The White Flag

by Gene Stratton-Porter

Jason stood still an instant, then he answered her: “I helped Peter Potter in the grocery for a while. I’ve laid the money I earned on the kitchen table for you.” He hesitated an instant longer before he added: “And then, for a little while, I watched a party through a window.”

He stood still, waiting, but as there was no comment, he climbed the stairs and sat down on the side of his old bed. Through the open window he began another review of what had happened, thinking things out in clearer detail, reasoning, studying, planning, and in his heart—hoping. He tried to picture what was going on in the Spellman home at that minute. He had a vision of Junior, cleansed and bandaged, making his way home in the white heat of anger.

But his vision was not nearly adequate. Junior was so dizzy that he could not stand, even when he tried bravely. Preceded by Jemima carrying a lantern, Mahlon Spellman entered his barn and harnessed his horse. If Mahlon had been asked to describe his feelings, he would have announced that he was outraged. He hated blood; he had hated it all his life. It was one of the things that he had given the widest berth possible. To-night he had been forced to come into actual contact with it. He hated mystery as badly as he hated blood, and who had sent that wonderful little bird that sang its way across his threshold and won his daughter’s affections so easily, was a mystery. Really, it probably had been the cause of the whole trouble, and certainly it was sufficient trouble that a man of his position, of his dignity, should be forced at ten o’clock at night, an ungodly hour, to enter his stable to harness a horse. He had not dared take the time to change his clothing, and if there was anything on earth Mahlon hated worse than any other thing that could happen to clothing, it was stepping into a stable in the shoes and suit that he wore upon the streets. But he was afraid to wait to make the change for fear that Junior would realize what he was doing, while he was almost sick with fear that the boy might be seriously hurt. Even if Elizabeth could feel no yielding bones, no ragged seam, that was no guarantee that there might not be ruptured blood vessels or a clot forming inside the skull.

With shaking fingers Mahlon got the abominable harness upon the abomination of a horse and led it to the front door; and there, helped in by Jemima and Mrs. Spellman, Junior leaned against the carriage seat, which there was every probability he would stain and disfigure, and was driven home.

With shaking fingers Mahlon tied the horse at the Moreland hitching post. With wavering legs he travelled the length of the walk and rang the doorbell. He could see through the lighted windows that the Morelands had not yet retired. He wondered why they were up so late when they were not having a party; and he wondered what he was going to say, and he wondered how he was going to say it. He had no idea what Junior would tell his parents. He had a very clear idea that he wanted them told nothing that would be detrimental to his standing with them. Too frequently he needed the accommodations of the banker when he bought heavy consignments of dry goods in the East; often he needed ready money when he speculated on bits of delinquent land or town properties that he thought a bargain.

Martin Moreland opened his front door. He and Mahlon Spellman had been boys together in the same village. They knew each other thoroughly, but they were not particularly well acquainted. Mahlon Spellman had been a boy as fastidious as the man he became later, while Martin Moreland had been the same kind of boy that developed the man he now was. There always had been sufficient reason why neither of them swam in the same bend of the river or climbed the same trees to gather nuts. Mahlon had done precious little of either.

Each man in his own way thought himself the great man of Ashwater. Each in his own way would have been better pleased to have witnessed the downfall of the other than anything else that could have happened on earth. For this reason, they were always particularly courteous to each other, always giving the impression in public that they were friends.

Seeing Mr. Spellman standing, white and shaken at his door, produced a throb of primitive joy in the heart of Martin Moreland. Perhaps he needed money. Possibly this time he could be hopelessly involved. He thrust forth his hand and cried in his most genial voice: “Why, Mahlon, what brings you out at this time of night? I had thought respectable people like you would have been in bed!”

Mahlon opened his lips in the hope, that as a result of his exemplary life, something exemplary would issue therefrom of its own accord, because he had no idea what to say. There was nothing sharper in Ashwater County than the eyes of Martin Moreland; by this time they had looked past Mahlon, down the length of the walk, and visualized the conveyance at the gate and the bandaged head it contained.

“You don’t mean to tell me,” he cried roughly, “that you have brought Junior home with a broken head! I didn’t know you were having a prize fight. I thought I was sending the boy to a civilized entertainment!”