“THE LAST STRAW”
As Mahala went intently and industriously about her work, she was doing
a great deal of thinking. She was forced to the conviction that she had
no real friends in the whole of the town who would pursue her with
friendship, who would thrust themselves upon her and make an effort to
force her to feel that all of the years of her life when she had tried
to be reasonably considerate of the people with whom she came in
contact, had not been wasted. Out of the wreck, she was left with her
mother’s servant, whose roof now afforded shelter. There were times when
she tried to think in a sort of dull daze what would have become of them
had not that shelter been forthcoming. She looked at Jemima and found
that she was loving her and clinging to her, giving to her at least a
degree of the gratitude and the affection that should have gone to her
mother.
As she bent to stitch linings and wrestled with contrary wirings, Mahala
was forever busy at her problem, because she had a problem to face. She
realized from the manner in which her mother had listened that she would
be interested in repairing the house and moving to the bit of land that
had fallen to them. But if she did this, she must either keep a working
place in the village and go back and forth, or she must undertake to
handle the land in such a way as to make a living from it. On this part
of her problem Mahala was helpless. She knew nothing whatever of sowing
and reaping, the rotation of crops; of gardening, of chickens, and of
the raising of stock. The only thing she did know that she could turn to
dollars and cents was the thing that she was doing. The only way in
which she could procure even a small degree of comfort for her mother
was to keep on with the work she really could do with assurance and with
extremely profitable results.
With a sharp eye upon every detail of expense, she began deliberately to
see how much she could save that might be laid away toward the repairing
of the farm house. If she had a few minutes to read, she found that she
was reading about land. If there was spare time in which Jemima came and
sat beside her and tried to help her with the coarser part of her work,
she constantly questioned her to learn what she knew about soil,
poultry, and gardening.
One day she said to Jemima: “Old dear, how much of your life are you
going to give to me? I want to know definitely how long I can depend on
you.”
Jemima smiled at her.
“Now, my dear,” she said, “don’t be botherin’ your head about that.
There’s only one thing on earth that could happen that would take me
away from you.”
“You mean your son?” questioned Mahala.
“Yes,” said Jemima. “I mean my boy. He’s a fine, upstanding lad. From
the time his father died till he could look out for himself, I took care
of him. He’s a good boy; he’s got a good wife. He’s got a houseful of
fine babies. As long as everything goes all right with them, I’m free to
stay with you and do all I can for you, and if it’s goin’ to be any
comfort to you, I want you to understand that’s what I mean to do.”
Mahala laid aside her work, and sitting on Jemima’s knee, she kissed her
and smoothed her hair and told her how deeply she loved her, how sure
she was of her friendship and sympathy. Then she went back to thinking
who else there was that had proved a friend in her hour of need. After
Jemima, Jason loomed large on her horizon. She had no positive
knowledge, but she felt a certainty that he must be amplifying the
baskets he delivered to her. She could hear him in the kitchen offering
his services for any hard work requiring a man about the premises. Any
new food that was sent to the grocery, she was comfortably certain would
be advertised with sufficient samples for a meal for the three of them
in her basket. Any errand she could delegate to him he seemed delighted
to do for her. So Mahala was forced to realize, that outside of her
home, the best friend she had in Ashwater was the son of her mother’s
washerwoman.
Edith Williams had not been to see Mahala on a real, friendly, old-time
visit since the day of her catastrophe. She had not been in her home
upon any excuse for even a short period since the day of her marriage.
Mahala had understood a great deal concerning that marriage. She had
realized how hard it would be for Edith to come. She had scarcely
expected that she would, and yet, when one is utterly stranded,
altogether bereft, one will cling even to straws, and if there was a
girl in the town who should have stood staunchly by Mahala, it was Edith
Williams. Many times in a day there was a click of the latch of the gate
at which Mahala lifted a busy head, and in the beginning, there
frequently had been a rush of colour to her cheeks, a light in her eyes.
As the weeks went by, very frequently she did not even take the trouble
to raise her head. Life had reduced things to the certainty that any one
entering her gate came to have a dress remodelled, a hat made over. The
last straw was the desertion of Susanna of the outskirts, Susanna who
had kept the embroidered petticoat. Thinking on this subject, Mahala
fell into a mental habit of saying: “Even Susanna!”
In the beginning, Mahala forced her customers to realize quite all that
she was worth to them. She did her work conscientiously and honestly.
She could not be forced, in remodelling a dress, to make an extremely
wide skirt and panniers for a fat woman; she would not put a narrow
skirt and a long polonaise on a thin woman. She frequently required
changes in hair dressing before she would make a hat for a customer. She
flatly refused either to make a hat or to remodel a dress unless she
were allowed to use her own taste. When her customers really learned
what had happened to them under Mahala’s skilful fingers, they were
compelled to admit that she had made such a great improvement in their
appearance that they were in her debt.
When she had fully forced this realization upon them, Mahala began
quietly but persistently to raise her prices. She did nothing but good
work. She made her charge commensurate with the time and the labour she
had expended. Gradually she began to teach the whole town how to make
the most of their looks, of the material that they could afford to use.
So it was only a few months until she was making a comfortable living
for herself and for her mother, till she was slipping away small sums
destined for the restoration of the old house.
One morning, one of her customers stopping for a word of gossip, told
Mahala that Edith Moreland was a very sick woman. She was having great
difficulty in breathing and was being frequently attacked with fainting
spells, and the doctors had ordered an immediate change of climate.
After the woman had gone, Mahala sat thinking. Some undiscovered malady
always had preyed upon Edith. During the past year Mahala had hoped that
she was better. This report seemed to indicate that she was not. As she
bent above her work, Mahala was wondering what would constitute a change
of climate. Where would they take Edith in the hope that she might
escape a severe illness? She thought of Junior. She could picture his
dismay at being bound to a woman who was ill. He had no stomach for
people who were in pain and trouble; that Mahala thoroughly understood.
It was while she was pondering on these things that the grinding of
wheels before her door caused her to look up, and to her deep surprise,
she saw Mrs. Moreland alighting from her carriage and coming in. Mahala
always had been sorry for Mrs. Moreland. She had recognized in her a
woman who was trying to do what was right, to live an exemplary life
before her community. Through her own distaste for the methods of Martin
Moreland and Junior, she had arrived at a realizing sense of how
frequently this same distaste must be in the mouth of a right-thinking
woman who was trying to live with them daily.
She opened her door and admitted Mrs. Moreland quietly and with the
self-possession which always had characterized her. It was evident that
her visitor was very much perturbed. She refused to be seated.
Without preliminaries she said: “Mahala, Edith is very sick this
morning. She can scarcely breathe. The doctor has said that her only
chance depends upon getting her to another climate as promptly as
possible. We have planned to start her South and she should go at once,
but she positively refuses until she has at least a dress to travel in
and a hat of the latest mode. Right away I thought of you. I want you to
come and help me get her off as soon as possible.”
Mahala stood very still for a second, then she said quietly: “Thank you
very much, Mrs. Moreland. For your sake I should like to do what you
ask, but it is quite impossible. Mother is still confined to her bed and
I never go from the sound of her voice. I’m always here in case she
wants me. Surely there is some one else who can help you with Edith.”
“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Moreland, “there are a number of people who could,
but you know as well as I do that Edith wouldn’t touch what they did.
She’s always sent away for her things and had her dresses made by that
woman in Covington who works on a form from her measurements. There
isn’t time to wait for her. It’s a matter of life and death, I tell
you!”
“I’m sorry,” said Mahala, “but I can’t possibly come to your house to
work. As I told you before, I don’t want to leave Mother, and in the
next place, I can’t afford to miss the work that I might lose by being
away.”
“So far as that is concerned,” said Mrs. Moreland, “of course, I’m
willing to pay you for anything you might possibly lose through helping
us to get Edith off. I can’t understand your refusal when you and Edith
always have been the dearest friends.”
Mahala opened her lips and then she closed them. She looked at Mrs.
Moreland intently.
“I had supposed,” she said gently, “that every one in Ashwater knew that
I haven’t been overburdened with friends of late. When I was in a
position where I could not go to my friends and they failed to come to
me, I had not the feeling that it was my right to seek them afterward. I
took their failure to appear as conclusive evidence that they were not
my friends.”
“I scarcely think,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that such a criticism applies
to me.”
“No,” said Mahala, “it does not. You did come, and you were kindness
itself. But you happen to be the one woman in town from whose hands I
could not accept kindness.”
“It seems to me,” said Mrs. Moreland, “that you’re not quite as big and
as fine as I always have thought you if you allow anything that has
happened to keep you from doing what you can to save a life. I’m sorry
if you feel you have reason to blame Mr. Moreland or me for anything
that happened concerning your father’s loss of his property. Certainly,
you can’t feel that Edith had anything to do with it. She was your
friend, and you were hers; and now she is ill and asking for you—such a
little favour that you could so well grant—and you refuse. Mahala, I am
surprised at you!”
It was on Mahala’s lips to tell Mrs. Moreland that she was quite welcome
to be surprised or the reverse. That pride that had caused her father’s
downfall was a lively part of her inheritance from him. It touched her
pride that she should be accused of failing a friend when she was ill.
Possibly it was her part to teach Edith the better way.
“If you put it in that light,” she said, “I’ll ask Mother. If she thinks
she can spare me, I will come.”
She stepped to the bedroom and found her mother soundly sleeping. Upon
her relaxed face there was a look of quiet and peace that was not
present when her mental processes were working. Mahala imagined that she
was better. She went out and explained the situation to Jemima.
“You go straight ahead,” said Jemima. “Go and do what they want, and
then soak it to them good and proper. Make ’em pay fully three times
what you would anybody else.”
Mahala gathered up her workbag, the implements she was accustomed to
handling in her trade, and climbing into the carriage, was driven to the
Moreland residence.
Her first day’s work progressed finely. She was given exquisite material
that had been clumsily made to alter. With touches here and there Mahala
could transform a dress into a garment expressing the height of the
prevailing mode. The instincts of the artist awoke in her and she began
her work with enthusiasm and growing confidence. Junior and his father
did not appear. Edith was so ill that she only spoke to her when it was
necessary to find out what she wanted done, and how she wanted it. When
she left at night she took several hats with her to remodel. Until past
midnight she was bending over them, changing, altering, then adding
touches to heighten their attractiveness. When Edith sat up long enough
to try them on in the morning, she was effusive in her gratitude.
An effort was being made to have her ready to leave on the noon train.
She sat on a chair before the mirror where she could study the effect of
the hats she tried on. Mahala was standing beside her fitting one upon
which she was working, when Junior entered the room. He brought himself
into immediate proximity with Mahala. He kissed Edith and made a great
display of affection for her. He told her that his mother had finished
packing her trunks and that everything would be ready for them to start
on the noon train. He dropped into her lap, for safekeeping, a pocket
book which he told her contained the money for their journey and also
the money to pay Mahala when she had completed her work. He explained
that he would be forced to return to the bank on some business matters
that he must finish before they started.
Edith picked up the pocket book and returned it to him. She said: “Put
it on the table in the parlour beside the coat that is laid out for me
to wear.”
Junior took the pocket book and stood an instant holding it, and then he
said to her: “Is there any one else in the house?”
Edith replied: “No, there is not.”
“All right,” said Junior, “I guess it will be safe then, but I’ll warn
you to keep an eye on it. Father wants you to have every luxury while
we’re away, and he nearly broke the bank when he filled that pocket
book.”
He stepped into the parlour and laid the long bill book on the table
where he had been told; returning immediately, he left by passing
through the dining room and kitchen, stopping a minute to speak to the
gardener who was at work in the back yard. He went out of the side gate,
which opened into an alley used by the Morelands as a short cut to the
bank, and there he encountered Rebecca Sampson.
Rebecca was coming down the alley, her well-filled market basket on her
arm, her white flag flashing in the sunlight. When Junior saw her, he
stopped short, seeming to be possessed with an idea. He paused in deep
thought for a minute, and when Rebecca lowered the flag, crowded to the
farthest width of the alley and started to pass him with forbidding
countenance, he took off his hat and smiled at her in a friendly manner.
In an aggrieved voice he said to her: “Becky, I am surprised at you! How
can such a beautiful woman as you are let other people see that you
think I have a bad heart? How can you have a clean heart yourself,
unless you forgive other people? I know I was wild when I was a boy, but
I’m a married man now, a staid business man. I’ll never tease you again
or allow the other boys to, if you’ll let me pass under your flag.”
Instantly, Rebecca relented. She held up the flag, since one of the
greatest objects of her wrecked brain was to see any one, whosoever
would, bow his head and reverently pass under it. That her old-time
enemy and tormentor had promised never to tease her again, had asked the
privilege of passing under the flag, delighted Rebecca so that she held
the white emblem high and said an unusually long blessing as Junior
Moreland bowed his head and passed under. Then he talked to her for a
minute longer and hurried up the alley to the bank. Before he left the
alley, he turned and watched Rebecca’s movements. When finally he saw
her go from sight, he smiled to himself and hurried on his way.
Mahala put the finishing touches on the hat, and carrying it into the
parlour, laid it beside the coat as Edith had told her to do. Returning
to the living room, she closed the parlour door enough to conceal Edith
from the view of any one who might enter the room, and began work on the
front of the waist she was altering. When the waist was finished, her
work was done. She gathered up her measures, her scissors, and began
packing her workbag.
Edith watched her and into her selfish, indifferent heart there crept a
pang of remembrance of the many happy times that they had enjoyed
together as children.
She said to Mahala: “I can’t tell you how much I thank you for helping
me out. I really am awfully sick. I suppose I shouldn’t have stopped a
minute for anything, but I’m going to be better in a few days and I
couldn’t endure the thought of being packed off where I might look like
a rag to Junior.”
“You’re quite welcome,” said Mahala quietly. “I was glad to do anything
I could for you.”
Edith hesitated. She opened her lips. She knew what she should say, but
she had not quite the moral courage to say it. Seeing Mahala, with the
joy of youth wiped from her face, with the dancing sparkle lost from her
eyes, her delicate hands roughened through handling contrary material
and the constant plying of her needle, hurt her. She wanted to open her
arms and cry: “Mahala, forgive me! Let’s be friends again. When I come
back, let’s be friends!”
Lacking moral courage, as she always had lacked it, what she did say
was: “Junior said the money to pay you was in the pocket book he laid
beside my coat. Will you hand it to me?”
Mahala swung open the door and stepped toward the table. Then she paused
and said over her shoulder: “Why, Edith, the pocket book isn’t here.
Mrs. Moreland must have taken charge of it.”
At that minute Mrs. Moreland entered from the dining room.
Edith said to her: “Mother, have you been in the parlour?”
Mrs. Moreland shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m trying to help get a
decent dinner on the table for you before you leave.”
“That’s strange,” said Edith. “There’s nobody else in the house, is
there?”
“Not that I know of,” said Mrs. Moreland.
Immediately turmoil began. Edith asked Mahala if she had seen the pocket
book when she entered the parlour with her hat, and Mahala replied that
she had. It was lying in plain sight on the table beside the coat. No
one else had been in the room. There was a hush; and then both the
Moreland women focussed amazed, questioning eyes upon Mahala. Suddenly
it occurred to her that as she was the only one known to have entered
the room, they were looking accusingly at her. A gush of red from her
outraged heart stained her face and then sank back and left it, by
contrast, all the whiter.
Both hands clutched her workbag tightly and she cried to Edith: “It is
not possible that you think I touched that pocket book?”
Edith replied slowly: “I don’t want to think that, Mahala. But since
you’re the only person who’s been in the room, and since every one knows
that you’ve been needing money so badly, I should say that, at least,
it’s up to you to find it.”
Mahala lifted her head. All the pride of a long race of proud people was
in her blood. Her voice was smooth and even as she said: “You’re quite
mistaken, Edith. It is not ‘up to me’ to do anything except to receive
the pay for the work I have done for you and then to go home.”
Edith’s smile was the most disfiguring her face had ever known. Seeing
it, Mahala spoke further.
“We were not in a position to see who might have entered the room while
I was working on your waist. If you want to search me, I am perfectly
willing that you should satisfy yourself that I have not the pocket book
before I leave the house.”
At this unfortunate juncture, Martin Moreland entered the room.
Instantly, he sensed the tense situation and began asking questions.
Edith reached out her hands to him and began to cry. Immediately, he
rushed to Mahala, seized her roughly by the arm, and cried: “You’ll stay
right here, my lady, till you’re searched from head to heels. You’ll not
leave this house till that pocket book is discovered. It was crammed as
full as it would hold with money for this journey.”
Edith immediately chimed in to explain that Junior had said that the
purse contained a large amount of money when she had told him to put it
with her coat. She had not been sitting where she could see in the other
room, but there had been no sound, no one had opened or closed a door,
no one had entered the parlour or passed down the hall. The pocket book
must be in the room.
During the ensuing discussion, Junior came hurrying in to tell them that
time was flying and that they had none to waste. His father and mother
and Edith joined in excitedly explaining the situation to him.
Instantly, he went to Mahala, put his arm across her shoulders, and said
to her in a voice filled with pity: “My poor little schoolmate, have
death and misfortune driven you to this? If you needed money so badly,
why didn’t you ask me? You know I would gladly have given it to you.”
Mahala sprang away from him, staring at him with tense, wide eyes.
Mr. Moreland straightened up.
“Junior,” he said sharply, “we haven’t time for any nonsense of that
sort! Get yourself down town by the shortest cut and bring a policeman
to search her.”
At this Mahala lifted her head. She said to Mr. Moreland: “No officer
shall touch me. If it is your wish that I be searched, you may leave the
room and Mrs. Moreland may satisfy herself and Edith that neither the
pocket book nor the money is on my person.”
At this juncture Edith began to gasp for breath; then she collapsed on
the sofa, declaring that she was dying. Mrs. Moreland spoke
authoritatively for the first time: “No one is going to lay a finger on
Mahala Spellman in this house,” she said. “Every one of you very well
knows that she’s quite incapable of touching anything that doesn’t
belong to her. If she says she did not touch that pocket book, she
didn’t!”
Then she turned to Mahala and said to her: “Put on your hat, child, take
your workbag, and go home.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Moreland,” said Mahala, and she started toward the
door.
The elder Moreland stepped in front of her. He had worked himself into a
rage. He declared that she should not leave the house carrying three
thousand dollars with her. Junior agreed with him.
He said to his father: “This breaks my heart. What a dreadful thing that
the loss of her money should have so undermined the principles of such a
girl as we always have supposed Mahala to be!”
And then he turned to Mahala in direct appeal. “Mahala,” he begged,
“please tell me where the pocket book is and you shall go free. All of
us will agree never to mention it. You couldn’t possibly get away with
stealing that amount of money.”
He extended his hands to her and pleaded with her to save herself while
there was yet time.
“Mahala, you can’t do it! What are you thinking of?” he cried.
Mahala replied quietly: “I’m thinking of a threat you made only a few
weeks ago to degrade me till even the dogs of Ashwater would not bark at
me. I’m thinking that this is your first move in fulfilling that
threat.”
Edith immediately recovered her breath. She sat erect and demanded: “Why
should Junior have made such a horrible threat as that against you?”
Mahala answered: “Well, if Junior were like other men, I should advise
you to ask him.”
Edith instantly turned to Junior. He went to her, forcing her to lie
down, and begging her to calm herself. He turned to his father and said
to him: “Take Mother and Mahala into the parlour. Shut the door. If this
thing’s carried much further, it may kill Edith.”
The elder Moreland immediately obeyed.
As soon as they were left alone, Junior said to Edith: “You very well
know how Mahala always hung around me and bothered me with her
attentions, and there were times when she had me fooled into thinking
she was the one I really cared for. But when I learned Commencement
night how beautiful you really were, superior in every way to Mahala,
and when I let you see it, right away she got ugly. She threatened to
ruin our happiness when I told her that I meant to ask you to marry me.”
Instantly Edith put her arms around him and kissed him and comforted
him. She turned against Mahala, saying: “She’s so plausible she could
deceive St. Peter with her innocent face and her snaky airs. Go, and
call a policeman. I don’t care if you do. Make her shell out all that
money and then put her out of this house!”
The horrible scene ended on the entrance of the gardener with the
policeman, who forcibly conducted a search of Mahala and her bag, and
announced that neither the pocket book nor the money was on her. When
Junior was told that the bill book could not be found, he said slowly:
“She must have managed to hand it out of the front door to some one to
take to her house for her. Cheer up, Dad, if it isn’t here, it’s there.
You’ll find it all right!”
Martin Moreland then told the policeman to take Mahala to the station
and detain her until he had time to swear out a warrant for her arrest
and a permit to search her house. The policeman knew he had no right to
detain Mahala without a warrant, but she did not, so he took her by the
arm and started down the street with her toward the station.
As they reached the gate she said to him: “Will you kindly remove your
hand from my arm? I’ve not the slightest intention of trying to escape.”
It was the officer’s first chance to display the depths of his nature to
the girl against whom the venom of unsuccess in his heart had secretly
been directed all her life. He deliberately tightened his grip until he
felt her wince; he started walking so rapidly that every one was forced
to notice that Mahala was in his custody, as he intended that they
should. So the main street of the town stood gaping at the sight of
Mahala being forcibly propelled in the direction of the station house by
the village policeman.
In passing Peter Potter’s grocery they met Jason arranging a display of
baskets outside the window. In despair Mahala caught his arm.
In a low voice she cried to him: “Jason! Jason! Junior has managed to
make trouble for me! Run quick to Albert Rich’s office and ask him to
hurry to the police station!”
A few minutes after her arrival, Martin Moreland entered. He was shaking
with anger, white with emotion. Unhesitatingly he swore out a warrant
charging Mahala with the theft of three thousand dollars, and also a
search warrant for her home. He asked that she be required to furnish
bail to cover the amount she was accused of having taken. Mahala was
terrified; she was nauseated; but she tried to keep her head erect,
tried to think.
She replied: “You very well know that I cannot.”
A few minutes later she was behind the bars of a cell allotted to the
vagrants and the common drunks of the town. She stood erect in the
middle of it, holding her skirts that they might not be contaminated.
Then Albert Rich and Jason entered the building. The lawyer immediately
began to arrange details for her release.
With his first understanding of the situation, Jason said: “I will
furnish the money for her bail, but if it has to be cash, I’ll have to
drive to Bluffport. I must draw it from the bank.”
He begged that Mahala be allowed to go home, even if the policeman must
accompany her, till he could secure the money. This was refused, and
Mahala was forced to remain in the cell until Jason could make the drive
to Bluffport and return with the amount needed taken from his years of
savings. During all that time Mahala stood waiting. She never spoke save
to ask repeatedly for water; thirst seemed to be consuming her. It was
three hours later that the cell door was unlocked. Mahala stepped out,
and between her lawyer and Jason, entered a carriage and was driven
home.
There she found the Senior Moreland and the police officer searching the
house in detail; her mother again lying unconscious, having been
brutally told of the trouble. Moreland’s complaint was formally lodged
against Mahala and her trial was set, at her own request, almost
immediately. In a daze she worked over her mother.
Jason and Albert Rich made frantic efforts. They exhausted every means
possible to them to find whether any one had been seen around the
Moreland house at that time. Most of the women in the town did their own
work. It was near the noon hour that the pocket book had disappeared.
All of the neighbours had been in their kitchens at the time. No one
could be found who had seen any one upon the streets that was not a
resident going about his business.
A few days later, in a dull daze, Mahala stood in the town court house
and heard herself arraigned upon the charge of having stolen three
thousand dollars from the residence of Martin Moreland. She listened to
the readings of the depositions of Junior Moreland and his wife, who had
left on the noon train as arranged on the day of the trouble. She
listened to the harsh testimony of Martin Moreland. She saw him glare at
his wife. She saw the cruel grip with which he clutched her arm as he
pretended carefully to lead her to the witness stand. She saw the
shrinking, cowering woman lift a blanched face to the judge, and having
been sworn, she heard her testify to having seen her son enter the
living room with the pocket book in his hand, to having been told by him
what sum it contained as he passed through the kitchen where she was
hurriedly preparing dinner. He had explained that the money to pay
Mahala was to be taken from it and the remainder was for the expenses of
his trip with Edith. She told of hearing his voice as he talked to the
two women and of having spoken with him again as he passed back through
the dining room and kitchen on the way out. She told of having seen him
stand a minute in conversation with the gardener at the back door and
then start on his way toward the alley gate to go back to the bank. She
could testify to nothing else except entering the room when she had been
called after the loss of the pocket book had been discovered.
Pressed by Albert Rich with the question: “Have you any theory, Mrs.
Moreland, can you offer any explanation as to how that pocket book might
have disappeared?” she hesitated, evidently suffering cruelly, then with
dry lips she said: “I have not.”
And again Albert Rich asked her: “Is it your belief that Mahala
Spellman, the daughter of Mahlon and Elizabeth Spellman, stole that
money?”
She answered promptly: “It is not.”
Pressed again to explain how else it could have disappeared, she
answered: “I do not know, but there must have been some other way.”
Then Mahala was asked if there was anything she wished to say. She took
the stand and clearly and unwaveringly, she made her testimony. She
detailed every occurrence simply and explicitly. She admitted having
seen the pocket book, which she described, in Junior’s hands and again
in the parlour lying where Edith had told him to place it, when she had
been sent to lay the hat she had finished beside the coat. She stoutly
denied having touched it.
Under skilful questioning by Albert Rich the facts were developed that
it would have been possible for any one who knew that the money was
there to have entered the hall quietly, either at the front or side
door, and taken it away. In rebuttal the Morelands were prompt with the
evidence that no one knew that the money was in the house except Junior
and his father, both of whom were occupied at the bank at the time of
its disappearance, and the people who had been in the Moreland home,
each of whom could be accounted for. Mahala’s lawyer made much of the
fact that the money could not be found upon her or in her home, and that
she had not been from the sight of the Junior Mrs. Moreland except for
the minute when she had laid the finished hat beside the coat.
Anticipating this testimony, Martin Moreland had packed the front seats
of the courtroom with his followers. At this statement all of them
laughed immoderately. There was confusion in the court. Mahala turned
deliberately, and so standing, she slowly searched the room filled with
faces on not one of which could she find real sympathy, compassion, or
comfort save on the agonized white face of Jason gazing up at her. Then
she studied the jury, man by man, and as she did so, she realized that
the power and the wealth of Martin Moreland had been lavished upon it.
She turned to the judge, who had been a friend of her father, with whose
children she had played, and who had known her all her life.
Unexpectedly, she flashed at him the question: “Judge Staples, do you
truly believe that I stole that money?”
The judge leaned toward her with tears in his eyes.
He answered: “What I truly believe, Mahala, can be of no earthly value
to you now. The only thing that can help you here with this accusation
against you, is for the prosecutor to fail in proving that you took it.”
Mahala cried to him: “You know I cannot prove that I did not take it;
but you know equally as well that he cannot prove that I did.”
Sorrowfully the old judge said: “In order to be cleared of this charge,
Mahala, the prosecutor _must_ fail to prove that you took the money.”
Her head bowed, Mahala stood thinking.
Finally she said to the judge and to the jury: “So far as I know, I am
quite helpless. I have no proof to offer other than my own word. If you
will not accept that I seem to be at your mercy. I beg that you will get
through with this in the speediest manner possible.”
The judge closed the case by instructing the jury on the subject of
“reasonable doubt” and sent them to agree on a verdict. After a day’s
deliberation a verdict of disagreement was rendered. That jury had
contained one man whom Martin Moreland dared not approach, a man who had
convictions, and was above a price. He had obstinately refused to agree
to finding Mahala guilty. He roundly scored the other men for their lack
of penetration, of mercy, of honesty.
When Mahala heard the verdict, she quietly slid down in her seat and was
taken home unconscious by her lawyer and Jason. When reason returned,
many days later, she had to be told that the shock of the trial had
driven her mother, in agony and doubt, to her long rest. There awaited
Mahala this alleviation: Her case had been dismissed by the sympathetic
judge. It was his feeling that the evidence was not sufficient to merit
punishment on Mahala’s part. He told the lawyer for the prosecution that
he must produce something more tangible than the mere fact that Mahala
had been in the house at the time the purse was taken.
This knowledge came too late to be of material help to Mahala. When
Jemima tried to tell her, she discovered from her bright eyes, her
burning cheeks, and a quivering of her lips that she had developed a
fever, and for weeks she lay scorching and babbling while Jemima and
Doctor Grayson, with Jason in the background, worked over her.
In leaving the courtroom, Jason made an attempt to attack Martin
Moreland. The banker was half expecting that something of the kind might
happen. He had so surrounded himself with people craving his favour that
the boy was not able even to reach him.
Then Jason felt the hand of Albert Rich on his arm and he heard his
voice saying: “Don’t be a fool, Jason. You can’t get at him that way.
You can’t help her that way. We must make a clean job of this even if
it’s a long one. We’ve got to trace this thing out and find exactly how
it happened. Every one knows there’s been some underhand work
somewhere.”
When Jason became more controlled, he said to Albert Rich: “Isn’t it
like Junior Moreland to make this horrible trouble and then disappear
and leave his father to get through with the dirty work?”
“Yes,” said Albert Rich, “it’s exactly like Junior to do that very
thing.”
“The day is coming,” said Jason, “and it’s coming very speedily, when I
shall be forced to kill both of those slippery snakes.”
“Hush!” cautioned Albert Rich, “I tell you that when you say such things
you make a fool of yourself. You must not let people hear you. If they
did, and anything happened to either one of them, those who heard would
remember and your day of trouble would come. In that case, you would
cease to be of any help to Mahala.”
With scarcely a thought of food or sleep, completely neglecting his
work, Jason got through the first days of Mahala’s illness. When he
learned that it would be a thing of long duration, that it was an hourly
fight that would stretch out for weeks, he saw that the best thing he
could do was to find another woman to help Jemima and himself, to be on
hand as frequently as possible in order that their every need might be
quickly supplied. In this extremity Jason was so obsessed in helping
with the fight for Mahala’s life that he had no time to pay any
attention to any one else. If he had been paying attention, he might
have seen that there was something of a turning in the tide of feeling
concerning Mahala. There had been many people who, in the beginning, had
accepted the thought that because of her father’s disaster and her need
for money, she might have done this thing, even as Junior had pityingly
suggested to every one he could before leaving.
But there were a number of people in the town, who, when they stopped to
think for a few days, realized the fact that Mahala was not in financial
extremity. Albert Rich had discovered a piece of land belonging to her,
that with cleaning up and cultivation, might become valuable. Jemima was
furnishing her a roof. With her own efforts she was earning a
comfortable living for herself and her mother. It was these people who
began saying, at first tentatively and later with confidence, that the
whole thing was another piece of dirty work on the part of the
Morelands; that it was quite impossible that the daughter of Mahlon and
Elizabeth Spellman should be a common thief; that it was unthinkable
that the little girl who had been reared among them with such fastidious
care should have developed a moral nature that could so easily be broken
down.
In the days that passed while Mahala lay muttering on her pillow, there
were many people who began making the journey to her door, and the door
was as far as any of them ever travelled. Right there the face of
Jemima, as coldly graven as any face of stone, met them, and Jemima did
not mince words.
She said to Mrs. Williams flatly: “You’re about three weeks too late.
The time you ought to have come and made a stand and done something was
before that damned trial. You let things go on and let her be tortured
to the breakin’ point and now you want to know if there’s anything you
can do! Let me tell you pretty flat that there ain’t! What Mahala needs
right now is cold baths and any nourishment she can take, and the loving
care of people who understand her and sympathize with her, and that
she’s gettin’ from me. If any of the rest of the folks is meditatin’
comin’, at this time of the day, you can tell ’em from me that I wish
they’d stay away. They’re takin’ up time and they’re usin’ strength that
Mahala needs!”
She shut the door with all the emphasis she dared—but her consideration
was solely for the girl lying in the room in which her mother had lain
for such a long time before her. Her heavy hair was unbound and spread
over the pillow. Her body lay quiet; her head kept rolling back and
forth; her hands picked at the covers or twisted together, and from her
lips there came constantly a plaintive murmur: Where were all her
friends? Had she no friends anywhere in the world? Sometimes she spent
hours trying to convince her father or her mother that she was not a
thief. Sometimes she cried pitifully and begged the whole town to
believe that it was impossible that she could have done the thing of
which she was accused.
Presently, the greater part of the town began to believe this. Martin
Moreland found he was meeting a look of cold questioning on the faces of
men who always had been friendly. The pastor of the Presbyterian Church,
of which he was a deacon, had entered his room at the bank and no one
knew what took place behind the closed doors, but as he left the room,
several customers in the bank had heard his voice distinctly as he said
to Martin Moreland: “I have the feeling that the life of this girl is
endangered. If it is to be saved, it is upon your head to discover the
necessary evidence to save it.” That was repeated over the town, and
there were many who came to feel the same way.
For once in her life Mahala was being the perfect lady that her mother
had always exhorted her to be. She was lying still, having the typhoid
fever, undoubtedly from germs she had accumulated in the county jail
where she had drunk avidly to quench a consuming thirst while she waited
for Jason—having it quietly, in a way that her mother would have highly
approved had she been there to dictate exactly the manner in which a
lady should have a fever.
Sitting on the back steps waiting to see if the opportunity to be of any
service might arise, Jason said to Jemima early in Mahala’s illness:
“I’ve been thinking. The money I put up for Mahala’s bail has been
returned to me. I’ve a notion to take some of it and fix up her house in
the country so that it will be ready for her to go to when she gets over
this. There’s nobody here she’ll be interested in seeing. The change
might give her something to think of, it might help her. How do you feel
about it?”
“I think,” said Jemima, “that it would be the very thing. I’ll go with
her and we’ll live together. We’ll raise chickens and calves and pigs
and she’ll feel better, be stronger, than she would at what she’s been
doin’.”
So the two conspirators began a plot that ended in Jason’s finding a new
interest in life. He told Peter Potter what he was planning, and with
his approval and his help, Jason went at the work of repairing the house
and redeeming the piece of land that Mahlon Spellman had thought so
worthless that he had even forgotten to mention that he ever had
purchased it.