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!”
CHAPTER XVIII
“A Triumph in Millinery”
Just at the time when Nancy Bodkin felt that life might be taking on a happier aspect for Marcia, she heard the slam of the screen door and looking from her work down the long aisle of the store, she saw coming toward her what she thought was the handsomest man that she ever had seen. In her hasty summary she could note that he was tall, that he was dark, that he was tastefully and expensively clothed. Her eyes raced about the room searching for Marcia who was standing before a case in which she was arranging some finished hats. She saw Marcia start and cast a glance in her direction. She saw her hesitate before she moved forward to meet the stranger. Nancy laid down her work, crossed her hands on it, and sat watching intently. She saw the young man take an envelope from his pocket and with a few polite sentences he drew therefrom some old yellowed papers which he showed to Marcia but did not give into her keeping. She saw him hand Marcia some clean, new papers, and with a bow of exaggerated deference, she saw him turn and leave the store. She watched Marcia follow him, close the door and turn the key in the lock. It was mid-day; customers might come at any minute. In a daze she watched Marcia with a ghastly face come the length of the store toward her and draw the curtains behind her. She felt the papers thrust into her hands. Then she realized that Marcia was on her knees; she felt the weight of her head in her lap, the clinging grip of her arms around her.
The little milliner slowly straightened. She never had felt quite so important, quite so confident, quite so worth while in all her life. Suddenly, to herself she became a rock upon which a craft was being splintered. The hand she laid on Marcia’s bent head was perfectly firm.