In the room over Peter Potter’s grocery, Jason, every day growing taller, stronger, and developing in mentality, planned for spare time that he might spend at his books and in taking care of the things that he and Peter had salvaged for Mahala without her knowledge. As he had advanced in his work in the grocery, and his benefit to Peter in his business had become pronounced, Peter had generously recompensed him. In the new building, the front room over the grocery had been designed for Jason’s needs. He now had a living room and a small separate bedroom. He had good lights, a table at which to work, a carpet upon his floor. This room was a private place, a personal possession of his. With the exception of Peter Potter and his wife, no one ever had entered it. Jason had no intention that any one should. There were many things in it which most of the people in Ashwater would have recognized.

Here Jason found his refuge; this was his place for meditation, for rest, for study. In the grocery below he worked indefatigably. Every few days fresh signs of the most attractive nature appeared in the windows. These signs, surrounded by attractively displayed goods, had been the means of reinstating Peter Potter. Two other clerks were busy behind his counters. Jason had drilled them according to his own ideas. They were not only efficient, but they were also honest. Peter found himself doing more business than both the other groceries of the town. When he reached this point he made Jason a partner in truth. Aside from a sufficient salary, he recompensed his good work with a third of the profits of the business. He realized that either of the other firms in town would be delighted to add Jason’s ability, his untiring labour, and his personal magnetism to its stock in trade. He knew that he could keep Jason only by making it well worth his while to remain with him.

One day he said admiringly to Jason: “They tell me that young Junior Moreland is pretty keen on a deal, but I’ll wager that he can’t beat you.”

Jason laughed as he replied: “Junior will cut circles around me when it comes to accumulating money because I am forced to be honest and he is forced to be crooked.”

Peter had a way of opening his mouth wide, and then setting the thumb and forefinger of his right hand immediately under his nose, he outlined the orifice. Slowly he indulged in this familiar practice. Finally, when his lips came together, he was looking at Jason, his head tilted to intensify his vision, speculation rampant in his eyes.

“Jason,” he asked suddenly, “who taught you to be honest?”

Jason considered his reply and then he said: “Outside of your grocery and what I learned at school, I can’t remember that any one ever taught me anything. Marcia never did, and when she let Martin Moreland beat me when I did not deserve beating, I began to feel that she was not even my mother.”

Once again Peter outlined a circle back of which his tongue worked, and then he asked another leading question. “By what right did Martin Moreland come to your house and beat you?”

Jason’s laugh was bitter, while his reply was: “By the right of riches; by superior strength, with the consent of the woman with whom I lived.”

Peter thought this over.

“I’ve known a few men in my time,” he said, “who were just naturally cruel; but Martin Moreland is just naturally a devil.”

Jason assented, and then he asked his leading question of Peter.

“I’ve been told,” he said, “that Becky Sampson goes into George Sand’s grocery, picks up whatever suits her fancy, and walks away, and that Martin Moreland foots her bills. Do you know whether that’s the truth?”

“Come here a minute,” said Peter.

Jason followed him to the back of the store. Out of a safe which was a part of the new building designed to do away with some of his trips to Bluffport, since Peter had no use for the village banker, he took one of the old ledgers he had brought back. He leafed over its pages until he came to one at the head of which was written, “Becky Sampson.” He showed Jason an account extending over years. He pointed to the foot of each page where the account was totalled and the total was carried over and added to the account of Martin Moreland.

As Peter closed the ledger and returned it to the safety of the vault he said: “I lost a good deal of his business when my store got to its lowest point. I lost the rest of it when I took you in; but I’ve made so much more with your help that I don’t care. Martin Moreland always put my back up like a mad cat’s whenever he came near me, anyway.”

Jason went through his work the remainder of that day without giving much thought to what he was doing. In the back of his head he was thinking of the woman, who, from childhood, had been supposed to be his mother. While she never had treated him as he saw other women treating their children, she never had been aggressively unkind to him. He had been plainly fed on the simplest fare; he had been scantily clothed; but he was comfortable. He never had been forced to go to school with icy feet and a purple nose. He had always had a warm coat with mittens in his pocket. From earliest remembrance he had worked all day and in a manner that produced results. He realized that his deepest thanks were due to Marcia; that she had taught him to do this, and that, had he not known how to work efficiently and speedily when he was left alone, he would have been deserted indeed. If he had not been quick and neat and efficient, it would not have been in his soul to perform the near miracle that he had performed in the transformation of Peter’s grocery from the third in the town to the first. He would not have been able to draw patronage in spite of the things that repeatedly came to his ear that the powerful banker was doing secretly to prevent Peter’s business from flourishing.

There were many things that Martin Moreland could do to any man he had in his power financially. The one place in which Peter Potter always had shown deep wisdom was in keeping out of Moreland’s hands financially. In his worst days, if he had a small surplus to bank, he had left the store in charge of Jason, climbed into his delivery wagon, and jogged to Bluffport. So long as he was not under financial obligations at the First National, so long as his store was fresh and shining, his windows filled with attractive signs encircled by attractive food in the way of corroboration, Martin Moreland had not been able either to say or to do anything that would injure him.

Reviewing all these things, and studying them over, Jason was slowly beginning to arrive at conclusions. As he grew older and watched the ramifications of life unfold everywhere around him, he began to see and to understand and to place his own interpretation upon things that had happened to him ever since his childhood. Because Marcia had never been actively unkind to him, because life with her was the only life he had known up to the time that she had vanished in one black night of horror, Jason’s thoughts of her were not wholly unkind. As he studied the situation in Ashwater, as he realized what financial power like that of Martin Moreland meant in the hands of an unscrupulous man, he found himself thinking more frequently, and even in a kindlier way, concerning Marcia. If Martin Moreland were a man sufficiently bright mentally, sufficiently unscrupulous to encompass the downfall of one after another of the financial men of Ashwater and adjoining counties, it was not so very much of a marvel that he might also have in his power a woman who was standing alone.

Jason began to wonder where Marcia was; what life was doing to her; whether she really was his mother, and if she was, whether she would be pleased to see him, to know that he was prospering, to know that very frequently he made the journey to Bluffport for Peter Potter, and that in the bank there stood an account to his credit from which nothing ever had been deducted except for his barest necessities—food, clothing, and books. With the stigma of his mother’s occupation removed from him, with the changed appearance through years of growth, sufficient food, and not too strenuous work, Jason was slowly developing into an attractive figure. Always he had kept in mind, that if he did make a noteworthy success of life, he must remember his books. He found that during the years when he had fixed his lessons in his mind, repeating formulas, tables, and equations at the same time he was selling tomatoes and raisins and tobacco, he had acquired what might be denominated the “habit” of study. He liked to study; he liked to carry a problem in his head, thrash it out to a certain point, and to experience the feeling of power he experienced when sudden interruptions diverted his mind, and yet, with the return of leisure, came the ability to return to his problem, take it up where he had left off, and carry it to a successful conclusion. This argued well for the fact that he was able to attain for himself, by himself, a degree of culture that might possibly surpass that which others were acquiring in their school work. When Commencement was over and Mahala no longer entered the store to show him how far the classes had advanced, Jason had procured for himself higher books and gone on with what really were the beginnings of a college education.

Somewhere, inherent in his nature, there was a love of the soil. He was particularly interested in the wagons of the farmers who stopped at the back door of the grocery with great loads of crisp cabbages, golden tomatoes, purple beets, silvery-skinned onions, long white radishes with blue tops, and turnips of the same colour, spreading into great, juicy circles of crisp tartness. He liked to slice the top from one of these, peel it, and stand biting into it like an apple, as he negotiated the purchase of the load and its transfer to the back of the grocery. Sometimes he went and stood beside the teams and slipped his slender fingers under the harness, easing it about the horses’ ears, straightening out the mane, talking to them as if they had been people. The one thing upon which he had determined was that he would not remain much longer with Peter Potter, and the other thing about which he had not determined, but concerning which in his heart he admitted the lure, was land. He would like to grow such wagonloads of fruits and vegetables as he constantly handled in Peter Potter’s grocery. He would like to own a stable filled with cows and calves and sheep and horses. He would like to have around his feet once more a flock of chickens such as he had lost upon the night when he lost everything else on earth that belonged to him except his life and the clothing he wore.

He understood what it meant when boys who had scorned and taunted him at school began dropping into the grocery and asking him to the backs of certain buildings after working hours were over. Now that they knew he had money, they were willing to gamble with him. As he increased in stature and it became known that he really was a partner in Peter Potter’s business, there were boys, and girls as well, who began to be friendly and occasionally he was asked to a party or some social gathering; but not in one instance had Jason ever accepted any of these invitations. Firmly fixed in his mind were his days of privation, the days when he would have been so delighted to be included at the merry makings devised for other children, the days when his heart and brain were hungry. Now that he was mentally occupied and physically satisfied, he could not quite control the feeling of repulsion that crept up in his heart when he met with an advance on the part of any boy or girl who, once upon a time, had seared his brain and repulsed his body with the taunt: “Washerwoman’s son!”

Jason knew, in the depths of his heart, that as the years passed, the same hunger for love, for companionship, for the diversions of the young around him, were even stronger than they had been as a child. He realized that there was something for which he was waiting, something that he wanted with an intensity that at times seared his body like a fever, but what it was that he wanted was not a thing that could be supplied by tardy kindness on the part of his former tormentors.

For four years the bright spots in Jason’s life had been the few minutes each Friday evening of the school week when Mahala, usually armed with a list of groceries, had slipped into the store, come straight to him and put in his fingers the neat slip giving the pages of advance over the previous week; and sometimes there had been written out the start of a difficult equation, a hint that read: “You will find a catch in the fifteenth problem on the sixty-seventh page. You divide by nine and multiply by fifty-four,” and sometimes she had carried to him for a few weeks of his use, a volume of supplementary reading that helped him.

With Commencement these things stopped. Almost immediately thereafter, Mahala’s troubles had begun, and then, to Jason’s bewilderment, there had speedily come the time when there were things that he could do for her, things that saved her work, that saved her money, that helped her to keep her head high and her face pridefully lifted and fronting the world that so soon had forgotten her. There was beginning in his heart a yeasty ferment, a boiling up of many things, a wandering and a questioning, and above everything else, each day more deeply rooted, the conviction that the same hand that had so much to do with his destiny was the hand that deliberately had brought ruin into the life of the girl who, alone of the whole town, had gone out of her way to show him compassion and human kindness. He was beginning to wonder what there was that he could do to free Mahala from this sinister power under which so many others had fallen. He was beginning to study, occasionally to ask questions, and in his heart there grew a slow wonder as to just what money was, how it had originated, and why it gave to any man the power to ride in a carriage, to mingle in the best society, to hold up his head in the churches, to control for years in the schools and the town council, in every enterprise in which money or business welfare was concerned, and at the same time to be the unseen cause of financial wreck, of physical downfall for other men.

Definitely Jason was beginning to settle in his own mind as to what such power also entailed in the lives of women. Sometimes, when his thoughts were skipping over the surface, or delving deep, he thought of Mrs. Moreland. He remembered her dark face, the pathetic lines around her mouth. He remembered the story of how she had come to the village upon a visit in the days when she was young and good looking and richly dressed. He had been told of the whirlwind courtship of Martin Moreland and how she had married him, believing that he loved her, and how she had put her fortune into his hands and was now so dependent upon him that she might only spend of her own money by charging an account at the stores which would be paid by a check from the bank. Certainly, she was not a happy woman. Certainly, she could not be, if she knew anything concerning the financial transactions in which her husband indulged. Because she remained the larger part of her time at home and busied herself about her household affairs, it was generally conceded that she did not know many of the things that were known concerning her husband. There was a tendency to speak of her in a whisper as “the poor thing.”

Then one day Jason’s brain found a new subject for consideration. He had gone to the Bluffport bank, carrying an unusually heavy deposit for Peter Potter and himself. Standing at a small side desk, occupied with pen and blotter, going over his account, he caught an oblique glimpse of a woman entering the door, a woman in the very prime of life, having a frank face of alluring beauty. He noticed the attractive way in which her hair was dressed; he noticed the neatness, the dignity, the style of her clothing. The fact that she was bareheaded told him that she must be from one of the near-by stores. With the sure step of one accustomed by a long-formed habit, she took her place at the window of the paying teller and transacted her business. Jason slid around the corner of the desk, pulled his hat a bit lower over his face, and gripping the pen firmly, watched in almost stupefying bewilderment.

It could not be possible; but it was possible. There was no mistaking the tones of the quick, incisive voice. It was the same voice that had told him, almost every day of his youth, that his only chance lay through books. It was the same frame now fashionably, even expensively, clothed, that had bent above the washtub in the dingy kitchen of his childhood. It was the same face, with the accompanying miracle of elaborate and attractive hair dressing and a chamois skin dusted with pink powder. When Jason’s lips met, he realized that they had been hanging open until they were dry. Above the marvel of seeing Marcia standing so confidently at the wicket of the bank, transacting a financial matter that appeared to be of considerable importance, came the marvel of the deference with which she was treated by the cashier. For her the wicket was swung open; for her there were polite greetings and a few words concerning the weather and outside matters; for her there was a laughing jest as she turned away and went swiftly as she had come.

Jason laid down the pen and followed at a distance. One block down the street she crossed and went into an interesting building on the corner. From across the street, he looked at the front window, at the side, at the entrance, and read, in letters of white china placed upon the glass, “Millinery and Ladies’ Furnishings. Nancy Bodkin and Company.”

Jason repeated it over and over—“‘and Company.’” Did that mean that Martin Moreland had given liberty to his slave, that she was no longer a creature of dingy kitchens and the subterfuge of washtubs in order that for a few night hours she might be the creature Jason once had seen in the rose-pink environment and the dress of snow? Was Marcia the woman who could carry such an alliance further, and at the same time look and move and speak as he had just seen her?

Jason found himself entering the store behind him. It proved to be a drug store. He bought a glass of milk shake, and sitting down at the counter, he began a conversation with the clerk as he drank. He started by remarking upon the wonderful growth of Bluffport—how many new buildings and how attractive they were. Then he came to the point which concerned him.

“In all the tidying up you’ve done here in the past four or five years, I don’t see anything to beat this establishment or the one just across the street. I’d call that the kind of an enterprise that wouldn’t look so bad in Indianapolis or Chicago,” he said.

“And that’s a funny thing,” said the clerk. “Ever since I was a little shaver running around town, Nancy Bodkin has been in the millinery business here. Good years she managed to make ends meet and bad years she didn’t. And I’ve heard here lately that she was just at the point of going bankrupt and giving up in despair when along comes a stranger in town and they get to work together.”

“Oh,” said Jason, “then the stranger represents the ‘and Company’?”

“Yeh,” said the clerk, “represents the ‘and Company.’”

“And the ‘and Company’ had money to pull the concern up to a corner building and all that foxy millinery and ladies’ fixings?”

“No,” said the clerk. “That’s the funny part of it. The ‘and Company’ came in and went to work as she stood. There’s been quite a bit of talk among the womenfolks off and on, but nobody has ever discovered, either from the ‘and Company’ or from Nancy, where she came from or how she happened to come. She didn’t have anything but herself, but she knew how to wash windows and how to clean up. I can remember that I saw her myself the day she climbed on a store box and started painting the front of Nancy Bodkin’s store with a bucket of paint and a brush. When she got it painted on the outside as far as she could reach, she painted it on the inside. She had such a knack of selling goods and she was so keen about buying, that in no time at all they pulled right out, and now look where they are!”

“You think they did it all by themselves?” persisted Jason.

“Sure of it,” said the clerk. “So’s every one else. They didn’t get a cent of help from any one; the banker says so. This ‘and Company,’ whose name happens to be Marcia Peters, marched into the bank and told the banker what she was going to do and she told it so convincingly that he believed her. He loaned her what she needed for her first order of millinery, on the strength of her face and her convincing talk. It shows what a couple of women can do if they put their heads together and decide that they’ll do it.”

Without realizing precisely what he was doing, Jason reached up and took off his hat. He hung it over one of his knees and sipping at the milk shake, he sat looking across the street. He could see Marcia moving back and forth behind the counters. Once she followed a customer to the door and stood talking a minute, her face full of interest and animation. She looked the proud, competent, confident woman of business. He was possessed of an impulse to cross the street and say to her: “Mother, I am glad that you are getting along so finely. I’m gladder than I’ve any words to tell you that you are capable of taking care of yourself.”

When the impulse was quite the strongest, there came to Jason the realization that the woman he was watching could not, by any possibility, have been his mother. If his head ever had lain under her heart through the long journey from conception to birth, if his lips ever had mouthed at her breast and his babyhands slid over her face, it would have been impossible for the woman he knew Marcia to be, to have vanished in the night as she had, five long years ago. It was because she had not known these experiences, that even the boy sensed as the life, the heart, and the soul of the experience of women who are mothers, that she could stand there with her head erect and her eyes clear, meeting the world openly and unafraid.

She must know that he was in Ashwater. She must know what he was doing. If she wanted him, she knew where to find him. Since she did not seek him, since she sent no word, why should he thrust himself upon her? He could see that she was happy. He could see that she was respected and prosperous. And he found as he watched her, that there was a feeling of satisfaction growing in his heart concerning her. She was more of a woman than he had thought her. She was one human being who had escaped the power of Martin Moreland and who seemed to have come out unscathed.

As he drove back to Ashwater he was debating in his mind as to whether he would tell Peter Potter about her and he was finding that he was consoled concerning her by the knowledge that she was comfortable and happy.

Jason was right in his conjecture. Marcia was happy. She was happy to such a degree as she never had hoped to experience. Prosperity was written large all over the millinery store on the corner. It was written on Marcia, which made small difference to Bluffport as it had no realization that Marcia might not always have been reasonably prosperous. The concern of Bluffport centred upon Nancy Bodkin, who, following Marcia’s example, had lifted up her head, dressed her hair becomingly, powdered her nose, and exercised her art upon her dry goods as well as her head piece.

These two women, each with her own secret in her own heart, so far as the world knew, formed a combination that was the subject of prideful commendation in Bluffport. There was not an enterprise in the town in which they were not interested. When the Grand Army needed help for an entertainment, they were first class at decorations and resourceful in suggesting programmes. When a campaign was in full blast, they were of great help to their party in the decoration of wagons and the management of parades, and on one occasion, Marcia had stood in the full blaze of the sunlight of late October upon one of these wagons, in streaming robes of white, her gold hair unbound and falling almost to her knees, and shown all Bluffport and the surrounding country what a living, breathing Goddess of Liberty should look like. When an epidemic of diphtheria struck the town and the Presbyterian minister lost his wife and baby, leaving him helpless with another motherless little daughter, Marcia was sent by the church with lace and veiling to prepare the bodies for burial. Moving through the house at her work, she definitely caught the attention of the minister. He noticed her grace and her beauty. His heart was touched with her kindness to his terrified little daughter and her ability to soothe and quiet the frightened child. He carried the thought of her in the back of his head, and when time had healed his wounds and necessity had driven him to think of replacing his wife, the memory of Marcia came first to his thoughts and he began quietly and persistently to seek her company.

Marcia tried to evade him, to escape his attention, but he soon made it apparent to every one that he was deliberately seeking her. One day he entered the millinery store carrying an armful of beautiful flowers that one of his parishioners had given to him. He explained to Marcia that he thought that she might like to have them, and so he had brought them to her.

Peering from behind a case of hats, the little milliner watched with intense interest. If any male person ever had courted her, she never had mentioned the matter to any one. In her heart there was the interest which any woman feels in watching another woman whom she loves being courted by an attractive man. Nancy Bodkin’s lips were parted and her eyes shining as she saw Marcia’s hand reach out to take the flowers, as she heard her graciously thank the minister for his thoughtfulness. Behind them, through the open doorway, she saw the figure of a tall, slender man whom she knew. He had been pointed out to her years before on the streets of Bluffport as Martin Moreland, the richest man of the county seat, the banker, a land holder who had so many farms covered with mortgages that he was not supposed to know the exact number himself.

The minister was acquainted with Martin Moreland and at once introduced him to Marcia. Moreland explained his presence by saying that he wished to be shown a gray hat displayed in the window which he thought might possibly make a suitable gift for his daughter Edith. He spent some time telling the minister in detail what a charming woman his son had married, the delight he found in spending his hard-earned money for her pleasure. Then he began playing with Marcia.

At his first entrance he had merely bowed to her and devoted himself to the minister. After his explanation concerning the hat, he took it in his hands and examined it critically; he asked her personal opinion of it; he described the woman who was to wear it; then he asked Marcia to put it on in order that he could get its effect when worn.

Frightened almost to paralysis, tortured beyond endurance, afraid to refuse, Marcia put on the hat. It was one that had been built in particular reference to the lines of her face and head. As she settled it and turned, her beauty was strikingly enhanced. She was forced to stand before the two men, turning that they might get the full effect of it. Moreland admired the hat extravagantly and ended by purchasing it.

While Marcia was packing the hat in a box that he might carry it away, he said to her very casually: “You have displayed such wonderful art in the making of hats that evidently the good Lord designed you to be a milliner. I scarcely think you would be successful should you ever attempt to be anything else.”

Marcia understood. She mustered the courage to look him in the face as she replied: “I have not the slightest intention ever to attempt to be anything except a milliner.”

Moreland laughed; the old crafty look that Marcia so well knew was gleaming in his eyes. Then he took the hat and left the store with the remark that since he had discovered a place where such charming hats could be secured so reasonably, he thought that he would call again frequently. Swept by sickening waves throughout her being, Marcia had great difficulty in standing erect and keeping her facial muscles under control.

The first thing she knew the minister had reached across the counter and caught her hands. He was telling her that it was his opinion that the good Lord had designed her to be the helpmate in his clerical work, the love of his heart, and a mother to his lonely little daughter.

Marcia drew away, telling him that it was quite impossible that this should ever be. Disappointed, but unconvinced, the minister left the store, saying that he would give her time to think it over. He would come again and he would continue to plead his cause until he won.

He had not reached the front door before Marcia rushed to the seclusion of the back room. She dropped beside a table, covered with gay flowers and ribbons, and sobbed out her heart to Nancy who had become her friend in deed and in truth.

Since Martin Moreland had reËntered her life, Marcia contemplated herself in astonishment. How had she ever dared to hope that he would drop out of it so easily? Why had she ever thought that there was any possibility other than that he was merely biding his time, waiting to crush her, until he could make his triumph over her the greater? All the sunshine had vanished from her day; all joy was dead in her heart. The life she must face she visioned as a dreary thing of suspense and fear. In agony she slid to her knees on the floor, laid her head in the lap of Nancy Bodkin, and with her arms around her, purged her soul. A few terse sentences were all that were necessary.

Then in torture she cried to Nancy: “I am tempted to walk into the church and stand up before the minister and all the people, and proclaim myself!”

Horrified, Nancy began to protest. She told Marcia what she already knew: that the public never forgives a woman; that she would be driven from the town; that she would be forced to start life again among strangers; and that no matter where she went, Moreland would pursue her and try to exert his evil influence over her. Marcia stretched out her hands.

“Nancy,” she cried, “when you say people never forgive, does that include you?”

Nancy began to cry. She threw her arms around Marcia’s shoulders and drew her head against her breast, and there she stroked it with shaking hands.

“No!” she protested. “No! it doesn’t include me. I have not one word to say. I know nothing about your beginning. I know nothing about your temptation. I know nothing of the forces—they must have been something underhand and terrible to drive so fine a woman as you into years of the life you say you have lived.”

From that day forward it seemed to Marcia that she must never be out of the thoughts of Nancy Bodkin. Everything that she could do to protect her, to shield her, she did instinctively. When Nancy realized that Marcia was beginning to be afraid of the front door, she moved her work table to a point where she could command a view of it. She began the practice, whenever there were footsteps and the door opened, of sending a hasty glance in that direction and then nodding her head or calling to Marcia, and Marcia understood that in case Martin Moreland entered again, it was the intention of the little milliner to face him in her stead.

Because of these things there developed in Marcia’s heart a feeling for Nancy Bodkin’s breadth of mind, her largeness of soul, and her clear-eyed judgment, that was pitiful. There was nothing that she would not gladly have done for Nancy. When she saw the light beginning to fade from Nancy’s eyes, the colour to pale on her cheeks, she was heart broken.

And Nancy, in watching Marcia, was hurt infinitely worse. So hand in hand, the two of them went stumbling forward, making their bravest effort to meet life having the appearance of being upright and unafraid, when in reality each of them was filled with dreadful forebodings.