The White Flag

by Gene Stratton-Porter

“I’ve known a few men in my time,” he said, “who were just naturally cruel; but Martin Moreland is just naturally a devil.”

Jason assented, and then he asked his leading question of Peter.

“I’ve been told,” he said, “that Becky Sampson goes into George Sand’s grocery, picks up whatever suits her fancy, and walks away, and that Martin Moreland foots her bills. Do you know whether that’s the truth?”

“Come here a minute,” said Peter.

Jason followed him to the back of the store. Out of a safe which was a part of the new building designed to do away with some of his trips to Bluffport, since Peter had no use for the village banker, he took one of the old ledgers he had brought back. He leafed over its pages until he came to one at the head of which was written, “Becky Sampson.” He showed Jason an account extending over years. He pointed to the foot of each page where the account was totalled and the total was carried over and added to the account of Martin Moreland.

As Peter closed the ledger and returned it to the safety of the vault he said: “I lost a good deal of his business when my store got to its lowest point. I lost the rest of it when I took you in; but I’ve made so much more with your help that I don’t care. Martin Moreland always put my back up like a mad cat’s whenever he came near me, anyway.”

Jason went through his work the remainder of that day without giving much thought to what he was doing. In the back of his head he was thinking of the woman, who, from childhood, had been supposed to be his mother. While she never had treated him as he saw other women treating their children, she never had been aggressively unkind to him. He had been plainly fed on the simplest fare; he had been scantily clothed; but he was comfortable. He never had been forced to go to school with icy feet and a purple nose. He had always had a warm coat with mittens in his pocket. From earliest remembrance he had worked all day and in a manner that produced results. He realized that his deepest thanks were due to Marcia; that she had taught him to do this, and that, had he not known how to work efficiently and speedily when he was left alone, he would have been deserted indeed. If he had not been quick and neat and efficient, it would not have been in his soul to perform the near miracle that he had performed in the transformation of Peter’s grocery from the third in the town to the first. He would not have been able to draw patronage in spite of the things that repeatedly came to his ear that the powerful banker was doing secretly to prevent Peter’s business from flourishing.

There were many things that Martin Moreland could do to any man he had in his power financially. The one place in which Peter Potter always had shown deep wisdom was in keeping out of Moreland’s hands financially. In his worst days, if he had a small surplus to bank, he had left the store in charge of Jason, climbed into his delivery wagon, and jogged to Bluffport. So long as he was not under financial obligations at the First National, so long as his store was fresh and shining, his windows filled with attractive signs encircled by attractive food in the way of corroboration, Martin Moreland had not been able either to say or to do anything that would injure him.

Reviewing all these things, and studying them over, Jason was slowly beginning to arrive at conclusions. As he grew older and watched the ramifications of life unfold everywhere around him, he began to see and to understand and to place his own interpretation upon things that had happened to him ever since his childhood. Because Marcia had never been actively unkind to him, because life with her was the only life he had known up to the time that she had vanished in one black night of horror, Jason’s thoughts of her were not wholly unkind. As he studied the situation in Ashwater, as he realized what financial power like that of Martin Moreland meant in the hands of an unscrupulous man, he found himself thinking more frequently, and even in a kindlier way, concerning Marcia. If Martin Moreland were a man sufficiently bright mentally, sufficiently unscrupulous to encompass the downfall of one after another of the financial men of Ashwater and adjoining counties, it was not so very much of a marvel that he might also have in his power a woman who was standing alone.

Jason began to wonder where Marcia was; what life was doing to her; whether she really was his mother, and if she was, whether she would be pleased to see him, to know that he was prospering, to know that very frequently he made the journey to Bluffport for Peter Potter, and that in the bank there stood an account to his credit from which nothing ever had been deducted except for his barest necessities—food, clothing, and books. With the stigma of his mother’s occupation removed from him, with the changed appearance through years of growth, sufficient food, and not too strenuous work, Jason was slowly developing into an attractive figure. Always he had kept in mind, that if he did make a noteworthy success of life, he must remember his books. He found that during the years when he had fixed his lessons in his mind, repeating formulas, tables, and equations at the same time he was selling tomatoes and raisins and tobacco, he had acquired what might be denominated the “habit” of study. He liked to study; he liked to carry a problem in his head, thrash it out to a certain point, and to experience the feeling of power he experienced when sudden interruptions diverted his mind, and yet, with the return of leisure, came the ability to return to his problem, take it up where he had left off, and carry it to a successful conclusion. This argued well for the fact that he was able to attain for himself, by himself, a degree of culture that might possibly surpass that which others were acquiring in their school work. When Commencement was over and Mahala no longer entered the store to show him how far the classes had advanced, Jason had procured for himself higher books and gone on with what really were the beginnings of a college education.