The sheriff obeyed her. He spread the money, the railroad tickets, and the contents of the pocket book upon the table. The minister, at the call of Mahala’s eyes, went to her. He put his arm around her and drew her shivering little body to him with his strength. Looking into her eyes, he said: “Tell us, Mahala, why did Junior Moreland want to ruin you?”
Mahala drew a deep breath that steadied her. “You must ask him,” she said, never so true to her best instincts as in that hour.
Albert Rich came to her other side and took hold of her also, because he was human and his heart ached intolerably. Across her, he said to the minister: “Ask me. They were classmates from childhood. She watched the development of his character, day by day. Fashioned as God made her, she could do nothing but loathe him. Repeatedly she refused to marry him. This is her punishment. This is a new demonstration to Ashwater of the power of riches directed by the Morelands.”
Mahala thrust her hands wide spread before her. She drew away from the men, who were trying to reinforce her strength with theirs. She said to them: “If all of you are satisfied, will you please go?”
Albert Rich said to her: “Mahala, are you strong enough? Could you endure a trip to town with us? Becky feels that she can’t die in peace until she has seen you. She is begging for you constantly.”
Mahala assented. “Wait in the carriage,” she said. “Give me a few minutes to think, to make myself presentable, and then I will try to go with you.”
She hastily straightened her attire, then she went through the back of the house. She found Jason sitting in the kitchen, his face buried in his arms. In tones of cold formality as to a stranger, she said to him: “Becky is asking for me. Will you close and lock the house and then come to the bank after me? They say she is dying, that she feels she cannot go in peace until she has seen me. I am forced to go.”
As they drove through the brilliancy of spring along the River Road, the men tried to say kindly things to Mahala. Presently, they realized that she was not hearing them, that they were wasting words.
The outskirts of the town of Ashwater showed that it had been shaken from centre to circumference. Women were running bareheaded across the streets. Men were hastening here and there, and it could be seen that their hands were shaking, that their faces were set, that the expressions upon them more clearly resembled ravenous animals than men. They were calling out to each other, they were breathing threats, they were uttering awful curses. Man was telling man what the hands of the Morelands had done to him. Here was a man whose land had gone delinquent, and before he was able to redeem it, Martin Moreland had taken it from him for a third of its value. Here was a seamstress who had not been able to pay the street taxes in front of her little home, and because she had borrowed from Martin Moreland she had lost her shelter.
Even from the country there were beginning to come teams driven by men whose faces were pictures of outrage. Conspicuous on the village streets was the form of Jimmy Price. He was rushing around with a sickle in one hand, telling every one who would listen what every one else had said. For once in his life he had forgotten to try to make himself ridiculous. In his excitement he became a pathetic thing. He who never had anything to lose was blustering, threatening, and wildly gesticulating over the wrongs of others. Men who had lost heavily, many of them the savings of a lifetime, were in a different mood. They were gathered in grim consultation. They were passing from house to house, in harsh tones they were making sure of their grievances: “Just what was the sum he skinned you out of, Robert?” “Did you say, John, your wife needn’t have died if you hadn’t been forced to move her in mid winter when she’d just had the baby?”