“A MILLSTONE AND THE HUMAN HEART”
During the days that Mahala lay approaching the culmination of the final
test as to whether her physical forces were strong enough to endure the
ravages of the fever and leave her only sufficient strength to go on
breathing, Jason worked frantically. For the first time in his life he
found himself doing the thing that was popular. Every one was willing to
help him. Carpenters would work over hours and on holidays; painters and
paper hangers were equally accommodating. The neighbours on the farms
surrounding Mahala’s forty acres came to his rescue. Without being
asked, they mowed weeds, burned brush heaps, trimmed the orchard, and
rebuilt tottering fences. They made a day of straightening the leaning
stable on its foundations and staying its framework, so that with new
roof and sheathing, it would be a tenable building for many years to
come.
Jason superintended everything, but he confined his personal work to the
house. While the men were nailing shingles and laying flooring, he was
peeling off rotten plastering, tearing away broken lathing, working
wherever he could lend a hand in most swiftly furthering the task he had
undertaken. Every morning he stood at the foot of Mahala’s bed looking
down at her a few moments before he went to work. All day her tortured
face was the spur that drove him to accomplishments worthy of the best
efforts of two men. Jemima kept assuring him that he need not be so
terribly anxious. There would be a crisis, but she and Doctor Grayson
and the nurse were watching for it; they would be prepared; they would
save Mahala.
But there came a day when Jason staggered into the little house wearing
a ghastly face. He paid no attention to the food Jemima set out for him.
He made his way to Mahala’s room, and clinging to the foot of the bed,
he stood staring down at her, an agony of doubt, of fear, written over
his face and figure. Finally, Jemima could endure it no longer. She put
her arm around him and helped him from the room. He went out and sat
down on the back steps, where Jemima followed him.
“Don’t feel so badly, Jason,” she said. “You’re working so hard that
your nerve is givin’ way. All of us feel that Mahala is holdin’ her own.
She’s goin’ to come out of this. You needn’t be so afraid. We won’t let
her die.”
The face that Jason lifted to hers was so ghastly that Jemima never
forgot it.
“You haven’t stopped to consider,” he said, “that death might be the
best thing that could happen to her.”
“No, I haven’t,” said Jemima stoutly, “because I don’t think it. She’s
young, and she’s strong, and she’s innocent.”
Jason sat so still that it occurred to Jemima that he had stopped
breathing; and then he said quietly: “One man said she was innocent.
Eleven say that she is guilty. That is a stain that is going to mark her
the remainder of her life. I’m not sure that life is the best thing for
her.”
“The only thing of which I’m sure,” said Jemima heartily, “is that
you’ve worked to the breaking point, or you may have picked up this
fever yourself. Doctor Grayson says people do get it from one another.
Now you come and get some food, and go to bed and have a good sleep, and
to-morrow you work just half as hard as you have to-day.”
There were three anxious days at the time the fever ran its course, but
Doctor Grayson was a skilled and a conscientious physician and he was
dealing with a condition that he had handled many times in his life when
he did not have the vitality of youth to aid him. The thing that he
would have to combat in Mahala’s case would be her lethargy, the
indifference that he felt sure she would feel, when consciousness
returned, as to whether she lived or died, and this proved to be the
hardest battle that he had to fight. But she was young; she was
physically strong. Jemima, the nurse, and Doctor Grayson never faltered
in their unwavering work and faith. The result was, that a week after
the crisis, they were beginning to whisper of mysterious things to
Mahala. There was a journey that she was to make; there was a wonderful
surprise in store for her; something delightful was going to happen.
Because she was very weak, because she was desperately tired, because
her heart had been as nearly broken as human hearts ever come to that
condition without ultimate completion, Mahala found the easiest way was
to listen, to accept what was being said. Several times she had sat in
her chair by the window for an hour; her feet had touched the floor; she
had stood upon them and performed a few wavering journeys around the
room.
Jemima had been dismantling and sending away everything in the house
belonging to Mahala that she could spare. Her clothing was packed, and
she was counting the days until the removal could be made, when there
came to the faithful creature a telegram from her daughter-in-law, and
this time the hand of fate had fallen heavily upon Jemima. In the prime
of her son’s life, in the full tide of his strength, with his wife and a
house full of small children depending upon him, a piston had burst in a
piece of machinery upon which he had been working in the factory that
employed him, and the remainder of Jemima’s life was taken out of her
hands. She was asked to come and help to rear and to support seven
children, all of them youngsters needing everything. She was asked to
come immediately, so there was nothing to do but to tell Mahala that
there was trouble in Jemima’s family; that she had been called, and to
leave Mahala to the care of the nurse.
So many things had happened to Mahala that one more did not matter. She
wept a few weak tears of compassion for Jemima and pity for herself and
went soundly to sleep at the hour of Jemima’s departure. The nurse was a
kindly woman, a judicious woman, and for the remainder of her stay she
found herself adhering very rigidly to the rules that Jemima had
explained to her. Backed by Jemima’s reasons, they seemed very good
rules. People who had failed Mahala in her hour of tribulation might
stay away and attend to their own affairs; they might learn the lesson
very thoroughly that the friend in need is the one who is the friend in
deed; and that if people were not friends in need, there was every
likelihood that they never would be friends again in any conditions that
might obtain.
On the day that Jason announced that the house was ready, that he was
very certain that he and the daughter of one of the neighbouring farmers
who had been helping him to arrange the house, would be able to care for
Mahala in the future, the nurse helped him to lay springs and a mattress
in Peter Potter’s delivery wagon and make up a comfortable bed. With a
smile on her pale lips and that brand of hopelessness in her heart which
amounts to passivity, Mahala walked between the nurse and Jason and was
lifted to the bed. With closed eyes she lay quietly while she was driven
through the streets of Ashwater, out country highways, and slowly down
the River Road until they reached the house she once had visited.
As they had driven along in the warming sunshine she had felt that it
made small difference to her whether she lived or died. When she saw the
transformation that had taken place in her house and land, there came to
her with a distinct shock the feeling that it would be ungracious of her
to die. There was an expectant look about the face of the waiting house.
It proclaimed itself with dignity and pride; it was alluring to look
at—all fresh paint and lace-curtained windows. It was standing up
straight upon its foundations. A veranda had been added across the
front, and everything was a vision of peace and quiet beauty. It gave
Mahala the feeling that she would not be doing the square thing not to
live in it, not to love it, not to search for happiness there.
Sitting on the veranda was an attractive young girl. When she saw the
covered wagon coming, she arose and came down to the gate, swinging it
open. She was a slip of a thing with light hair, wide-open questioning
young eyes, and a provoking red mouth. She was quite tall for a girl,
slender, and neatly dressed. There was the vivid pink of fresh air, an
outdoor flush on her cheeks.
Mahala looked at Jason; her lips formed the one word: “Who?”
Jason answered: “Her name is Ellen Ford. She’s the daughter of your
nearest neighbour. She’s taken a lot of interest while I was fixing up
the place. She’s agreed to stay with you and take care of you until you
feel well enough to manage by yourself. She’s a real nice girl with
sufficient sense to keep her mouth shut. She thinks you wonderful and
she’s crazy about having the chance to stay with you.”
For a long time Mahala’s eyes looked intently down the road in front of
her. The sight of the little house, almost buried in green, of the
neatly fenced fields, and the thought of searching for happiness again
had brought rushing back to her brain the one thought that, since her
day of direst disaster, had persisted with her. Suddenly the big tears
began to brim from her eyes and slide down her cheeks. Then she lifted
her head and looked into Jason’s eyes.
“Jason,” she cried, “you know that I never touched that money!”
Jason put his arms around her and muttered words of comfort. He was
telling her to be brave, to be calm, to think of nothing but that she
was coming to her very own home, that for the remainder of her life, if
she chose, she was to do nothing but tend her flowers and her garden and
do whatever she pleased there. When they stopped, Jason lifted her
bodily, carrying her across the veranda and into her room where he laid
her on the bed upon which she had slept as a child.
When she opened her tired eyes, she saw that the room was almost an
exact reproduction of her old one. She swung her feet to the floor, and
steadying herself by the furniture, made her way around the room in
wonderment almost too great for words. At sight of her, the gold bird
burst into song. She looked into the living room and she cried out in
astonished delight when she saw upon the walls pictures that had
belonged to her father and mother, the oil portrait of her mother
hanging above the mantel—a whole room full of precious things that she
had thought lost to her forever. There were several cases of the books
they had loved like old friends waiting to greet her. She forgot her
weakness. She voiced a cry of delight as she stood in the middle of the
room gazing in an ecstasy at each precious thing she never had hoped to
see again.
She made her way to the door of the next room, and there she found a
guest chamber furnished with more of their home possessions, and another
door led to the dining room—floor, side walls, furnishings—each object
was familiar to her. Crossing it, she looked into the kitchen, furnished
as were the other rooms, with her possessions. And there she saw Ellen
Ford busy preparing supper for her. Through the back door she could see
a roofed veranda having chairs and a small table, and on back to the old
orchard from which she could hear the humming wings of bees, and the
voices of the bluebirds. She could see the stable with white chickens
busy around it and a cow and a calf in the lot beside it. Her quick eyes
took in the upper part of the stable where she judged, from the
arrangement of windows, that Jason had made a room for himself while he
worked.
With the bravest effort at self-control of which she was capable, Mahala
turned to Ellen Ford. “I want to thank you very much for your kindness
in helping to make a home for me,” she said.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” answered the girl, busy over the stove. “We join
land, you know, and we always try to do what we can for any of our
neighbours.”
And then, in an effort to be friendly, to cover an embarrassing
situation, she rattled a kettle lid and fussed with some things on the
table as she remarked casually: “Of course, we’d expect you to do
anything for us that I’ve tried to do here, in case we needed it.”
Mahala looked at the girl quickly. She divined that the speech had been
made to put her at ease, but she also divined something else. It was
innocent, it was simple, it was honest. Here was some one who had faith
in her, who had been willing to bolster that faith with works; some one
who was proud to be with her, to help her till she should again be able
to help herself. Before she thought what she was doing, she found
herself standing face to face with Ellen Ford. She realized that her
hands were reaching up to the shoulders of the girl, who was taller than
she. She found herself crying out: “You know, don’t you, that I never
touched that money?”
Instantly the stout young arms closed around her. Mahala felt herself
drawn to Ellen Ford and a work-coarsened young hand was stroking her
hair. “Why, of course you didn’t!” she said. “Every one with any sense
knows you couldn’t!”
Mahala turned suddenly and went back to her room where she was greeted
with another gush of song from the throat of her bird. She was too weak
to reach its cage. She dropped upon the side of the bed and sat staring
through the window. When Ellen came presently, saying supper was ready,
she went to the dining room and tried with all her might to force down
her throat some of the very good food which the girl had deftly
prepared. Then she sat for an hour in an arm chair on the veranda,
looking at the flowers redeemed from the trespassing of overrunning
weeds, fertilized, and cultivated. How they would bloom in the spring,
how well the bushes looked, and the trees; how rank the grass! By and
by, the moon came up and the night was filled with the soft sounds of
fall. It was Jason who said to her: “I wish you would lie down now,
Mahala. I think you’re taxing yourself too far. You’ve got to take this
slowly. In a few weeks you’ll be surprised at what the air, and the
food, and the work that you will find, will do for you.”
Mahala arose and went to him. She laid her hands upon his arm. “Jason,”
she said in a shaking voice, “I had hopes about this land the minute I
saw it. It will take all the rest of my life to tell you what a
wonderful thing I think you have done in fixing up my house for me. I
never, never can tell you what it means to me to have these things from
my home back again. How does it happen?”
“Don’t, Mahala,” said Jason, taking her arm and trying to guide her
toward the door. “Don’t worry about these things now. Don’t try to talk.
There’s a long time coming when you can tell me anything you want to.”
Mahala stood looking up at him.
“Jason, are you going back to Ashwater to-night?” she asked.
“No,” answered Jason, “I’m only going to Ashwater when business takes me
there. I’ve still got my interest with Peter. I am going to help him
with his books. I’m paying a good man that I trained myself to take my
place. After I got your house started enough that I knew what it would
cost, I had sufficient money left to buy forty more acres joining yours,
so I went into partnership with you. As soon as you’re able, you’re
going to do the house work and I’m going to do the farm work, and we’re
going to share and share alike. There’s nothing the matter with your
land. All it needs is work. The cost of the improvements on the house I
have charged to you; I’ll take that much out of your share. Now you go
to bed and go to sleep. My room is over the carriage room in the stable,
and Ellen’s going to stay all night with you as long as you want her.”
Then Mahala found herself standing beside her bed. Slowly, she slipped
down on her knees. She leaned forward; she tried to pray. But she found
there was nothing that she wanted to say to God except to beg of Him to
take care of Jason, to reward his thoughtfulness and his kindness. Then
she put out the light, laid her head on her pillow, and in spite of
herself, began an intensive review of the day.
She recalled and dwelt upon each incident and suddenly, with the torture
of memory, there came to her the thought that while Jason had
overwhelmed her with kindness, had given her every assurance that she
would be sheltered and cared for, he had not said the words that her
heart had been hungering to hear him say. He had not gripped her hands
tightly and looked straight into her eyes and said with the firmness of
deliberate assurance: “Mahala, I know that you didn’t touch that money.”
The thought shocked and startled her. She recalled that she had expected
it. She wondered how he could have forgotten to give her the assurance
that he must have known her heart would crave. She found herself sitting
up in bed, looking through the window at the moon-whitened world
outside. The notes of a whippoorwill came sharply stressed through the
night. Back in the orchard she could hear the wavering complainings of a
hunting screech owl. She could hear the little creatures of night
calling. With her hands gripped together and pressed hard against her
heart, she heard her own voice repeating: “Oh, Jason, I didn’t! I
didn’t!” Over and over she reached the moment of the question she had
asked. Finally, she was able to comfort herself with the kindness of the
things that he had said, with the manifestations of the thoughtfulness
and the planning and the work that he had done in her behalf. She
succeeded in making herself believe that Jason was so sorry, and his
mind so filled with what he had been doing, that he had merely neglected
to speak the words her heart so longed to hear.
She made a brave effort in the days that followed, to keep that thought
from entering her mind. She was too proud to mention the matter again,
but constantly she kept watching Jason. She found that she was waiting
to hear him involuntarily say the words that she longed to hear. As she
studied him and the situation, there came to her the realization that he
was thinking for her, that he was planning for her, that he was working
for her, but equally he was thinking, he was planning, he was working
for himself. He was making the money that would insure her having a home
again and freedom, but he was assuming nothing. Whatever he made, he
divided equally. For the share of land that she furnished he was doing
his equivalent in work. The division was fair enough. She did not know,
until Jason told her, that he always had loved the country, that it had
been a boyhood hope to own and to work upon land, that he had only done
the thing that he was glad in his heart to do when he had escaped from
the grocery through the arrangement he had made, and found himself free
to devote most of his time to the development and cultivation of land.
He pointed out to her the extent of the land he had purchased adjoining
her nearest neighbour, James Ford, the father of Ellen who was still
helping her about the house and in the garden.
Nothing could have given Mahala more comfort at that minute than the
thought that Jason was not sacrificing himself; that he was doing the
thing that he had hoped, and for a long time planned, to do; that he was
happy with the wind in his hair and his feet in the freshly turned earth
of a furrow. Watching him at his work, sometimes answering the chatter
of Ellen, who was so full of the joy of living that she talked upon any
occasion that she felt it proper that she might speak, milling these
things over in her heart, there came to Mahala the realization that
Ashwater stood to Jason Peters in some small degree in the same light as
it now did to her. It had been a place where an unkind fate had bound
him and he had suffered from taunt and from insult; he had suffered from
unjust persecution; manhood had brought to him the power to fend for
himself and the friend he needed in his hour of trial, but it had not
taught him to love the place in which he lived or the people among whom
he had endured humiliation and suffering.
The first wave of gladness that she had known since her earliest
calamity had befallen her, washed up in Mahala’s heart with a real
comprehension of the fact that Jason was happy; that he wanted to live
upon the land; that he enjoyed every foot of his environment. It pleased
her when she discovered that he disliked that day upon which he was
forced to go upon errands to Ashwater to repair implements or for food.
When she had watched him until she thoroughly convinced herself of these
things, one degree of the bitterness in Mahala’s heart was assuaged.
Another thing that helped her on the road toward an approach to her
normal condition was the attitude of Ellen Ford. Ellen was a charming
girl. Mahala soon learned to love her. She was frank, unusually
innocent. Mahala decided that her mother must have used a much greater
degree of caution in speech before her daughter than she had understood
was common with country women in general. Ellen came when she was
wanted; with perfect cheerfulness went home when she was not. She
chattered on every other subject on earth, but she never evinced the
slightest curiosity concerning Mahala or what the future might have in
store for her. If the task Mahala laid out for herself was so heavy she
could not finish it, Jason went down the road and told Ellen. The girl
came singing, did what was wanted efficiently, begged the privilege of
brushing Mahala’s hair or doing any possible personal service for her,
and went back singing, Mahala thought, as spontaneously as the bluebirds
and the fat robins of the garden and the orchard. For these reasons,
Mahala found her heart running out to her; found herself praising her
and loving her; listening for her song and her footstep; wishing that
she might do for her some pleasing service in return for the many kind
and practical things that Ellen could think of to do for her.
Imperceptibly each day, but surely in a total of days, Mahala’s strength
began to return, and with it came a high tide in her beauty. Washed in
rain water and dried in the sun, the golden life came back to her hair;
an adorable pink flush into her cheeks; a deeper red than they ever had
known stained her lips. The one place that the mark remained was in the
depths of her eyes. In them dwelt a dread question, a pain that never
left them. Looking deep into them at times, Jason felt that the one
thing for which he could thank God was that he did not there find any
semblance of fear. The horror that had hovered over his boyhood from a
gnawing stomach, a beaten body, and a tormented brain, had left him in
such a condition that at times he acknowledged a sickening surge of pure
fear sweeping through him. Whenever this happened, he set himself to
master it, to prove that he was not afraid. There had been a few times
in his life when the obsession was heaviest upon him, that he had
deliberately put himself in Martin Moreland’s presence, in order to
prove to himself that he could stand, in those days, at the height of
the banker with his shoulders squared and his eyes able to meet those of
any man straightly. He never had been afraid of Junior physically since
the first day in which he had tested the high tide of his youth upon
him. Knowing what Junior had been able to do to him, feeling in the
depths of his heart that the troubles that had fallen upon Mahala were
of Junior’s devising, would breed and keep in Jason a nauseating nerve
strain springing from mental suffering, so strong that it caused
physical reaction.
Mahala spent much of her time in the house. She experienced such joy as
she never had hoped for again merely in walking over the carpets, in
touching the curtains, in handling the linens, the books, the needle
work, and the silver that had been her father’s and her mother’s. By
imperceptible degrees she had altered Jason’s arrangement of the house
until the place became a reproduction of the delicate colour, of
alluring invitation, of nerve-soothing rest that she had homed among
during her childhood. When she could find nothing further to prettify
inside her house—the little house that was truly hers—she walked around
it lavishing love upon the flowers and the bushes, the trees and the
shrubs. She spent a great deal of time on her knees before the boxed bed
running around the house, loosening and fertilizing the soil, picking
out the sly weeds that tried to find a home under the shelter of the
star flowers and the daffodils and the iris. She loved every foot of the
old garden. On her writing desk there were catalogues from which she was
selecting the seeds and bulbs she meant to order for fall planting so
that the coming summer her garden should once more spread its tapestry
of colour and wave its banners of beauty on the air.
She liked to cross the corner of the orchard and feed the chickens and
the white pigeons that shared the barn loft with Jason. She liked to pet
the calf and make friends with the cow. With the assistance of Ellen,
and under the advice of Mrs. Ford, remembering what she could of
Jemima’s methods and following the instructions of several cook books,
she began to prepare meals for Jason and herself which were nourishing
and sustaining, and at the same time, appetizing and attractive. It was
several months before the morning dawned upon which Mahala realized that
the full tide of health was flowing in her veins; that strength had come
back to her; that when she sent for Ellen, most frequently she was doing
it because she wanted company, for the day had not yet arrived when
Mahala would face Ashwater.
There was no one there whom she cared to see; nothing there that she
cared to do. A written slip naming her necessities went in Jason’s
pocket on his trips to town on business connected with the grocery or
conveniences necessary for his farm work. She found, after a few months
of experience of living with the woman who was herself, that a mark had
been set upon her, literally burned into her brain, her heart, and her
soul,—a mark that never could be effaced. The other doors and windows of
the house stood wide open. The front door was always closed, always
locked. She found, too, that if, while she sat by an open window sewing
or under the trees of the dooryard, she heard the rattle of wheels and
saw a face she recognized, she arose and on winged feet put herself out
of hearing in case any one should knock upon her door, so that she would
not be forced to open it and face them.
There were times when she deliberately tried to determine what she
thought and felt concerning Jason, but her brain was still in such
tumult that she could not be definite even with herself. Life had
narrowed her proposition to the one fact that he was everything that she
had left of her old life. She could not look at any beloved possession
that had belonged to her father and her mother without the knowledge
that, save for him, she would have been denied even this poor
consolation from life. She could not move through the small home that in
her heart she soon grew almost to worship without the knowledge that she
owed to him her joy in having it to live in so soon. As she tried to
think things out, it appealed to Mahala that the time had passed in
which she could spend even a thought on remembering the days of his
youth. She herself had been stripped to the bone. She had lost
everything but her respect for herself. Every material comfort she had,
she owed to him. Slowly in her heart there began to take form the
decision that whatever there was of her personality, of her life,
belonged to Jason if he wanted it. If there was any way in which he
cared to use it, it was for him to say what he desired.
During the winter Mahala found herself living passively. She found that
she was allowing each day to provide its duties, and on land she learned
that they were many. Whatever there was to do, she went about casually
and determinedly. Slowly, through absorption in her work, through
contact with the growing and the rejuvenating processes of nature,
through the healing power of spontaneous life around her, the shadow
began to lift. One day she stopped short in crossing the kitchen with a
pan of odorous golden biscuit fresh from the oven in her hands, stunned
by the realization that she was hearing her own voice lifted in a little
murmuring song. There had been days in Mahala’s life when she never
expected that song could ever again return to her lips. After a while,
she realized that she was laughing with Jason over things that occurred
when he came in ravenous from work to food of her preparing. She found
herself talking happy, nonsensical things to the calf and the chickens
that she was feeding, and she had trained the pigeons until they came
circling around her, settling over her head and shoulders like a white
cloud when she entered the barnyard with her feed basket.
So spring came again.
To repay Ellen Ford for the many things that she had done for her for
which she had refused to accept payment in money, Mahala had selected,
from samples she had Jason bring her, a piece of attractive pink calico
and a blue gingham and a finer piece of dainty white goods. From these
she fashioned attractive dresses for Ellen. The white one she made foamy
with lace and feathery with ruffles. Ellen was delighted. She made bold
to throw her arms around Mahala and kiss her repeatedly in an effort to
express her thankfulness for this gift. But when the Ford carriage
passed the house on Sunday morning, taking the family to church, Mahala
was surprised to see that Ellen was wearing the pink dress instead of
the white one.
As she served Jason’s plate at dinner that day she said to him: “I
thought Ellen would wear the white dress I made for her to-day, but I
noticed as they passed that she wore the pink one.”
And Jason answered: “Perhaps she’s saving the white one for some very
special occasion.”
“I suspect that is it,” said Mahala. “Maybe there’s going to be a picnic
or a party.”
A few days later, sitting on her front steps in the soft air of evening,
Mahala saw Ellen slowly coming down the road in her direction, and then
she saw Jason coming from one of his fields carrying a hoe over his
shoulder. His lithe leap carried him over the fence as Ellen was
passing. She saw them stop and begin talking, and then she saw Jason
lean his hoe in the fence corner, turn, and slowly walk back down the
road with Ellen. He stood for a long time at her gate talking with her
before he came back, picked up his hoe, and came on to the house.
For a long time Mahala sat thinking. Then she got up and went to her
room. She shut the door, and lighting a lamp, stood before her mirror
and looked intently at the reflection of her face. It was a very white
face that she saw and it was gazing at her with wide, questioning eyes.
Then slowly she undressed and went to bed without saying good-night to
Jason.
For a few days Mahala went about her work in a sort of stupefied
fashion. Sometimes she lifted her head and ran her hands over her face
as if it were a numb thing that needed, in some way, to be galvanized
into expression by an outside agency. And then, a few days later, there
were steps on the veranda, the door opened, and Jason and Ellen Ford
came in together. Ellen’s face was flushed, her eyes were dancing, and
her red lips were laughing. The white dress was clothing her
beautifully.
In a voice that was steady but slightly husky, Jason said: “Mahala,
Ellen is my wife. We were married an hour ago. I am glad that you’ve
learned already to love her.”
There is large advantage in having been born a thoroughbred. Mahala
kissed Ellen’s pink cheeks. She patted down a white ruffle that was not
quite in place. She said very quietly: “Indeed I have learned to love
Ellen.”
She offered Jason a steady hand and hearty congratulations, and then she
sat down and said evenly: “Now tell me about your plans.”
Their plans were extremely simple. Ellen’s people were selling their
farm and moving away. Jason meant to buy what he needed of their
furniture and set up housekeeping in the home the Fords were abandoning.
He told Mahala that the reason he had set up the bell in her back yard a
few days before and stretched a cord to her room was so that she might
ring any time during the day or night when she wanted either of them.
One ring should be for him, two for Ellen. There was to be no change in
anything except that Jason would not take his meals with her and instead
of sleeping over the stable, he would be across the road and a few yards
farther away. Otherwise they were expecting life to go on exactly as it
always had.
Then Ellen kissed Mahala repeatedly, and with an arm around Jason’s
waist and his hand on her shoulder, they went down the road together.
Mahala fled to her room and locked the door behind her, without
realizing that there was no one against whom she need lock it. Once more
she faced herself in her truthful mirror.
“Exactly the same,” she said at last, “exactly the same.” And then she
cried out at her reflection: “Fool! Fool! You big fool! You’ve worried
your brain, you’ve lain awake nights, trying to figure out whether Jason
was good enough for you. He’s settled your problem by letting you see
that you’re not good enough for him. Fool! Fool! You big fool!”
Her eyes turned inward and backward. Wildly she tried to understand how
this thing could have happened. Then, suddenly, realization came to her.
Her face was dead white, her lips stiff when she announced the
ultimatum: “The reason he didn’t say anything the day we got here was
because he thinks I took it. He thinks I’m a thief. He wouldn’t make me
the mother of his children because in his heart he believes I’m guilty.”
Then Mahala dropped over in merciful unconsciousness. Far in the night,
a heavy moon ray, falling persistently on her face, aroused her. She
drew herself up on her bed and lay as she was till she heard Jason’s
step on the back porch the next morning. Then she forced herself to her
feet, unlocked the door, and went out to meet the day as if it were
going to be exactly like any other day that had passed before it.
In the days that followed, Mahala learned that the extent to which the
human heart can be tortured is practically without any limit. One may
suffer and suffer for years, only to discover that there are still
unplumbed depths of pain and degradation to which one may be forced. In
these days she really was a primitive creature, stripped to the bone.
She was seeing herself now, not as she always had seen herself, but as
other people were seeing her, and slowly there was beginning to rise in
her heart the feeling that if some one did not do something to
reëstablish her before the world and in her own self-respect, she would
be forced to do it herself. With every ounce of strength she had, she
fought herself to keep Jason and Ellen from seeing that she was
suffering, that once more the power to see beauty had left her eyes. Her
ears no longer heard song; hourly they were tortured by the sound of her
own voice muttering in dazed amazement: “He thinks I’m guilty!”