The White Flag

by Gene Stratton-Porter

He tried to figure out why the fact that Martin Moreland owned the house in which they lived, should give him the right repeatedly to enter it late at night and attack him physically. Of course, Junior had lied to his father. He lied to every one when a lie suited his purpose better than the truth. He lied habitually to his mother, to his playmates, to his teachers; but even so, Jason could not understand why his teachers were not left to deal with him, as they were with other boys in case of wrong doing. By and by, he remembered the long walk he had made to Bluffport for the canary which he had bought with some of the money he had saved for his own use, earned by doing extra work on Saturdays and of nights and mornings and during summer vacations in the grocery of Peter Potter. He had understood why Mahala could not invite him to her party, and he understood as surely that she would have done it if she could; and that made everything concerning her all right with Jason. To his mind, the will to do was in no way related to the power of execution. Because Mahala wanted to invite him, he had thought deeply, and the loveliest thing he could think of in connection with her was a bird, as gold as her hair, that spent its life in spontaneous song,—the tiny, domestic creature that loved the bars of the only home its kind had known for generations and would have been terrified and lost outside them. He had been compelled to walk far and fast, to beg rides when he could, in order to cover the distance, and get Peter Potter’s hand to frame the note for him that he tied upon the cage, in time for the party. He had left the bird at her door; he had seen Mahala love it. He had felt her hand on his arm, her gift thrust into his fingers; he had heard her voice urging him to protect himself; but not one word had she said to chide him for the impulse that had caused him to tear the piece of brick from the border of Mrs. Spellman’s flower bed and send it smashing against the head of the boy who had dared to touch her roughly, to lay the hateful red of his full-lipped mouth on her delicate face.

The sunlight slowly warmed Jason and comforted him. He began to feel the gnawing of hunger. He remembered with a shock that almost toppled him off the stump, that all the honours of the previous evening had been his. He had watched the party from the vantage of a maple tree outside the parlour window, and it had been a long time before he had gained the courage to set his gift before the door, ring the bell, and rush back to his viewpoint. Now he recalled the fact, that while Junior’s gift had been shown to the other children and examined and exclaimed upon, it was his gift that Mahala had taken into her arms. He did not even have to shut his eyes to see her face strained against the wires of the cage. He could hear her voice crying: “Oh, you dear little bird, I love you!” in Billings’ cattle pasture quite as plainly as he had heard it the previous night.

Jason drew a deep breath and stood up and tested his strength. So far as Junior was concerned, he would undertake to handle him in the future, not from ambush, not with the help of a piece of brick. He would engage, by the strength of his arms and the tumult in his heart, to meet Junior as man met man upon any occasion.

Then he advanced a degree further in his progression, only to face the power of the banker. How was it that a beautiful woman in fine clothing appeared in his humble home; that she called the banker “Martin”; that she dared lay her hands upon him; that she tried to stop him from coming up the stairs mouthing his threats to kill; that she endured the blow from his blood-dripping hand? Who could the woman of foaming laces and arresting beauty have been save Marcia Peters? In his heart Jason always had called the woman with whom he lived “Marcia Peters.” She never had taught him to call her “mother.” He never had attempted the familiarity even when a small child. She had said to him: “Marcia will give you a glass of milk.” He had said to her: “Marcia, please give me a piece of bread.” How was it that in his life with her she was plain and homely, bending over a washtub, quietly mending laces and embroideries, while behind a locked door there was a room full of light, of delicate colour, of fashionable clothing, a room from which emanated flower perfumes and the tang of wine, a room with which the banker must have been familiar since he stepped from it laying down the law of outrage?

Jason’s shoulders were square and his face was toward home now. But some way, as he took the first step in that direction, in his heart he felt that he was slightly taller, stronger, different from the boy he had been the night before. He might get no satisfactory answer, but there were questions he intended to ask. He had no idea what he would find at the other side of the meadow. Would Martin Moreland be lying dead at the foot of the stairs? Would Marcia have dragged him into the locked room? Would she tell him to go and dig a deep place in the forest? Would they carry Martin Moreland out the coming night and lay him in it, and must they walk the remainder of their lives with a horrible secret stiffening their mouths and taunting their brains?

As he mulled these problems over and over in his mind he reached his back door. He realized that something portentous had happened. There were many heavy footprints, deeply cut wagon tracks; the cow was not calling from the shed; his white chickens that he had earned through the medium of Peter Potter, were not walking in their yard calling for their breakfast. He laid his hand upon the kitchen door, and tried to open it, only to find that it was locked. Then he went to the front door which was locked, while across it there was nailed a board upon which was printed in big, black letters: “This property for sale.” Through the window he could look into the house and see that it was empty. Then he knew that the woman he had always thought of as his mother had abandoned him. Marcia must have been the woman that he had seen the night before. He sat on the top step and began to remember again. He remembered many things—little things. The rubber gloves she wore when she was washing. She had said that they were to protect her fingers so that she could handle laces and fine mending. He remembered the jealously locked door and the glimpse he had had inside it the previous night. How could she have emptied the house and disappeared in that length of time without the aid of a powerful influence? He had seen the powerful influence in the grim figure with the uplifted hand. He had seen her dare to touch the banker. He had heard her call him “Martin,” he had seen the mark of his bloody hand on her white breast. She had been roughly flung aside as if she were a creature worthy of no consideration.

Suddenly Jason found that his face was buried in his rough, lean hands, while his body was torn once more with deep, dry sobs that rasped his being until the soles of his feet twitched on the board walk. When he had cried until he was exhausted, he slowly arose, and going around the house, he pumped some water and bathed his face and hands, drying them with a forgotten towel hanging on the back porch. He combed his hair with his fingers and straightened his clothing as best he could. He turned his face in the direction of the only friend he had in the world to whom he could go.

On the way, he made a detour and passed the bank on the opposite side of the street. Then he lingered until he saw Martin Moreland cross from the wicket of the paying teller to the private office of the President. Jason knew him by his height, his form, his bandaged head. The face of the boy took on the look of a man as he went on his way.

There was a lull in the business of the morning when Jason walked into the grocery of Peter Potter. Peter was precisely what his name implied—British, English of birth, as all Potters have a right to be, stable of character as all Peters have a right to be; the rock that a discerning mother had discovered in his small face before she had decorated him with the Peter appellation. Unquestionably, Peter had not been as progressive as he might have been. He had been faithful in the grocery business, but he had lacked talent. There were a thousand things that he should have been doing in the morning lull; instead he was smoking a pipe and contentedly stroking a cat. His florid face was very round, his bright eyes were twinkly blue. A hint of shrewdness and penuriousness lay in the lines around them; more than a hint of stubbornness lay in the breadth of his chin. Conservatism was written all over his baggy breeches and his gingham shirt, but no one would have dared to look at Peter Potter and say that he was not immaculately clean in person, honest in disposition, while the discerning might have surmised that he was misinformed as to the size of his palpitator. Peter prided himself upon being close.

Jason felt sufficiently well acquainted with Peter to venture a familiarity. Now Jason was not given to familiarities, but he had spent a searing night in the woods, he had spent the morning in Billings’ pasture and at his deserted home. He had reached a decision, and that decision was that he was utterly alone in the world, that he had his own way to make, and that he must begin by using his wits. And so, in desperation, he thrust his past behind him, and spiritually as naked as at the hour of his birth and equally as forsaken, he stood before Peter Potter. In a voice that sounded peculiar to himself and that caught Peter in an unaccustomed way, Jason said quietly: “Peter, I have decided that the time has come when you need a partner in your business.”