The White Flag

by Gene Stratton-Porter

He turned and started toward the stairway.

Jason had dropped on his pillow just as he was, and had fallen asleep, his brain busy with the events of the evening. He was deep in the midst of a wonderful dream. He had seen himself with flesh on his bones, hope in his eyes, and pride in his heart. He made a surprising vision. He was wearing clothing as beautiful as the suits that always had been worn by Junior Moreland. He had seen himself, with the step of independence, standing before the door of Mahlon Spellman. He had used the knocker and had stepped inside. The great merchant had shaken hands with him and with his most urbane gesture had indicated that he was to walk into the parlour. He had boldly walked in, and in the presence of Mrs. Spellman and his schoolmates, he had offered Mahala the bird. She had been in such transports of joy as he had seen with his actual eyes that evening. She had opened the cage door and the gold bird had left its perch and flown to her finger; as she held it up, suddenly frightened at the faces and the lights, it had darted swiftly above their heads and from the open doorway.

Her cries of distress awakened him. His feet came to the floor and he swung his body upright. Then he heard. He arose and took three steps to the head of the stairs. He was unconscious that he had reached out and picked up a small wooden stool that stood beside his bed to hold a candle or water. He looked down the stairway. At its foot stood, what, to the boy, seemed to be a monster fashioned from unyielding steel into the shape of an inexorable ogre.

The distortion of Martin Moreland’s face seen from the angle at which the boy was standing, was hideous. His mouthing threats were terrifying. His uplifted hand was dripping blood. Something tightened in the breast of the boy and arose in his throat, creeping back to his brain. Even as he gazed, there mingled with the terror he knew a slow wonder, for he was on a line with the locked door—that door inside which he had never had a glimpse. It opened into a room full of light; he saw beautiful furniture, dainty things, and silken hangings. Beside Martin Moreland, trying to block his way, clinging to him, there was a woman, a stranger woman, a woman that the boy never before had seen. She was wearing an exquisite wrapper of snowy white, foaming with laces, falling to her feet and heaping there as if she stood in a drift of snow.

At this apparition, Jason stared in dull wonder. Through the paralysis of terror in his brain there filtered the thought that Marcia could be made to look like that when the day came that he could give her beautiful clothing and such a room. A white ray of moonlight from the open window beside him fell on the boy and lighted the stairway. He saw the banker’s awful hand crash against the breast of the woman. He heard her cry of pain and pleading. He heard the thick, shaking voice shout: “Save your damned mouthing! The chances are that I will kill him before I get through with him this time!”

The woman, in her feathery laces, was thrown aside; Martin Moreland started up the stairway two steps at a time. When he was nearly two thirds of the way up, Jason moved, the wooden stool curved a circle around his head; then it crashed down with the combined strength of his two arms of desperation.

Martin Moreland uttered a guttural, rasping grunt. He clutched at the smooth sides of the walls but there was no supporting rail. Slowly his body curved backward and went crashing down, and into the arms that were stretched out, he fell, bearing the woman to the floor with him. Staring dully, Jason saw her struggle up; saw her stretch the form of the banker at the foot of the stairs; saw a hand reach across him to close the door.

Jason turned, every line of his terrified face etched clear in the moonlight. He went straight to the window and climbing through it, slid down the slanting roof of the lean-to, and dropping to the ground, turned his face toward the adjoining pasture and the woods back of it, and with all the strength he could summon, ran for cover, for the protection of the darkness that the big trees afforded.

Kneeling on the floor beside the banker, Marcia ran her hand across his temple and was horrified to find that it was covered with a sticky, warm red. She staggered to her feet, and hurrying to the kitchen, she brought back a basin of water. But before she used it she again put brandy to Moreland’s lips. For a few minutes she worked over him frantically. Then she arose, and stepping across his body, she called up the stairway: “I’m afraid you’ve killed him. Run, Jason, run! Run to the end of the earth and never come back!”

She listened, but there was no sound and no answer. She glanced backward, and then with flying feet, she climbed the stairs until her head was level with the floor of the garret, and in the pale light she searched the empty room and the vacant bed. Then she hurried back and renewed her ministrations.