Wordless, Mahala set down the lantern and held out her arms for the child. Jason gave the baby to her and lifted Ellen. Mahala picked up the lantern, and they carried Ellen home and laid her on her bed. The baby had fallen asleep and they put him in his cradle and covered him. Then they knelt, one on each side of Ellen, and sobbed out the pain, the grief, and the torture that had torn their hearts to the limit of endurance.
CHAPTER XXIII
“The Flag on Its Journey”
Stumblingly Marcia made her way from the alley, and finding the nearest livery stable, she had some difficulty in persuading a man to drive her to Bluffport. During that ride she realized only one thing. The hand of God had intervened and she was forever freed from the power of either of the Morelands. Never again need she fear the Martin Moreland whom she had last seen clutching the white flag and babbling over Rebecca’s speech. Never again need she fear the sardonic smile, the merciless cruelty of the beautiful boy, who, with the utmost politeness, had taken the revolver from her shaking hands with a deep bow and a gay, “Permit me,” and with no instant of hesitation had discharged it into his own breast. He must have known that no escape was left him and that the wrath of Jason would be as inexorable as Fate itself. He had preferred escaping all of them in his own way. Abominable as he had been, Marcia was almost stunned at herself as she rode through the night thinking things over, to find that she had been unable, either when she stood before him alone, or as she watched from the closet during the appearance of Jason and Mahala, to keep from admiring Junior. She found herself saying to the darkness: “What a wonderful man he might have been! How lovable, how brave!”
It comforted her heart as they came down the main street of Bluffport, to see a light in the back of the Bodkin Millinery, to know that there was food and a warm welcome awaiting her. In a few minutes more she was sobbing in utter abandonment on the narrow breast of Nancy. After she had regained her composure and Nancy had done everything to comfort and to console her, they sat until almost daybreak talking things over.
When she had rehearsed every detail of the day, Marcia lifted her head: “I think,” she said, “that I am as safe at last as I ever can be. Jason will never do anything to harm me. All the mentality Martin Moreland has left will be occupied from now on with fulfilling the curse set upon him by Rebecca. I truly believe that I have nothing further to fear.”
Nancy sat thinking for a long time. Then she looked at Marcia and said softly: “And now, Marcia, will you listen to the minister?”
Marcia sat a long time in deep thought, and then she said quietly: “To have the love of a good man, to have the home and the security that he would give me if he did not know, might be a wonderful thing. But I could not marry him without telling him, because, so surely as I did not, some way, some of my graves would open and the dead would confront me; and there is the child that I would not be considered suitable to mother. The only way I can see out of it is for you and me to go on together making the best that we can of life.”
It hurt Nancy Bodkin sorely to see Marcia suffer. She had a pang, too, for the minister, but deep in her heart she was ashamed of herself for the little throb of rejoicing that sprang up at Marcia’s words. She might dismiss her remotest fear. Nothing ever could sever their partnership or spoil their friendship; until one or the other of them lay down in the final sleep, the Bodkin Millinery would go on doing business and each of the partners would give to the other the undivided devotion of a sincere heart.
When another winter had run its course, under the old apple trees of May, Jason sat on a bench in the orchard with young Jason on his lap. Kneeling in front of them, Mahala was playing a game almost as old as babies. Holding up one pink, bare toe for every line, she chanted: