Jimmy stood the impact amazingly well. Martin Moreland glanced off him and reeled to one side. Jimmy was rather substantial; in that instant his person converted itself into a materialization of the last straw for Martin Moreland. Here was a creature, shaped like a man, wholly at his mercy. The banker doubled his disabled hand into a fist, with which he launched a crashing blow in the direction of the most substantial part of Jimmy’s anatomy. Jimmy had recovered from the mackerel sufficiently to realize that it was the mighty banker who had collided with him, while the blow had careened him to one side. Through daily manipulations of hoe, rake, and sickle, Jimmy had become almost a boneless creature. He evaded the menace as lightly as he sank to work with sheep shears or trowel, so that the fist of opulence shot over him and struck the window casing instead with sufficient force to break open the slightly set wounds, wrenching from the lips of its owner a hyena-like howl of shredded anguish.
For one moment Martin Moreland was too badly hurt to think of his position or his dignity—matters of his most constant concern. He was almost reeling with nausea and spleen. He felt for his hat to see that it was set as straight as possible above his bandages, and arranged his coat. He thrust the hand, through which wiry slivers of pain were shooting, into his bosom. He started toward the bank in what he hoped was his most dignified manner.
Jimmy, completing the dive he had made to escape the arm of malevolence, came to an upright position at the middle of the step leading to the grocery. He did not in the least understand why, in the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” he might not be permitted to stand on the sidewalk and contemplate the deliciousness on display in Peter Potter’s window if he chose. He did not understand why the august banker should not have been paying sufficient attention to where he was going not to collide with inoffensive human beings wholly within their rights. He did not even try to understand why Martin Moreland had launched a blow at him with a heavily bandaged hand, but it had caused hatred to flare in his heart. He resolved, that if he ever got a chance, he would show Martin Moreland that he was just as good as any old banker. He wondered about the heavily bandaged head. As he looked after the retreating figure, Jimmy became aware, as he always was aware of any slight chance to be in the limelight, that a number of people on the street and at the doors and windows of the different stores, were watching the proceeding with intense interest. Immediately, Jimmy straightened his figure, felt for his hat, set his coat, and thrusting one hand into the front of it, strutted down the street in such exact imitation of the stride of the banker that a roar went up the length of the block; the louder people laughed the more exaggeratedly Jimmy kept up his imitation.
Martin Moreland was conscious of being the butt of that shout of laughter. He was certain that the creature he referred to as the “town monkey” was performing some absurd antic behind his back which was making him the one thing he loathed being above any other—a laughing stock. His inherent pride was too strong to allow him even to glance behind him. He would infringe on his dignity if he permitted himself to pay the slightest attention to what he mentally denominated “the rabble.” Exactly why the Senior Moreland should have felt in his heart that the “boys grown tall” among whom he had been born and had lived all his life, were “rabble” would be very difficult to explain. He was perspiring freely with pain, with nervousness, while his heart was almost suffocating him with anger as he mounted the steps and made his way between the huge bronze dogs guarding the portal of the Ashwater First National Bank, Martin Moreland, President.
CHAPTER VI
“The Golden Egg”
By what she could see in the October moonlight of the open spaces, Marcia Peters, pounding over the highway, surrounded by her belongings, imagined that she was on the way to the second largest town of the county, Bluffport, a dozen or so miles from Ashwater. She recognized the village when she was driven into it. She saw that she was passing the business part of the town and the better residences, and at last, as in Ashwater, she found herself on the extreme outskirts.
The dray stopped before a small house. The drayman unlocked the door, carried in, and with small ceremony, dumped her clothing and furnishings on the floor. Then he climbed on his wagon and drove away without having spoken a word.
Marcia closed the door behind him, and from force of habit, turned the key. She had been riding through the night until her eyes were accustomed to the darkness. She had no provision for light, but through the uncurtained windows she could see enough to distinguish the mattress of her bed. As she was desperately tired, she pulled it to a bare spot upon the floor, hunted a pillow, and lying down in her clothing, covered her shoulders with her coat, and mental strain culminated in the blessed surcease of tears.
Marcia whimpered to the darkness: “What had I to do with it? What is fair or just about treating me like this?”