poorhouse was and what it
was. She had gone there with her mother at Thanksgiving and Easter and
Christmas times to try to carry a degree of cheer. Could it be possible
that such a place threatened her father and her mother?
The tears softened Junior. He commenced to plead with her.
He said to her: “There’s no sense in a girl wasting time to go to
college. You know how to sew and to keep a house beautifully. If you
need a little help with the cooking, you can soon learn. You would only
have to superintend. I could afford servants for you from the very
start. Dad’s crazy about you. He’d do anything in the world I wanted for
you. Forget this college business. I can’t eat calculus and radicals or
drink syntax and prosody. You’re all right for me and for Ashwater,
exactly the way you are!”
He started to seize her roughly, but divining his intentions, she
swiftly evaded him and swung a heavy porch chair between them, and then,
anger surging up to a degree overcoming fear, she spat at him her real
thoughts.
“You coward! You always have been a coward! You always will be! You
never picked on a boy in school unless you were twice his size. You
never passed an examination without cheating. You even made the
Principal fix up the grades that allowed you to graduate. You’ve never
cared what happened to any other girl or boy so long as you were the
leader and had what you wanted.”
At that Junior turned ugly. He stepped back and began to sneer.
“What about the leader you have been, dressed in your fine clothes from
your father’s bankrupt store?”
Mahala lifted her head and dried her eyes.
“I never cheated any one out of their property,” she said. “My father is
only one out of dozens of men whose fortunes have been deliberately
wrecked by your father. If I can’t afford the clothing I’m wearing, I’ll
take it off and put on what I can, and I’ll earn with my own hands what
I need to take care of myself and my father, too!”
Then Junior shouted with rough laughter. He pointed to her hands, and at
sight of them, and at the thought of them being forced to work for a
living, he tried to catch hold of them.
“And what is it you propose to do with those mighty hands of yours?” he
asked.
Mahala held them up and looked at them speculatively.
“I’ll admit that they’re small, and that they’re white,” she said, “but
they’re strong as steel, and if you’ll be pleased to observe closely,
you’ll notice further that they’re clean.”
Then Junior tried another tack.
“What about your mother?” he said. “Haven’t you got the sense to realize
that it will kill your father to lose his business standing, to be
stamped a failure before the community? Don’t you know that it will kill
your mother to be driven from this house and to try to live in skimpy,
ugly poverty? Don’t be a silly fool!”
Then Mahala stepped back.
She said quietly: “I’ve always tried to treat you kindly, Junior. I’ve
always hoped that you might see what it was in your power to become, and
change your ways. But you never have. You don’t see even now where
you’re wrong. You don’t understand now why I’d die, and let my father
and mother die with me, before I’d marry you and bring little children,
who would be like you, into the world. I loathe the kind of man your
father has deliberately made of you. I’d rather see all of us dead than
to see us forced into the power of your horrible father!”
Inside the window that verdict struck Mahlon Spellman straight to the
heart. Both of his hands were clutched into his aching breast as he slid
forward across the chair beside which he was standing.