He said to her sneeringly: “You can take your time to cool off. That boy has got to realize once and for all that it is quite impossible for him to interfere in any way with any of the pleasures or the inclinations of my son.”
Later she served him with wine and cake and delicious buttered biscuits, and when he had made himself thoroughly at home, he took his leave. After he had gone, she again locked herself in her room, tore off the fine clothing she had worn, and throwing it aside, pasted down her hair, slipped into her old dress, and, softly climbing the stairs, entered Jason’s room. He was stretched on the bed in a light sleep, breathing hard. His face was white and full of suffering. She stood over him, looking down at him for a long time. Then she straightened the covers and slipped from the room. She went back to her own room, locked the door, and threw herself on her knees beside the bed, her arms stretched out among the finery she had worn, her face buried in the silken covers.
In these homes and in this environment the four children advanced until they entered the first year of high school.
CHAPTER II
“The Gifts of Light and Song”
During the recess period of a brilliant October day, Mahala spent her time inviting those pupils of her school who were her particular friends to attend her birthday party. At fourteen in appearance Mahala was what she had been destined to be from birth. Fourteen years of unceasing drilling, of constant care, of daily admonition on the part of Elizabeth Spellman had made habitual with her daughter an exquisite daintiness of person. The only criticism Jemima Davis had ever been known to make concerning Mrs. Spellman was that she was “nasty nice.” Mahala instinctively drew back from contact with anything that might soil her clothing or her person. While she was thus dainty concerning her exterior, she was equally cleanly and refined in the workings of her heart and her brain. Hers was an unusually active brain; her eyes were flashingly comprehensive. All her life she had been seeing and understanding a great many things that her father and mother never suspected that she had either seen or understood. But since her personal fastidiousness extended to her brain as well as to her body, the result made a composite that was wholly charming.
Mahala’s keen sense of humour kept her lips slightly curled, a dancing light in her eyes. She was always whispering to the anæmic shadow at her elbow: “Oh, Edith, did you see?” “Did you hear?”
Almost always Edith did see and hear, but her interpretations and conclusions were scarcely ever the same as Mahala’s. The sour discontent of her really beautiful dark face came almost as a shock in contrast with Mahala’s person; while mentally the girls were even more unlike. Mahala always had a remedy, always had hope; Edith believed the worst of every one; so when she had leisure time she spent it looking for something worse that she might believe on the slightest pretext.
The result was that every one in the village thought they loved Mahala, and it was curious that this should have been a universal attitude because the particularly spiritual quality of the child’s beauty always had been enhanced by the most tasteful and expensive clothing, so that no other girl of the town could bear comparison with her. Because she always had been generous, always considerate, always just, and always mirthful, she was sure that she was among friends. Every pupil who had gone through seven years of schooling with her knew that her word was secure. If she talked of an incident at all, she could be depended upon to tell the truth. If she criticised an offender, she cut deep, but she did it with fairness. She never wore offensively her dainty clothing, so carefully selected for her in the Eastern cities where her father went to buy goods. She was quite capable of pulling off her coat on the street and allowing any of her girl friends to carry it home that a pattern might be cut from it.
The most shocking occurrence the town had to record concerning Mahala was that one day, in bitter winter weather, she had surrounded herself on the street with a circle of her girl friends and in their shelter deftly removed her exquisitely embroidered petticoat for the benefit of a schoolmate who was visibly shivering with cold. When Mahala, with watery eyes and a red nose, faced her mother that night and confessed what she had done, Elizabeth Spellman began by being shocked and ended by becoming bewildered.