The White Flag

by Gene Stratton-Porter

Jason stood still, holding the box. His heart was pounding until he had to grip tight to keep from dropping his gift. He could still feel her breath on his cheek. He could hear the shaken voice. In his nostrils was the odour of her nearness, of food that she had thrust into his hands. All this was a miracle straight from heaven, but there was a greater far—an overwhelmingly greater. She had not said one word of condemnation; she had neither chided nor reproached him.

Jason raised his head and tested his shoulders. Gripping the box carefully, he went down the Spellman back walk, through the gate, and then he entered a gate opposite, and skirting a house, came out on the adjoining side of the block. From there on, with no particular haste, he made his way home.

It would be closer truth to state that his feet made their way home; his brain knew very little about where he was going or why. He had given Mahala a gift. He had seen it in her arms. He had heard her voice crying out before every one that she loved it. He had punished Junior Moreland’s rudeness and roughness. She had known that he had done it, and she had not even mentioned the fact that she knew.

When he reached home, Jason sat on the back steps in the beneficence of the October moon, and with the box on his knees, stared up at the sky. He was trying, with all his might, to understand what had happened, and how it had happened, and why. There had been no time to think. From the branches of a maple tree he had watched the progress of Mahala’s party, even as he had watched hundreds of other parties from trees and bushes, all his lonely, neglected childhood. He had seen Mahala’s trip to the gate with Junior. He had heard what they said; had seen Junior’s rude act. He had had no time to think; he had followed an animal impulse. Of all the town Mahala was the one creature in woman’s form who had been truly kind to him, who had tried to make him feel that he was not an outcast, who had put into his heart the thought, that if he would culture himself and do what was right, he might have an equal chance with other men when he grew up. When she was offended and had cried out, Jason had bridged space with a piece of brick wrenched from the wall of a flower bed beside which he had landed as he slid from the tree. When he saw Junior fall, he had been paralysed. He had not known but that he must go in the house and admit that he had killed him, until Mahala stood near offering him food, urging his flight to safety.

Jason studied the moon critically. He had never before realized that it was so big, that it seemed so close, that with his unassisted eyes he could trace the conformations upon it. Then he told the moon his secret.

“When she has time to study this over, she will think I am a coward to have thrown the brick. I should have overtaken him and beaten him with my fists.”

Sick with shame and humiliation, Jason pondered deeply on the subject and made his high resolve. Hereafter, he would not be afraid. Hereafter, he would not be ashamed. He would do the level best that was in his power and some day, in some way, there would be a turning. Things would come right for him.

Resolves are wonderful. They brace mentality and the physical being as well. The odour of tempting food persisted, and still watching the moon, listening to the sounds of night, surrounded by the silver silence lightly flecked by the softly dropping gold and red leaves, Jason had his first experience with really delicious food, delicately prepared.

When he had finished the last crumb, he carried the box to the small, ramshackle woodhouse beside the back walk and dropped it behind a pile of split wood. Then he softly opened the back door and started to climb the stairs. Marcia’s voice stopped him.

“Jason,” she called through the darkness, “what made you so late?”